Borges y los clásicos - Carlos Gamerro - Festival Borges 2021

A great reader is one who manages to transform our experience of the books they have read and that we read after them. Borges has changed the way we read Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, or Cervantes, to mention only the four authors we will discuss. But in Borges's case, that "we" goes beyond Argentinians or South Americans. That Borges modifies the reading of Homer or Dante for Argentinian readers is not such an unprecedented feat, at least. What is unprecedented is that Borges has modified the Italian literary tradition for Italians, as he has done with his readings of Dante; or that he has changed the relationship of the English with their own literature, notably in his rewritings of Old English literature, or that of the Spanish with Cervantes, their most representative author. In his essays, poems, and stories, Borges reinterprets and rewrites the work of these authors, bringing them closer to our time and our world, weaving their infinite threads into our literature, and consequently into our tradition and our lives.