The Argentine philosopher who taught Jorge Luis Borges how to question reality itself
In short: Macedonio Fernández was a lawyer, humorist, and mentor to the young Jorge Luis Borges. While Borges later downplayed his influence, scholars now recognize that the core concepts of Borgesian fiction—from the fluidity of identity to the blurring of dreams and wakefulness—originated in his long, intimate conversations with Macedonio.
Born in 1874, Macedonio Fernández was a central figure in the Buenos Aires avant-garde. After a career in law and the sudden death of his wife in 1920, he abandoned his profession to live as an idiosyncratic writer and philosopher. He became a mentor to the generation of writers associated with the magazine Martín Fierro, hosting intimate gatherings in cafes and rural shacks where he debated the nature of existence.
The relationship between Macedonio and Borges was profound but fraught. In his later years, Borges claimed he had once imitated Macedonio to the point of plagiarism, yet simultaneously insisted the older man lacked literary importance. Modern research suggests this was a calculated effort by Borges to obscure his intellectual debt. Many of the fundamental themes in Borges' work—the questioning of time and space, the unreliability of memory, and the idea that texts are merely recyclings of prior works—were concepts developed alongside Macedonio during the 1920s.
Macedonio’s own writing, such as his posthumously published masterpiece Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, sought to transform reality into a novel. He and Borges even collaborated on burlesque presidential campaigns, an absurdity that mirrored the fictionalized, alternative dimensions found in their literature. By the late 1920s, as Borges moved toward his own distinct style, he began to distance himself from Macedonio’s absolute relativism, viewing it as potentially dangerous. Despite this rift, Macedonio remained the essential architect of the metaphysical framework that defined Borges' most famous stories.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Macedonio Fernández
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