Becomes the best writer from Latin America

basado

is there a graph like pic related for Borges?

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just get collected fictions you dweeb

I'd start with his stories. I prefer his essays, but it's harder to start from there.

Some people don't understand the importance of Borges to Argentina and to the literature in the continent because they have nothing to compare. So, take a look at the Brazilian literature after 1940.
You have Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado (I'm not a fan, but he has some merit), Guimarães Rosa, Ariano Suassuna and nothing else of value.
Borges said and showed that writers in Argentina couldn't be limited to write about gauchos and the Pampas forever, they had to go beyond. While Brazilian writers decided that chronicles about Rio de Janeiro and the semi-arid region were enough. The modernists were more about marketing and "breaking the rules", so the innovation of the movement wasn't enough to bring quality.

The other day I read where Machado de Assis expresses something kind of Borgean. You might want to check it out. Its title is "Instinto de nacionalidade. Notícia da atual literatura brasileira" (1873).

It's an interesting article.
But do you see the problem? Machado de Assis talked about it, Borges went there and did it.

Yes. That was my point in the other comment: Borges works as a pivot between tradition and innovation, there lies his richness. He manages to introduce the universal in the localist and more regionalistic tradition.
Here's a funny story: a professor of mine always tells the anecdote that he met a few academics from Europe in a symposium and thet were speculating about the meaning of "Fray Bentos" in "Funes el memorioso" (about the symbolic meaning of including the "fray", a religious subtone). Of course any local can point that Fray Bentos is a real place where Enrique Amorim, a good friend of Borges, had a countryside house. The fact that something this nimial can surrender itself to speculation proves the power of Borges literature.
Anyway, I don't completely agree that Machado only spoke of it. Certain parts of his writings is pretty "universal" (the famous "Memórias póstumas...", for example). But I agree in the sense that Borges was the first to make it in a programatic way and from his firsts writings (the inclusion of Manuel Leandro Ipuche and Fernán Silva Valdés, two nativist poets, next to the philosopher Berkeley et al, in "Inquisiciones" is a proof of it). Of course Borges later regretted saying the things he said about the nativist (whom he later despised), but it's another example of the tension between localism and universalism present in latinamerican literary tradition).

>the tension between localism and universalism present in latinamerican literary tradition

Important and overlooked topic.

In Brazil there is no tension because there is no universalism.
But the real problem is the quality.

Did Borges hate Argentina?

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This exact quote was what I was thinking earlier when I cited Machado's article ()

"O que se deve exigir do escritor antes de tudo, é certo sentimento íntimo, que o tome homem do seu tempo e do seu pais, ainda quando trate de assuntos remotos no tempo e no espaço. Um notável crítico da França, analisando há tempos um escritor escocês, Masson, com muito acerto dizia que do mesmo modo que se podia ser bretão sem falar sempre de tojo, assim Masson era bem escocês, sem dezir palavra do cardo[...]" (1873)
Shit and fast translation:
"What must be demanded of the writer, first of all, is a certain intimate feeling, which makes him a man of his time and of his country, even when it deals with remote matters in time and space. A noted critic of France, analyzing a longtime Scottish writer, Masson, was quite right to say that in the same way that one could be Breton without always speaking of gorse, so Masson was very Scottish, without saying the word of the thistle[...]"

Machado de Assis explains in this text that Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and Othello aren't based in the British story and the story never happened in the British islands, but that doesn't make Shakespeare less British.

It's kind of interest the parallel, huh?

interesting*

urr durr but "O Sertão está em toda parte..."

A lot.

Sorry, I may have been more ambiguous than I originally intended.
My point was that, even though I love Rosa's books, I simply cannot understand the people who say that he was universal. I cannot even conceive a decent translation of his work.

In Brazil the real universalism and good literature was the friends I made along the way in our luxury gated community of Copacabana.

The themes are, the prose isn't. But he was a good writer, something rare even among the "good" "writers" the media and academia keep praising.

The first half of the comment isn't to you. I'm just shitting on writers from Rio de Janeiro born after 1890.

Not that user, but what's your opinion on Oswald de Andrade's manifestos? Imo, as a foreigner (so it really doesn't matter at all), even though it didn't materialise into something solid, the thought is worth the analysis. I get that manifestos in modernism were all the fuzz (and that the first futurist manifesto is from 1909), but taking into account that the "Manifesto Pau-Brasil" is published at the same time that the first surrealist manifesto is noticeable. Also, the idea of an equilibrium between european and local culture is interesting in a latinamerican studies perspectives. Reminds me of "Ariel" and the metaphor as Prosperus as the old teacher (Europe), and America as the genie that mixes the different influxes.

I'm biased because I'm not a fan of the work of Oswald and his friends.
Like you said, his manifestos changed nothing and, honestly, his new movement was a mix of marketing and an excuse to make people accept the shit that small group was producing. They even attacked Monteiro Lobato because he criticized the woman who painted this (pic), she was a friend of Oswald.
The whole thing was strange and ignored great names like J. Carlos (check his art for the magazine "Para Todos", it's amazing).

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Will check that out. Thanks for the rec.

