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ARCHERS, HUMANISTS AND STORKS: THREADING ARGENTINE IDENTITY ISSUES
pierced by his universal vision. This issue is not worthless. Indeed, Argentina
and Hungary have traditionally had to deal with tensions between global and
local forces in constant restlessness.
In this unique piece that links poetry and philosophy, localism and
universalism, Argentine and Hungarian identity concerns as well, Borges
tries an impossible identification with a remote but admired “first poet of
Hungary”. In a part of this unbeatable poem — perhaps the most beautiful
poetic text dedicated by a foreigner to Hungarian literature —, we can read in
the splendid translation made by my friend Szabolcs Szekeres, and I quote:
The nights and the seas keep us apart,
the changes brought by the centuries,
the climates, the empires and the bloods,
but indecipherably we are united
by the mysterious love of words,
that habit of sounds and symbols.
(Las noches y los mares nos apartan,
las modificaciones seculares,
los climas, los imperios y las sangres,
pero nos une indescifrablemente
el misterioso amor de las palabras,
este habito de sones y de simbolos.)
The daring means chosen by Borges in this poem to span the big temporal
and special ellipse which separates both poets was through the well-known
Archer of Elea Aporia, the most classical philosophic paradox ever, between
the unique being and the multiple existence:
Like the archer of Elea
a lonely man in an empty afternoon
endlessly spouts this impossible
nostalgia that seeks a shadow.
(Andlogo al arquero del eleata
un hombre solo en una tarde hueca
deja correr sin fin esta imposible
nostalgia, cuya meta es una sombra.)
The image of a flying arrow was an ancient symbol for reconciling the
possibilities of being one and many at the same time, resolving in that way the
inaugural debate of western philosophy between Heraclitus and Parmenides.
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