Orbis Litterarum 60:4 293–312, 2005

Printed in Singapore. All rights reserved

The World in a Poem? Góngora versus Quevedo

in Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph
Sofie Kluge, University of Copenhagen

The famous ‘Góngora controversy’ plays an important part in

Jorge Luis Borges’ short story El Aleph (1944), where the rivalry of
the two protagonists is projected onto that of the Spanish Golden
Age writers Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo. Thus, El
Aleph is transformed into a discussion about the nature of poetry.
The link between these seemingly incongruous elements is the
theme of the temporal limitations of human consciousness and
language, which impede not only our ability to fix the image of the
dead in memory, but also the ability of literature to fix the
changing universe in a finite poem. The story is not only projected
onto the Soledades controversy, but also onto the philosophical
discrepancy between mysticism and scepticism, turning it into a
highly complex palimpsest. The Góngora controversy – seen in the
critical attacks launched at Góngora’s encyclopaedic and formally
extravagant poem by the ambitious Quevedo, the quintessential
genius of Baroque disillusionment – adds depth to the story about
the writer-narrator Borges and his rival Carlos Daneri Argentino.
But, more importantly, it points to a Borgesian reception of the
Baroque, not only of interest to Baroque scholarship, but also to
the field of Borgesian studies.

O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a King of infinite

space…
Hamlet, II, 2

But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time, a
Nunc-stans (as the schools call it); which neither they, nor any else understand,
no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatness of Place.
Leviathan, IV, 46

Jorge Luis Borges is a reluctant heir of the Baroque mentality.1 His

emphatically self-conscious texts project the image of a highly sophisti-
cated and playful literature, endlessly thematizing the problems of
294 Sofie Kluge

language and literary representation, and thus evoking the central Baroque
preoccupation with what can provisionally be referred to as ‘signification’
in the broadest sense of the term. Although Borges’ preoccupation with
these problems may also have an unmistakably modern air, he consciously
treats the problems of signification and representation referring to authors
and literary discussions of the Spanish Golden Age.2 The crucial question
relevant to Borges’ oeuvre as a whole can, moreover, be thought of as the
question of desengaño, the intrinsically Baroque attitude pointing to the
vanity of human affairs, including the activity of linguistic representation.
In the context of aesthetics, the sentiment of desengaño may, however, be
understood in alternative or even opposing ways: either as the expression
of scepticism about literary language’s ability to represent an extralinguis-
tic object (i.e., as an example of profound disillusionment3) or as an
expression of a negative dialectical aesthetics, attempting to make an
extralinguistic object – the world as infinite phenomena or an infinite
object of a more traditional metaphysical nature – appear indirectly
through artificiality and self-referentiality. The latter option is not, it
seems, incompatible with the tradition of literary mysticism, the eternal
opponent of scepticism.4
Scepticism and mysticism, two traditions of major importance in the
cultural history of the West, are both deeply rooted in an awareness of
the insufficiency and arbitrarity of language, and are both applicable to
Borges’ works. Where does this leave the critic seeking to pinpoint the
essence of Borgesian poetics? The solution to this critical paradox can
be attempted through an analysis of the famous story El Aleph, where
Borges subtly evokes a highly important Baroque controversy on
literary language, namely that following the publication of the first
Soledad by the great Spanish poet Luis de Góngora in 1613. As a
hidden track, the Góngora controversy – as seen in the critical attacks
launched at Góngora’s encyclopaedic and formally extravagant poem by
the young, ambitious writer Francisco de Quevedo, the quintessential
genius of Baroque desengaño – adds colour and depth to the story
about the writer ⁄ narrator Borges and his rival writer Carlos Daneri
Argentino. But, more importantly, it also points unmistakably to a
Borgesian reception of the Baroque, which is not only of interest to
Baroque scholarship, but also to Borgesian studies.
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 295

