Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Borges y yo/Borges y los otros by Jorgelina Corbatta

2015; American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; Volume: 98; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hpn.2015.0147

2153-6414

Cecily Raynor,

Latin American Literature Studies

Reviewed by: Borges y yo/Borges y los otros by Jorgelina Corbatta Cecily Raynor Corbatta, Jorgelina. Borges y yo/Borges y los otros. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2013. Pp. 182. ISBN 978-9-50052-087-4. As the work’s title—Borges y yo/Borges y los otros—reveals, what makes this compilation stand out amongst the many studies on Borges is how Jorgelina Corbatta interweaves her personal history with the author and fresh takes on scholarly analysis. She begins with an introduction titled “Borges y yo”, describing her personal encounters with the Argentine, which vary from reader, to student, to avid audience member in his lectures, to critic, to scholar. Her detailing of a lifelong commitment provides a fitting point of departure for the second part titled “Borges y los otros”. In this second section, Corbatta integrates wide-ranging critical theory on the author with historical information, excerpts from his fiction, essays, and Borges’s own theoretical undertakings on Argentine literature, as well original analyses of some of his key works. This varied investigation is novel in its approach and is thus worth a second look. [End Page 829] In the first substantive chapter, Corbatta attempts to recover a study on Borges from French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu. Though many have approached Borges from a psychoanalytical lens, including Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Thomas H. Ogden and Julio Woscoboinik, Corbatta hones in on Anzieu’s Freudian investigation, which is often disregarded given Borges’s personal aversion to Freud. Corbatta shows how a Freudian analysis can provide nuance to our understanding of the author, particularly with regard to artistic creativity and the subconscious. Corbatta then gives a comprehensive analysis on Borges’s recreation of two figures essential in the Argentine imaginary, the gaucho and the compadrito. Rather than simply showing how these figures are represented and developed, she examines the ways in which Borges tests and challenges the very notion of the gaucho and the compadrito in his work. In the following chapter, Corbatta studies Borges’s rereading of Martín Fierro, providing new insight into his interpretation of the classic text and focusing on the notion of hyper, trans and intertextuality. In “Borges, entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad,” Corbatta studies three of Borges’s short stories with female protagonists, “Hombre de la esquina rosada,” “La intrusa,” and “Emma Zunz.” In this chapter she hones in on the idea of cultural hybridity, considering the complex tensions between the urban and the rural, Latin America and Europe, and the elite class and the masses. Corbatta uses these classic dichotomies to reexamine the representation of the female figure. Finally, the author proceeds to critically examine Borges in relationship to his twentieth century compatriots via Piglia in chapter 6, “Borges/Piglia: 10 puntos de encuentro/desencuentro,” Manuel Puig in chapter 7, “Manuel Puig/Jorge Luis Borges: semejanzas y diferencias,” and finally in chapter 8, via a comparative analysis with José Saer. These studies not only situate Borges in relationship to his more contemporary counterparts, they also consider convergent and divergent aesthetics, helping readers to appreciate Borges’s literary and cultural influence on Argentine literature broadly. To end the book, Corbatta returns to her own personal story in an interview with the author from 1983, mentioned in the introduction, giving readers a final, intimate glimpse into Borges’s reflections on life and literature. Concluding the work in this way is characteristic of the book’s strength, which lies in creating an intertextual dialogue through joining the personal with the scholarly, the historic with the theoretical. Due to this distinctive approach and the fact that Corbatta consistently challenges and expands upon former studies, this work can be recommended not only to scholars on Borges or twentieth century and contemporary Argentine literature, but also to those who engage Latin American literature as a discipline. Cecily Raynor McGill University Copyright © 2015 Published by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc.