The National Library of the Argentine Republic

The National Library of the Argentine Republic is the largest library in Argentina. It was founded in 1810 and originally called the Public Library of Buenos Aires. Only in the late 1800s was it officially renamed the National Library of Argentina. Its first director was Mariano Moreno (1778 –1811) an Argentine lawyer, journalist, and politician. Moreno saw a library as an essential part of public awareness of political and civic life. Public education was considered necessary for building an independent nation.

One of the National Library’s most internationally celebrated directors was the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). The Thammasat University Library owns a number of books by and about Jorge Luis Borges. Despite having difficulties with vision, Borges was a devoted reader, and had people read to him when he could no longer read for himself. Among his favorite writers of world literature, some of whom are represented in the collection of the TU Library, were Julio Cortázar; Franz Kafka; G.K. Chesterton; Wilkie Collins; Maurice Maeterlinck; Dino Buzzati; Henrik Ibsen; Eça de Queirós; Leopoldo Lugones; André Gide; H.G. Wells; Robert Graves; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Edward Kasner; Eugene O’Neill; Ariwara no Narihara; Herman Melville; Giovanni Papini; Fray Luis de León; Joseph Conrad; Edward Gibbon; Oscar Wilde; Henri Michaux; Hermann Hesse; Arnold Bennett; Claudius Elianus; Thorstein Veblen; Gustave Flaubert; Marco Polo; Marcel Schwob; George Bernard Shaw; Francisco de Quevedo; Eden Phillpotts; Søren Kierkegaard; Gustav Meyrink; Henry James; Herodotus; Rudyard Kipling; William Beckford; Daniel Defoe; Jean Cocteau; Thomas de Quincey; Ramon Gomez de la Serna; Robert Louis Stevenson; Léon Bloy; Jonathan Swift; William Blake; Hugh Walpole; Edgar Allan Poe; Voltaire; Atilio Momigliano; J.W. Dunne; William James; Snorri Sturluson; and J. Alexander Gunn.

Among the observations of Borges from his own writings are the following:

• Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.
• That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.
• It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.
• May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
• Reading … is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
• The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
• The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings.
• Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
• To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.
• To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
• Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
• Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
• I have committed the worst sin that can be committed. I have not been happy.
• Life itself is a quotation.
• Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you’re writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader’s imagination will reject it.
• Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

While Borges was director of the National Library, the need for a trained staff in library science led to the creation of a National School of Librarians. The current National Library of Argentina building was originally designed by the architects Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia Cazzaniga. It was officially opened in 1992, many years after the design was first proposed. The architectural design is meant to express the idea of strength, with reading rooms raised above ground level, while book stacks are kept underground. The Library is located near parks, and from its windows, trees and other signs of nature may be seen.

One architectural blogger observed about the building:

The National Library of the Argentine Republic took well over 20 years to design and build and consequently was the result of a number of different government leaderships but it has something animal about it. It could almost be a hulking, towering being from another planet.

Another recent director of the National Library of Argentina, who resigned last year, was the author Alberto Manguel. The TU Library owns a number of books by Alberto Manguel. In 2016, Manguel wrote about his experience at the library:

The previous library administration had concentrated its efforts on political and popular cultural events, and had paid less attention to the technical aspects of the library, such as the cataloguing and digitising programmes. As a result, when I took up my position I was not able to tell with any accuracy how many books the library held in its stacks. Between three and five million documents was the closest guess that could be made. I’ve made it my priority to reorganise the different departments so that the library administration can be more efficient and coherent. Above all, I’m insisting that the catalogue be brought up to date and a programme of digitisation be embarked on that will allow us to share our resources with provincial libraries. The National Library is supposed to be, of course, the library of all Argentinians, but up to now it has served mostly the public of Buenos Aires. Shortly after my arrival, I started travelling around the country in order to get to know provincial librarians and find out what their needs are. Borges imagined every library as universal. With this in mind, I have also been trying to sign agreements with various national libraries and university libraries around the world, among them the British Library and the university library of Cambridge…. I had wanted to try to put my ideas about reading and libraries into action ever since I received my first books. Now I have got my wish with a vengeance. I have never in my life done anything as demanding and overwhelming as directing the National Library of Argentina. I have become, from one day to the next, an accountant, technician, lawyer, architect, electrician, psychologist, diplomat, sociologist, specialist on union politics, technocrat, cultural programmer and, of course, librarian. I hope that, time and Argentinian politics permitting, I’ll be able to start a few things that may allow us to have, in the not too distant future, a national library we can be proud of.       

             

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)