Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda: The Writers Enchanted by Argentine Tango
It’s undeniable that Argentine tango has a strong influence on many aspects of worldwide culture and art.
It’s been the driving force of many dance communities, a subject of countless stories and songs, a crucial detail in films, and has inspired some of the most influential Latin American writers.
In this article, we explore the influence of the Argentine tango on two key literary figures: Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda.
Jorge Luis Borges, the Short Story Writer, Essayist, Poet, and Translator
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges was born on August 24, 1899, in Buenos Aires.
He grew up in the Palermo district in a middle-class family with a distinguished military background.
Photo from Lavanguardia
In 1914, his family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and stayed there during World War I. After graduating high school in 1918,
Jorge Luis Borges picked up German and French, exposing himself to many innovative writers and literary movements.
While in Europe,
Jorge Luis Borges participated in groundbreaking literary movements he encountered, including the founding of “Ultraism.”
The movement was all about poetry free from form and sentimental imagery. He published “Ultra” along with other young writers before his family traveled around Spain after the war. In 1921, he eventually moved back to Buenos Aires with his inventive ideas.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote combinations of mystery, fantasy, metafiction, riddles, and many others, blessing the literary world with some of the best literary gems.
As said by Dr. Oliver Tearle of Loughborough University in “10 of the Best Jorge Luis Borges Stories Everyone Should Read“:
“The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, nor did he write a novel. But he is widely regarded as one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century, was a considerable influence on magic realism, and penned some of the most original, clever, and thought-provoking short stories ever written.”
Jorge Luis Borges was a lecturer, editor, and writer, director of the national library, and professor of English and American literature at the University of Buenos Aires.
In 1961, he received the Formentor Prize for unpublished manuscripts, which led him to become known as the writer of 20th-century world literary classics.
Borges and Tango
Besides Jorge Luis Borges’ incredible writing career, his fascination with the tango was also noteworthy. As said by Paudal in “Jorge Luis Borges and his passion for “El tango“”:
“With Borges, tango acquires a poetic dimension that is typical of history books.
Tango is the excuse of the Argentine people to tell their anecdotes, to revive their dead, to keep their heroes proud. There is talk here of a condemnation, of that country that left, of an Argentina whose past has been wounded.
“Tango gives us all an imaginary past, we all feel that, in a magical way, we have died fighting in a corner of the suburb”.”
Let’s dive deep into Jorge Luis Borges’ three tango-related works:
El Tango
“El Tango” was published in 1965, establishing the creation of the archetypal or “mythic” milonga.
The following passages show the beauty of tango in Borges’ words:
“Una mitología de puñales
(A mythology of daggers)
lentamente se anula en el olvido;
(slowly fades into oblivion;)
Una canción de gesta se ha perdido
(A song of deed has been lost)
entre sórdidas noticias policiales.
(between sordid police news.)”
Marilyn G. Miller, in “Tango Lessons,” published by Duke University Press, said:
“Borges reconstructs this “mythology of knives” in his milongas, where it simultaneously signifies oblivion and memory, “the impossible memory of having died while fighting.”
This creation, or re-creation, of a milonga archetype implies a recovery of the musical genre but also, and most importantly, the incorporation of certain procedures that are characteristic of popular poetry translated into Argentine literature through the milonga, as shown analogically in the case of the payada in the gauchesque literary genre.
In this way Borges plots an attempt to incorporate a kind of milonga poetics into literature, which is itself a product of what he himself defines as the literary, a definition that depends on atypicality and that responds to a constant reformulation of the limits that separate it from the popular.”
Milonga de Manuel Flores
“Milonga de Manuel Flores” reflects Jorge Luis Borges’ “responses” to other milongueros,
which, according to Ana Cara-Walker in “Borges’ Milongas: The Chords of Argentine Verbal Art,” is “not as explicitly stated as the one to Nicanor Paredes, yet we hear echoes of past popular milonga verses woven into Borges’ poems.”
Milonga compositions included metaphysical concerns that defy popular expression, which was echoed in Milonga de Manual Flores. The poem talks about a deceptively simple, logical reasoning about life and death:
“Manuel Flores va a morir
(Manuel Flores is doomed to die)
Eso es moneda corriente
(That’s as sure as your money)
Morir es una costumbre
(Dying is a custom)
Que sabe tener la gente
(Well known to many)
Manana vendra la bala
(Tomorrow comes the bullet,)
Y con la bala el olvido;
(oblivion descending.)
Lo dijo el sabio Merlin:
(Merlin the magus said it:)
Morir es haber nacido.
(being born has an ending.)”
El Tango de la Guardia Vieja
John Turci-Escobar in “Rescatando el tango para una nueva musica: reconsidering the collaboration between Borges and Piazzolla” said:
“The standard term for tangos composed before 1920 is tangos de la Guardia Vieja, which Borges used from time to time.”
Jorge Luis Borges used and ultimately favored the term “tango-milonga” to make the relation between tango and milonga explicit.
