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‘BRILLA Y MUERE, MUERE Y BRILLA’: DAWN AND SUNSET DESCRIPTION IN BORGES' POETRY (1923–1967)

1972; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382722000349383

1469-3550

Frank Riess,

Poetry Analysis and Criticism

Abstract Images of sunrise and sunset are recurring features of Borges' poetry. In his early work, sunsets form an essential part of his city landscapes, which are always the same: views of the arrabal (or suburb at the edge of Buenos Aires), made up of streets flanked by small houses. The overall effect is of a perspective stretching out to the Pampa, and even at a distance, the setting sun dwarfs everything in the foreground as if at the end of the street. The poetry of the 1920s expresses the poet's great affection for the city of Buenos Aires and its surroundings, especially in the late afternoons of the quiet suburban streets. Emotional attachment to the suburbs is very strong and is reflected in the number of poems describing walks through streets at sunset or at dawn. The statements of Borges' poetry are not merely literary, but also extremely close and personal. BSS Subject Index: BORGES, JORGE LUIS (1899–1986)IMAGERY/METAPHORSUN [AS LITERARY/CULTURAL THEME] Notes 1 Obra po ‘lica, 8th ed. (Buenos Aires 1969), 17. This text is the latest ‘complete’ edition of Borges’ poetry. It is by no means complete, as the author does not wish to include all his poems. There are reworkings in some of the poems, but only the 1943 edition is referred to for comparison. All references to Borges' poetry are to the page number and title of the 1969 edition cited hereafter in the text of the article. For the text of the quotation about sunsets see Inquisiciones (Buenos Aires 1925). In 1969 Borges published Elogio de la sombra (1967–1969), a collection of poems not included in Obra poética which stops at 1967. These poems do not depart from the descriptive pattern of his previous poetry with regard to sunset and dawn descriptions. It is difficult to establish a basic text of Borges' poetry. Elogio de la sombra is included in Obra poética (Madrid 1972). This edition contains substantial reworkings of the early poems, which Borges insists on revising at every opportunity. Not only is there no ‘complete’ edition, but there is also no ‘correct’ version of the poems. Recently, Norman Thomas di Giovanni has edited a bilingual selection: Jorge Luis Borges Selected Poems 1923–1967 (London 1972). This volume contains some helpful details on this problem, a descriptive bibliography of the various books of poetry with the poems that have been added, subtracted and revised since 1923. There is no attempt made to compare actual texts. 1Ana María Barrenechea, La expresión de la irrealidad en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges (Mexico 1957). 97. This view is largely echoed in Zunilda Gertel, Borges y su retorno a la poesía (New York 196g), 107–10. 1In 1923 the text read ‘de pasos y de sombra’. 2A similar recreation of life associated with a dawn description occurs in Don Segundo Sombra in Chapter 3: ‘aquella madrugada, que me parecía crear la pampa venciendo a la noche’. The theme of nightfall is important in the symbolism of the novel. It also occurs frequently in other writers, who appear to draw on their personal observation. Martínez 1 Poemas (1922–1943) (Buenos Aires 1943), 27. 1In an essay titled ‘Nueva refutación del tiempo’, Otras inquisiciones (Buenos Aires 1960), 237: ‘… he divisado o presentido una refutación del tiempo, de la que yo mismo descreo, pero que suele visitarme en las noches, y en el fatigado crepúsculo, con ilusoria fuerza de axioma. Esa refutación está de algún modo de todos mis libros’. In Evaristo Carriego [M. Gleizer] (Buenos Aires 1930), 36, Borges shows a spirited disdain of dates and chronology. He prefers to describe Carriego otherwise: ‘Enumerarlo, seguir el orden de sus días, me parece imposible, mejor buscar su eternidad sus repeticiones’. For a discussion of these ideas see Ana María Barrenechea, op. cit., 102–20; Zunilda Gertel, op. cit., 132–38. The best discussion of Borges' poetry to date, though the author is not very specific about poems or particular images, is Guillermo Sucre, Borges el Poeta (Mexico 1967). 1These details are in Sucre, op. cit., 98. 1 Poemas (1943), 96. See Di Giovanni (ed. cit.), 274, where this poem is included. The line division is that of the latter version. 1 Poemas (1943), 164. ‘La noche cíclica’ is dated 1940. The note is to be found at the back (174–78). 1Examples are numerous, but for Herrera y Reissig one can cite ‘Holocausto’ (209) and ‘Expiación’ (203), ‘La violeta’ (196): see Poesías completas, 4 a ed. (Buenos Aires 1958). Similarly Lugones, Obras poéticas completas (Madrid 1959), ‘Cisnes negros’ (109), ‘Hortus Deliciaram’ (113), ‘Tentación’ (117). 1Examples can be found in ‘La Recoleta’ (19) ‘entristeciendo’; ‘El jardín botánico’ (23) ‘angustia’; ‘Forjadura’ (62) ‘el llanto de las tardes’; ‘Atardeceres’ (63) ‘congoja’; ‘Al hori zonte de un suburbio’ (71) ‘desangrando’; ‘Dulce linquimus arva’ (88) ‘queja larga’; ‘Versos de catorce’ (96) ‘desangré’. All these associations are frequently found in conventional modernista sunset descriptions. 2See Herrera y Reissig, Poesías completas (ed. cit.), ‘Claroscuro’ (146) and ‘El genio de los campos’ (174). Borges' use of ‘esquila’ in ‘Campos atardecidos’ is extraordinarily similar to these two poems of Herrera's set at the same time of day with the same descriptive elements. 4Quoted in J. Isaacson, 40 años de la poesia argentina, I (1920–1930), (Buenos Aires 1962), 267. 1See Martin Fierro, 6 de Agosto—6 de Septiembre 1924, Año 1, No. 8–9. 1J. Isaacson, op. cit., 178. 3Quoted by G. de Torre in ‘Para la prehistoria ultraísta de Borges’, Hispania, XLVII (1964), 461. 2See E. Colquhoun, ‘Notes on French influences in the work of Julio Herrera y Reissig’, BSS, XXI (1944), 145–58. Colquhoun shows the influence of Samain's sunset descriptions in Herrera y Reissig and also in Lugones. The ‘girl-in-the-garden-at-sunset’ is common in Albert Samain and a frequent motif of Symbolist painters such as Eugène Grasset who was highly influential at the time. See Philippe Julian, Dreamers of Decadence, Symbolist painters of the 1890s (London 1971), 115–28. Here the literary and artistic origins of sunset descriptions that came to Montevideo and Buenos Aires at the end of the century are discerned in French poetry and painting of the time. For an example of personal memories mingling with literary associations in Borges' poetry see ‘Adrogué’ (214) where a childhood garden is compared to the gardens of Herrera y Reissig and Verlaine. 2‘Noches de Garufa’ in Antología general de la poesía argentina, ed. Bruguera (Barcelona1969), 687, a poem by Marcos Barnatán.