Who was Jorge Luis Borges? To understand someone, you must first know some background on their life as well as where and when they lived their life. A lot can also be learned by Borges’ style in writing. First of all, Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 24, 1899. Borges’ father was a lawyer as well as a psychology teacher, his mother was a descendent from many soldiers and freedom fighters. Borges and his younger sister Norah, his only real childhood friend, would act out scenes from books and spend their time roaming the library, labyrinthine, and the garden. His lack of friends founded a friendship with a local poet, Evaristo Carriego, a fearless man of Argentine tradition who became something of a minor idol to young Borges.
Young Jorge grew up in Palermo, a suburb on the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires. At the time it was a lower class suburb that was known for its bordellos, cabarets, and knife-fights. Most people went to these places to dance the tango and tell stories in front of a fire. Gauchos would get into knife-fights to show their courage, to settle disputes, and to earn respect for the way they handled a knife. Much of Borges’ earlier work was drenched with thoughts from Palermo, even though he mostly grew up in a garden or in a library of unlimited English books. In 1908 Borges began going to school, but soon came to hate school because of the other students, even though he excelled academically. In 1914 the family moved to Geneva, where Borges would attend four years of high school at the College Calvin. The following years were spent traveling through Spain primarily. In 1921 the family returned to Buenos Aires where Borges brought out his first collection of poems. In 1938 his father died. That Christmas Eve, Borges himself had an accident that had him hallucinating in bed for a week, and after getting surgery he got septicemia which held him between life and death for a month. Although there are many interesting facts about his life, what happened in the world at the time affected his daily life. Just as our world affects us, his world affected his way of thinking, his jobs over the years, and just about every other facet of life.
When the Borges family first moved to Geneva, a war broke out and they were forced to stay. After the war, they moved to Spain. The twenties brought some political awareness to Borges. He supported the campaign of former president Hipólito Yrigoyen who served as president from 1916 to 1922. But, he proved to be too out of touch with the times to be an effective ruler. Borges’ was discouraged when Yrigoyen was overthrown by a military junta, which would turn out to be only the first of many more repressive governments. Borges’s disgust with politics became complete. Ironically he gained wider recognition for his political articles than for his fictions. This fact caused him problems when the fascists came into power in the mid forties. In 1946 Juan Perón was elected president, and due to his political affiliations, Borges was «promoted» to «Inspector of Poultry and Rabbits in the Public Markets.» He immediately resigned, saying that «dictatorships foment subservience, dictatorships foment cruelty; even more abominable is the fact that they foment stupidity.»
The Perón regime, though not arresting him personally, did make life more difficult for him and his family. After taking part in a protest, his mother and Norah were arrested in 1948; his mother was placed under house arrest, but Norah was thrown in a jail reserved primarily for prostitutes. In 1950 Borges was elected President of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (The Argentine Writer’s Society.) The SADE had mainly political thoughts and was under investigation by the government. A typical meeting would begin with complex literature and philosophy until the police agents would be bored to sleep or gone home, then the real political discussions would take place. Even though cautious, the SADE was eventually closed. In 1955 the «Revolución Libertadora» took place. Even though the government was still military in nature, the SADE was reopened, and Borges was appointed Director of the National Library, But it turned out that the new government was just as abusive of power as any other traditional Argentine junta. Borges began to criticize its policies, until the «absurd war» over the Falkland Islands made Borges disgusted into withdrawal from the world of politics. By this time Borges was going completely blind. There is no doubt that all of this had its own influence on Borges’ writing, but it all came together as his own style.
Borges had his own writing style out of a blend of many people’s styles and somehow made it uniquely his own. It seemed as though anyone that had an impact in Borges’ life also influenced some of his literature. He started writing at the age of six, mostly stories inspired by Cervantes. When he was nine, he translated Oscar Wilde’s «The Happy Prince» into Spanish, which appeared in a local newspaper called El País. Since it was signed only «Jorge Borges,» everyone assumed it was his father’s work, further noting how close his writing was to his fathers. Borges has also mentioned that his Grandmother’s dry English wit was the origin of his concise style. It was at the College Calvin that Borges discovered a completely new way of relating the world through abstract literature through the work of Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. It was also in Geneva where he first acquired his love of Schopenhauer, his favorite of all the philosophers, and Walt Whitman, whom for a while he believed to be the culmination of all the subtle aims of poetry. According to John Updike, «»For all his modesty and reasonableness of tone, he proposes some sort of essential revision in literature itself,» and saying that Mr Borges’ »driest paragraph is somehow compelling.» Also the historian and philosopher George Steiner wrote, »When he cites fictitious titles, imaginary cross-references, folios and writers that have never existed, Borges is simply regrouping counters of reality into the shape of possible other worlds. When he moves, by wordplay and echo, from language to language, he is turning the kaleidoscope, throwing the light on another patch of the wall.» Because of all the different aspects of Jorge Luis Borges, being who he was, living when he did, writing in the manner that only he could; I opted to evaluate one of his many works.
Reading his first short story, Streetcorner Man, allows you capture all that is Borges. The story was inspired by a local ‘compadrito’ that died. The story was at no time dry or boring. The story was all the more real due to the setting which could have been a local cabaret where Borges grew up. Although written under the pseudonym of «Francisco Bustos» and becoming a great success, Borges did not want to be known as some mere writer of populist dramas. His blend of fact and fiction had the story flowing until an unsuspecting twist at the end. Seeing how his past is related and vividly described through his work is one of the pleasures of reading Borges. It was fascinating to see how well he portrayed all of the aspects of the story. The mood he set went along with the story, how the story would have been told by someone of that time period, down to how people would have reacted to every stimulus in the story. The characters were so real, that it is hard to distinguish if it really isn’t fiction. Through this story, as with many of his stories, starts to become clear as it goes on, that is, until the twist at the end. It was at this point that I knew that it was not the same, Borges simply has more elements in his stories than most writers. Even in such a short story, Borges still found a way to pack in so many details. So many details in fact, that you pick up on things reading the story for the third and fourth times. Hopefully you somewhat understand Borges now, if not, go read some of his works and you will see what sets him apart from other writers.
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