Described as "one of the most influential Latin American literary critics of the 20th century" by the Encyclopædia Britannica,[1] Monegal wrote key books about Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges, and the Britannica Macropædia notice of the later. He was a part in "The Boom" of 1960s Latin American literature as founder and 1966–1968 editor of his influential magazine Mundo Nuevo. Umberto Eco was quoted in saying that Jorge Luis Borges had read almost everything but no one knew that indiscernable totallity better than Emir.[2]
In 1921, Emir Rodríguez Monegal was born on 28 July in Melo, Cerro Largo, Uruguay.[4] He had the double-barrelled name Rodríguez Monegal (erroneously "Rodríguez-Monegal" in some texts) but was often referred to as R. Monegal or Monegal only, a Spanish naming custom when the first surname is extremely common.
From 1945 to 1957 (age 24 to 36), he edited the literary section of the Montevideo weekly Marcha.[4] He was one of the first to recognize early on the importance of Borges,[1][5] seeing him and his family frequently after 1945, and taking him for model to the point of pastiche.[5] Conversely, he got a cameo in a pseudo-autobiographical Borges short story:[6]
The second episode took place in Montevideo, months later. Don Pedro's fever and his agony gave me the idea for a tale of fantasy based on the defeat at Masoller; Emir Rodriguez Monegal, to whom I had told the plot, wrote me an introduction to Colonel Dionisio Tabares, who had fought in that campaign.
In 1949 (age 28), he won a scholarship from the British Council for a year's study at the University of Cambridge; he went to study under F. R. Leavis and complete a project on Andrés Bello.[5] During 1949 to 1955 (age 28 to 34), he was also editor of Número, a Montevideo literary magazine.[4] In 1952, he became friend with Pablo Neruda, who would later lend him his intimate papers for Monegal's biography of Neruda.[5]
In 1956 (age 35), Monegal obtained the equivalent of a PhD at the Facultad de Humanidades (Faculty of Letters), Montevideo, for his research on "Andrés Bello y el Romanticismo hispanoamericano".[4]
In 1966 (age 45), Monegal directed the literary monthly Mundo Nuevo, published in Spanish in Paris. [7] Monegal directed it until July 1968, after the New York Times uncovered CIA connections with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Cold War mega-organization under which auspicies Mundo Nuevo was born. [8]Mundo Nuevo contributed to the 1960s publishing phenomenon dubbed "The Boom" in Latin American literature that led to many Latin American writers being published outside of their home countries and gaining critical recognition.[7][9]
In 1985 (aged 64), Monegal died on Thursday 14 November at Yale's infirmary in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He was survived by his wife: Selma Calasans Rodrigues de Rodríguez; and three children: Georgina Rodríguez Nebot, Joaquín Rodríguez Nebot, and Alejandro Rodríguez Gerona.[10]
His April 1968 article "Nota sobre Biorges" (reused in a chapter of his 1970 Borgès) introduced the concept of "Biorges". According to him, when Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges collaborated under the pseudonyms H. Bustos Domecq or B. Suárez Lynch, the results seemed written by a new personality, more than the sum of its parts, which he dubbed "Biorges" and considered in his own right as "one of the most important Argentine prose writers of his time", for having influenced writers such as Leopoldo Marechal (an otherwise anti-Borgesian), or Julio Cortázar's use of fictional language and slang in his masterpiece Hopscotch.[11]
His 1966 biography of his friend Pablo Neruda, who accepted to lend him his personal papers, remains a key book on the topic. Similarly, his 1970 study and 1978 biography of his friend Borges remain key books.
In June 1985, Monegal published an article exploring the "kinship" between Derrida's themes in "Plato's Pharmacy" and the work of Borges, from essays and tales Derrida had read such as "Pierre Menard" (1939) and "Tlön" (1940).[12] He wrote that "I had experienced [deconstruction] in Borges avant la lettre,[13] though also writing that "the intent here is not to produce another exercise of the 'Borges, presursor of Derrida' variety."[14]
Bibliography
The bulk of Monegal's works exists only in Spanish.[15] For untranslated texts, an English equivalent of the title is provided in parentheses.
Books
1950: José Enrique Rodó en el Novecientos ("José Enrique Rodó in the twentieth century")
1956: El juicio de los parricidas. La nueva generación argentina y sus maestros. ("The trial of the parricides. The new Argentine generation and their masters.", study of the dismissal of Borges, Mallea, and Martínez Estrada in Argentina)
1961: Las raíces de Horacio Quiroga ("The roots of Horacio Quiroga")
1961: Narradores de esta América ("Storytellers of this America", seventeen essays on prominent fiction writers of contemporary Latin American literature)
Expanded to thirty-four writers in two volumes (1969 and 1974)
1963: Eduardo Acevedo Díaz. Dos versiones de un mismo tema. ("Eduardo Acevedo Díaz. Two versions of a same theme.")
1964: Ingmar Bergman. Un dramaturgo cinematográfico. (with Homero Alsina Thevenet, "Ingmar Bergman. A cinematographic playwright.")
