From the long list of love of Jorge Luis Borges, Women who appear in their stories They will be forever an entrance path to their intimacy. That is the cutting cut Patricio Zunini in “Borges in love”his last book. He put aside the academic Borges to rebuild his sentimental relationships and reveal how each affective link left a deep, often decisive brand, in his work.
Journalist, teacher and editor, Zunini has just been appointed to integrate the Board of the National Fund of the Arts. As a writer, his first book was dedicated to Fogwill (“Fogwill: a choral memory”). This was followed “What is a writer: one hundred questions about Argentine literature”, with a selection of reports to authors such as Ricardo Piglia, Hebe Uhart, Beatriz Sarlo and Abelardo Castillo, among others. In “Borges in the library,” he analyzed the years in which the writer served as an employee of the Miguel Cané Library and, later, as director of the National Library.
In his talk with news, he reflects on the boundaries between life and literature in the work of the author of “El Aleph”.
News: What was the moment when he decided that love in Borges’ life deserved his own book?
Patricio Zunini: It was when I saw the poem “Saturdays”, as it appeared published in “Fervor de Buenos Aires.” He was dedicated to his first girlfriend, Concepción Guerrero. The interesting thing is that in that first edition the dedication was explicit: “For my girlfriend Concepción Guerrero.” I only knew the version of the later editions, where it appears as “for CG”. The poem was also longer, more explicit. There I felt that there was a story to unravel: who was that girl and who were the other women in the life of a Borges who always seemed so content. That difference in the versions gave me the key: there was a literary search for love that deserved attention.
News: Did Borges really love these women or just used them as an excuse to continue writing?
Zunini: I can’t speak from your mind or body, but for what I investigated, I am convinced that Borges was in love. He had words of tenderness and love for many of those women. It happened to love what happens to any of us: he fell in love.
News: Did you reflect those crush in your work?
Zunini: In Borges, love left immense literary traces. Each woman with whom she was linked inspired some text. “The Aleph” is born from Estela Canto, the story “Emma Zunz” from Cecilia Ingenieros, “The poem Los Dones” is dedicated to María Esther Vázquez. They are very great works in the life of Borges, very high mountains, as I like to say, that have an origin in love. Perhaps not explicitly in the text, but in the desire to give something to the beloved woman.
News: Would I say he wrote about love to avoid living it?
Zunini: The question is good, but Borges would never have asked that dilemma. For him, there was nothing outside of literature. Like any other issue, a misfortune, a sadness, a joy, Borges had to sift him for words and we could say that he lived by words. But, it is not that he fell in love with someone and never told him. With Concepción he wanted to marry, Estela fell in love and proposed marriage. The same with María Kodama. He also had fantasized or sought -after loves in a slightly more elliptical way. He had the feeling and did not repress it.
News: Why Borges, with so much prestige and culture, seems to have had such a clumsy or painful love life?
Zunini: Well, everyone seems to me that in the end we have a slightly clumsy or painful life, whether or not we have the prestige of Borges’ literature. I think that, at one point, I do not remember if I read it in “The Borges Factor” by Alan Pauls, or in a text by María Moreno or Beatriz Sarlo, which Borges was like a big boy. Given that we can say that he had several clumsiness, not only that of love, but that is the one I stayed to investigate in this book.
News: Is there an erotic dimension in Borges that we have ignored for academic comfort?
Zunini: Yes, totally. Ariel de la Fuente has a book called “Borges, desire and sex”, where he makes a deep reading from that perspective. Explore your stories, poems, even essays such as those dedicated to “the thousand and one nights.” It is a little addressed, although there are valuable works. Perhaps, in part, we read Borges as he asked us to read it. But you have to give credit to De la Fuente for daring to another approach with a fascinating essay.
News: Did he fear of “deacralizing it” by showing it vulnerable, insecure or even ridiculous in love?
Zunini: No not at all. I think there are three books that have changed the way of reading Borges over the time that are “Borges A Contraluz” by Estela Canto, “The Borges Factor” by Alan Pauls and the newspaper of Adolfo Bioy Casares that left behind that marble Borges. In addition, more than 40 years passed since his death. I have 50 and I did not grew up with the reverential gaze that an adult could have in the 70s. I even believe that those who still see him bronze, have read little.
News: Which of your women inspired the most powerful creation?
Zunini: Difficult to say it. First we should define what its most powerful creation is. But if we concentrate on the women I speak in the book, those who gave their testimony, I think Estela singing stands out. He was with Borges during a key period in his literary life, when he took a quality leap and began writing his most emblematic stories, such as “El Aleph”, which just dedicates her to her. I do not say that he inspired him, but he was present at that crucial moment.
News: What love story did I think was the most authentic or transformative for him?
Zunini: All were authentic. Some deeper, others more painful. As it happens to us all. But I want to highlight something, there is a very unfair social look on María Kodama, who is judged as interested or ambitious. I don’t get into that, but Borges dedicated four books. And he did the same with each of his women: a poem, a story, a dedication, a prologue. He always offered them something from literature.
News: Is there any Argentine literary figure that also intrigues you from the emotional life behind the work?
Zunini: Many. Cortázar, for example. Bioy, not only for Elena Garro, which is already an incredible story, but for the other women who went through her life. I am also interested in writers. How was Silvina Ocampo’s life? I think we could review the love dimension of almost all our writers. What interested me about Borges is that, despite the biographies that already exist and the new one that comes from Lucas Adur, the dimension of love had not yet developed enough. And that was what I wanted to tell.
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