“I know nothing or very little about my Portuguese elders, the Borges: vague people/ who continue in my flesh, darkly,” begins the poem that Jorge Luis Borges dedicated to his paternal ancestors, natives of Moncorvo, a Portuguese town near the border with Spain. More than half a century after these verses by the great Argentine writer were published in his book The makerArgentina and Portugal are still two unknown countries on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. This year, the presence of Lisbon as city guest of honor at the Buenos Aires Book Fair It has built a cultural bridge between both capitals and, in turn, between their inhabitants and their languages.
“The world, today more than ever, needs these crossings between countries, between cultures, with the written word, music and art,” said this Thursday in Buenos Aires the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas at the city’s large stand. at the fair. Moedas highlighted the role of culture in opening minds, overthrowing fears and creating bonds. “In such a polarized world, in a world at war, culture is even more important,” he stated at a press conference, before recalling that Portugal has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution and praising the role of writers for freedom and democracy.
Exorcism against “the extreme right”
The novelist Lídia Jorge, star of the Portuguese delegation and one of the candidates for the Nobel Prize, also recovered the revolution with which Portugal ended a 48-year dictatorship. “It is preferable to live in an imperfect democracy than in an autocracy,” she said during her presentation at the Jorge Fair, saying that she lived her entire childhood and youth under a military regime. The author expressed her regret that many young people are unaware of history and detract from democracy, but she was confident that a large majority of Portuguese understand the Carnation Revolution “as an exorcism against the threat of the extreme right.”
The 77-year-old writer urged new generations to talk about the darkest moments in history. “I don’t want to die thinking that young people, my nephews or my granddaughters, are going to be seduced by things that in the past caused millions of deaths. “No, I don’t want to—I don’t want to die with the idea that I didn’t talk enough,” she said. Her emotion also spread to the audience, who responded with enormous applause.
Jorge declares herself an admirer of the Argentine César Aira and recalled the novelist’s shy reaction when he confessed it to her in person some time ago: “While I was telling him that he was wonderful, he just looked down and didn’t answer me a single word.”
This Portuguese novelist is also linked to Argentina by a family history: her father emigrated here when she was four years old and never returned. In these lands, at the foot of the Andes mountain range, she formed another family, and some of its members were at the Fair on Thursday to accompany her.
Her mother raised her on the other side of the Atlantic, where she died in 2020 from covid. Now, I remember her crossing the waters with Mercy, Jorge’s latest novel, awarded with the Foreign Medici Award. The last year of his life, which he spent locked up in a nursing home, inspired the pages of this work in which the darkness of disability mixes with care, hope and the desire to live.
Two languages that distance
The Lisbon mayor regretted that it has never been possible to connect the Portuguese and Spanish languages in depth between Portugal and Spain, but he expressed hope that it could happen in South America, where both are central.
The heart of the Lisbon stand is a circle of books: some translated and others in their original language. There are titles by established authors such as Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago, and others less known to the Argentine public, but who are part of the delegation that will visit Buenos Aires in these weeks: Francisco José Viegas, Yara Monteiro, Isabel Stilwell and Bruno Vieira Amaral, Pedro Mexia, among others.
Lisbon and Buenos Aires share a great love for bookstores. The first is proud to have the oldest in the world, Bertrand, founded in 1732; the second, being the Latin American capital with the most bookstores, although the current economic crisis has many on the ropes. Sales at the Fair, the most popular literary event in the country, will be key to surviving this year.
Moedas was surprised by the remarkable knowledge that some local readers of Pessoa have and also to see that many take the risk of buying untranslated works, even without fully mastering Portuguese. ”Speaking in another language, having to think about the words, puts us in a more vulnerable position, but that vulnerability can be good, we have to stop being afraid of it,” he said, encouraging this reading, which can have some strangeness but also some challenge and discovery.
“A strange beauty gives life,” would say the composer Rodrigo Leão, who named his latest album that way and this Saturday will offer a concert at the Usina del Arte in Buenos Aires. Leao is part of the musical agenda designed by Lisbon to publicize Portuguese music and its intersections with letters, such as the one offered by the Lisbon Poetry Orchestra a few days ago. The pianist Artur Pizarro, the guitarist Gaspar Varela and the musician Ana Lua Caiano will trace a journey through Portuguese sounds.
Both Moedas and the Minister of Culture of Buenos Aires, Gabriela Ricardes, stressed the desire that the cultural bridge created by the Fair be maintained over time, with more translations and public policies that facilitate exchanges. “We are going to continue walking. It is a long journey of proximity,” promised the Lisbon mayor.
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