Macedonio Fernández
Macedonio Fernández (1 June 1874 – 10 February 1952) was an Argentine writer, humorist and philosopher. His writings included novels, stories, poetry, journalism, and works not easily classified. He was a mentor to Jorge Luis Borges and other avant-garde Argentine writers. Seventeen years of his correspondence with Borges was published in 2000. His published poetry includes "Creía yo" ("I believed").
Life
Macedonio (like Uruguay's Felisberto Hernández, he is commonly referred to by his first name only) was the son of Macedonio Fernández, farmer and military officer, and Rosa del Mazo Aguilar Ramos. In 1887, he enrolled in the Argentine Colegio Nacional Central.
In 1891–1892, as a university student, he published in El Progreso, a series of critical essays on customs and manners later included in Papeles antiguos. Like his intimate friend Jorge Guillermo Borges (father of Jorge Luis Borges), he was interested in psychology and in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
In 1897 he was granted a degree as a doctor of jurisprudence by the law faculty of the University of Buenos Aires. In this period, he wrote for La Montaña, a socialist daily directed by Leopoldo Lugones and José Ingenieros. He was a personal friend of physician, journalist, politician, and writer Juan B. Justo, with whom he maintained a correspondence. In 1898, he was admitted to the bar, and in 1899 he married Elena de Obieta, with whom he had four children (Macedonio, Adolfo, Maite, plus one)
In 1904 he published some poems in a magazine called Martín Fierro (not the more famous magazine of the same name published two decades later). In 1910, he obtained the position of public prosecutor in the Juzgado Letrado de Posadas, which he held for several years.
His wife died in 1920, and their children were left in the care of grandparents and aunts. Macedonio abandoned the profession of a lawyer. On the return of the Borges family from Europe in 1921, he renewed his friendship with his old friend, and also began a friendship with Jorge Luis Borges, at this time a young ultraist poet.[1]
In 1928 he published No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos, at the request of Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz and Leopoldo Marechal; the next year he published Papeles de Recienvenido.
En 1938 he published "Novela de la Eterna" y la Niña del dolor, la "Dulce-persona" de un amor que no fue sabido, an anticipation of
In 1947, Macedonio moved into the home of his son Adolfo de Obieta, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Macedonio and Borges
Macedonio was Jorge Luis Borges's most important Argentine mentor and influence. The relationship between the writers, however, was far more complex than Borges or his contemporaries represented it to be. In his later years, Borges made a point of naming Macedonio as an early influence whom, in the exuberance of his youth, Borges imitated "to the point of plagiarism." At the same time, Borges denied that Macedonio possessed any literary talent or importance, reinforcing the long-held perception of the older man as a kind of local Socratic philosopher, specific to Argentina and constitutive of an Argentine mythic dimension.
Recent studies by Ana Camblong, Julio Prieto, Daniel Attala and Todd S. Garth, among others, indicate that Macedonio's literary impact on Borges was far more profound and enduring than Borges ever admitted, and that Borges went to great pains to hide this influence. Many of the most fundamental concepts underpinning Borges' fiction come directly from Macedonio. These include the questioning of space and time and their continuity; the confusion of dreaming and wakefulness; the unreliability of memory and the importance of forgetfulness; the slipperiness (or nonexistence) of personal identity; the denial of originality and the emphasis on texts as being recyclings and translations of prior texts; and the questioning and commingling of the roles of author, reader, editor and commentator.
These influences extend to thematic material. Such themes include the conceit of an alternative, fictional dimension, elaborated anonymously in collaboration, that invades the known, tangible world (Borges' "
The relationship between these two men began in earnest in 1921, when Borges returned to Buenos Aires with his family after their extended stay in Switzerland (and travels elsewhere in Europe), where he had completed his education. Borges' father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, had been a close companion to Macedonio and attended law school with him. Upon graduating law school, Macedonio, the elder Borges, and companion
Borges and other members of the
The relationship between Borges and Macedonio appears to have begun to deteriorate around 1927 or 1928, when correspondence (published and analyzed by Carlos García) indicates a rift between them. This is also about the time that Borges made his famous break with the avant-garde and pronounced the death of Argentine ultraísmo, essentially forcing the closure of its most important publication, the little magazine
Works
- No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos; arreglo de papeles que dejó un personaje de novela creado por el arte, Deunamor el no existente caballero, el estudioso de su esperanza (1928)
- Una novela que comienza (1941)
- Poemas, with a prologue by Natalicio González. México, Guarania, 1953.
