Viking just brought out a handsome new edition of Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, with a new translation by Andrew Hurley and beguiling illustrations by Peter Sís. While she’s not credited on the cover, the title page lists the book’s authors as “Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero” and both the forewords to the 1954 and ’67 editions are signed “J.L.B. – M.G.”

However, there’s no author bio for Guerrero on the back flap (Borges, Hurley and Sís are all listed), and she’s only mentioned in passing in the Translator’s Note. So who was she?

From Edwin Williamson’s biography of Borges:

Indeed, while working on “The South,” Borges was also writing a critical study of The Gaucho Martín Fierro with the assistance of Margot Guerrero (whom he was to credit as a collaborator when it came out as a book in 1953). He was immersing himself once more in the world of gauchos, knives, and duels, the standard topics of Argentine “barbarism,” which, as he knew, Mother thoroughly disliked. This was a sign, I would say, that his romance with Margot had put him in a mood to rebel against the sword of honor, and Dahlmann’s taking up the dagger against the bullyboys in the tavern in a reflection, I believe, of the self-confidence Borges drew from his relationship with her.

He was, in fact, besotted with Margot, so besotted that he was prepared to overlook the fact that his girlfriend’s interest in literature was not as consuming as his own. And yet it was impossible for Borges to conduct any kind of relationship that did not involve some sort of literary activity, so he came up with a project that was extravagant enough to compete with Margot’s interest in the occult. He set about making a catalog of the weirdest animals the human mind has dreamed up, and he persuaded Margo to assist him in putting together this strange bestiary, which would eventually be published in 1957 as Manual de zoología fantástica. Despite such diversions, life with Margo was fairly stormy—he was living through “a reign of terror,” he would jokingly sigh to his friend Betina Edelberg. But he was happy enough to comply with his girlfriend’s wishes, and the only explanation Betina could find for such docility was that Borges was so terribly “anxious to find love.”

Eventually, there was a break-up — one that, according to Williamson, took Borges by surprise (although any reader who has noted that Mrs. Borges appears in this biography as “Mother” will be less shocked.*) Their friendship was later reinstated and the two collaborated on a “second, enlarged edition” of the bestiary (the ’67 edition).

* I haven’t yet read Williamson’s biography, just trolled the index, so I’m hesitant to criticize but … “Mother”? Just rifling through the pages the word pops up so often it’s like scanning a biography of Norman Bates. Also, the index ominously lists only two references to the Manual — with a writer like Borges, it seems like a little more Manual, a little less Mother, would be in order.

Viking just brought out a handsome new edition of Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, with a new translation by Andrew Hurley and beguiling illustrations by Peter Sís. While she’s not credited on the cover, the title page lists the book’s authors as “Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero” and both the forewords to the 1954 and ’67 editions are signed “J.L.B. – M.G.”

However, there’s no author bio for Guerrero on the back flap (Borges, Hurley and Sís are all listed), and she’s only mentioned in passing in the Translator’s Note. So who was she?

From Edwin Williamson’s biography of Borges:

Indeed, while working on “The South,” Borges was also writing a critical study of The Gaucho Martín Fierro with the assistance of Margot Guerrero (whom he was to credit as a collaborator when it came out as a book in 1953). He was immersing himself once more in the world of gauchos, knives, and duels, the standard topics of Argentine “barbarism,” which, as he knew, Mother thoroughly disliked. This was a sign, I would say, that his romance with Margot had put him in a mood to rebel against the sword of honor, and Dahlmann’s taking up the dagger against the bullyboys in the tavern in a reflection, I believe, of the self-confidence Borges drew from his relationship with her.

He was, in fact, besotted with Margot, so besotted that he was prepared to overlook the fact that his girlfriend’s interest in literature was not as consuming as his own. And yet it was impossible for Borges to conduct any kind of relationship that did not involve some sort of literary activity, so he came up with a project that was extravagant enough to compete with Margot’s interest in the occult. He set about making a catalog of the weirdest animals the human mind has dreamed up, and he persuaded Margo to assist him in putting together this strange bestiary, which would eventually be published in 1957 as Manual de zoología fantástica. Despite such diversions, life with Margo was fairly stormy—he was living through “a reign of terror,” he would jokingly sigh to his friend Betina Edelberg. But he was happy enough to comply with his girlfriend’s wishes, and the only explanation Betina could find for such docility was that Borges was so terribly “anxious to find love.”

Eventually, there was a break-up — one that, according to Williamson, took Borges by surprise (although any reader who has noted that Mrs. Borges appears in this biography as “Mother” will be less shocked.*) Their friendship was later reinstated and the two collaborated on a “second, enlarged edition” of the bestiary (the ’67 edition).

* I haven’t yet read Williamson’s biography, just trolled the index, so I’m hesitant to criticize but … “Mother”? Just rifling through the pages the word pops up so often it’s like scanning a biography of Norman Bates. Also, the index ominously lists only two references to the Manual — with a writer like Borges, it seems like a little more Manual, a little less Mother, would be in order.

Sylphs

For each of the four roots or elements into which the Greeks divided matter there was a corresponding spirit. In the work of Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician, we find four elementary spirits: the Gnomes of earth, the Nymphs of water, the Salamanders of fire, and the Sylphs or Sylphides of air. These words are of Greek origin. Littré has sought the etymology of “sylph” in the Celtic tongues, but it is most unlikely that Paracelsus would have known, or even suspected the existence of, those languages.

Today, no one believes in Sylphs, but the phrase “a sylphlike figure” is still applied to slender women, as a somewhat clichéd compliment. The Sylphs occupy a place between that of material beings and that of immaterial beings. Romantic poetry and the ballet find them useful.