"Beatriz Viterbo c'est
moi" :
Angular Vision in Estela Canto's
Borges a contraluz
Daniel Balderston
Daniel Balderston es
full-professor en la Universidad de Tulane (U.S.A.) y ha publicado algunos libros ya
clásicos sobre Borges, entre los cuales cabe distinguir The Literary Universe of Jorge
Luis Borges: An index to references and allusions to persons, titles and places in his
writings, New York, Greenwood Press, 1986. Daniel Balderston ha animado, en septiembre
1995, una de las sesiones del Seminario Permanente del Centro de Estudios y Documentación
"Jorge Luis Borges"
In one of the letters that form the magical center of Borges a
contraluz, Borges writes to Estela Canto :
"Nunca, Estela, me he sentido más cerca de ti, te imagino y
te pienso continuamente, pero siempre de espaldas o de perfil" (125).
In the following letter, Borges writes from rural Uruguay :
"Vagamente he visto unas casas, bruscamente anuladas por casi
intolerables memorias de un ángulo de tu sonrisa" (127).
Angular vision marks Borges a contraluz, the very title of
which suggests that Canto's theme is an unexpected lateral view of the great Argentine
writer. And because the view is from an unusual angle, the position of the observer is as
important as what is seen. I here propose to examine the ways in which the biography that
is Borges a contraluz masks the autobiographical impulse that is also very strong
in the book.
"A mode of truth, not of truth coherent and central,
but angular and splintered": this phrase of De Quincey's is used by Borges as the
epigraph to Evaristo Carriego.[1] Canto recalls
the phrase once (14)[2], without insisting on its
importance for her book. However, the "angular and splintered" truth about one
of the central events of Borges's emotional life is the raison d'être of Canto's book,
and it is fitting that the quotation from De Quincey should stand at the beginning of
Borges's own try at biography, his book on Evaristo Carriego. And if Evaristo
Carriego is exceedingly unorthodox as a biography, so too is Borges a contraluz.
The merits of Canto's book are many, and her play with the conventions of biography is not
the least of them. [3]
Of their first encounter, Canto writes with
delightful irony :
"Yo había oído que Borges no era exactamente buen mozo, que
ni siquiera tenía un fisico agradable. Sin embargo, estaba por debajo de lo que yo había
esperado" (24).
At the time of her meeting with Borges, Canto was the author of a
few stories in Sur, and partway through their relationship she won the Premio
Municipal de Literatura for her first novel El muro de mármol. Most of her
fiction comes in the years subsequent to their relationship, however, and Canto is at
pains to remind the reader of its existence.[4]
One of the more curious sections of the book begins with a
discussion between Canto and Borges about the merits of going to the beach, a place
defined by Borges as "un terreno baldío donde la gente se pone en paños
menores" (50). Canto comments : "Imagino que no aprobaba mi
entusiasmo o sentía celos por la vida que suponía que yo llevaba en esas playas"
(50), then goes on to speculate on Borges's dislike for vacant lots, a dislike that for
her borders on a phobia. She clearly insinuates that Borges as a boy was the victim of
something like a rape in a vacant lot (51-52), though the explanation she gives later in
the book (with the help of Dr. Cohen-Miller) of Borges's sexual problems does not return
to this hypothesis. [5]
The most moving portions of Borges a contraluz are when
Canto finds herself at fault for being too flippant with Borges, whose interest in her was
clearly sincere and intense. Her casual remark in Adrogué, in response to his (to her
taste) rather Victorian proposal of marriage, that she would only consider marry him after
going to bed with him, leads to the explosive center of the book, the revelation that
Borges, seeking to keep his part of the bargain, sought the help of a psychiatrist, Dr.
Cohen- Miller. While this episode of the book had much to do with its success, especially
when coupled with the revelations that Julio Woscoboinik subsequently extracted from the
by now rather aged Dr. Cohen-Miller, what has been less noticed is the pathetic tone that
Canto reserves for narrating her own behavior throughout this period. For her part, she
had little intention of marrying Borges-the remark was spontaneous, even perhaps rather
cruel. She felt no physical attraction to Borges, she says repeatedly, and so there was no
real incentive for her to keep her part of the bargain. Indeed, marriage to Borges was
more or less out of the question because of his mother's antipathy to Canto.
Canto's account of Borges's obsession with her is moving partly
because it is so self-deprecating. She defines the relationship as a friendship (at least
on her side) :
"Digo 'amistad' porque para mí no fue otra cosa. Sobre mí
él proyectó sus sueños o, mejor dicho, sus anhelos no conscientes de rebelión y de
cambio" (77).
