Borges, Reader of Lucretius

Abstract

When a text deeply enters a reader’s heart and intellect, it stays with him forever. Even when it seems to fall into lethargy, it returns back in specific moments. When talking of a writer, these background texts are shown in his work, sometimes unconsciously while, other times, the writer receives these recollections consciously and with intense gratitude. A friendship is born between the reader and the writer, in which the writer returns to life through the reader. This work aims at showing the particular gifts that, as a reader, the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges received, specifically those gifts related to his readings of the classic works, both in translation and in the original versions, since the Latin that he learned in his youth would always accompany him as a faithful friend. The particular topic of this study is the friendship between Borges and the Latin philosopher Lucretius, and the way in which Lucretius appears in Borges’s works.