He believed the genre was the precursor of the early tangos. In Miguel Lorenci’s “Borges tanguista,” he said:
“(Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires, 1899 – Geneva, 1986) loved tango. He delighted in his most ancestral forms, the old guard and the milonga, and insulted modern myths of the genre such as Carlos Gardel “for ñoño”. Although the legendary Argentine writer never danced it, he dealt extensively with the Argentine cultural manifestation par excellence and dedicated some talks to tango that slept the sleep of the just for five decades.)”
Jorge Luis Borges loved the early rural milonga, which he always reflected in his writing. As said by Tango High and Low in “Borges and the tradition“:
“What drew Borges to these early “prototype” tangos was the sense of martial vigor and unashamed machismo, the depiction of a world of proud men and sharp knives, a world ruled by honor, endurance, and rough poetry.
For Borges, anything later than the Guardia Vieja was not “tango,” did not provide a sufficient basis on which to construct a mythic past Argentina could be proud of.”
Through his works, it’s no secret that tango has served as a significant inspiration. His use of tango-inspired language and his beliefs in tango music’s social implications have proven invaluable to literature.
Pablo Neruda, the Poet-Diplomat and Politician
Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile. His name was actually Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, and his mother died when he was just a few months old.
His father remarried in 1906, and they moved to Temuco, Chile, where the boy lived with his half-brother, sister, and stepmother. According to Claire Carroll in “Biography of Pablo Neruda, Chilean Poet and Diplomat”:
“Neruda wrote his first poem before his 11th birthday, on June 30, 1915, which he dedicated to his stepmother.”
It was in 1920 when Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto began writing under the pen name Pablo Neruda, who eventually became one of the literary world’s most beloved poets.
In Carmen Guillen’s “Pablo Neruda’s style,” she said:
“Pablo Neruda’s style was unmistakable. Wrote focusing on all the senses: hear, smell, look, etc. With this he sought the description of a scene or feeling as natural as possible to convey that truth to the reader and make him or her enter his poem or writing. Neruda was precise when looking for the suitable words that will excite the reader, especially in inanimate things, those most difficult to describe.”
Pablo Neruda won the International Peace Prize and Stalin Peace Prize. He also won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century—in any language.” In 2003, the mammoth collaboration “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda” saw 600 of Neruda’s poems in English for the first time.
Neruda and Tango
Pablo Neruda wrote many of the world’s most beloved poems, and “Widower’s Tango” in 1928 is undeniably one of his greatest.
It’s about Josie Bliss, a mosquito net, and a knife. Seamus Martov in “Neruda’s Burmese Days” said:
“While Josie Bliss may have been a great poetic inspiration, her intensity appears to have been too much for the intrepid Neruda.”
The poem describes the fall of Pablo Neruda and Josie Bliss’ relationship because of jealousy, anger, distrust, and mental abuse.
Pablo Neruda was deeply in love with Josie Bliss, his Myanmar lover who was “too in love” with him.
Other significant works by Pablo Neruda include “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,” a verse collection published in 1924.
The poems expressed intensity and described sensual passion, ending in melancholy, detachment, bitterness, and hopelessness.
The same words describe his “Los versos del Capitan (The Captain’s Verses)” and “Cien sonetos de amor (One Hundred Love Sonnets),” which he addressed to his lover Matilde Urrutia.
What binds Pablo Neruda and the Argentine tango together is tenderness, melancholy, sensuousness, and passion.
Pablo Neruda was an ardent admirer of poetry; his works could make readers feel what tango is. Tango is poetic. It’s about love and pain, with a hint of danger. And nothing else describes it better than the words of Pablo Neruda.
The Tango Culture and Literature of Argentina
The role of tango in shaping Argentine national identity has been significant since the mid-19th century.
Christine S. Nielsen and Juan Gabriel Mariotto’s “The Tango Metaphor: The Essence of Argentina’s National Identity” said tango is a cultural metaphor for Argentina, revealing that it “has been forged through socioeconomic and political forces integral to the development of Argentine national identity.”
Tango enables us to extend and deepen our knowledge of culture’s complexity. And because tango has imprinted its mark on culture, its influence has extended to Argentine literature.
It’s present in works by some of the world’s most influential authors, including Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda.
Jorge Luis Borges even said that the people of Buenos Aires absolutely recognize themselves in tango!
UNESCO included tango in the world’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.
While some discover it through the art of dance, many can also fall in love with it through literature. Tango is so powerful that it evokes emotions in the works of poets, writers, dancers, and other artists worldwide.
The Enduring Influence of Tango on Argentine Literature
The influence of tango on Argentine culture and literature has been strong. It has empowered many authors like Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda to explore the meaning of life, love, and loss. The two literary titans have captivatingly translated the powerful and languid dance into their works.
When we look at the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, we can see how much tango has influenced his work and literary style.
He delves into tango’s complexities, exploring its mysterious depths in his stories and poems.
And when we look at Pablo Neruda’s works,
we can get hints of every emotion that tango invokes — heartache, love, and passion.
These two great authors have inspired generations with their work and showed the world the power of tango. Tango has been the source of great inspiration for them and will continue to be for generations. Who knows?
Maybe among us, there’s the Jorge Luis Borges or Pablo Neruda of dancing, personifying tango as a timeless and universal art form that transcends boundaries!