1. Transgressive memory and representation in El Aleph

El Aleph is basically a story about love and loss (Borges’ love for Beatriz
Viterbo and his loss at her death). Through the theme of memory as a way
of coping with loss (Borges’ attempt to keep his image of Beatriz intact),
however, the text simultaneously discusses the problems facing literary
mimesis, such as memory aiming at a fixed representation of things
necessarily subject to change with time. Accordingly, Borges initially
announces his intention of keeping Beatriz’ image intact:
On the bright February morning, when Beatriz Viterbo died, after a worthy agony
during which she never for a moment gave in neither to sentimentalism nor to fear,
I noted that the advertisement boards on Plaza Constitución had changed I know
not which advertisement for cigars; the fact pained me, because I understood that
the infinite and vast universe was leaving her, and that this change was the first in
an endless series. The universe may change, I won’t – I thought with melancholic
vanity. (p.175; this and all subsequent translations my own)

The dominant theme of memory thus provides the link between the plot
and the underlying meta-aesthetic reflection on literary representation – a
link clearly established in the plot by the fact that Borges’ act of
commemoration (his annual visits to Beatriz’s former home on her
birthday) is necessarily bound up with tiresome literary discussions with
her cousin, Carlos Argentino, who also frequents the house in Garay
Street, and occasionally reads parts of his ever-expanding poem entitled La
Tierra to the rather annoyed Borges. Argentino’s poem, whose poetic
subtleties he himself extravagantly expounds and elaborates on, is an
ambitious and learned description of the globe, in which he employs the
stylistic devices of the entire literary history in his attempt to show the
object of his representation from all angles simultaneously. Argentino’s
aesthetic project seems to the sceptic Borges a vain attempt to transgress
the partiality of human consciousness, although in its transgressive, time-
and space-refuting nature fundamentally akin to his own commemorative
project. It eventually turns out that Argentino is inspired in writing his
encyclopaedic poem by a so-called ‘Aleph’ – a small point of 2–3
centimeters projecting a concentrated vision of the entire universe – housed
in the basement of Beatriz’ former home. Having convinced Borges to
follow him into the basement, Argentino describes the Aleph, referring to
different occult traditions, thus indirectly presenting himself as somewhat
of a mystic:
296 Sofie Kluge

-The Aleph? I repeated.

-Yes, the place where all the places of the universe, seen from all angles
simultaneously, meet without being confused. (p.188)
In a few minutes you will see the Aleph: the micro cosmos of the alchemists and
Cabalists, our concrete proverbial friend, the multum in parvum! (pp.189–190)

Contrary to Argentino, Borges is not poetically inspired by the vision of

the infinite, but rather very bewildered and dizzy. The loss of focus caused
by the coexistence of all possible perspectives frightens him because of the
resulting disintegration of the fixed identity of things. Moreover, the
experience has shaken his commemorative project, i.e. his own attempt to
transgress the boundaries imposed on human consciousness by temporal-
ity, as he has envisioned the disjecta membra of his romantically conceived
love:5 the decomposing body of Beatriz, a breast cancer (the cause of her
death?), and a bunch of secret love letters written by Beatriz to Argentino.
He has envisioned, in brief, the calcinating power of death and the ultimate
illusion of romantic love. Soon after, the story ends with an after word
which partly relates how Argentino received a literary prize for his
monstrous poem, partly elaborates on the phenomenon of the Aleph,
presenting the assumption, based on a characteristically Borgesian
enumerative catalogue of Alephs, that the Aleph in Garay Street was
false: a number of different ‘alls’ is a logical self-contradiction. Borges
finally states that he doesn’t exactly remember what he saw, and that he
therefore has given up deciphering its meaning. A profound scepticism –
doubt not only about the object of knowledge, but even about the ability
of man to know anything at all – seems to get the final word. Borges takes
up the line of thought from the beginning of the story, reflecting on the
eroding effect of time on memory, and admitting that his project of
keeping the image of Beatriz intact from the erosion of time has failed:
Does that Aleph really exist inside a stone? Did I see it, when I saw all things,
and have I forgotten it? Our mind is vulnerable to forgetting; I myself am
falsifying and loosing Beatriz’ features under the tragic erosion of the years.
(p.198)

The story thus begins and ends with a reflection on time as a premise for
human consciousness, language and representation, and, accordingly, on
the problem of fixing something timeless by means of unavoidably
temporal consciousness and language. Just as sceptically as he viewed
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 297

