In 1965, in a modest classroom of the College of Immaculate Conception of Santa Fe, a young literature professor called Jorge Mario Bergoglio “Who decades later would be the first Latin American Pope,” organized a very special class. I had achieved something unusual: that Jorge Luis Borgesthen a consecrated figure of Argentine literature will travel in collective to the institution to meet its students. The writer spoke with the students and, from that meeting, a narrative workshop was formed whose fruits would derive in an anthology of youth stories extended by the author of the author of Fictions. Sixty years later, that pedagogical gesture becomes a book: Pope Francis, Borges and literaturewhich will be presented on Saturday, May 10 at 7:00 p.m. in the Victoria Ocampo room of the Buenos Aires Book Fair.
The activity – organized by the Cervantes Institute and the Jorge Luis Borges Foundation, in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain in Argentina – will have the participation of Luis García Monterodirector of the Cervantes Institute; María Victoria KodamaPresident of the Borges Foundation; and Lucas AdurResearcher at the Ricardo Rojas Argentina Institute of the University of Buenos Aires. The axis will be Francisco’s link with literature from his relationship with Borges, a link that dates back to that school day in the sixties, and is reactuated today in this work that intertwines memory, training and literary vocation.
The origin of this new volume is found in that experience as a Bergoglio teacher, who remembered Borges as “a tipozo” for accepting the invitation. The visit resulted in a collection of stories written by his students, with a prologue signed by Borges where he highlighted the importance of fiction as a learning tool. This 1965 text is published again in this edition as a symbolic opening of a work that brings together different moments of the relationship between literature, education and youth.
During a private audience in September 2023 with García MonteroFrancisco had authorized the Cervantes Institute to publish those materials “in the way it would consider more useful.” This decision translated into a book that articulates past and present with the purpose of stimulating not only reading, but also writing, especially among the youngest. The work takes additional value after the recent death of the Pontiff, who maintained a constant defense of culture and word as training tools.
The publication is not limited to the rescue of a historical anecdote. It also brings together recent stories written by students of secondary level of public and private schools throughout the country, awarded between 2021 and 2024 in the competitions organized by the Borges Foundation. These competitions, promoted for decades by María Kodamathey functioned as stimulus spaces for young writers, and now find a new editorial dimension in this joint proposal with the Cervantes Institute.
The selected stories address diverse themes, with styles that range from the realistic to the fantastic. Among them are “lost letters” of Natrone candle“How deep the sea can be” Sasha Nahir Luna Folmer“Where eternity does not arrive” of Simon Rojas and “Aleph” of Mora Lucía Zabala. Each of these texts reveals generational concerns, poetic intuitions and a remarkable narrative capacity.
In addition to the stories, the book includes several texts that frame the proposal from different perspectives. The main essay, signed by Luis García Montero, travels through the cultural link between Borges and Francisco, stopping in the relationship that both established with teaching, youth and literature. María Victoria Kodamafor his part, he writes about the continuity of the work initiated by María Kodama in promoting reading and writing among adolescents.
Lucas Adur contributes with Borges, a young writeressay that stops in the reading that Borges himself made of the new authors and their vision of the literary formation process. In turn, two texts written by Francisco are included before his death: Letter to the poets y About the role of literature in formation. In the latter, the Pope wrote:
“When I think of literature, what the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges tells his students comes to mind: the most important thing is to read, go into direct contact with literature, immerse themselves in the living text that we have in front of us, rather than look at the ideas and critical comments. And Borges explained this idea to his students telling them that perhaps at the beginning they were going to understand little of what they were reading, but that in any case they would have heard. Someone ‘.
The volume closes with an epilogue that includes “two words”, from Luis J. Toteraand “Borges in Santa Fe”, from Santiago de Lucahistorically contextualizing the visit of the writer to the Bergoglio Santa Fe classroom.
Francisco’s recent death gives this publication a testimonial and symbolic value. Not only for the rescue of the initial gesture of his teaching work, but for the reaffirmation of his commitment to the word as a transformation tool. Pope Francis, Borges and literature It can be read, in this sense, as part of its cultural legacy: a project that recognizes literature as part of people’s training framework, beyond beliefs, disciplines or contexts.
The presentation act at the Book Fair will not only honor Francisco’s memory, but will also remember the validity of his ideas about education, youth and the power of the word. In times of debates about the place of literature in school, this work comes to reopen a conversation that Borges and Bergoglio, each from their place, knew how to anticipate.
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