Borges and nationalism: urban myth and nation-dreaming in the 1920s

Abstract

This article explores Jorge Luis Borges's reconceptualization of the periphery of Buenos Aires in the 1920s by focusing on his poetry collection Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) and a number of his critical essays of the same period. It becomes clear that Borges opts for the liminal landscape of the orillas – the borders between Buenos Aires and the Pampa – in order to create an essentialist myth for the city and, metonymically, for the entire nation in an era when the country's most enduring national narrative – criollismo – is imperilled by immigration and modernization, most strikingly in the capital city. Part 1, ‘Changing landscapes: from ultraísmo to criollismo’, follows Borges's return to Argentina in 1921 and contextualizes his swift transformation from a fervent ultraist and ‘a good European’ into an impassioned criollo who ventures into the city's most progressive region – the suburbs – in an attempt to rehabilitate Pampean criollismo against the indomitable backdrop of modernity. Part 2, ‘The intimate na(rra)tion: a close up of Fervor’, studies in more detail the conceptual nation-rebuilding that Borges undertakes in his first poetry collection, and links it to contemporary theories on nationalism.