When she comes to the point in the book where she must tell her
story, she writes :
"Al llegar a este punto debo disculparme. Tengo que hablar de
mí misma. Éste es un estudio sobre Borges y mi vida personal sólo debe intervenir
cuando entra en contacto con él. Para aclarar la situación a la que me estoy refiriendo,
tengo que hablar ahora de mí. Sólo repetiré esto cuando sea imprescindible" (81).
Yet she writes of herself throughout the book, and indeed it would
be a much poorer text without her self-conscious reflections.
One leitmotiv of the relationship, to culminate in Canto's
transformation into the Beatriz Viterbo of "El Aleph," is Borges's insistent
nicknaming of her as Beatrice :
"Me repetía que él era Dante, que yo era Beatrice y que
habría de liberarlo del infierno, aunque yo no conociera la naturaleza de ese infierno.
Cuando me apretaba entre sus brazos, yo podía sentir su virilidad, pero nunca fue más
allá de unos cuantos besos."(95)
Though Canto clarifies that Borges's impotence was mental rather
than physical -"se excitaba como cualquier hombre normal" (98)- she notes
that their relationship never acquired an adequate physical dimension :
"La actitud de Borges hacia mí me conmovía. Me gustaba lo
que yo era para él, lo que él veía en mí. Sexualmente me era indiferente. (...) ni
siquiera me desagradaba. Gozaba de su conversación, pero su convencionalismo me agobiaba.
Sus besos, torpes, bruscos, siempre a destiempo, eran aceptados condescendientemente.
Nunca pretendí sentir lo que no sentía." (83)
In fact, the moment she defines as the most physical contact she
ever had with Borges is the experience of shaving him when he was convalescing from an eye
operation :
"Éste fue el contacto físico mas íntimo que iba a haber
entre Jorge Luis Borges y Estela Canto" (238).
Canto does not claim to have behaved well with Borges. When he is
getting ready to ask her to visit Dr. Cohen-Miller, for instance, it does not occur to her
that that is what he is driving at :
"El hecho de que yo haya creído tan fácil lo que supuse
muestra hasta qué punto estaba alejada de los problemas reales de él, hasta qué punto
era yo egoísta e insensible" (111).
She portrays her desire to help him as essentially
self-involved :
"Tengo curiosidad y quería ayudar a Georgie. En mí hay algo
de Sherlock Holmes ; me gusta indagar los motivos del prójimo. Me gusta la aventura
y esta indagación del alma de los demás es una aventura grande y peligrosa. Además,
quería serle útil, darle lo que podía darle" (112).
And when Dr. Cohen-Miller asks her to marry Borges even without the
evidence in advance that there will be a physical relationship, he does so with a strange
variation of the Victorian adage to wives ("open your legs and think of
England") : "Piense en su patria, piense en la literatura argentina. Se
lo aseguro : no tendrá que arrepentirse" (120).
She clarifies, too, that she had a life independent of Borges, free
of his designs on her :
"A todo esto, hubo cambios en mi vida. Conocí a un hombre.
Durante tres años me alejé de mis amigos, de mi medio. Me porté mal con Borges"
(120).
One thing that served to distance them in the fifties and sixties
was politics, as Canto became an active Communist, and then a non-Communist leftist, while
Borges went from an anti-Peronist liberal position to one of extreme conservatism (perhaps
under the influence of his mother, never Canto's favorite person). Canto tells of the
denial by the U.S. government of a visa for her to visit this country, and comments :
"Esa furia iba a llevarme al campo opuesto" (240). Of their common opposition to
Perón, Canto writes :
"La Revolución Libertadora, que debió habernos acercado, nos
alejó. Yo me acerqué a la izquierda, una izquierda que, a decir verdad, sobrenadaba
sobre la realidad del país" (245).
Eventually they were reconciled, and began meeting again : "Yo
no disponía de las noches ; pero nos veíamos de mañana o de tarde"
(257) : by then married to her Belgian husband Georges Moentack, Canto narrates with
some indignation the final machinations she attributes to Borges's mother, especially what
she considers an arranged marriage to Elsa Astete. And she tells of the end :
"Pero quedaban 'cosas', como se vio cuando personas allegadas
vendieron papeles de él en la casa Sotheby's de Nueva York, donde yo misma había vendido
en mayo de 1985 el manuscrito de El Aleph" (278).
Near the end of her book, Canto writes :
"He llegado al final de estos recuerdos. Podría prolongarlos.
Pero a Borges le gustaba la brevedad y abrevio en su honor. Hay anécdotas que no cuento,
personas que no nombro. Sé que hay mujeres que fueron más o menos importantes en su
vida. Alguna, en un exceso de recato, no ha querido ser nombrada en estas páginas ;
otras tienen los instrumentos literarios requeridos para contar ellas mismas su relación
con él" (285).
