Borges ou l'Autre

Abstract

Borges does not exist. A group of writers, led by Bioy Casares, is jointly responsible for his work and the notorious Argentinian himself has been played all these years by a second-rate Italian actor. So ran the rumour in Paris when the daily Liberation reported on the 1981 International Borges Colloquium at Cerisy-la-Salle. After Romain Gary's suicide revelation that Emile Ajar, the prize-winning novelist, was none other than his pseudonym, the Parisian hounds were obviously keen to sniff out a literary hoax. To English eyes the newsworthiness of such an item might seem bewildering. Indeed, some months ago, when I wrote to a leading British Borges specialist of the forthcoming colloquium, he expressed the view that the French had little new to say on Borges and 'besides, they're a funny lot'. In retrospect the lack of British and, more surprisingly still, of North American participants, was unusual enough for Cerisy but also speaks volumes on the respective receptions of Borges's work in two worlds often seen to be at odds in his writing itself, the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin.