And now, in front of Borges' tomb.
A slight tremor, the final elusive and tangible shadow, life and death lurking, a tenuous melancholy in the lonely Plainpalais cemetery in Geneva, so close to Lake Lehman, its waters as transparent as the blind eyes of
Jorge Luis Borges
.
The tombstones are sober, stony, grayed by the immobile years of the buried.
There are no fuss.
Everything is silence.
There is no one among the graves.
"
What God behind God the plot begins from dust and time and sleep and agony
?"
Why did Borges go to die in Geneva?
Why so far from home?
What is the eternal home?
Where is?
It's not far.
Here in this sunny and cold Geneva the whole of Argentina is in that tomb.
Or is it not?
Or
is Borges far from home by choice
, due to distance with our illnesses?
Miguel Wiñazki next to the grave of Jorge Luis Borges in Geneva.
Photo: Juan Winazki
I am not referring to the literal geographical distance, but to a country with a spiritual bias that splits from Borges.
Because there is
a sick Argentina, that hates, that goes backwards
, that sometimes submits to madness.
"Love does not unite us but fear / that is why I love her so much"
.
There is a bronze cat walking through the water-green cemetery of Plainpalais around Borges' tomb.
"You are, under the moon, that panther that is given to us to see from afar"
.
The cat walks through the quiet grass, like someone who knows death and life.
It is immortal.
Was Borges happy in Geneva?
Or was he unhappy?
The bond with his father threaded mysteries in Geneva and eternal torments, but that refers to his private life.
The streets of Geneva are clean, they rise and fall in the old town like a light orderly ocean.
It is translucent.
A fountain of white water that does not stop reaches the top and defines a rainbow over the lake.
The bikes are simple and powerful.
The walkers are very elegant.
Buenos Aires is more Borgean than Geneva.
"And now the city is like a map of my humiliations and failures..."
But at the same time, because it is about Borges, his tomb tinges Geneva for an Argentine like a labyrinth in its circular ruins, because Borges' tomb carved in stone evokes the ruins of bodies, but at the same time, the immortality of literature.
"If (as the Greek affirms in the Cratylus) the name is an archetype of the thing in the letters of 'rose' there is the rose and the entire Nile in the word 'Nile'".
They are all words and Borges is all words.
The tombstone is simple and it is complex with its legends "And ne forhtedon na" reads.
It means "and they did not fear".
Seven warriors with their unsheathed weapons can be seen carved.
But the enigmatic inscriptions inscribed in stone allude (you will know how to allow me a free interpretation) yes to the cult of courage that Borges longed for so much from his ancestors and his knife fighters, but also to the history that is the history of all the battles of life, of civilizations and each person.
Each person is all persons.
Borges' tomb is the Aleph.
It's all there, the blood that in torrents and crosses the centuries, reddens the swords and becomes a Borgean letter, and a Genevan, Argentine tombstone, and as eternal as water and air.
The epitaphs summon the walker from the eloquent silence of the deceased, and in this case, they invoke him from the deepest mystery.
What does Borges tell us?
“... remember that time is another river, know that we get lost like the river and that faces pass like water
.
Feeling that waking is another dream that dreams not to dream..." And the inexorable death "...space and time and Borges already leave me".
Borges is the most relevant philosopher that Argentina gave, he is not only the incomparable writer who was born in Buenos Aires, and who died in Geneva and conscientiously.
After the death of Beatriz Viterbo, her contemptuous and beloved character in El Aleph writes
"...I understood that the incessant and vast universe was already moving away from her..."
Is the universe moving away from Borges, or is Borges describing the universe and giving it to us? about?
What seems certain is that
Argentina distances itself from Borges
, that Borges went to die in Geneva because the country distanced itself from his words and his genius.
Because we are endorsing savagery and dishonesty, because the ruffians and not the brave claim victory, because not learning and becoming illiterate is the decision of certain ignoramuses who claim that this is how it is governed, because we believe that low politics is politics and that overwhelms us with misery , because Borges lies in another place, because here we tie him to our fear.
But
from his tomb in Geneva he continues to write to us and describe us
and if we read it, and if we read it more and better, and study it, and go through its nightmares, and its mirrors and its mazes, and its mythologies, surely, without a doubt, with certainty;
we will be better.
Borges watches us.
And he offers us his talent.
It's cold in Plainpalais and it's sunny.
There is no wind or ash in the wind.
Borges, the dead man, the other, the same, already lying mute, more eloquent than ever.
More than ever.
The cat, the panther, that other tiger, is still there.
look too
The "practical-inert" Argentina and the pain of comparing ourselves with Spain
The real Argentina and the aspirational Argentina
