The man
Jorge Martín Furt was born in the city of Buenos Aires on May 20, 1902. Son of Jorge Aquiles Furt, Argentine, from an old family originally from Bordeaux, France, and Etelvina Feliciana Biaus, born in Córdoba, of Basque-French descent. The productive agricultural activity allowed him to invest in cultural assets, especially documentaries and bibliographies. He died on February 7, 1971 in «El cortijo», his residence in the city of Luján. He had married María Celia Suarez [d. 1988] with whom she had two children: Etelvina Celia [1931-2008] and Mariano Jorge [1934-1950]. Etelvina married Osvaldo Rodríguez [d. 2004], and they were the parents of five children: Etelvina Inés [d. 2007], María Isabel, María Mercedes, Ricardo Pedro and María Elena Rodríguez Furt, with offspring.
The studious, researcher and writer
Furt attended high school in Buenos Aires, at the Lacordaire school, of the Dominicans, which occupied the block of Esmeralda, Tucumán, Suipacha and Viamonte. After finishing high school he began Medicine and Law, and later Philosophy and Letters, which he studied more assiduously. After passing several subjects he interrupted his university life to continue, on his own, as a scholar and perpetual student, but to his liking and manner, as he used to say. Until the age of 21, he alternated his residence between his parents' house on Sarmiento Street in the capital and the family ranch of "Los Talas" on the road from Luján to Navarro in the province of Buenos Aires.
Although Furt's temperament and intimate vocation did not conform to the routine, regulated and systematic university learning, he was a self-taught researcher interested in Archaeology and Anthropology; he knew classical languages, French, Italian, English and German; and he frequented some of the masters of the time in various disciplines, such as Emilio Ravignani, Juan Agustín García, Francisco Capello, Clemente Ricci, Juan B. Ambrosetti, Félix F. Outes, Monsignor Pablo Cabrera, Roberto Lehmann Nitsche and Amado Alonso, who left a lasting mark on his spirit.
In 1926, when he had already published several books, a scholarship granted by the Ministry of Education allowed him to travel to Italy, but he managed to stay one more year, until 1929, when he returned to our country, loaded with experience, readings and books. During his European stay, in the Vatican Library, under the expert guidance of its prefect, the Benedictine Anselmo Albareda, he learned to catalogue old prints, an important auxiliary resource for scholarship that would allow him to identify classical texts and the correct use of technical terms in the citations and references of authors that he showed off in his studies. He attended classes at the universities of Naples and Turin, and lectured at the University of Rome [1]. In addition, he visited Paris, where he was able to appreciate Kieffer's beautiful bindings in his own atelier [2].
During his life he was a member of important institutes of the University of Buenos Aires. He was an honorary member of the Institute of Historical Research chaired by Emilio Ravignani and a researcher at the Institute of Philology under the direction of Amado Alonso. In Europe he was incorporated as a full member of important institutions dedicated to Americanist studies: on May 30, 1927, he joined the "Hermann Barth Gesellschaft" in Berlin and Vienna, at the request of Professor Friedrich Krauss, and on June 20 of the same year he joined the "Société des Américanistes" in Paris on the initiative of Professor Paul Rivet. In 1938 he joined the Argentine Folklore Association, and in 1966 he was appointed corresponding member of the Argentine Academy of Letters.
In the local sphere of Luján, from 1934 to 1939 he was the director of the Library of the «Asociación Cultural Ameghino», which he chaired for several years and to which he donated a valuable piece of land, advised and contributed financially for the construction of its current headquarters, a small architectural gem. He was also first vice-director, and from 1960, director of the Historical Museum of Luján, due to the death of Mr. Enrique Udaondo.
He was, in our country, a precursor of the scientific study of folklore, for which he personally carried out survey tasks in the provinces of the North and Buenos Aires, in which he collected the expressions of popular anonymous knowledge. He analyzed cultural testimonies of oral transmission in the light of philological knowledge, in the company of Amado Alonso and Eleuterio Tiscornia, the latter author of a magnificent critical edition of Martín Fierro, with whom he alternated at the Institute of Philology of the UBA in the old building on Viamonte Street. Furt left unfinished a work entitled Primitivos Gauchescos, for which he had collected curious editions of printed poetry. After Tiscornia's death in 1945, he published his Archivo de guitarra, thanks to the efforts of his teacher and friend's son, Ricardo, who placed all of his father's papers in his hands "without any limitation of trust."
The bibliophile
It is a curious coincidence that Esteban Echeverría, who spent some time at the estancia "Los Talas", was the first in our midst to feel the need and concern for neatly printed and beautifully illustrated books, a circumstance that presents him as the precursor of Argentine bibliophiles; an aesthetic concern that, a century later, Furt cultivated in the same Luján area.
