Borges's Middle Poetry: National Identity and 'Olvido'

• In Event: Anational Authorships

Abstract

The question of memory is unavoidable when discussing the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Moreover, this question in the work of Borges is indelibly linked to the matter of belonging to a specific place and time, which for Borges is the ineluctable category of the Argentine trapped between the literature of the nineteenth century and the modern era. However, in this discussion of memory something that is commonly omitted is the question of forgetfulness. The Spanish word olvido signifies both forgetfulness and oblivion, and figures prominently in the Borgesian idea of what it means to belong to a culture. My analysis embarks upon an interdisciplinary philosophical analysis of olvido means in the context of Borges’s poetry, looking at how he constructs and destroys a sense of Argentine, and also more broadly Latin American, identity. Specifically, I will focus on works such as El otro, el mismo and Para las seis cuadras, along with other late poetry to explore how the philosophical undercurrents of olvido destruct, or at the very least attempt to destruct the metaphysics upon which nationhood and culture are built. The implications of this philosophical analysis will extend into what it means to belong to not just Argentina but also the Americas as a whole, especially as Borges has had a critical role in defining Argentine identity ever since the latter half of the twentieth century.

Author

• Alexander Gannuscio