A los setenta años de la muerte de Leopoldo Lugones, publicamos este breve ensayo que jorge Luis Borges escribió con la colaboración de Betina Edelberg y que sigue siendo importante para abordar la obra de quien fue, sin dudas, el más prestigioso hombre de letras de su tiempo. En una rápida incursión por la historia de la literatura argentina y de la literatura hispanoamericana, el libro se propone despertar y orientar la curiosidad del lector contemporáneo. Sus capítulos: El modernismo; Lugones Poeta; El prosista y lo argentino; Lugones y lo helénico; Lugones y la política, etc. resumen el pensamiento maduro de Borges sobre su admirable colega. «Lugones encarnó en grado heroico las cualidades de nuestra literatura, buenas y malas. Por un lado, el goce verbal, la música instintiva, la facultad de comprender y reproducir cualquier artificio, por el otro, cierta indiferencia esencial, la posibilidad de encarar un tema desde diversos ángulos, de usarlo para la exaltación o para la burla».
Author
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, usually referred to as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: [xoɾxe lwis boɾxes]), was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. Borges was fluent in several languages. He was a target of political persecution during the Peron regime, and supported the military juntas that overthrew it. Due to a hereditary condition, Borges became blind in his late fifties. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986. J. M. Coetzee said of Borges: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."