I forgot to say one thing.
>Also, the idea of an equilibrium between european and local culture is interesting in a latinamerican studies perspectives.
Monteiro Lobato criticized them because of that too.
According to him, the "estrangeirismo" (using a word from a different language in portuguese) cosmopolitanism of the modernists was basically the same thing than before, but with a new paint and without the skills of old writers. Plus, the modernists ignored the real culture of Brazil (rural areas, forest, etc).

What about Clarice Lispector, though? She is pretty universal.

Not a good writer.

I won't deny it (hers short stories are fine, but I really disliked Passion According to G.H.) , but universal nonetheless.

btw, I love how this tread turned from Borges to complaining about Brazilian lit

Borges is on top and any discussion that starts there goes downhill.

>glorified fantasy writer

>Believing that his short stories are what made him great
The state of Yea Forums

>believing that's not the sole reason he's remembered nowadays

Imagine being that naive.

>reading a short story collection of borges and other authors
>story about a guy walking into a medical center that turns people into immortal cubes without organs
>can't remember the author
>can't remember what library book it even was

Shit, now I really want to know too.

Oh wait, wasn't it one of those Anthologies by Jeff Vandermeer? This one I think, it has a Borges story.

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>Believing that that is the case
You should leave Yea Forums more often and talk to Borges readers.

But user, that's not Juan Rulfo

It wasn't that one. I think it also had Borges stories about a duel at a party out in the country, one about two brothers who fuck the same woman. The cube story was by a different writer I think.

The only Giovanni translation i could find was Doctor Brodie's Report. His translations are considered the definitive versions.
Is Andrew Hurley's translations not worth reading?

>abounding in local color
Basically calling Argentines niggers.
Based

They're not bad, but Borges worked with Giovanni and even said (iirc) he liked them better than the original Spanish.

Hurley's translations are just a get rich quick scheme but that crazy-ass bitch wife of Borges, Kodama

Here. I made it some time ago.

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The cube one is called The Immortals and was written by Borges and Casares. The one with the girl is called The Intruder I think, and the one about the duel at the party is called The Meeting

>needs a guide for fucking murakami

Not that user, but please do

gracias postero basado

Ok, here goes the first "Gaucho en Campaña" (1839). Sorry for the shitty quality, I wasn't able to use a real scanner and the print isn't that great in the first place.

docdro.id/eynJdgE

For contextual purposes, it's really important to understand the scope of the war that was taking place. It involved a lot of countries (included the Confederación Argentina under the rule of Rosas and the federales allied with the ex president of the Estado Oriental del Uruguay, Manuel Oribe, against the unitarios allied with the then president of Uruguay, Fructuoso Rivera). Besides involving the exile of thousands of argentinian intellectuals (such as Alberdi and Sarmiento), it ended involving the French and the British. If you consider the conflict on a regional scale, it lasted for almost 20 years, 9 of them being in the state of siege on the city of Montevideo (episode that inspired Alexandre Dumas' —yes, that Dumas— to write the 1851 novel "Montevideo ou une nouvelle Troie).
Ascasubi's "Gacetas" and Dumas' novel are not the only literary product of this conflict, it also inspired the famous "Facundo..." by the aforementioned Sarmiento (book, that according to some critics, started the argentinian literary tradition).
If someone is interested, I can post more of these or give some bibliographical recs for the context of the war, etc.

Oh, if there's an italian interested in Giuseppe Garibaldi's life, this shit is important.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Civil_War
Here is a wiki for the anglos.
Hermanos hispanohablantes, han corrido ríos de tinta sobre el tema. Autores argentinos, uruguayos, brasileños, franceses, ingleses. Los clásicos siempre tienen un perfil partidario y parcial, por lo que recomiendo ir con cuidado.
A los argentinos no hace falta aclararle la importancia de Rosas para la república y para todo lo que ha sucedido en esta parte del Plata en los últimos 170 años.

>Certain parts of his writings is pretty "universal"
What do you mean by universal?

I was being purposefully vague about it because it's a really tricky (and, in my opinion, fictional idea). I don't believe that it exist the "universal" thing outside of an attitude towards certain kind of nationalistic localisms. I don't really know if i'm being clear in English, but, in literature, "universalism" is kind of the concept that arises from the tension of abandoning localism. Is more of a diallectically derived concept than anything really quantifiable.
Considering the things that we were mentioning, universalism is kind of writing about Scotland without speaking about that shit (as Machado says) or writing the arabian book per excellence without mentioning any camels (as Borges talks in the image someone shared). As a foreigner to Brazil, I can see some things in Machado's literature that goes beyond brazilian borders, some topics and rhetorical modes that can resonate with someone who doesn't know nor care about Brazil, brazilian reality on Machado's time, etc.
It's quite difficult to articulate this in English, at least for me. But there are a lot of light in using this tension to read post-colonial national literatures. In early independence writers there is a conscious effort on marking its writings with things unique to its writers and its nationality. Universality goes in the opposite direction, somewhat at least. The tricky thing as a xxth Century writer was to balance the decimononical regionalistic tendencies with the universalist (and somewhat Cosmopolitan) tendency.

bump

>books are only good if you know every other work that preceded it in his national tradition
That level of gatekeeping. Jesus Christ.

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>implying theres something wrong with fantasy
>implying Borges only wrote fantasy

>he liked them better than the original Spanish.
He never said that lol Borges didn't even like the guy that much.