Macedonio Fernández (1 June 1874 – 10 February 1952) was an

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

writer, humorist and philosopher. His writings included novels, stories, poetry, journalism, and works not easily classified. He was a mentor to

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

and other avant-garde Argentine writers. Seventeen years of his correspondence with Borges was published in 2000. His published poetry includes " Creía yo" ("I believed").

Life

Macedonio (like

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

's Felisberto Hernández, he is commonly referred to by his first name only) was the son of Macedonio Fernández, farmer and military officer, and Rosa del Mazo Aguilar Ramos. In 1887, he enrolled in the Argentine Colegio Nacional Central. It is believed that he is a descendant of the Macedonio family of Naples, Italy who claimed descent from the Macedonian dynasty of Eastern Rome and Philip II of ancient Macedonia. In 1891–1892, as a university student, he published in ''El Progreso'', a series of critical essays on customs and manners later included in ''Papeles antiguos''. Like his intimate friend Jorge Guillermo Borges (father of

), he was interested in psychology and in the philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...

. In 1897 he was granted a degree as a doctor of jurisprudence by the law faculty of the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...

. In this period, he wrote for ''La Montaña,'' a socialist daily directed by

Leopoldo Lugones Leopoldo Antonio Lugones Argüello (13 June 1874 – 18 February 1938) was an Argentine poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, historian, professor, translator, biographer, philologist, theologian, diplomat, politician and journalist. His poetic ...

and José Ingenieros. He was a personal friend of physician, journalist, politician, and writer Juan B. Justo, with whom he maintained a correspondence. In 1898, he was admitted to the bar, and in 1899 he married Elena de Obieta, with whom he had four children (Macedonio, Adolfo, Maite, plus one) In 1904 he published some poems in a magazine called ''Martín Fierro'' (not the more famous magazine of the same name published two decades later). In 1910, he obtained the position of public prosecutor in the Juzgado Letrado de Posadas, which he held for several years. His wife died in 1920, and their children were left in the care of grandparents and aunts. Macedonio abandoned the profession of a lawyer. On the return of the Borges family from Europe in 1921, he renewed his friendship with his old friend, and also began a friendship with Jorge Luis Borges, at this time a young ultraist poet. In 1928 he published ''No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos'', at the request of Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz and Leopoldo Marechal; the next year he published ''Papeles de Recienvenido.'' En 1938 he published ''"Novela de la Eterna" y la Niña del dolor, la "Dulce-persona" de un amor que no fue sabido'', an anticipation of '' Museo de la Novela de la Eterna'' (published posthumously in 1967); in 1941 he published, in Chile ''Una novela que comienza'', and in 1944 a new edition of ''Papeles de Recienvenido''. In 1947, Macedonio moved into the home of his son Adolfo de Obieta, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Macedonio and Borges

Macedonio was Jorge Luis Borges's most important Argentine mentor and influence. The relationship between the writers, however, was far more complex than Borges or his contemporaries represented it to be. In his later years, Borges made a point of naming Macedonio as an early influence whom, in the exuberance of his youth, Borges imitated "to the point of plagiarism." At the same time, Borges denied that Macedonio possessed any literary talent or importance, reinforcing the long-held perception of the older man as a kind of local Socratic philosopher, specific to Argentina and constitutive of an Argentine mythic dimension. Recent studies by Ana Camblong, Julio Prieto, Daniel Attala and Todd S. Garth, among others, indicate that Macedonio's literary impact on Borges was far more profound and enduring than Borges ever admitted, and that Borges went to great pains to hide this influence. Many of the most fundamental concepts underpinning Borges' fiction come directly from Macedonio. These include the questioning of space and time and their continuity; the confusion of dreaming and wakefulness; the unreliability of memory and the importance of forgetfulness; the slipperiness (or nonexistence) of personal identity; the denial of originality and the emphasis on texts as being recyclings and translations of prior texts; and the questioning and commingling of the roles of author, reader, editor and commentator. These influences extend to thematic material. Such themes include the conceit of an alternative, fictional dimension, elaborated anonymously in collaboration, that invades the known, tangible world (Borges' "

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a short story by the 20th-century Argentina, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in the Argentine journal ''Sur (magazine), Sur'', May 1940 in literature, 1940. The "postscript" dated ...

" and Macedonio's campaign to transform

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

by turning it into a novel, a component of his ''Museo de la Novela de la Eterna''); and the hermetic world of immigrant working girls who must negotiate the city on their own, secret terms based purely on instinct and passion (Borges' " Emma Zunz" and Macedonio's ''Adriana Buenos Aires''). While it is evident both men were inspired by ideas they read in the works of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosophers (specifically

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manife ...

and

Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; ; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the S ...

), there is little question that the two Argentines developed some of their most characteristic and enduring ideas together, in conversation, throughout the 1920s. Macedonio appears explicitly in Borges' " Dialogue about a Dialogue,"Borges, Jorges Luis. Trans. Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland. ''Dreamtigers''. University of Texas Press, 1985, p. 25. in which the two discuss the

immortality of the soul Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some species possess " biological immortality" due to an apparent lack of the Hayflick limit. From at least the time of the ancient Mesopotamians, there has been a conviction that gods may be phy ...