Argentino’s transgressive aesthetic project – his attempt to fixate the

infinite universe in the finite form of a poem (however encyclopaedic) –
Borges now sees his own transgressive project of commemoration, and
accepts, so to say, the fact of time and death.6 He has become
disillusionment incarnate.
The edifying, even didactic story about Borges’ personal development
into a conspicuous sceptic, is, however, only one side of the story: El Aleph
happens to be a virtual meeting place for two opposite views of human
consciousness and language, personalized in the figures of Borges and
Argentino. To understand the complex or even conflicting nature of the
text, it is necessary to take a closer look at its paralleling and contrasting of
the two main characters. Both can be said to incarnate a certain view of
literary representation: whereas Argentino is confident that the tireless
reworking of the representational structures will eventually pave the way
for a mimetic representation of the infinite in literature, Borges essentially
denies the possibility of this project, emphasizing the necessity of
perspective and the inability of literature ever to be more than language
signifying itself. The latter sceptical position may provisionally be seen as
corresponding to a concept of literature as autonomous/isolated from the
world, emphatically posing as fiction, artefact, construction. The former
position, with its mystical undertones, may correspond to a concept of
literature as a privileged form of signification, mysteriously posing as
truth, godlike creation, or even as divine revelation. I shall subsequently
elaborate a bit on these points.
While presenting Borges and Argentino as antagonists, El Aleph
simultaneously establishes a certain relation of power between the two
(including the projects and the concepts of literature they embody),
because one of them is the narrator of the story and therefore narrates
the other. Borges’ perspective and position dominate the text and
determine the reader’s view of the fictive universe, while Argentino, as a
consequence of his being told, is situated in a narrative frame. The
resulting effect is a simultaneous putting-in-play of Argentino’s position
and keeping at a distance from it. The text clearly doesn’t want to project
the image of Argentino as a poetological self-portrait. However, seeing
that it fundamentally discusses the potential of literature and language to
transgress temporal limits, it must consider the view that the artistic
renovation of poetic language will eventually lead to a transgression of
298 Sofie Kluge

the limits of human consciousness and language, and, thus, to a

representation of the all through literature – i.e. it must allow the
mimetic position to have its say.7 By transposing this creed and ambition
on to the character of Argentino, and putting him on a narrated scene,
the text distances itself from this ‘mystical’ concept of literature, without
entirely neglecting it. The confrontation between the two author
characters initiates a dialectical process in the text, whose outcome
cannot be identified with either of them, or with their unproblematic
synthesis, for that matter.

2. The mystical experience of a sceptic

In order to get a grasp on the Borges figure, we may want to analyze the
direct self-portrait given in the description of his meeting with the Aleph,
of the thoughts and feelings that this meeting awakes in him. Moreover, it
will be useful to take a look at the indirect self-portrait given in his
description of Argentino. In this context I will only touch on the points of
literary characterization relevant to the understanding of the text’s
contrasting of a ‘mystical’ and a ‘sceptical’ concept of literature, and thus
lead us directly towards the confrontation of Góngorist and Quevedean
poetics hovering in the background of El Aleph. The text introduces
Borges’ meeting with the Aleph with the following reflection on literary
representation:
I am now reaching the ineffable center of my story; here, my desperation as a
writer begins. All language is an alphabet of symbols whose usefulness
presupposes a common past shared by the interlocutors; how is it possible to
transmit the infinite Aleph, which my frightened memory barely grasps, to
others? In an analogous trance the mystics indulge in emblems: to signify the
divinity, a Persian talks of a bird which is somehow all birds; Alanus de Insulis,
of a sphere whose center is in all the parts and whose circumference is in none;
Ezequiel, of an angel with four heads which simultaneously faces the Orient and
the Occident, the North and the South. (Not in vain do I memorize these
inconceivable analogies; they all have some relation to the Aleph.) The gods may
not deny me the coining of an equivalent image, but this account will be stained
with literature, with falseness. Besides, the central problem is insoluble: the
enumeration, may it even be partial, of an infinite amount. In this gigantic
instant I saw millions of pleasant or wild acts; none surprised me like the fact
that they all occupied the same point, without overlapping or transparency.
What my eyes saw was simultaneous: what I transcribe is successive, because
language is. Surely I will, however, be able to recollect something. (pp.191–192)
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 299