The bibliophile quality that distinguished Furt, who in 1928 was one of the founding members of the Argentine Bibliophile Society, is evident not only in the copies of his voluminous library but also in the typographical dignity of his own works. He cultivated the art of carefully controlled and hand-made editions. For each one he chose the paper, the type of letter, the layout, the vignettes, the perfection of the illustrations. They were generally limited and, long or short, distributed among friends, literary people and bibliophiles. That is why he was always linked to the Colombos, exceptional printing artists.
It is enough to take a quick look at them.
Already in the Cancionero Popular Rioplatense, which he compiled in two volumes [1923 and 1925], he showed good taste. From 1926 dates The legend of Fray Luis de Bolaños, published in Florence by Julio Gianini and son, with headlines and calderones printed in red ink; vignette on the cover, initials and colophon engraved on wood [5 numbered copies on old paper, with various watermarks, of 500] [3]. The Antología gauchesca, printed in Buenos Aires by Francisco A. Colombo for J. Samet, in 1930, with headlines and typographical decorations in two inks [150 copies on very fine Ingress paper] designed by the author. The print run of his Libro de Prosa, printed in Buenos Aires by Francisco A. Colombo for Viau y Zona in 1932, with initials in red and green ink [550 copies, of which 40 were on Hammermill paper]. The critical edition of the Book of Various Treatises and News by Luis de Tejeda [Buenos Aires, Coni, 1947], which Furt edited according to the manuscript preserved in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites of Córdoba, has a very careful typographical presentation. From the reissue that he made in 1952 of the Martín Fierro annotated by Tiscornia, the volume printed by Coni reproduces on its cover a silver harrow that belonged to Furt's great-grandfather, Don Mariano Biaus [1787-1869], which represents a gaucho mounted on his long-tailed horse, as was the custom of those years. In 1958 he published the facsimile edition of 300 copies of the Manual Oracle and the Art of Prudence, by Baltasar Gracián, which was in charge of the master Coni, based on the volume that he owned, one of the very few of the first edition [Huesca, Juan de Nogués, 1647].
Formation of the library. The physical location
By 1931, Furt's personal library already had a large number of volumes that he initially collected in the two houses he rented to live with his family in the city of Luján. In 1941, following the death of his father, Jorge Aquiles Furt, the family moved to the Villa del Lago estate or "Castillo Furt" in Villa Carlos Paz, Province of Córdoba, on Route 38 that connects Tanti and Carlos Paz, and in front of Lake San Roque, which he had ordered to be built in the mid-1930s. There he built a pavilion for the library that was beginning to be populated, and where it acquired its definitive form, as will be seen. The architecture and gardens show the style of Roman villas, surrounded by olive and cypress trees.
In 1949 he made a trip to Europe with his family. Back in the country, after the death of his young son Jorge Mariano in 1950, in a car accident on the road to the Villa del Lago residence, and because Furt's wife, Celia Suárez, did not want to return to that place, in 1952 they decided to return to Luján and move the library to the "Los Talas" ranch, in district 2 of the district [Provincial Route 47, km. 19], about 80 kilometers west of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
"Los Talas" ranch. View of the oldest house, built in 1824.
Two buildings existed in the "Los Talas" complex: the old house from 1824 and the new one from 1860. Furt decided to place the Library to the south of the latter, practically leaning it against the Italianate style facade that the builder Palet had designed for its front. To this end, he had two U-shaped wings built, with long rooms that close off the patio and garden of the main house. They are, in fact, three complete corridors of more than ten meters each, filled from floor to ceiling with the bibliographic wealth of 40,000 volumes, distributed among the Americanist library, the library of Argentine writers, the music room with the French and Italian library and the collection of Italian and Spanish prints from the 16th to the 18th centuries. When I visited it, the material was arranged in eight rooms corresponding to the manuscripts of Furt's work and the library of old books [in my opinion the most valuable]; scrolls and old copies of classical literature; French and Italian literature; Argentine literature; old and modern dictionaries; magazines and pamphlets; books in order; and copies in the process of binding.
How he built his library
His library, beyond the volumes he initially acquired personally or received as gifts from third parties, was based on the French books he inherited after his mother's death in 1917. To these were added those he acquired in Europe, especially in Italy, which he brought back to Argentina in several boxes.
He also obtained by purchase materials from other qualified local collections that, due to different circumstances, were sold or were at risk of their copies being dispersed.
Thus, in 1931 he acquired the library of the historian Clemente Leoncio Fregeiro, of 20,000 volumes, specialized in Argentine and American works of the 19th century, sold by the firm Guerrico & Williams at public auction in 1931 [4].
