In his essay “Pour la préhistoire ultraïste de Borges” (Cahiers L’Herne 161) Guillermo de Torre writes: “Dans ses premières lignes autobiographiques—celles qu’il rédigea pour une Exposición de la actual poesía argentina (1927)—Borges écrit: ‘Je suis porteño … Je suis né en 1900 … En 18 j’allais en Espagne. Là j’ai collaboré aux commencements de l’ultraïsme … ’ Eclairons ce point-là: ‘J’ai collaboré’ et avec quelle fréquence et quelle intensité! A peine ouvre-t-on un quelconque numéro de cette tendance, Grecia, Ultra, Tableros. … qu’on y trouve quelques écrits de lui en prose ou en vers …” Gloria Videla extends the list to include Cosmópolis, Cervantes and Reflector. In the magazines mentioned in her book she also includes Manomètre. But since in her bibliography she mentions only the brief review which it carried of Guillermo de Torre's Hélices (1923), without either details or page-numbers, she may not have seen the original. Clearly, however, this little magazine deserves attention not only by Hispanists but also by students both of comparative literature and of cultural movements in Europe in the 1920s.

Manomètre began publication in Lyons in 1922, dying in 1928 after nine numbers. Its founder and contributing editor was a young doctor with literary pretensions, Emile Malaspine (1892–1953). He had served in the First World War as a medical auxiliary and been gassed in 1918. While recuperating in Switzerland during the following year he met Vicente Huidobro and almost certainly through him came into contact with other Spanish and Spanish American poets and with the little reviews in which they published. Thus he was presently able to contribute, like Borges, to the Ultraista magazine Alfar, published in Corunna between 1921 and 1927 and to Proa (1922 and 1924–26) in Buenos Aires. About the time he met Huidobro, Malespine also met Hans Arp, the French poet, painter and sculptor and possibly through him contacted Herwarth Walden, the editor of the immensely influential Der Sturm in Berlin (1910–1932) to which he would contribute along with Tristan Tzara. No doubt through other acquaintances Malespine would also publish in Het Oversicht (Antwerp), Mertz (Hanover), Ma (Vienna), and even Zenit (Zagreb-Belgrade), as well as sundry French magazines. His career illustrates how interconnected the small literary and artistic magazines of the day in Europe tended to be.

Manomètre engaged Malespine's main efforts in the 1920s outside his profession. It is not impossible that it was inspired by Huidobro's similar magazine Creación which began to appear a year earlier than its French counterpart. Both published items in several languages and accepted, in addition to poetry, illustrations of contemporary painting and architecture and articles on the arts in general, including the “new” music. A glance at the list of contributors to Manomètre is quite startling. They included acquaintances like Huidobro, Arp, and Guillermo de Torre; fellow editors of other little magazines (who could return the favor) like Walden, Julio J. Casal (the editor of Alfar between 1923 and 1926), and Alfar's next editor, Julio González del Valle; poets like Rogelio Buendía, Borges, and others best forgotten who were active with Huidobro and de Torre in Spanish Ultraísta magazines; and friends of friends like Tzara, Soupault, Mondrian and the Mexican Stridentist, Maples Arce. The list is remarkable until we recall that around the same time Grecia in Spain (whose editorial board included Buendía) was publishing contributions by (or translations of) Apollinaire, Marinetti, Cocteau, Tzara, Reverdy, Soupault and others of similar caliber.

Sadly, the first contribution in Spanish to Manomètre, “Poesía sin lógica” (Manomètre 1, pp. 11–13),¹ is unsigned. It purports to specify, very schematically, the difference between contemporary poetry and that of earlier periods. It contains nothing surprising to anyone who has read, for instance, the Prisma manifesto of 1921 signed by Guillermo de Torre, Guillermo Juan, Eduardo González Lanuza and Borges, which itself rehearses the basic doctrines of an already well-established “new” poetry, that of the European avant-garde. It is in fact a simplified explanation of what the ultraístas, in this case, took for granted, with certain concessions to a provincial French readership familiar with Spanish. The writer insists on the suppression of anecdotic content, rhyme and metre, while stressing the continuing importance of rhythm and musicality, with predictable references to Rémy de Gourmont and Verlaine. What links this short essay to Borges's views at this time is the insistence on imagery as the stuff of poetry, so that what is to be aimed at is “música de imágenes” without the necessity of logical or syntactical connections from line to line or stanza to stanza. “La sensación interna domina la sensación externa. (Cenestesia) … A la lengua lógica se substituye la lengua cenestésica … Un poema perfectamente lógico no es poético …” (p. 13). What makes this item interesting is that it was almost certainly written by Guillermo de Torre. If so, it represents one of his earliest attempts to explain the outlook of the group of poets to whom he belonged. The chief reason, apart from the content, which points towards de Torre as the author, is that the essay contains the phrase “Palabras en libertad” which subsequently became the title of a section in his only book of poetry, Hélices (1923). Poems by de Torre appear in the second, third and eighth numbers of Manomètre.² Clearly Malespine saw de Torre as a more promising poet than Borges, but had serious doubts already about ultraísmo and the avant-garde. Indeed, before long Malespine was issuing his own manifestos, in favor of what he called “Suridéalisme” (7, 109–11 and 9, 154–55). The second of these was merely a polemical article directed against a Parisian take-over of the name of his “movement”. In the first, however, he develops his criticism of recent poetry as merely a pattern of rhythms and images (especially the latter) and calls for a return to ideas and to simpler poetic diction. Nonetheless, as we saw, he did publish another poem by de Torre.