. The relationship between these two men began in earnest in 1921, when Borges returned to Buenos Aires with his family after their extended stay in Switzerland (and travels elsewhere in Europe), where he had completed his education. Borges' father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, had been a close companion to Macedonio and attended law school with him. Upon graduating law school, Macedonio, the elder Borges, and companion Julio Molina y Vedia hatched a plan to found a

utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', which describes a fictional island soci ...

colony based on the

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

principles of Élisée Reclus. This plan apparently never went beyond an exploratory visit the three made around 1897 to a plantation the Molina y Vedia family owned in the Argentine Chaco, near the

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

n border. During the years prior to 1921, Macedonio married, started a law practice and went about raising a family. This idyll came to an end when Macedonio's wife, Elena de Obieta, died suddenly in 1920. Macedonio then shuttered his law practice, dismantled his household and, about the same time as he renewed his friendship with the now adult Jorge Luis Borges, embarked on a life as an idiosyncratic writer-philosopher. Borges and other members of the '' generación martinfierrista'' were drawn to Macedonio as a mentor and figurehead who could serve as an anchor to the nascent Buenos Aires avant-garde and a foil to

, leader of the ''modernista'' movement of a generation earlier. Macedonio made noteworthy, if infrequent, contributions to the literary gatherings of the '' ultraísta'' movement and the related "Florida" group of writers and artists. Borges was an active participant in Macedonio's intimate ''

tertulia A ''tertulia'' (, ; ; ) is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberian Peninsula, Iberia or in Spanish America. Tertulia also means an informal meeting of people to talk about current affairs, arts, etc. The word ...

s'', both in Buenos Aires bars and cafés and in a shack Macedonio sometimes borrowed on a friend's ranch outside the city. He also was one of the collaborators in Macedonio's burlesque campaigns for the presidency of the Argentine Republic (in 1921 and again in 1927), episodes which apparently gave rise to the analogous fictional campaign in ''Museo''. In addition, Borges was responsible for urging Macedonio to publish at least one of the two book-length works printed in Macedonio's lifetime, ''No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos'', in 1926. The relationship between Borges and Macedonio appears to have begun to deteriorate around 1927 or 1928, when correspondence (published and analyzed by Carlos García) indicates a rift between them. This is also about the time that Borges made his famous break with the avant-garde and pronounced the death of Argentine ''ultraísmo'', essentially forcing the closure of its most important publication, the little magazine '' Martín Fierro'', after its sixteenth issue. The two events may not be coincidental. From 1927 onward, Borges not only started to write, publish and promote his characteristic short fiction (beginning with "Hombre de la esquina rosada"), he aggressively renounced his prior aesthetic production and put considerable energy into burying it forever. A number of sources ( Donald Shaw in particular) suggest that Borges began to regard most of his early writings, and the ideas behind them, as potentially pernicious, especially in the hands of nationalists. Supporting this notion is the fact that many of Borges's stories in which Macedonio's influence is most evident imply a warning against concepts and principles Macedonio represented: absolute relativism; the priority of thought, emotion and imagination over a nominal existence; and the implicit heroism of a hermetic existence.

Works

*''No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos; arreglo de papeles que dejó un personaje de novela creado por el arte, Deunamor el no existente caballero, el estudioso de su esperanza'' (1928) *''Una novela que comienza'' (1941) * ''Poemas'', with a prologue by Natalicio González. México, Guarania, 1953. *''Papeles de Recienvenido. Continuación de la nada'' (1944); ''Papeles de recienvenido y continuación de la nada'' (1989) *''Museo de la novela de la eterna'' (1967); (1995) ; (1982) ; (pbk.) * ''No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos y otros escritos''. Advertencia de Adolfo de Obieta. Buenos Aires, CEAL, 1967. * ''Cuadernos de todo y nada''. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1972. 2a. ed. 1990. *''Manera de una psique sin cuerpo'' (1973) *''Obras completas'' (1974-1995) **''Adriana Buenos Aires : última novela mala'' Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1974 (Obras completas, vol. V; Adolfo de Obieta, editor); (1998) **''Teorías'', Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1974 (Obras completas, vol. III; Adolfo de Obieta, editor); (1990) ** ''Museo de la Novela de la Eterna; primera novela buena''. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1975 (Obras completas, vol. VI; Adolfo de Obieta, editor) *''Relato : cuentos, poemas y misceláneas'' (1987) *''Poesías completas'' (1991) *''Todo y nada'' (1995) *''Textos selectos'' (1999) *''Macedonio : memorias errantes'' (1999)

In English translation

*''Macedonio : selected writings in translation'' edited by Jo Anne Engelbert, Latitudes Press 1984, . *'' The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel)'' translated by Margaret Schwartz (2010) published by Open Letter Books

Correspondence

* ''Epistolario''. Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 1976. (Obras completas, vol. II, Alicia Borinsky, editor). *''Correspondencia, 1922-1939 : crónica de una amistad'' with Jorge Luis Borges (2000)

Notes

External links

* Roberto Bardini, , RATACRUEL (e-zine) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Macedonio 1874 births 1952 deaths Writers from Buenos Aires Burials at La Recoleta Cemetery Argentine humorists 20th-century Argentine philosophers Argentine male poets 19th-century Argentine poets 20th-century Argentine poets