Traveller Borges
In 1984, two years before his death, Borges published Atlas, a book of journeys. It is composed by memories, brief stories and essays, dreams and even a love declaration to María Kodama (who accompanied him during his last trips) but the book is unique due to the photos of Borges as tourist: at the pyramids, in Madrid, in Athens, in an air balloon in California.
The texts, some old and some written for this book, are inspired or based on cities, places and objects which Borges knew as traveller or inhabitant. For him, Geneva –where he lived as teenager and where is nor buried– is “the most suitable place for happiness” and the city where he found the revelation of love and friendship.
But Buenos Aires is the most mentioned city in this book.
In Atlas, Borges visits the Canadian totem of Retiro, the house of his friend Xul Solar at Laprida 1214, the Bollini alley, the cemetery of Recoleta. He also discusses about the corners of the city, remembers a dinner at a Japanese restaurant in downtown and the islands of El Tigre.
In one of the texts, he tells that his body can travel around the world but his dreams always take place in Buenos Aires. And, in spite of the fabulous of the geography (”mountain chains, fens with scaffolds, spiral stairs immersed in cellars”) in his dream he knows it is a real corner of Palermo or the South. The note about the dreams, a paragraph of fourteen lines, ends with a question: “Does all this mean that, beyond my conscience and will, I am irremediably and incomprehensibly porteño?”
Which places of Buenos Aires mentioned in Atlas do you know?