Then came the acquisition of the library of Abel Chanetón, rich in illustrated Argentine books [5], of the aforementioned jurist, historian and bibliophile who had died in the Cordoba town of Nono in February 1943 while on vacation, and Furt's correspondence with his widow regarding the acquisition of this material is preserved.
In May 1944, he acquired rare books from the library of the erudite poet Arturo Marasso.
Another acquisition for a fee was that of the library of literature, philology and linguistics formed by Eleuterio F. Tiscornia [1879-1945] – the only asset of his estate – whose heirs refused to accept payment by virtue of the friendship that had united them in life, but which they accepted at the request of Furt who understood that this was fulfilling a sacred commitment [6] Tiscornia had been his guitar teacher, and received from the heirs the donation of his teacher's archive [an archive that had continued to grow after the last reissue of that work].
In 1946, Furt purchased the archive of Juan Bautista Alberdi from the widow of Don Francisco Cruz, who in turn obtained it from Mrs. Josefa Escobar Sarsfield de Pérez, under whose care Manuel Alberdi [the writer's natural son] lived his last years. He died in 1900 without heirs. He was the owner of his illustrious father's papers by virtue of an arrangement made with the only legitimate heirs of Don Juan Bautista, the children of his sister Doña Tránsito Alberdi de García. The archive included 7,190 letters of private correspondence addressed to Alberdi, dated between 1832 and 1884, signed by public figures of the time, 225 letters of correspondence between third parties but related to the above; various copies; Alberdian manuscripts, drafts and originals [unpublished manuscripts and the drafts that served as the basis for the Posthumous Writings, a 16-volume edition that doubled the volume of the work printed during the author's lifetime and was published between 1895 and 1901]; 119 notebooks of different sizes; files that give an account of his European diplomatic activity in the service of the new Confederation; of his professional performance as a lawyer in Chile and in Europe; with legal, diplomatic, political and private documentation: and with written documents from third parties; invoices, cards, various notes, purchases, etc., loose papers of interest [navigation of the Salado River, girls' school in Santiago, Chile, etc.]. To pay for this set of documents that its owner had offered in vain to the National Government, Furt used the forty thousand pesos [$40,000] that he obtained from the mortgage of his Bragado farm [ranch «La Colorada», of 680 hectares]. In this way he avoided the dispersion of the archive and its possible sale to Brazilian buyers.
Finally, in 1949 he added 2,500 volumes purchased in Rosario from the heirs of Víctor E. Tappone.
At the II Congress of the Argentine Graphic Industry, held in 1964, Furt exhibited 32 books, two incunabula, twenty from the 16th century, two from the 17th century, seven from the 18th century and one from the 19th century [7].
Supplier booksellers and a bibliophile friend
Important copies were sold to Furt by the bookseller Leo S. Olschki, owner of bookstores in Rome and Florence, whom he met on his first trip to Europe and with whom he subsequently maintained a copious correspondence. Of Prussian Jewish origin and resident in Italy, in 1939, due to the persecutory racial laws, he was forced to go into exile in Switzerland, where he died the following year. The booksellers José R. Peña, from Córdoba, and Jorge Rothstein in Buenos Aires, assisted Furt in the acquisition of books. Peña copied documents from the archives for Furt and acquired first editions and valuable copies for him between 1930 and 1962. In December 1944, he informed him of the acquisition of The Agony of the Transit of Death by Alexio Venegas del Busto [Zaragoza, 1544]. Rothstein, who was Furt's supplier between 1940 and 1955, offered him The Three Hundred by Juan de Mena [Antwerp, 1552] in February 1947 and Amadís de Gaula [Venice, 1533] in October 1949. Also Las obras de Boscán y algunos de Garcilaso [Barcelona, 1543], and the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia by Baltasar Gracián, a very rare copy of the first edition [Huesca, 1647], ordered in 1947 from Dolphin Book Co., Oxford, which offered it in the catalogue at the price of 35 pounds sterling.
Furt was advised on the acquisition of works, especially poetry and old Spanish prints, by his friend the exquisite poet Ricardo Molinari [1898-1996], who also gave him valuable volumes that preserve their ex libris.
The catalogue
Like many Argentine bibliophiles and collectors [or the great majority of them], Furt did not have his library listed. He designed his catalogue, with a warning from Domingo Buonocore, in five sections, each presented by an authority on the subject: the academics Arturo Marasso, for the section on «Ancient Books [1496-1821]», and Rafael Alberto Arrieta, for «Literature»; Federico Fernández Monjardín would do the same with «History and Geography»; Aníbal Vargas Nigoul, for «Archives and Publications», and Jorge M. Mayer for the very rich «Alberdi Manuscript Collection». But circumstances beyond Furt's control and later his death prevented the realization of the bibliographical work. After his death, his son-in-law Ricardo Rodríguez recorded the entire library, using handwritten cardboard cards, neatly packed in shoe boxes. The file is currently digitalized.
