A City That Doesn’t Exist: The Lost Everyday Life of J.L. Borges

The poetic texts of Borges, dedicated to everyday life and the image of Buenos Aires, clearly demonstrate the side of the great Argentine writer’s work, which for many remains unnoticed due to his established literary reputation. This article provides an analysis not of Borges the bookworm or Borges the librarian, who talks about literature and philosophy, immersing the reader in sophisticated mystifications, but of Borges the emotional, attentive to details, landscape and people that actually made up his everyday life. This new point of view is relevant, since modern Borges studies focus predominantly on either intertextual connections (the model of this kind of studies is «Borges and others»), or textual aspects, or provide a philosophical analysis of his works. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how Borges uses the attributes of everyday life in his poetry. The poems used as material are: «Sala vacía» from the book «Fervor de Buenos Aires» (1923), «Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires» from «Cuaderno San Martín» (1929), two poems entitled «Buenos Aires» («El otro, el mismo», 1964), «Buenos Aires» («Elogio de la sombra», 1969)), «Buenos Aires, 1899» («Historia de la noche», 1977) and «Buenos Aires» («La cifra», 1981). In the early texts by Borges, the city has a more symbolic meaning, serving as a mediator between the real and the metaphysical. In his later poems, written during his blindness, Borges constructs an image of the Buenos Aires of his youth, paying particular attention to everyday life in the 1920s–40s. In essence, Old Buenos Aires is a lost paradise for Borges, which he himself confirms in his later texts.