The inclusion of items by Huidobro and Borges, not forgetting those by more minor figures like Maples Arce, Rogelio Buendía, Julio Casal, Roberto Ortelli and Julio González del Valle, is interesting chiefly because of the way they figure alongside others by Tzara,³ Soupault,⁴ Arp,⁵ and Mondrian, who contributed a little essay on “Les arts et la beauté de nôtre ambiance tangible” (6, pp. 107–8). Huidobro's contribution is his poem “La Matelotte” from Automne régulier (1925). It is identical with the version contained in his Obras completas (I, 1976, pp. 344–45) save in one respect: line 6 here reads “Les bateaux traînent les vagues jusqu’à toucher le ciel” while the Obras completas text has “monter au ciel”.

The two poems by Borges: “Sábado” (2, p. 12) and “Atardecer” (4, p. 71) are another matter. So far as I know, these were the first of his poems to be published in France and, in the case of the second, the first to be translated into any language. The second number of Manomètre, in which “Sábado” appeared, came out in October 1922. By this time Borges had returned to Buenos Aires from Spain and was preparing Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) in which the poem figures under the title “Sábados” and was dedicated to his then novia Concepción Guerrero (Meneses 43–52). Shortly before the poem appeared in Manomètre a version had appeared in Nosotros (Buenos Aires) in September 1922. None of the three versions is identical to any of the others. The version in Manomètre reads as follows:

“Sábado”

Benjuí de tu presencia
                    que luego he de quemar en el recuerdo
y miradas felices
de ir orillando tu alma
Afuera hay un ocaso joya oscura
engastada en el tiempo
que levanta las calles humilladas
y una honda ciudad ciega
de hombres que no te vieron
La tarde calla o canta
Alguien descrucifica los anhelos
clavados en el piano
Siempre la multitud de tu hermosura
en claro esparcimiento sobre mi alma

The version in Nosotros published a month earlier, reads as follows (the variants are in italics):

“Sábado”

Benjuí de tu presencia
                    que iré quemando luego en el recuerdo
y miradas felices
de bordear tu vivir.
Afuera hay un ocaso joya oscura
engastada en el tiempo
que redime las calles humilladas
y una honda ciudad ciega
de hombres que no te vieron.
La tarde calla o canta.
Alguien descrucifica los acordes
clavados en el piano.
Siempre la multitud de tu belleza
en claro esparcimiento sobre mi alma.

(Scarano, 93–95)

Finally, the version published in Fervor de Buenos Aires was as follows:

“Sábados”

                                        Para mi novia, Concepción
Guerrero
Benjuí de tu presencia
                    que iré quemando luego en el recuerdo
y miradas felices
de bordear tu vivir.
Hay afuera un ocaso, alhaja oscura
engastada en el tiempo
que redime las calles humilladas
y una honda ciudad ciega
de hombres que no te vieron.
La tarde calla o canta.
Alguien descrucifica los anhelos
clavados en el piano.
Siempre la multitud de tu hermosura
en claro esparcimiento sobre mi alma.

Although it was published earlier, the Nosotros version seems to be a corrected version of the text in Manomètre since it is clearly closer to the Fervor text. Some points are interesting. We notice that in Nosotros Borges has discreetly restored punctuation. Secondly, he replaces “luego he de quemar” with “iré quemando luego” but, on the other hand, he substitutes “bordear tu vivir” for “ir orillando tu alma”. This last substitution removes both an overstatement and an Argentinism. It refines the effect of line 4; but in addition the change deliberately introduces the only “verso agudo” in the poem as amended, altering the whole rhythmic effect of the opening. As we know, a major feature of Borges's early poetry about Buenos Aires was its tendency to humanize the city-scape. Here that tendency is intensified by the substitution of “redime”, a verb more appropriate to humans, for the more banal “levanta”. The change seems to have been made in order to emphasize Borges's sense of the contrast between the squalid streets and the beauty of the sunset. Interestingly, the two other changes made in the Nosotros version do not survive into the poem as it appeared in the first edition of Fervor: “anhelos” becomes less metaphorically “acordes” in the allusion to a piano in the background, but “anhelos” is wisely restored in 1923. Similarly, Concepción's “hermosura” becomes “belleza” in the Nosotros version, losing the acoustic effect of the tonic accents on “multitUd” and “hermosUra”, but Borges again had wise second thoughts. In the version contained in Fervor the change from “joya” to “alhaja” in line 5 is presumably dictated by a desire to balance “afuera” earlier in the line; in this case the change is surely an improvement. It is not clear why the title is shifted from singular to plural in Fervor, since the experience which the poem expresses seems to be related to a specific occasion. Perhaps the change is related to “la multitud de tu hermosura”, in the sense that each Saturday evening of the kind evoked reveals one more facet of Concepción's manifold beauty.