1966: El viajero inmóvil: Introducción a Pablo Neruda ("The immobile traveler: an introduction to Pablo Neruda")
Neruda, le voyageur immobile (1973, French)
1967: Genio y figura de Horacio Quiroga ("Genius and character of Horacio Quiroga")
1968: El desterrado: Vida y obra de Horacio Quiroga ("The exile: life and work of Horacio Quiroga")
1969: El otro Andrés Bello ("The other Andrés Bello")
1970: Borgès par lui même (French, "Borges by himself")
Borges por él mismo (1979, Spanish)
Μπόρχες (Borches, 1987, Greek)
1976: Borges: Hacia una lectura poética ("Borges: towards a poetic reading"), erroneous title printed for Borges: Hacia una poética de la lectura ("Borges: towards a poetics of reading")
Borges, uma poética da leitura (1980, Portuguese)
1978: Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography
Borges : una biografia letteraria (1982, Italian)
Jorge Luis Borges: biographie littéraire (1983, French)
Jorge Luis Borges: una biografía literaria (1985, Spanish)
Articles
Selected among more than 330 articles and notices:[15]
1955: "Borges: Teoría y práctica", in: Número 27
Expanded, in: Narradores de esta América, Tomo 1 (1969)
1975: "Realismo mágico versus literatura fantástica: Un diálogo de sordos", in: Yates, A. Donald, ed. (1975) Otros Mundos, Otros Fuegos. Fantasía y realismo mágico en Iberoamérica.
1976: "Borges: Una Teoría de la Literatura Fantástica", in: Revista Iberoamericana 42
1985: "Borges y Derrida: boticarios", in: Maldoror 21
"Borges and Derrida. Apothecaries", in: Aizenberg, Edna, ed. (1990). Borges and His Successors. The Borgian Impact on Literature and the Arts.
Edited
1950: La literatura uruguaya del Novecientos ("Uruguayan literature of the twentieth century", compilation of essays and documents)
1957: José Enrique Rodó. Obras completas ("José Enrique Rodó: complete works")
1963: José Enrique Rodó: Páginas ("José Enrique Rodó: pages", anthology)
1966: El cuento uruguayo ("The Uruguyan tale", short-story anthology)
1966: Juan Carlos Onetti: Los rostros del amor ("Juan Carlos Onetti: the faces of love", erotic texts anthology)
1968: El arte de narrar ("The art of narration", interviews with leading Hispanic prose fiction writers)
1970: Juan Carlos Onetti. Novelas y cuentos completos. ("Juan Carlos Onetti. Complete novels and tales", anthology)
1977: The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, 2 volumes (with Thomas Colchie)
1979: Maestros hispánicos del siglo veinte ("Hispanic masters of the 20th century", with Suzanne Jill Levine)
1980: Pablo Neruda (collection of critical essays on Pablo Neruda)
1981: Borges: A Reader (anthology, with Alastair Reid)
Monegal (1968). "Nota sobre Biorges". Emir Rodríguez Monegal website (in Spanish). Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy. pp. (from Mundo Nuevo 22, April 1968, p. 89–92). Archived from the original on 17 October 2007.
Monegal (1985). "Borges y Derrida: boticarios". Emir Rodríguez Monegal website (in Spanish). Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy. pp. (from Montevideo: Maldoror 21, 1985, p. 123–132). Archived from the original on 17 October 2007.
^Borges, Jorge Luis (1949). "La otra muerte". in El Aleph. El segundo episodio se produjo en Montevideo, meses después. La fiebre y la agonía del entrerriano me sugirieron un relato fantástico sobre la derrota de Masoller; Emir Rodríguez Monegal, a quien referí el argumento, me dio unas líneas para el coronel Dionisio Tabares, que había hecho esa campaña.
^
Monegal 1968, primary sources. "Allí Borges y Bioy crean literalmente un escritor compuesto, que podría bautizarse Biorges y en el que predomina un sentido violento del humor, una sátira literaria y social más descarnada de la que asoma en las respectivas obras no apócrifas, un placer por jugar con el lenguaje por explorar sus posibilidades paródicas, por romper y recrear sus estructuras orales, que convierten a los casi inexistentes Bustos Domecq, o Suárez Lynch, o Biorges, en uno de los más importantes prosistas argentinos de su época. Un prosista sin el cual no es posible explicar a Leopoldo Marechal en sus momentos más felices, o a Cortázar, sobre todo, en Rayuela, cuando se larga a hablar en un rioplatense inventado. Biorges estuvo aquí, habría que inscribir en muchas páginas de la más ingeniosa e inventiva literatura rioplatense de estos últimos treinta años."
^Monegam, Emir Rodríguez (1990). "Borges and Derrida: Apothecaries," trans. Paul Budofsky and Edna Aizenberg. In Borges and His Successors, ed. Edna Aizenberg: University of Missouri Press, 128–138. Originally published as ""Borges y Derrida: boticarios"," in Maldoror (Montevideo) 21 (1985): 123–32
