Macedonio Fernández: Between Literature, Philosophy, and the Avant-Garde

At Macedonio Fernández's funeral in 1952, Jorge Luis Borges delivered the following elegy: "In those years I imitated him to the point of transcription, to the point of devout and passionate plagiarism. I felt: Macedonio is metaphysics, Macedonio is literature." This is the first book available in English that collects essays by the world's leading scholars on Macedonio Fernández, one of Borges's most important mentors and a still enigmatic thinker of the early 20th century. Macedonio's philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and experimental writing laid the foundations for Borges's own theoretical and literary matrix. Nonetheless, Borges helped shape a myth of Macedonio as a thinker who could not translate his oratorial geniality into written intelligibility. So, despite the centrality of Macedonio to Borges's thought, his work has remained almost unknown to English-speaking readers.

Contributors to this volume demonstrate, however, that this myth reduces the complexities of Macedonio's life and creative process, as each chapter shines new light on his texts. Conceived as both a companion for new readers of Macedonio's writings and an invitation for specialists to revisit his work through new perspectives, essays in this volume provide extensive background and bibliographical references, as well as English translations of Macedonio's original texts. This collection seeks to serve as a catalyst for the continued discovery and rediscovery of Macedonio Fernández's texts and the ways they might help us to rediscover the singularities of our own present moment.

Auteur

Federico Fridman is Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Michigan, USA.

Contenu

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Federico Fridman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Part 1. Life and Literature at the Edge

1. Jorge Luis Borges and Macedonio Fernández: History of a Literary Friendship
   Mónica Bueno, University of Mar del Plata, Argentina
2. Heroes without Selves: Macedonio Fernández and a New Ethics of the Heroic
   Todd S. Garth, U.S. Naval Academy, USA
3. Consuelo-Eterna, Macedonio's Erotic and Metaphysical Passion
   Ana Camblong, University of Misiones, Argentina
4. Macedonio Fernández's Neighborhood Metaphysics: Belarte, the Fool of Buenos Aires, and the Evidential Siesta
   Gonzalo S. Aguirre, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
   Part 2. Philosophy, Affects, and Politics
5. Macedonio Fernández: The First Egocide in the Río de la Plata
   Diego Vecchio, University of Paris VIII, France
6. A Metaphysics That Only Begins: On Macedonio's Writing Passion
   Julio Prieto, Universität Potsdam, Germany
7. Songs Without a Self: Macedonio's Anarchist Aesthetics
   Luis Othoniel Rosa, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
8. The Thought of Macedonio Fernández: A Dictionary
   Daniel Attala, University of Southern Brittany, France
   Part 3. Metaphysics on the Move
9. Notes on Macedonio in a Diary
   Ricardo Piglia, Princeton University, USA
10. What Is Believing?
    Horacio González, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
11. No hay proa sin popa
    Liliana Weinberg, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
    Notes on Contributors
    Bibliography
    Index