Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2019)
W.H. Hudson in the Readings of Jorge Luis Borges
Abstract
William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) is an English language writer. Although he was born and raised in Argentina, he settled in London at 33 years old and lived there until his death. He considered himself an English writer and, ideologically, a subject of the Crown. The conditions of his upbringing in the rural Pampean environment, as well as the criollo thematic of much of his work, were emphasized by the Argentine reception, from which Hudson’s gaucho origin was claimed, turning the author in a sort of emblem of national culture (parallel to figures such as Sarmiento, Hernández, Lugones or Güiraldes). We propose here an approach to the emblematizing reading Jorge Luis Borges carries out throughout his critical work regarding Hudson. We will search for the functioning of this discursive representation about the Anglo-Argentine author in three key elements: (a) the Anglophilia of the Borgean creative project, (b) the imaginary formations coming from the criollismo that were responsible for Hudson’s nationalization, and (c) the representation, typical in Borges, of reading as an experience whose scope is only restricted to the field of the individual: Borges as an “hedonic reader”.
