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sábado, octubre 15, 2022

Jorge Luis Borges visits Machu Picchu. Escritores en Machu Picchu

Jorge Luis Borges visits Machu Picchu

12 feb 202012 feb 2020CULTURE/ENGLISH. OPULENS

LIFE. On Sunday, 25 April 1965, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, a 66-year-old, got off a plane at Lima’s international airport. He was accompanied by his student, the educated, young and beautiful María Esther Vázquez, 27. They stayed at Hotel Bolivar, Plaza San Martín, in the historic centre of Lima.

On Monday Borges gave a press conference. He admitted that he knew little about Peruvian literature. In the traditional Café de Los Huérfanos, which still exists and where the speciality is sweet anise bread, Borges had a coffee with numerous writers. Then he visited the ‘Gold of Peru’ exhibition at the Museum of Art on the Paseo Colón.

The following morning Borges spoke at the National University about ‘The Metaphor’, one of his favourite subjects. On Wednesday, 28 April, Borges and María Esther Vásquez travelled by plane to Cusco. In Cusco, he was taken to see the Stone of the Twelve Angles on Calle Hatunrumiyoq. The stone is a cultural heritage of Peru – the base previously held the palace of Inca Roca and now supports the Archbishop’s Palace.

From Cusco, they travelled on the small train to Aguas Calientes and then by bus to the terraces of Machu Picchu. Borges, erect, almost blind but active, swaying like a wild boar and leaning on his bamboo stick, approached the terraces as María Esther was telling him what she saw. They took the classic photo with the citadel behind them.

Jorge Luis Borges was dressed in a khaki suit. María Kodama wore a two-piece suit. At the airport, he was received by a group of students as if he were a Beatle. They settled in Cesar’s hotel in Miraflores. Borges gave numerous interviews at honorary dinners with writers and finally at critical academic events, such as the reception of the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, José Tola Pasquel.

Maybe at that moment, Borges understood that Machu Picchu had nothing to do with him. Alternatively, perhaps he imagined it as a maze of stones, a large circular space where a lion and his hunter were hopelessly dead. María Esther Vásquez explained later:

‘Borges could be moved by the sound of a verse or the poetic cadence of a phrase, but the feeling of the terraces of the pre-Columbian past, so close to the sky, did not stir his aesthetic passion. I never saw him more politely bored.’

The ruins of Machu Picchu did not dazzle him. On Friday, 30 April 1965, Borges left Peru. He would not remember those five days, but he went back. On 21 November 1978, the Argentine writer landed in Lima again. By now he was 79 years old and accompanied by his friend and personal assistant, María Kodama. She was 41 years old but had the face of a teenager.

Jorge Luis Borges was dressed in a khaki suit. María Kodama wore a two-piece suit. At the airport, he was received by a group of students as if he were a Beatle. They settled in Cesar’s hotel in Miraflores. Borges gave numerous interviews at honorary dinners with writers and finally at critical academic events, such as the reception of the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, José Tola Pasquel.

On Friday, 24 November, they flew to Cusco. If Borges did not like Machu Picchu, why would he return? Well, he liked paradoxes. In Lima, Peruvian writer and journalist Alfredo Barnechea asked Borges a precise question:

‘Why do you go to Machu Picchu?’

Borges responded politely:

‘There are two reasons. First, I want to see Cusco again, I know how much it impressed me, and I know that now, although I cannot see it, I will believe to see it. And then I want María Kodama to see Machu Picchu.’

Borges arrived in the town of Aguas Calientes affected by altitude sickness, which is not unusual for a 79-year-old man. The lack of air affected him. He got on the bus that climbed the hill to the sanctuary. The entrance to the ruins was full of tourists waiting for their turn to enter Machu Picchu.

In 1946 the first hotel was created there. In the hotel lobby, the pale Borges sat silently and motionless in an armchair, drinking coca tea under the supervision of María Kodama. Borges was not impressed. Back in Cusco, he got excited about the history of an old house, a relic. He visited Casa Cabrera, a pre-Columbian art museum, near the Plaza de Armas. Borges mentioned that Cabrera was one of his ancestors. The Spanish conqueror Jerónimo de Cabrera (1528-1574) had lived in Cusco, and his house is a museum today. Cabrera left Cusco and founded the city of Córdoba in Argentina.

Borges’s genius was a little petulant. In Cusco, Borges’s rancid soul appeared as a ghost, to vindicate supposed old kinships with Jerónimo de Cabrera. This is what Borges said:

‘Jerónimo de Cabrera was one of the thousands of my ancestors. The Peruvians took me to their house in Cusco. It was strange for me to think that from that house, Jerome had left Cusco, never to return.’

