“He brought together glacial symbols
of the triumph of Death. He did not fear them.”
— Jose Luis Borges, on Edgar Allan Poe
Blind and frail at the age of 83, highly acclaimed Argentinean writer Jose Luis Borges had difficulty navigating the narrow staircase to the third floor of Edgar Allan Poe’s house, yet he still demanded to be the first one to the top.
It was the spring of 1983, and Borges — 42 years after he published a detective story to revive the genre invented by Poe — had finally arrived at The Poe House on 203 Amity St. in West Baltimore.
Accompanied by literary sleuth John T. Irwin, a world-renowned English professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Poe House curator Jeff Jerome, Borges slowly ascended.
“In the dormer window of the third-floor bedroom, there was a stuffed raven,” Irwin said. “Borges patted the bird’s head and began a recitation of ‘The Raven’ from memory.” He would have finished the poem, “but we were pressed for time.”
Descending the “narrow, coffin-like stairway,” as Irwin called it, was not so easy. Borges sat on the steps and “bumped” himself down like a Slinky.
Irwin had invited Borges to Baltimore to give a lecture on Whitman and already had begun his own deep exploration of the intellectual riddles posed by the detective stories of Poe and Borges.
At the grave site, Jerome remembers holding Borges up by the arm.
“Don’t let go of me,” Borges whispered to Jerome. “I’m going to fall.” The curator ignored photographers who frantically tried to wave him out of the pictures.
“My concern was for his safety,” Jerome said.
As is the custom, two bouquets of roses were left, one at the marble monument at the front of the graveyard, where Poe is now buried, and one at the original resting place — to cover all bases.
Before leaving, Borges ran his hand across the bas-relief of Poe’s face.
“He was humbled and grateful that he finally made it here,” said Jerome, honored to have shown Poe’s house and grave to Borges, who first encountered the works of Poe in his father’s library as a young man.
When asked by reporters whether he felt the spirit of Poe, Borges replied, “I certainly felt something.”
The visit marked the end of a labyrinthine literary journey that began in 1941, when Borges published ‘The Garden of the Forking Paths” — 100 years after Poe’s first detective story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” — and established a connection with one of the most influential writers of latter half of the 19th century.
Irwin writes in his book, “Mystery to a Solution” that Borges, who died in 1986 at the age of 86, is “the most original writer of fiction in the last half of the 20th century,” taking over from James Joyce.
On the drive to the airport, Borges expressed to Irwin that he was afraid of being found out, that everything in his work was borrowed.
“The greater the writer, the more he borrowed.” Irwin answered.
