El tango

Thanks to the three thousand pesos he received as the second Municipal Prize for Literature, Borges dedicated 1929 to research on the poet Evaristo Carriego, which transformed into a profound and revealing study of the world of tango. More than thirty years later, he revisited that world, which had led him into the underbelly of Buenos Aires, in four lectures delivered on Mondays in October 1965 at seven in the evening in an apartment in the Constitución neighborhood. Lucid and witty, Borges exhumed the Palermo and the South of yesteryear, populated by compadritos, braggarts, privileged gang members, brothels, and milongas, to explore the origins, symbols, myths, and lyricism of the emblematic music of the Río de la Plata. Transcribed for the first time in this book, these lectures offer a prodigious encounter: that of Borges and tango, for him "a symbol of happiness."