Writer’s Day: Lugones and Borges, duel of the titans

2023-06-13 10:50:00

Every June 13 is celebrated in Argentina the Writer’s Day in commemoration of the birth of Leopoldo Lugones that day but from 1874 in Villa de María de Río Seco.

The date was instituted following the death of the Cordovan poet and prose writer in 1938 by the Argentine Society of Writers.

lugonesthe first president of that entity in 1928, was already a consecrated figure of national letters, while a young Jorge Luis Borgess, a member of the founding board of directors, appeared on the literary stage.

Around those times a dispute arises between the two that is reflected in the book “A Crucial Triangle”by Ivonne Bordelois.

The author explains that Borges criticized the ballads of lugonesbut that he ignored his ironies and chose to consecrate Ricardo Guiraldes and his work “Don Second Shadow” in a laudatory article published in the daily The nation.

The controversy raged for years and the controversy seemed to come to an end in 1960, more than two decades following the death of lugoneswhen Borges dedicates the prologue to “The maker”.

“These reflections leave me at the door of his office. I enter; We exchange a few conventional and cordial words and I give you this book. If I’m not deceived, you didn’t hate me, Lugones, and you would have liked some of my work. This never happened, but this time you turn the pages and read some verse with approval, perhaps because you have recognized your own voice in it, perhaps because deficient practice matters less to you than sound theory”, he writes in part of the introit.

In a dialogue with Ernesto Sábato on December 14, 1974, Borges ironically repeats a sonnet by Lugones that ends with the following verses:

“The combo populated with bats

heaven, in the manner of Chinese screens…”

Although later he praises other verses of the Cordovan poet such as those of “Alma venturosa”:

“In the middle of the followingnoon of that day,

when my usual goodbye was going to give you,

It was a vague sorrow of leaving you…

which made me know that I loved you.”

To conclude in an interview with the newspaper The Capital of Mar del Plata of September 7, 1984, Borges returns to rescue the figure of lugones:

“When I was young I wanted to be Lugones, like all the people of my generation, and now I have given up on that mission and have resigned myself to being Borges, something minor of course, but it’s me.”

Fuentes

Bordeaux, Ivonne. 1999. “A Crucial Triangle”. Buenos Aires. Editorial Eudeba. Note extracted by the newspaper “La Nación” with the title “The duel between Lugones and Borges”.

Borges, Jorge Luis. 1996, 2007, Maria Kodama. “The maker”. Buenos Aires. Editorial Emecé.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Saturday Ernesto. Layout Orlando Barone. 1996, Maria Kodama. “Borges and Sábato Dialogues”. Buenos Aires. Editorial Emecé.

Marcelo Passetti. September 7, 1984. Interview with Jorge Luis Borges: “One must be happy not for oneself, but for the people who love them”. Newspaper The Capital of Mar del Plata.

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