The literary representation of the Aleph thus has to face a number of

different problems: 1) a communicative or hermeneutical problem caused
by the Aleph not belonging within the boundaries of the common
knowledge that guarantees the communicative functioning of language; 2)
an epistemological problem of human consciousness not being able to keep
the infinite in memory; 3) a mathematical or logical problem, namely the
impossibility of enumerating an infinite quantity; and 4) an aesthetic
problem caused by the incongruity between a temporally defined literary
language and a non-temporal object. Although he emphatically describes
his experience of the Aleph as mystical (in accordance with mystical
tradition of the momentary union of the divine and the soul),8 Borges
simultaneously demonstrates a sceptical outlook by recognizing these
different representational problems. One may actually venture to say that
the mystical experience in the Aleph is split in two: an iconoclast (Borges),
negating the possibility of a representation of the beheld, and an iconodule
(Argentino), holding that the vision might be represented poetically, albeit
with serious aesthetic implications. Here, as usual, the Borgesian catalogue
or enumeration is motivated by a feeling of despair, and substitutes for a
cohesive and comprehensive representation of things. The phenomenon of
the catalogue is thus an expression of the disintegration of representational
cohesion, and displays a fundamental mistrust of linguistic representation.
Now, a second utterly arbitrary and heterogeneous catalogue follows,
pointing to the general tendency of the Borgesian text to dissolve
experience into meaningless and autonomous fragments, only to reorgan-
ize them subsequently into subtle new structures. An important part of the
phenomena in this catalogue, however, have to do with Beatriz: they
emphasize the fundamentally disintegrating nature of the mystical experi-
ence, in this particular case the disintegration of Borges’ romantic/naively
idealistic love for Beatriz, appropriately named after Dante’s ethereal
muse. The passage further establishes a relation between this disintegrating
experience and Argentino’s poem, which has its place in the same desk
drawer (cf. p.179) as Beatriz’ love letters to Argentino. Beatriz is,
consequently, once again conferred with the infinite universe as the object
of a temporally limited representation:
[I]n a drawer in the desk I saw (and the writing made me shudder) obscene,
incredible, necessary letters from Beatriz to Carlos Argentino, I saw a
worshipped monument in la Chacarita, I saw the horrible relique of what was
300 Sofie Kluge

once delicately Beatriz Viterbo, I saw the circulation of my dark blood, I saw the
meaning of love and the modification of death, I saw the Aleph, from all points,
I saw the earth in the Aleph, and in the earth the Aleph and the Aleph in the
earth, I saw my face and my guts, I saw your face, and I was dizzy and cried,
because my eyes had seen this secret and conjectural object, whose name usurps
men, but which no man has seen: the inconceivable universe. (pp.193–194)

Argentino is, it follows, not only a professional rival, but also a

personal rival. Borges and Argentino are opposed because they compete
for the affections of the same woman, they represent two opposite views
of literature, and, most importantly, because they have contrary
reactions to the mystical experience of the infinite Aleph. Argentino is
not frightened by the Aleph: on the contrary, it serves as a moti-
vation for his ambition to describe the endless earth. To Borges, the
experience of the all is destructive and makes him realize the falsifying
element of his commemorative project: his love is, too, a beautifying,
falsifying construction comparable to literary representation, which
(allegedly) beautifies the world, while at the same time falsifying it. The
mystical experience makes Borges realize that both literature and
memory are constructions that are necessarily revealed by the modifying
power of death. His mystical experience has made him a sound
sceptical.
I have previously tried to demonstrate Borges’ essentially sceptical
outlook, but more facts point in the same direction. The text mentions in
passing the title of a book which Borges subsequently wrote and submitted
to a national literary competition. The book is called Los naı¨pes del tahur
[The Gambler’s Playing Cards] – a title pointing towards the concept of a
light-hearted, unpreoccupied literature, understanding itself emphatically
as construction, artefact, game, falsity. And finally there is the after word,
reflecting sceptically on the phenomenon of the Aleph. After telling the
reader about the Aleph, Borges once again presents a catalogue of Alephs,
this time with the explicit aim of proving his own Aleph’s falsity. First he
emphasizes the logical impossibility of a number of different alls, then he
mentions the weakness of memory. He now cites from a book about
Alephs written by an English consul, who rejects the legitimacy of a good
number of Alephs on the grounds that they are visual. The real Aleph, this
author claims, is auditory and thus even more insubstantial than a small
point of 2–3 centimeters (p.192):
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 301

