Chapter 21 - Borges and the First Spanish Avant-Garde

Summary

In Borges’s poem, ’A Rafael Cansions Assens’, the image of the Segovia Viaduct in Madrid is a record of the years he spent in that city and of his brief but intense involvement with Ultraism. A member of the literary scene also represented in ’Luces de Bohemia’ by Ramón María del Valle Inclan, the benevolent, heterodox figure of Cansinos Assens was never wholly in tune with the aesthetic programme of Ultraism. Similarly, Borges would disown his Ultraist roots but never lost his admiration and affection for Cansinos Assens. In the long run, the experience from 1919 to 1922 of life in Madrid, Majorca, and Seville was stimulating and seminal in that it allowed Borges to experiment with techniques and themes he would later develop in his work.