BORGES JORGE LUIS: (1899-1986) Argentine Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Poet & Translator, a key figure in Spanish ...

BORGES JORGE LUIS: (1899-1986) Argentine Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Poet & Translator, a key figure in Spanish literature. A good, rare autograph manuscript signed, Jorge Luis Borges, one page, 8vo, Buenos Aires, 18th May n.y. (1927), in Spanish. The manuscript, with several corrections, is of an essay entitled Para el Centenario de Gongora and commences 'I will always be ready to think of Don Luis de Gongora every hundred years', continuing 'Gongora has risen to abstraction. The dedication to the letters, the esoteric and modest writing, the martyrdom acts of other people's misunderstanding and finesse, are symbolised in him. The witty Cordovan Luis de Argote - a man of bitterness on the lips and of youth employed in love - is now called Gongora, in the same way that two sticks tied in the middle are called a cross' and concluding 'Gongora is - I hope unfairly - the symbol of careful technicality, of the simulation of mystery, of mere adventures of syntax. That is to say, of academism that misbehaves and is scandalous. That is to say, of that melodious and perfect non-literature that I have always repudiated. I consign my hope - so often satisfied - of being wrong'. A wonderfully astute essay written in celebration of the tri-centennial of the death of Luis de Gongora. Some light overall foxing, otherwise VG Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) Spanish Poet who, alongside his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, is widely considered to be one of the most prominent Spanish poets of all time and a leading figure in Spain's Golden Age of literature. Gongora's influence on the Spanish-language avant-gardes was far reaching and Garcia Lorca's poetic group, 'The Generation of '27', are referred to as such precisely because their founding act was a celebration of Gongora's tri-centennial in that year. Para el Centenario de Gongora was originally published in Martin Fierro (No. 41, Buenos Aires, 28th May 1927) and reprinted in El idioma de los argentines the following year.