The second Borges poem to be published in Manomètre was then entitled “Atardecer.” Later, when it was incorporated into Fervor de Buenos Aires, it lost its individual existence and title, becoming instead stanza three (lines 9–18) of “Sábados”, which was expanded to 28 lines. The only difference between the Manomètre version and the lines as they appear later in Fervor, is that in the Manomètre text there is no punctuation other than a final period thoughtlessly added by Malespine at the end of his translation. In Fervor, punctuation is restored. Since this is probably the first poem by Borges ever to be translated, I reproduce the original and the translation:

“Atardecer”

A despecho de tu desamor
tu hermosura
prodiga su milagro por el tiempo
Está en tí la ventura
como la primavera en la hoja nueva
Quedamente a tu vera
se desangra el silencio
Ya casi no soy nadie
soy tan solo un anhelo
que se pierde en la tarde
En tí está la delicia
como está la crueldad en las espadas

“Le Soir Tombe”

En dépit de ton désamour
ta beauté
par le temps son miracle prodigue
le bonheur est en toi comme
le printemps dans la feuille neuve
Quiétement à ton côté
le silence perd son sang
Déjà presque personne ne suis
Suis seulement un désir
qui se perd avant la nuit
Le délice est en toi
comme est la cruauté dans les épées.

Despite helpful work by Guillermo de Torre, Videla, Meneses, Linda Maier and others, if and when the much-heralded critical and annotated edition of the complete works of Borges ever appears (hopefully it will be begun before his centenary), much more research will be required on his early poetry, including that contained in manuscripts which are still coming to light, and in small journals of which Manomètre is a hitherto neglected example. It is to be hoped that the process of accumulating evidence, to which this note is a modest contribution, will continue, until we have really adequate and systematic documentation of this period of his career.

Notes

1. The pagination of this collection is as follows: No. I is paginated 1–16; thereafter the other eight numbers are paginated consecutively 1–155. To avoid misunderstanding I give both the number of the magazine and the pages as they appear in the collected edition. I owe the discovery of Manomètre to the Curator of the Borges Collection at the University of Virginia's Alderman Library, Dr. J. B. Loewenstein, to whom I return grateful thanks.

2. To be precise: “Inauguración” (dated “Madrid 1922 [2, pp. 6–7]), “Ventilador” (from Hélices [3, pp. 40–41]), with a short introduction by Malespine, praising Hélices and declaring his friendship with de Torre, but already uttering a significant warning against “l’image outrancière” and de Torre's use of recherché language, and “Balneario” (dated “Ontaneda, septr 1924” [8, 132–33]).

3. “Herbiers des jeux et des calculs,” from De nos oiseaux 1929 (3, p. 38); “Préalable” and “Précise” from L’arbre des voyageurs, 1932 (5, p. 87 and 8, p. 136); “Les écluses de la pensée”, “Le nain dans son cornet”, “Chaque ampoule contient mon système nerveux” and “Carnage abracadabrant”, all four from L’antitête: Monsieur Aa l’antiphilosophe, 1933 (2, pp. 4–5 and 7, p. 118). All of these are fully documented in the first two volumes of Tzara's Oeuvres complètes, Paris, Flammarion, I, 1975 and II, 1977.

4. A note on Paul Eluard's Répétitions (2, pp. 10–11) and another on Tzara's De nos oiseaux (4, pp. 75–76).

5. “Die Schwallenhode” (2, p. 11) and four illustrations, one of which is accompanied by an untitled poem beginning: “die fahnenflüchtigen engel stürzen verhetzl herein” (8, p. 130).

Works cited

Huidobro, Vicente. Obras completas. Santiago de Chile: Andrés Bello, 1976.

Maier, Linda S. “Three ‘New’ Avant-garde Poems of Jorge Luis Borges.” Modern Language Notes 102 (1987):223–32.

Manomètre: collection complète. Paris: Editions Jean-Michel Place, 1977.

Meneses, Carlos. Jorge Luis Borges. Cartas de juventud. Madrid: Orígenes, 1987.

Roux, D. de & Milleret, J. de (eds). Jorge Luis Borges. Paris: Cahiers L’Herne, 1964.

Scarano, Tommaso. Variante a stampa nella poesia del primo Borges. Pisa: Giardini Editori, 1987.

Tzara, Tristan. Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Flammarion, I, 1975 and II, 1977.

Videla, Gloria. El ultraismo. Madrid: Gredos, 1963.