- Papeles de Recienvenido. Continuación de la nada (1944); Papeles de recienvenido y continuación de la nada (1989)
- Museo de la novela de la eterna (1967); (1995) ISBN 84-660-0089-5(pbk.)
- No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos y otros escritos. Advertencia de Adolfo de Obieta. Buenos Aires, CEAL, 1967.
- Cuadernos de todo y nada. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1972. 2a. ed. 1990.
- Manera de una psique sin cuerpo (1973) ISBN 84-7223-542-4
- Obras completas (1974-1995) ISBN 950-05-0584-3
- Adriana Buenos Aires : última novela mala Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1974 (Obras completas, vol. V; Adolfo de Obieta, editor); (1998) ISBN 84-8307-127-4
- Teorías, Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1974 (Obras completas, vol. III; Adolfo de Obieta, editor); (1990) ISBN 950-05-0584-3
- Museo de la Novela de la Eterna; primera novela buena. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1975 (Obras completas, vol. VI; Adolfo de Obieta, editor)
- Adriana Buenos Aires : última novela mala Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1974 (Obras completas, vol. V; Adolfo de Obieta, editor); (1998)
- Relato : cuentos, poemas y misceláneas (1987)
- Poesías completas (1991) ISBN 84-7522-265-X
- Todo y nada (1995)
- Textos selectos (1999) ISBN 950-05-1181-9
- Macedonio : memorias errantes (1999) ISBN 978-98797654-0-1
In English translation
- Macedonio : selected writings in translation edited by Jo Anne Engelbert, Latitudes Press 1984, ISBN 978-9995878801.
- The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) translated by Margaret Schwartz (2010) published by Open Letter Books
Correspondence
- Epistolario. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1976. (Obras completas, vol. II, Alicia Borinsky, editor).
- Correspondencia, 1922-1939 : crónica de una amistad with Jorge Luis Borges (2000) ISBN 950-05-1258-0
Further reading
- Abós, Álvaro: Macedonio Fernández. La biografía impossible. Plaza & Janés, Buenos Aires 2002, ISBN 950-644-020-4.
- Camblong, Ana: Macedonio. Retórica y política de los discursos paradójicos. Buenos Aires: Eudeba 2003.
- Engelbert, Jo Anne: Macedonio Fernández and the Spanish American New Novel. New York: NYU Press 1978.
- Flammersfeld, Waltraud: Macedonio Fernández (1874–1952) . Reflexion und Negation als Bestimmung der Modernität. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-261-01777-5.
- Garth, Todd S. "Confused Oratory: Borges, Macedonio and the Creation of the Mythological Author ". Modern Language Notes 116 (2) (2001): 350–370 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3251624
- Garth, Todd S.: The self of the city. Macedonio Fernández, the Argentine Avant-Garde, and modernity in Buenos Aires. University Press, Lewisburg, Pa 2005, ISBN 978-0-8387-5615-7.
- Garth, Todd S. and Heather Dubnick. "Uninvited inversions: Borges, Macedonio and the genesis of "Tlön , Uqbar , Orbis Tertius"". In: Variaciones Borges 26 (2008): 157–170.
Notes
- ^ The Editors of The Encyclopædia Britannica . "Ultraism Literary Movement". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
- ^ Borges , Jorges Luis. Trans. Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland. Dreamtigers. University of Texas Press, 1985, p. 25.
External links
- (in Spanish) Roberto Bardini, Macedonio Fernández at the Wayback Machine (archived October 24, 2007), RATACRUEL (e-zine)