Imagining the world with Borges by Mario Vargas Llosa

The writer Mario Vargas Llosa, at the Teatro Real in Madrid.JOSE JIMENEZ / EFE

Imagine the world in the middle of a pandemic.

Use the word and literature to do so.

The presence of the imaginative Jorge Luis Borges could not gravitate more accurately in this version of the Hay Festival in Arequipa.

"Borges was focused on literature as a salvation in itself," recalled the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, about the Argentine author whom he met personally in Paris.

One of the most anticipated talks of the literary meeting about

, the new book by Vargas Llosa

, has turned on the universal and extraordinary writer, who is still the north of generations of writers

.

“We are from worlds very far away.

I am a realist writer, I was a follower of Jean-Paul Sartre and of those who believed in committed literature;

Borges was not interested in politics, rather fantasy literature, he had concerns more related to time, not to changing society, ”Vargas Llosa told Peruvian journalist Raúl Tola on Wednesday during the talk in which he admitted that in his At the beginning I read it almost secretly.

His first contact - he has also recalled - was thanks to his friend Luis Loaiza, who was fascinated with the author of

, and began with stories.

"The type of writer I try to be is very different from Borges;

it was a

for me to

find it.

He enjoyed Borges but without acknowledging him ”, the Nobel laureate told Tola.

"Then I did it without shame, assuming the admiration I've had for him."

Borges and the 'boom'

Before the conversation, Eva Valero, a doctor in Hispanic Philology from the University of Alicante, and José Carlos Yrigoyen, a critic for the newspaper

in Peru, spoke with Tola about this book that connects the two icons of Latin American literature.

“Borges's revolution is one-man.

It is premonitory of what will come after the

”said Valero, who highlighted the section on the fictions of the Argentine writer that the Nobel analyzes in the book.

For them, just as Borges fueled the

, he also benefited from the push that this great movement had in Latin America.

Borges was dismissive of the

.

Once they asked him about Vargas Llosa and he said he hadn't read it, ”Yrigoyen recalled.

And Tola added: "He said that he was a boy who writes well, but that he had invented leaks in an interview."

Vargas Llosa remembers that anecdote in detail and the effects of the interview he did in 1983 in Buenos Aires.

It was in his apartment in the Palermo neighborhood and he was impressed by the modesty with which one of the fundamental Spanish authors lived.

The detail of a leak that the Peruvian included in his interview did not make Borges very funny.

"The fact that he wrote that there was a leak that leaked made Borges say: 'He is a boy who came to see me, a journalist, but my impression is that he was a publicist who wanted to sell me a house," said Vargas Llosa between laughs

Another interview, this time in 1963 in Paris, brings bright memories to the Nobel.

Borges had dazzled French intellectuals who were surprised to discover a type of Latin American literature that forced them to rethink their prejudices.

Vargas Llosa was a young writer and also fell under the fascination of the Argentine.

“Borges's great prestige jumped on that trip.

And that recognition jumped to Latin America, when it was sanctioned by its success in France, ”said Vargas Llosa, who recalled the emotion that that moment produced in him despite being in such distant literary worlds.

“Extraordinary prose and originality prevailed.

It was very difficult not to give in to that fascination and charm that it produced.