How incredible it may sound, I believe that there is (or was) another Aleph, I
believe that the Aleph in Garay Street was a false Aleph. I shall give my reasons.
Around 1867 Captain Burton was in function as British consul in Brazil; In July
1942 Pedro Henrı́quez Ureña discovered a manuscript of his in a library in
Santos. It was about the mirror which the Orient attributes to Iskandar Zu al-
Karnayn or Alexander the Great of Macedonia. In its glass the entire universe
was reflected. Burton mentions other similar artifices – the sevenfold glass of Kai
Josrú, the mirror that Tárik Benzeyad found in a tower (1001 Nights, 272), the
mirror that Lucian of Samosata examined in the moon (A True Story, I, 26), the
spectacular lance that the first book of Capella’s Satyricon attributes to Jupiter,
Merlin’s universal mirror, ‘round and concave and like a world made of glass’
(The Faerie Queene, III, 2, 19) – and adds the following curious words: ‘But the
preceding (besides the defect of not existing) are all mere optical instruments.
The devotees who concur to the mosque of Amr in Cairo know very well that the
universe is inside one of the stone columns surrounding the central patio …
Nobody can, of course, see it, but those who lean their ear to the surface claim to
perceive, quickly, its busy mumbling.’ (pp.196–198)

The claim that the real Aleph is not even visible but only aurally
perceptible first of all takes the problem of representation to the extreme:
representing the infinite in a candescent point of 2–3 centimeters is indeed
hard, but giving form to an infinite that is only aurally perceptible is simply
impossible. It is, moreover, worth noting that whereas the first Aleph
catalogue showed an initial lack of confidence in the ability to represent the
infinite, the second catalogue is the overt expression that Borges has now
definitively given up on any coherent and meaningful representation of the
Aleph. He affirms his sceptical credo and explicitly acknowledges the
failure of his transgressive, commemorative project:
Does that Aleph really exist inside a stone? Did I see it, when I saw all things,
and have I forgotten it? Our mind is porous to forgetting; I myself am falsifying
and losing Beatriz’ features under the tragic erosion of the years. (p.198)

Psychologically, Borges has now reached the point of reality adjustment in

the Freudian sense, which means he has given up his attempt to fix the lost
love-object in a literary and/or commemorative vacuum beyond time: his
mourning work, which, as we have seen, functioned as a parallel to the
transgressive literary representation of the infinite, is completed. The
earlier contradiction between Borges’ transgressive, commemorative pro-
ject and his epistemological scepticism has been solved, and at the end of
the story his horizon is entirely dominated by an experience of death and
vanity, or by desengaño. Like the classic edifying tale or Bildungsroman, the
302 Sofie Kluge

story ends with the narrator’s reality adjustment and a general memento
mori. Despite the temptation to identify author and narrator, and,
consequently, to assign an overtly central position to the latter, the story
about the Borges-figure is, as already noted, not the whole story about El
Aleph. Taking a closer look at Borges’ professional as well as personal
rival, Argentino, will add nuance and depth to the picture of Borgesian
poetics sketched so far.
Already in the first physical characterization of Argentino one finds the
echo of a characterization of his poetry. Formal and thematic character-
ization are joined in the narrator Borges’ description of this human
incarnation of Schwulst: Argentino’s physical appearance as well as his
gesticulation and mental activity are – after Jorge Luis Borges’ Baroque-
inspired love of oxymoron and antithesis – on the one hand opulent and
bombastic, on the other hand empty and superficial:
Carlos Argentino is roseate, corpulent, grey-haired, and has fine features. He has
some kind of subordinary function in an illegible library in the southern
suburbs; he is authoritarian, but also ineffective; until recently, he spent most of
his nights and days without leaving his house. In two generations the Italian ‘s’
and the copious Italian gesticulation have survived in him. His mental activity is
continuous, passionate, versatile, and mostly insignificant. He indulges in useless
analogues and lazy scruples. (p.177)

