Dialogi Borges – Sabato. Fragmenty
„Diálogos Borges-Sabato” (Fragments)

Summary/Abstract: The author reviewed the conversations of two famous Argentinian writers: Ernesto Sabato and Jorge Luis Borges, published in Buenos Aires as Diálogos (2007). The book offers the Polish reader new information about the relations between the two men of letters. The author characterised the universally known differences between them and then captured the breakthrough moment in the dialogues conducted in 1974: the attitude towards Don Quixote. Borges admitted that for many years he erred in his assessments of Cervantes and the hero of the novel (this was one of the reasons for Sabato’s enmity). This important confession becomes a key to capturing the 'secret and genuine similarity' of the antagonistic writers, expressed in the metaphor: 'the heirs of Cervantes'. The review is thus also a polemic with the image of Borges and a victory of the 'concealed', 'second' Borges (Sabato). The author enclosed a translation of a fragment of Dialogos illustrating the central thesis of the article (the problem of Don Quixote) and a fragment of a conversation about the tango. Music was probably the only phenomenon towards which Borges remained indifferent, but about which he spoke surprisingly often. Here, in the company of Sabato, he kept silence and admitted to helplessness, betraying only a taste for music and a familiarity with the phrases of the 'Rio de la Plata songs'.

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