Often, students who attend Spanish school in Buenos Aires don’t take the time beforehand to learn about all the famous writers and artists of the region. However, if you learn about these impressive figures, it will not only motivate you to master the language during the period you learn Spanish in Argentina, but you will also gain additional cultural and historical knowledge about the region. One famous figure you will certainly want to meet is Jorge Luis Borges.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, Borges is one of the most famous Argentine writers of all time. As a child, he and his family lived in the suburb of Palermo. Of course, if you attend a Spanish school in Buenos Aires, Palermo is an area that you can easily visit first hand. His father, Jorge Guillermo Borges, who was a lawyer, a teacher and also an anarchist, greatly influenced Borges’s ideas and beliefs. When Jorge Guillermo Borges began to lose his sight, he looked to his son to take charge of his own plans to be a writer.
One of the reasons Jorge Borges is so well known is because of his tremendous versatility. He was an essayist and also a poet. By the time he was in his early twenties, Borges had already begun to publish his work in surrealist literary magazines. Two of his most famous books were collections of short stories that incorporated magical realism and explored existential questions. Ficciones, published in 1944, and El Aleph, published in 1949. Much of Borges’ work has been translated into English. For example, Fictions and Labyrinths have been published in English by the New York press.
Like many Latin American writers, Jorge Borges was involved in politics. Borges was considered a political conservative and called himself a Spencerian anarchist. He stated that he was opposed to Marxism and communism. He even said that the famous poet Pablo Neruda was a “very bad man” for supporting the Soviet Union. Borges also made known his opinion that he was very opposed to Peronism.
Throughout his career, Borges held a variety of impressive positions. In 1955, Borges became director of the National Public Library of Argentina and became a professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Borges also won a variety of awards over the years, including the International Editors Prize in 1961 and the Jerusalem Prize in 1971. Unfortunately, in the early 1930s, Borges began to lose sight of him. As a result, he began to read and write screenplays as well.
Jorge Borges was credited with opening the door for a variety of Hispanic-American novelists, including Gabriel García Márquez. While he may not be ready to read Jorge Borges’s work when he learns Spanish for the first time in Argentina, this is definitely a milestone he can look forward to as his Spanish gets better and better.