By the art of omission she preserves the uniqueness of her own
perspective. The book's fragmentary nature-part biography, part literary criticism, part
intimate letters-assures the "angular and splintered" nature of its truth.
Emir Rodríguez Monegal writes in his Literary Biography of
Borges :
"Even the person to whom Borges dedicates the story, a young
Argentine writer named Estela Canto, has the right Dantesque name : Estela (Stella)
was the word Dante chose to end each of the three Cantiche of the Divine Comedy ;
Canto was the name of each division in each Cantica. But the name "Estela Canto"
also means, in Spanish, "I sing to Estela." At the time Borges wrote the story,
he was more than ready to sing to that particular Estela. As homage, he gave her the
manuscript, in his own miniscule handwriting, of "The Aleph."" (414)
Monegal adds in the next paragraph : "Some critics
have attempted to identify Beatriz Viterbo ; it is a pointless task" (414-15).
His declaration is curious in that he has just identified Beatriz Viterbo, though perhaps
he could not know that Estela Canto would later revel in that identification. In any case,
Canto is swift to respond to Monegal :
"Un crítico uruguayo, que iba a escribir un libro mal
informado y farragoso sobre Borges, vino a verme y me pidió que le prestara el manuscrito
de El Aleph, según él, para ver la "escritura" de Borges. Escarmentada por lo
que me había ocurrido con Milleret[6], le di unas
fotocopias del principio y del fin del cuento. Esas fotocopias fueron publicadas en
revistas universitarias de Estados Unidos." (248)
Canto does not need to belittle Monegal. Her own book will without
question be seen in the future as a much more significant contribution to the
understanding of Borges than Monegal's. In one of the letters, Borges writes :
"Vagamente he visto unas casas, bruscamente anuladas por casi
intolerables memorias de un ángulo de tu sonrisa, de la inflexión de tu voz diciendo
Georgie, de una esquina de Lomas o de La Plata, de mi reloj en tu cartera, de tus dedos
rasgando papel" (127).
Her hands tearing paper : the image is haunting, as if Borges
were watching her tear at his pages, tearing at her own. A relationship always mediated
through paper. A shattered, angular mode of truth.
Daniel Balderston
Tulane University
Works Cited
Canto, Estela. Borges a contraluz. Madrid :
Espasa-Calpe, 1989.
Moreiras, Alberto. "Borges y Estela Canto : la sombra de
una dedicatoria." Journal of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 5.1
(1993) : 131-46.
Moreiras, Alberto. "The Leap and the Lapse : Hacking a
Private Site in Cyberspace." Rethinking Technologies. Ed. Verena Andermatt
Conley. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 191-204.
Rodriguez Monegal, Emir. Jorge Luis Borges : A Literary
Biography. New York : E. P. Dutton, 1978.
Woscoboinik, Julio. El secreto de Borges : Indagación
psicoanalítica de su obra. 2nd ed. Buenos Aires : Grupo Editor
Latinoamericano, 1991.
Notes
NOTE 1
The phrase comes from De Quincey's essay "The Poetry of Pope", the same essay in
which De Quincey makes his famous distinction between the "literature of
knowledge" and the "literature of power." The passage from which this
quotation comes, a commentary on "The Essay on Man," notes the lack of coherence
or of organizing principles in Pope's thought, then goes on to the argument that the very
fragmentary nature of the writing is the source of its brilliance and its truth.
NOTE 2
One of the many books that Borges gave Canto was the eleventh volume of the Masson edition
of De Quincey's works, the volume comprising De Quincey's critical writings and writings
on literary theory, which includes the essay on the poetry of Pope. When I visited Canto
for the last time, on 25 May 1995, nine days before her death, she gave the eleventh
volume to me.
NOTE 3
The book is structured in three parts : the first telling the story of her
relationship with Borges, the second (much briefer) section consisting of his letters to
her at the time of his infatuation, the third consisting of a sort of critical approach to
a number of his most famous texts, emphasizing their autobiographical content.
NOTE4
Alberto Moreiras has argued in two articles that there are significant echoes of "El
Aleph" in El muro de mármol. Both texts were first published in 1945.
NOTE5
She does, however, suggest on several occasions that Borges was perhaps latently
homosexual (114-15, 230-31).
NOTE6
Jean de Milleret, the author of a book of interviews with Borges, "borrowed" the
manuscript of "El Aleph," but then would not return it until threatened by
Canto's husband, Georges Moentack (Canto 247-48).