Jorge Luis Borges at two final judgments

Abstract

In 1988, Beatriz Sarlo proposes a passage between two poetics in Jorge Luis Borges’s work: from Evaristo Carriego (1930) towards Historia universal de la infamia (1935). Both texts are “insidious,” argues Sarlo, because they falsify the biographies of their characters. However, the 1935 book operates on a universal basis. This movement, according to Sarlo, has several prerogatives associated with a double inscription of Borges: citizen of the world and, simultaneously, citizen of a country concieved from the image of Buenos Aires. In this essay, we suggest an earlier passage, evidenced in “Sentirse en muerte” (1928): from Criollismo – the poet of the suburbs, endowed with the capacity for sensitive transit and installed within the limits of his imagined city, which seeks the poetic representation worthy of his concept of Argentinity – toward the prose that reaches the argumentative-reflective character of the celebrated Borges’s essays on Time and Eternity, the beginning of his legitimation as “pircibidor abstracto del mundo”. This movement has also several prerogatives associated with a double inscription of Borges: as poet, man of letters and programmatic essayist of Criollismo; as an expert meditator on the astonishment found out in our concepts of Life, Time, and Universe, working with texts from Philosophy and Theology.