On the morning of Sunday, 26 November, he flew to Buenos Aires. In 1986 Borges married María Kodama in Geneva and died two months later.

Allen Ginsberg visits Machu Picchu. Escritores en Machu Picchu

Allen Ginsberg visits Machu Picchu

29 jan 202029 jan 2020CULTURE/ENGLISH. OPULENS

EXPERIENCE. On January 20th 1960, Allen Ginsberg flew from New York and landed at the Los Cerrillo’s airfield in Santiago. The poet was bearded and short-sighted, had dark eyes with optical lenses and carried a backpack. Ginsberg told reporters ‘I’m here to have fun’, but the next day a newspaper would write, perhaps maliciously: ‘I’m here to fuck one’.

Allen Ginsberg published his book Howl in 1957. Its impact on the literary world was like that of a cluster bomb. Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas sent him an invitation to participate in a meeting organised by the Universidad de Concepción in 1960.
He stayed at the Pan-American hotel on Teatinos Street, next to the presidential palace La Moneda. He went to Café Il Bosco, the bustling bohemian centre in Alameda. Il Bosco was full of journalists, writers, night owls, cabaret performers, comedians and nightclubs dancers.

The following day a skinny man, only 25 years old, appeared at the entrance of the hotel. It was the poet Jorge Tellier. He did an interview which he published in Ultramar magazine. Ginsberg travelled in a van to Los Cerrillos where a plane took him to Concepción. The ‘First meeting of American writers’ was held between January 20th and 25th.

On April 21st Allen Ginsberg arrived in Cusco. He spent five days in the city. Then he went to the Machu Picchu area where a guard offered him accommodation in his hut. From there he wrote to his boyfriend, Peter, describing the cliffs and snow-capped mountains of the Andes. Ginsberg did not find what he was looking for: the sacred plant of the Incas – Ayahuasca, the rope of the dead.

Ginsberg stayed at the City Hotel, famous for its parties, boîte and elegant rooms. On January 21st he reads Howl in the auditorium of the University. In a letter he sent to his lover Peter Orlovsky he writes that the central discussion was about the relationship between art and politics. ‘Everyone expects the revolution.’ He wrote about the poet Luis Oyarzún, whom he described as a ‘roly-poly philosopher’, member of a semi-secret queer society. The writer Luis Oyarzún was then 40 years old. In 1954 he had been president of the Society of Writers. He also meets the Peruvian writer, Sebastián Salazar Bondy, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art of Lima. He invited him to Lima.

In the early morning of January 26th, Ginsberg and his backpack got on the train that would take him further south. He wandered the wet streets of the cities of southern Chile; Temuco and Puerto Montt. Then he returned to Santiago and met the famous poets, Nicanor Parra, Jorge Teillier and Pablo de Rokha. He spent three months in Chile. In April he went to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, writing:

”How real is Bolivia? With its snowy Andes rising above the modern city, now that one is in La Paz, which means The Peace in Spanish.”

On April 21st Allen Ginsberg arrived in Cusco. He spent five days in the city. Then he went to the Machu Picchu area where a guard offered him accommodation in his hut. From there he wrote to his boyfriend, Peter, describing the cliffs and snow-capped mountains of the Andes. Ginsberg did not find what he was looking for: the sacred plant of the Incas – Ayahuasca, the rope of the dead.

On May 5th Ginsberg went to Lima by bus. He stayed at the legendary Hotel Comercio, in front of the Desamparados Railway Station. The hotel has a famous bar on the ground floor, the Cordano bar. As in Il Bosco de Santiago, pisco sours were famous in the Cordano bar. Ginsberg reads Howl in a tiny room of the Institute of Contemporary Art, steps away from San Martin Square, on May 12th, 1960.
Ginsberg hiked in the Peruvian Amazon jungle through Huánuco to Pucallpa. Pucallpa reminded him in some city of Tibet. There he drank the hallucinogenic ayahuasca. In a letter sent to Burroughs Allen Ginsberg described his experience in these terms:

‘Drank a cup -slightly old stuff, several old and slightly fermented also- lay back and after an hour (in a bamboo hut outside his shack, where the shaman cooks) began seeing or feeling what I thought was a Great Being or a lake that approaching my mind like a great wet vagina was.’

On July 8th, 1960, Ginsberg departed from Lima airport back to New York.