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Lot 129

BORGES (JORGE LUIS)
Inquisiciones, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO RAMÓN GOMEZ DE LA SERNA, Buenos Aires, Editorial Proa, imprenta El Inca, 1925

11 November 2015, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

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BORGES (JORGE LUIS)

Inquisiciones, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO RAMÓN GOMEZ DE LA SERNA, inscribed on front free endpaper "al único (y mayor) Ramón, con la admiración desvelada del mal pombiano y buen ramonista/ Jorge Luis Borges", some foxing, modern suede style boards, publisher's blue printed wrappers bound in, slipcase, 8vo, Buenos Aires, Editorial Proa, imprenta El Inca, 1925

Footnotes

PRESENTATION COPY OF BORGES'S SCARCE FIRST PROSE WORK, TOUCHINGLY INSCRIBED TO RAMÓN GOMEZ DE LA SERNA, the influential Spanish modernist writer who became the hero of the Argentine avant-garde, and who had given Borges his big break that year.

"In Madrid, Borges and his sister Norah sat on the red divans of the Café Pombo [hence the inscription] on Carretas Street where the pipe-smoking, sturdy Ramón Gómez de la Serna directed his tertulias every Saturday night. He had translated Marinetti's futurist manifesto into Spanish in 1909, and monopolized, from his corner cafe table, the arguments and discussions about the new art (he made all visitors sign a book). A stuttering Borges would not have got a word in edgeways, but dynamic Ramón's greguerías mixed wit, humour and shock, reducing the long tradition of Spanish literature to surprising extended metaphors... Nevertheless, Ramón's review of Borges's first book of poems in Ortega y Gasset's prestigious Revista de Occidente in 1925 started the ball of Borge's European fame rolling" (Jason Wilson, Jorge Luis Borges, 2006).

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