BORGES, Jorge Luis (1899-1986). Autograph manuscript signed (‘Jorge Luis Borges’), draft for ‘Nota sobre la paz’, n.d. [c.1945].

BORGES, Jorge Luis (1899-1986). Autograph manuscript signed (‘Jorge Luis Borges’), draft for ‘Nota sobre la paz’, n.d. [c.1945].

In Spanish. One page, 315 x 205mm, autograph annotations and emendations.

Borges on ‘the victory of England’ in the Second World War. Opening on the contradiction inherent in imagining the inhabitants of a country united under a single name – as H.G. Wells reminds us, ‘France […] consists of children, women and men, not solely of a tempestuous woman with a Phrygian cap’ – Borges nevertheless insists, quoting Hume, Plutarch and Heraclitus, that ‘we cannot think of history without turning to the names of nations’. Turning to the crux of his argument, he continues: for him, a single fact salvages this tragic moment [the end of the Second World War] and that is ‘the victory of England. To say that England has won is to say that western culture has won; it is to say that Rome has won’, overcoming a malevolent German psychology. The military efforts of Russia and the United States are equally admirable, but the cultures they represent pale in comparison: ‘I think of England as I think of a loved one, something irreplaceable and individual’.

In a draft for a short article published by the magazine Sur (No 129, pp.9-10) in July 1945, Jorge Luis Borges asserts that the Allied victory is a victory for England and for western culture; some divergence from the finished work can be seen, including a footnote omitted from the final text baldly stating: ‘To identify the Roman Empire with the fleeting, pompous "Empire" bunglingly-made by Mussolini in the shadow of the Third Reich is almost a pun’. A staunch liberalist and anti-fascist, Borges’ criticism of the nationalist government of Juan Domingo Perón – and its leader’s links to Mussolini and Hitler – saw him stripped of his post at the Miguel Cané Library and appointed inspector of poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market, a position he refused, enshrining him as a popular figurehead in the resistance.