Speranza,
In the "Conversation" between Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari about Macedonio
Fernandez, Borges affection for him comes through strongly, and yet the
Wikipedia article implies something different:
/Macedonio was Jorge Luis Borges's most important Argentine mentor and
influence. The relationship between the writers, however, was far more
complex than Borges or his contemporaries represented it to be. In his
later years, Borges made a point of naming Macedonio as an early
influence whom, in the exuberance of his youth, Borges imitated "to the
point of plagiarism." At the same time, Borges denied that Macedonio
possessed any literary talent or importance, reinforcing the long-held
perception of the older man as a kind of local //Socratic
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method>//philosopher, specific
to Argentina and constitutive of an Argentine mythic dimension./
//
/Recent studies by Ana Camblong, Julio Prieto, Daniel Attala and Todd S.
Garth, among others, indicate that Macedonio's literary impact on Borges
was far more profound and enduring than Borges ever admitted, and that
Borges went to great pains to hide this influence. Many of the most
fundamental concepts underpinning Borges's fiction come directly from
Macedonio. These include the questioning of space and time and their
continuity; the confusion of dreaming and wakefulness; the unreliability
of memory and the importance of forgetfulness; the slipperiness (or
nonexistence) of personal identity; the denial of originality and the
emphasis on texts as being recyclings and translations of prior texts;
and the questioning and commingling of the roles of author, reader,
editor and commentator./
//
/These influences extend to thematic material. Such themes include the
conceit of an alternative, fictional dimension, elaborated anonymously
in collaboration, that invades the known, tangible world (Borges's
"//Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius>//" and
Macedonio's campaign to transform //Buenos Aires
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires>//by turning it into a
novel, a component of his //Museo de la Novela de la Eterna//); and the
hermetic world of immigrant working girls who must negotiate the city on
their own, secret terms based purely on instinct and passion (Borges's
"//Emma Zunz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Zunz>//" and
Macedonio's //Adriana Buenos Aires//). While it is evident both men were
inspired by ideas they read in the works of late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth century philosophers (specifically //Schopenhauer
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer>//and //Bergson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson>//), there is little
question that the two Argentines developed some of their most
characteristic and enduring ideas together, in conversation, throughout
the 1920s. Macedonio appears explicitly in Borges's "//Dialogue about a
Dialogue
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dialogue_about_a_Dialogue&action=edit&redlink=1>//,"//^[2]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonio_Fern%C3%A1ndez#cite_note-2>
//in which the two discuss the //immortality of the soul
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_of_the_soul>//./
//
/The relationship between these two men began in earnest in 1921, when
Borges returned to Buenos Aires with his family after their extended
stay in Switzerland (and travels elsewhere in Europe), where he had
completed his education. Borges's father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam,
had been a close companion to Macedonio and attended law school with
him. Upon graduating law school, Macedonio, the elder Borges, and
companion //Julio Molina y Vedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julio_Molina_y_Vedia&action=edit&redlink=1>//hatched
a plan to found a //utopian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopianism>//colony based on the
//anarchist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism>//principles of
//Élisée Reclus
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lis%C3%A9e_Reclus>//. This plan
apparently never went beyond an exploratory visit the three made around
1897 to a plantation the Molina y Vedia family owned in the Argentine
//Chaco <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Chaco>//, near the
//Bolivian <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia>//border. During the
years prior to 1921, Macedonio married, started a law practice and went
about raising a family. This idyll came to an end when Macedonio's wife,
Elena de Obieta, died suddenly in 1920. Macedonio then shuttered his law
practice, dismantled his household and, about the same time as he
renewed his friendship with the now adult Jorge Luis Borges, embarked on
a life as an idiosyncratic writer-philosopher./
//
/Borges and other members of the //generación martinfierrista
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Fierro_%28magazine%29>//were
drawn to Macedonio as a mentor and figurehead who could serve as an
anchor to the nascent Buenos Aires avant-garde and a foil to //Leopoldo
Lugones <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_Lugones>//, leader of
the //modernista//movement of a generation earlier. Macedonio made
noteworthy, if infrequent, contributions to the literary gatherings of
the //ultraísta <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraism>//movement and
the related //"Florida" group
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_group>//of writers and artists.
Borges was an active participant in Macedonio's intimate //tertulias
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertulia>//, both in Buenos Aires bars
and cafés and in a shack Macedonio sometimes borrowed on a friend's
ranch outside the city. He also was one of the collaborators in
Macedonio's burlesque campaigns for the presidency of the Argentine
Republic (in 1921 and again in 1927), episodes which apparently gave
rise to the analogous fictional campaign in //Museo//. In addition,
Borges was responsible for urging Macedonio to publish at least one of
the two book-length works printed in Macedonio's lifetime, //No toda es
vigilia la de los ojos abiertos//, in 1926./
//
/The relationship between Borges and Macedonio appears to have begun to
deteriorate around 1927 or 1928, when correspondence (published and
analyzed by Carlos García) indicates a rift between them. This is also
about the time that Borges made his famous break with the avant-garde
and pronounced the death of Argentine //ultraísmo//, essentially forcing
the closure of its most important publication, the little magazine
//Martín Fierro
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Fierro_%28magazine%29>//,
after its sixteenth issue. The two events may not be coincidental. From
1927 onward, Borges not only started to write, publish and promote his
characteristic short fiction (beginning with "Hombre de la esquina
rosada"), he aggressively renounced his prior aesthetic production and
put considerable energy into burying it forever. A number of sources
(//Donald Shaw
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Shaw_%28writer_and_professor%29>//in
particular) suggest that Borges began to regard most of his early
writings, and the ideas behind them, as potentially pernicious,
especially in the hands of nationalists. Supporting this notion is the
fact that many of Borges's stories in which Macedonio's influence is
most evident imply a warning against concepts and principles Macedonio
represented: absolute relativism; the priority of thought, emotion and
imagination over a nominal existence; and the implicit heroism of a
hermetic existence./
*COMMENT: *I have read only a few of Borges' stories, more of his essays
and poetry; so perhaps you can say whether the Wikipedia article treats
Borges fairly in regard to his relationship with Macedonio Fernandez.
One little bit from the "Conversation" struck me as nonsense -or a
joke. Macedonio was in the habit of leaving manuscripts in hotel rooms
and when asked by someone why is purported by Borges to be "genuinely
surprised, "But do you believe that I could think of something new? You
should know that I always have the same thoughts. I do not lose
anything. I will think of the same things again in such-and-such a
hotel in the Once. What I will think of on Jujuy Street will be the
same as what I thought on Misiones Street." No one who is in this sort
of rut and thinks only the same thoughts over and over can have been the
influence on Borges that he is described as being. On the other hand,
the split between them occurred apparently when Borges abandoned the
"ultra" movement, a movement that Macedonio may not have abandoned
implying that in the area of whatever thoughts went into Ultraism,
Macedonio stayed the same but Borges moved on.
