Borges y el tango en la disputa táctica por la orilla de Carriego

Abstract

Borges maintained an ambivalent position towards tango, expressed in three capital works: Evaristo Carriego, an apocryphal biography, Para las seis cuerdas, a compendium of milongas, and El tango (2016), four lectures given during the 1960s. His relationship with tango could be characterized as a tactical dispute for the aesthetic monopoly of “orilla” (shore), since demanding for himself the space created by Carriego and snatching it away from tango were, in Borges, essentially one movement. The mythical nature of tango discourse allowed Borges to make his own cosmogony of its vaporous origins. The Borgean shore will then appear sketched as an inexhaustible source of knife duels that end (such its raison d’être) in prosified epic short stories or in milonga’s lyrics.