Laughing French authors with Borges: how did Macron's conversation unfold with four Argentinian writers – 29/11/2018

Jorge Luis Borges mocking the great French literature. It was one of the highlights of French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the El Ateneo-Gran Splendid bookstore in Santa Fe and Callao, famous for its beauty. In fact, it was a selection of Borges, the book in which Adolfo Bioy Casares He documented his friendship with the author of The Aleph.

The director of the premises, Andrea Stefanoni, gave him Macron a book of pictures of writers, whose author is Sara Facio. "He said that he was going to give it a privileged place in his library," Stefanoni said. Clarin. The book was dedicated by the photographer to Macron and his wife Brigitte.

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"Since he's a fan of Cortázar, he wanted to see the Argentinean editions, that kind of thing he likes literature and interested in. He asked if young people were still reading the clbadics," Stefanoni said. .

Macron He met with four Argentinian writers: Damián Tabarovsky, Pola Oloixarac, Silvia Hopenhayn and Gonzalo Garcés.

"We talked about Borges," he said. Clarin Damian Tabarovksy (Buenos Aires, 1967) and French cultural attaché Caroline Coll, also present, explain: "They really talked about literature, the validity of Borges in contemporary Argentine literature, his influence on the works of four writers, the translation of Argentines in France ".

"It was a very unusual meeting with what one might think of a G20 member," he said. Clarin Silvia Hopenhayn (Buenos Aires, 1966). "We spent almost an hour talking about literature: it also finds in literature a kind of response to life, in the sense of giving it to reality. Borges, or at least very familiar with him and Latin American literature, mentioned García Márquez, talked about Mario Vargas Llosa. We are talking about A fish in the water, the book of Vargas Llosa it has a double reading: childhood, affection, power and politics. He asked interesting questions, as if we considered that Borges It was well translated into French or even if we noticed if the current authors were well translated into French. I thought it was a precise and valuable concern. We speak with literary pleasure, "says the author of the novel Geneva, among other books.

And he tells a detail: "At one point, Gonzalo Garcés (Buenos Aires, 1974) asked by his own writing and he told her that it was an ear loop to write but that for the moment he had postponed it. And I told him clearly, writing as a space of greater freedom. And he replied: "Do not believe how easy it is, it may be more difficult for the writer than the one who is touching me right now. . A writer has to face himself and the meaning of life. "Garcés – author of books such as Becoming a man Personal history of masculinity and editor – handed to the French president a copy of a bilingual edition of the Marquis de Sade taken by Galerna.

After, Macron he asked everyone how Borges it had influenced his writing. Hopenhayn told him about a phrase from Biography of Isidoro Tadeo Cruz, or Borges He writes: "Every destiny, as long and complex as it is, consists of a single moment: the moment when the man knows forever who he is".

Hopenhayn explains: "We try to explain the importance of Borges in the world today and we mention a text. The Argentine writer and tradition.

Pola OloixaracFor his part, he took a French translation into the process of Borges Adolfo Bioy Casares, the diaries in which Bioy documented his friendship with the author of The Aleph. "Then he gives it to him, explaining the importance of this book," Hopenhayn said. "Macron grabbed the papers that Pola gave him and showed him to the ambbadador. He said:" We need to have this book published in France. ""

Oloixarac (Buenos Aires, 1971) says: "It was a very pleasant conversation, in which Macron He began to comment on his fascination with Borges in his youth and to understand that it was incumbent on him to discover that a writer could play the universal only by will, from his library. Gonzalo Garcés linked this to the test The Argentine writer and tradition and the rise of current nationalisms. When I told him that, for me, The Aleph existed in the form of Google, and that's why the characters hack googlemaps in my novel Wild theoriesHe told me that he had found a fantastic metaphor. I told him that my favorite Borges was now the Borges Bioy Casares and Silvia Hopenhayn said that humor also fascinated her. I had brought a selection of tickets from Borges translated by my friends Victoria Liendo and Charles Coustille, where Borges is sent on Baudelaire, Stendhal and other captains of French literature. Macron read it aloud, delighted, mocking the Borgesian ills and, after learning that the book had not been published in France, he declared that he now had a mission to his return to France. "

The President of France echoed the conversation on networks: "As a young European, Borges It was for me a gateway to a South American imaginary through fiction. It has seemed extraordinary that one man has become blind in a Buenos Aires library and has been able to recap what his Anglo-Saxon education had taught him, knowing how to walk in Buddhism, describing wars in the seas chinese … Borges it's a personal sensibility that fits in the destiny of the Argentine people and allows it to achieve universality, "he wrote on Instagram.

When they left, some authors wished him good luck in thinking about the French political context. Macron shook hands: "Thank you, I'm taking luck, I'm taking care of the rest".