Borges Jorge Luis - Borgess Poe: the influence and reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish America

Borgess Poe

Series Editors

Jon Smith, Simon Fraser University

Rich Richardson, Cornell University

Advisory Board

Houston A. Baker Jr., Vanderbilt University

Leigh Anne Duck, The University of Mississippi

Jennifer Greeson, The University of Virginia

Trudier Harris, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

John T. Matthews, Boston University

Tara McPherson, The University of Southern California

Claudia Milian, Duke University

Borgess Poe

The Influence and Reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish America

EMRON ESPLIN

2016 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved Set in Sabon MT Pro and Whitney by Graphic Composition, Inc. Printed and bound by Sheridan The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.

Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 c 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Esplin, Emron.

Borgess Poe : the influence and reinvention of Edgar

Allan Poe in Spanish America / Emron Esplin.

pages cm (The New Southern Studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8203-4905-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8203-4904-6 (e-book) 1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 18091849Criticism and interpretationHistory20th century. 2. Borges, Jorge Luis, 18991986Criticism and interpretation. 3. Poe, Edgar Allan, 18091849 Influence. 4. Poe, Edgar Allan, 18091849AppreciationLatin America. I. Title.

PS 2637.3. E 75 2016

818.309dc23 2015023633

For me, this book has been a long but enjoyable adventurea journey I could not have accomplished without the support of key mentors, friends, family, libraries, and institutions. I need to begin by going back to Michigan State University in the early 2000s and thanking Stephen Arch and Mara Mudrovcic, whose graduate courses on nineteenth-century U.S. literature and the work of Jorge Luis Borges, respectively, inspired me to write comparative work on Poe and Borges. With their guidance and the encouragement of another MSU professor, Stephen Rachman, I published my first article on Poe and Spanish America and decided that I would return to this topic after finishing my graduate work. A few years and my dissertationon Faulkner and Fuentes rather than on Borges and Poelater, I took my first trip to Buenos Aires to begin my research for a book on Poe and Spanish America. That book quickly morphed into a book on Poe and the Ro de la Plata region after finding so much material in Buenos Aires. The project changed, again, to focus specifically on Poe and Borges after conducting another pair of research trips to libraries within the United States.

I owe special thanks to the following organizations, libraries, and librarians for their support with Borgess Poe. First, thanks to Mara Kodama and to the Fundacin Internacional Jorge Luis Borges for allowing me to visit the Fundacin on two occasions, for granting me permission to view Borgess marginalia in his personal copies of books by Poe and Hawthorne, and for sharing several stories with me about Borgess works and the latter years of his life. I would also like to thank the Biblioteca Nacional Argentinaespecially Laura Rosato, Germn lvarez, Juan Pablo Canala, and the other librarians in the Sala del Tesorofor their continual support with this project, both in person during three research trips to the library and via email over the past several years. Thanks to the staffs of the Harry Ransom Center and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, both at the University of Texas at Austin, for their help while I conducted research in the Ransoms collection of Borges materials and the Bensons collection of Cortzar materials. Thanks, too, to the wonderful librarians in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia for their support while I conducted research in their Jorge Luis Borges Collection. I would like to specifically thank C. Jared Loewenstein, the founding curator of the Jorge Luis Borges Collection, for talking with me in person, on the phone, and via email about the collection and about Borges the writer and the person. I need to thank Alexander Gilliam, Matthew Kelly, and the Raven Society at the University of Virginia for answering my questions and for sending me lesser-known materials about Poes relationship with UVA . Finally, I would like to thank the Fundacin Torres Garca and the Museo Torres Garca for the permission to use Torres Garcas Amrica invertida on my books cover.

I have researched and written this book while working at two outstanding institutions: Kennesaw State University ( KSU ) in Kennesaw, Georgia, and Brigham Young University ( BYU ) in Provo, Utah. Both institutions funded conference trips where I was able to present parts of this manuscript and receive valuable feedback. KSU also funded my research trips to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, UT Austin, and the University of Virginia through the following awards: a 20092010 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Seed Research Award, a 20102011 Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Incentive Funding Award for Research and Creative Activity, a 2011 Global Learning Award, and a 2013 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Grant. Without this generous support, Borgess Poe would not exist. BYU provided course releases during my first three years on campus that allowed me to craft my book proposal and to finish, revise, and proof my manuscript. BYU also provided funding for the index and the artwork on the books cover. Classrooms at both KSU and BYU have also been important venues in which I have been able to share my ideas on Borges and Poe with my students and receive their feedback.

I also need to thank the editors and staff at the University of Georgia Press for their support with this book. Special thanks to Jon Smith, one of the New Southern Studies series editors, for showing interest in my work over the years, for contacting me to discuss this book project, and for creating a larger space for inter-American scholarship through his work with Deborah Cohn and through the conferences he has organized around New World studies. Thanks, too, to Walter Biggins, senior acquisitions editor, for answering all my questions throughout this process. I would also like to thank the peer reviewers who offered me both support and valuable feedback in their responses to my book proposal and to the entire manuscript.

I have previously published two chapters from Borgess Poe, and I would like to thank the copyright holders for allowing me to republish that work here. Material from Borgess Philosophy of Poes Composition, copyright 2013 by the Pennsylvania State University Press, appears here in my first chapter and in a few paragraphs of my introduction. This article was originally published in Comparative Literature Studies 50, issue 3 (2013), and it is used by permission of the Pennsylvania State University Press. A slightly altered version of Reading and Re-Reading: Jorge Luis Borgess Literary Criticism on Edgar Allan Poe, first published in Comparative American Studies