The Alberdi Archive [8] and the material in the room of old prints [9] were inventoried. And that luminous man who was the always remembered and erudite philologist, Professor Germán Orduna and his wife, catalogued, with impeccable technical rigor, the printed works in Spanish from the 16th century [10].
Destiny of the library
Celia Etelvina Furt de Rodríguez was the one who, upon the death of her father in 1971, devoted and faithful as an Iphigenia, received the material inheritance and the moral mission of preserving her father's library and archive, together with the productive and ranching reality. And she did so until her death on March 19, 2008. Her management, together with her husband and children, allowed that valuable cultural heritage not to be dispersed or go abroad. She took on that task, and despite the death of her husband on April 18, 2004, she knew how to transmit to her family a commitment to continuity. An agreement signed with the National University of General San Martín (UNSAM), and in particular with the Center for Philological Studies "Jorge M. Furt" has allowed the reissue of old and rare texts in the collection "Biblioteca Furt", directed by that integral humanist who is Professor José Emilio Burucúa, and a series of volumes dedicated to the critical-genetic edition of works by Alberdi whose manuscripts are preserved and the critical edition of the correspondence of the great thinker. Thus the Furt Collection, in its third generation, maintains its lush prestige.
Notes
[1] Furt referred to his experiences and his European journey in volume I of his Libro de compañía, printed in Buenos Aires by Francisco A. Colombo in 1947. A volume of 330 p. with a print run of 500 copies, of which 10 on Vidalon paper and 10 on Gvarro paper, out of sale. Vol. II was only published by Vinciguerra Publishing in 2014 [169 p.]
[2] René Kieffer (1876-1963), one of the most important French bookbinders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was a disciple of the innovator Marius-Michel [1821-1890] who introduced the floral motifs of Art Nouveau into bookbinding. Kieffer's Parisian workshop, which adopted the avant-garde Art Deco style in the 1920s, adapting to the demands of the nouvelle bibliophilie, a new category of lovers of "illustrated books", came to bind up to 2,000 volumes per year. From 1909, Kieffer was also a publisher of luxury books, and in the early 1920s he opened a bookshop in his bookbinding workshop, located at no. 18 rue Séguier, work continued by his son Michel [1916-1991]. Recently, on May 30, 2024, the Librairie-Galerie of Emmanuel Fradois, at No. 5 rue du Cambodge, inaugurated an exhibition with a hundred copies from the Kieffer house, with a good catalogue.
3] Exhibited in 1940. Cf. Teodoro Becú, Catalogue of the Book Exhibition. Which is held in the city of Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction to commemorate the Fifth Centenary of the Invention of the Printing Press, by […], Buenos Aires, Talleres Gráficos de Guillermo Kraft Ltda. Sociedad Anónima, 1940.
[4] Guerrico & Williams, Notable biblioteca del Dr. Clemente Leoncio Fregeiro, Buenos Aires, 1931, unpaginated. This catalogue was severely criticized for the lack of data on the books and their state of preservation: «The library that belonged to Clemente L. Fregeiro, one of the most important in America, was inventoried eight years ago. Since then it has been dead, without the heirs having thought that it would be in their best interest to present it for sale in an interesting way. Today the auctioneers are delivering an absurd catalogue, two hundred pages crammed with incomplete titles». «Biblioteca de Clemente Fregeiro», in La Literatura Argentina, year IV, no. 38, Buenos Aires, October 1931, p. 65.
[5] Domingo Buonocore, Abel Chaneton, writer, jurist and bibliophile, City Bell, Editorial El Aljibe, 1984, 47 p. [Semblanzas Collection, vol. III].
[6] Domingo Buonocore, «Contribution to the bio-bibliography of Jorge Martín Furt», in Universidad, no. 88, Santa Fe, National University of the Litoral, September-December 1977, p. 131-153
7] Vicente Ros, “Furt bibliophile”, Buenos Aires, Lecture given at the Argentine Scientific Society, October 24, 2001, Tribute to Jorge M. Furt and Biaus, Graphic Arts.
8] Ricardo Rodríguez, «Alberdi Archive», in Furt Library and Archive, Buenos Aires, Center for Studies for the New Majority, 1991, p. [10] Germán Orduna and Lilia E. F. de Orduna, Descriptive catalogue of the printed works in Spanish, from the 16th century, in the "Jorge M. Furt" Library (Los Talas, Luján, Province of Buenos Aires-Argentina), Buenos Aires, SECRIT, 1991 (INCIPIT, Publications, I) 52+5 p. Reproduction of covers.