A HISTORY OF KNIVES

El encuentro. (Con) Punta seca de Héctor Basaldúa. 1969.

First edition. Folio (37.8 x 29 cm), 12 sheets. Printer's folder in branch with three sheets, each with its 8 pages, which includes Front cover, Cover, the story, the engraving and colophon. Copy number 2, of 20 prints on "papier a la cuve", with drypoint by Héctor Basaldúa, engraved on a hand press by Enrique Fernández Chelo. Printed by Francisco A. Colombo. Gustavo Fillol Day Collection. Nicolas Helf, Jorge Luis Borges. Complete work, Buenos Aires, Economic Culture Fund, 1997, p. 155.

It is a very limited edition “for the friends of the author, the illustrator and Mr. Gustavo Filloy Day”.

This work brings together Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986) and the visual artist Héctor Basaldúa (1895 - 1976). The story The Encounter was included by Borges in his book The Brodie Report (published in 1970), so this edition is prior to the commonly known one. It develops themes dear to Borges: destiny, duels, knives. In this case, the story includes Borges himself, who as a child witnessed a fight between two young gauchos, moved by a card game and drunk wine, in a ranch near Pergamino. Disturbed by an argument, the boys entered the mansion in search of weapons in the showcase where the owner of the house, a collector of knives, exhibited his set.

"I don't know who opened the window," says Borges. Maneco Uriarte looked for the most showy and longest weapon, the U-shaped hawk; Duncan, almost carelessly, a knife with a wooden end, with the figure of a small tree on the blade”. What they both didn't know is that they weren't the ones fighting, but the knives, heirs to the fate of previous owners, old rivals.