Christopher Isherwood Meets Jorge Luis Borges: On the Value of South American Cultures

In 1949, Christopher Isherwood, the author of Berlin Stories, the source for the musical and film Cabaret, published what is probably his least-known book, The Condor and the Cows, a South American Travel-Diary. (The "condor" refers to the Andean countries, the "cows," less elegantly, to Argentina.) This book, which is fascinating in its portrayal of the cultural environment of the Spanish-speaking South America of the late 1940s, though marred by Isherwood's limited knowledge of Spanish, his obvious ignorance of the literature of the region, and his excessive dependence on British and American diplomats for his information, has been neglected by readers and critics alike. It has never been reprinted in English and the only Spanish translation, published in 1994 in Colombia, received very limited distribution. The Condor and the Cows is, however, noteworthy for, among other things, presenting one of the earliest mentions of Jorge Luis Borges in English.¹

Isherwood's reference to Borges is found near the end of the The Condor and the Cows, when the Anglo-American novelist attempts a summing up of his mostly negative impressions of Spanish-speaking South America of the late 1940s. In his evaluation of the region's cultural life, he complains about its "art and literature" being "so obviously derivative" (213). But he also notes a meager positive balance in that "this excessive preoccupation with alien cultures has produced some extraordinary scholars" (213). Isherwood singles out Borges as the paradigmatic example of the region's hypothetical "extraordinary scholar": "Jorge Luis Borges, whom we have met here in Buenos Aires, is an example. He knows classical and modern English literature as few Englishmen or Americans know it, and can quote entire paragraphs from the most unexpected authors, with very amusing and subtle comments" (213). Thus in The Condor and the Cows, South Americans are described as producing works that are derivative and ancillary to "Western" culture.

Isherwood's remarks about South American culture gain additional interest in that they show numerous points of contact with Borges's own reflections regarding the position of the Argentine and South American writer vis-à-vis Western and "universal" culture presented in "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" (1951/1957).² In this text, Borges, like Isherwood, stresses the participation of Argentine and South American writers in the Western mainstream, the fact that, as he puts it, "our tradition is the whole of Western culture" (426).

But this linkage between Argentina and the Western cultural tradition characterized by the Anglo-American modernist as a major flaw, is, as we will see, identified by the Argentine author as a vital strength. It is this contrast between these opinions, this implicit conversation to be found in their texts, that is the subject of this essay. Given the importance of both authors in their respective "national" and linguistic canons, and the surprising similarities, as well as contrasts, between their evaluations of the cultures of South America, it is possible to see in the conversation both real and textual between Isherwood and Borges more than just a chance meeting or curious footnote in literary history. I believe one can also interpret it not only as an encounter between a writer from North and South America, the center and periphery, the North and the South, the First and the Third World, to use related but not identical terms, but also as one between a modern and postmodern one. And, in a surprising twist, it is the writer from Argentina who anticipates postmodern perspectives, while the Anglo-American author not only proposes values linked to modernity, but replicates, perspectives commonly associated with Latin America.

Isherwood's negative evaluation of South American cultural productions is based in his belief that the necessary pre-requisite for the development of first rate art and literature is the existence of a homogeneous nation. And given the...