Sobre la escritura: conversaciones con Borges en el taller literario

by Jorge Luis Borges

Este libro es fruto de los diálogos mantenidos por Jorge Luis Borges en diversos encuentros celebrados en los años 80 con los integrantes de los talleres literarios de narrativa y poesía que dirigía Féliz della Paolera. Se trata de un documento excepcional de la capacidad improvisadora de Borges y de su incuestionable seducción en el trato personal. El poder de síntesis, la astucia de sus paradojas y la afilada ironía del gran escritor argentino acuden aquí con especial brillantez. En estas conversaciones, Borges da respuesta a los interrogantes que surgen en el camino de los escritores en ciernes. Por qué se escribe, de dónde surge la íntima necesidad de escribir, cómo rescatar la emoción sentida para plasmarla en el texto, en qué medida forman las lecturas y las afinidades electivas a un escritor, cuáles son las diferencias entre el ritmo poético y el de la prosa, cómo construir la verosimilitud de un relato...Ante estas preguntas, Borges aparece como un faro para los jóvenes autores, una brújula de la dedicación a la práctica literaria - la vocación , el papel del escritor, el de la crítica y el mundo literario y la actitud frente a él - en manos de los que empiezan a tantear la forma silenciosa de la escritura.

164 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Antonio · Rating 2 out of 5]

No basta con llamarse Borges para publicar cualquier fraseo grabado a vuela pluma por el infausto Escudero Ramplón que se cruzase por su camino... so pretexto de un curso sobre literatura, gaitas u otras zarandajas. Lamentable el abuso y mal uso que se hace en su nombre y sin que nadie ponga coto a esta desmesura estomagante. Ojalá que pronto pongan multas a los que ultrajen su merecido descanso silente.