The description of Argentino’s person leads directly to the description of

his poem The Earth, which constitutes an attempt to versify the infinite
beheld in the Aleph beyond the boundaries of subjectivity and perspective,
and by means of a daring exploration of language and literary form.
Despite the already mentioned psychological motivations, Borges’ criti-
cism of Argentino’s encyclopaedic ambition is not only personal, but also
largely determined by principles: he doesn’t believe in it, and rejects it as
madness, bombast and ‘literature,’ thus at once promoting himself as the
spokesman of perspective, and claiming the right of his own story as more
than ‘literature.’ Borges evaluates in the subsequent manner some of
Argentino’s thoughts apropos the condition of modern man in a pro-
prologue to his poem:
So inept did I find these ideas, so pompous and vast their exposition, that I
immediately associated them with literature; I asked him why he didn’t write
them down. He answered, as could have been anticipated, that he had already
done so […]. (p.178)
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 303

The poem was called The Earth; it was a description of the planet, in which the
picturesque digression and the gallant apostrophe were certainly not missing.
(p.179)

While suggesting in the characterization of Argentino a timeless and rather

abstract discussion about the ability of literature to represent the infinite
by means of an encyclopaedic, poetic structure, El Aleph simultaneously
evokes a concrete, notorious, historical feud over literary representation.
To be able to understand this subtle intertextual reference, we must
eventually travel far back in time and space, to the Iberian peninsula at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.

3. A Baroque controversy about literary representation

Following the publication of the first Soledad by Luis de Góngora in 1613 a
vehement polemic arose, which became central to discussion of the Spanish
literary Baroque. The esoteric centre of this seemingly futile and highly
personal polemic, which even included insinuations about Góngora’s
‘contaminated’ blood, i.e. Moslem or Jewish descent, and latent homo-
sexuality, was in fact the overtly abstract and theoretical question about the
particular nature of literary representation. Together with Góngora’s
arduous responses, the provocative attacks launched at Góngora in a series
of pamphlets, short prose texts and satirical poems by his rivals Lope de
Vega, Juan de Jáuregui and Francisco de Quevedo probably constitute the
most famous and consequential debate of Spanish literary history. For
several centuries to follow, Góngora’s name was practically excluded from
the Spanish literary canon, while the poetic style that he originated was
pejoratively described as culteranismo and understood as a synonym of bad
taste and decadence. Not until the early twentieth century were there any
signs of a re-evaluation, and even at this point the appreciation was not
universal.9 Jorge Luis Borges himself has taken a clear anti-Gongorine
stand in the debate by repeatedly praising the conspicuous ingenio of
Francisco de Quevedo, accordingly scorning Góngora and Culteranism.10
Yet, as we shall see, Góngora’s voluptuous and extravagant spirit kept
haunting Borges’ own poetic as a tempting, heterodoxical creed, as it also
haunted Quevedo’s.11 I will begin the exorcism of this ghost by giving a
brief resume of the battle of the Soledades.12
304 Sofie Kluge

Góngora’s critics attacked the esoteric nature of his poetry, taking as

their point of departure the classical poetics of Aristotle and Horace, while
Góngora himself defended his work by pointing to the ambition of writing
poetically about something that ancient poetics allegedly excluded because
of its strict separation of genres and, hence, of perspectives.13 The
transcendent object of Gongorine poetics, we may guess from his poems as
well as from the letters of the controversy, was the infinite world seen from
all perspectives simultaneously.14 In a Counter-reformation context, this
poetic ambition was likely to be considered an incredible and despicable
heresy: for how could anyone sincerely believe that literary language was
able to attain the multidimensional perfection of the Holy Scripture, the
one true liber mundi?15 However, by elaborating all levels of literary form,
employing and uniting all kinds of traditions, genres and styles, Góngora
indirectly expressed the view that literature should, through the renovation
of literary form and language, aim at – and possibly accomplish – the
representation of the infinite beyond the perspectivism imposed on human
consciousness and language by temporality. He thus indirectly accused his
critics of reductionism in defining the function of art as imposing a grid,
and presenting a (necessarily partial) perspective of the world, while at the
same time posing as the high priest of secular mysticism, as an inspired
medium through which the infinite universe might emerge.
The Gongorine feud can, from this point of view, be said to constitute a
collision of a sceptical and perspectival concept of literature as form and a
mystical and mimetic concept of form as a means to grasp a totality
beyond the partiality implied by any perspective or grid. The exhaustive,
simultaneous employment of all forms would, according to the latter view,
equal a complete representation of the infinite world. A central device in
the Gongorine attempt to transgress the limits of literary representation
was, then, a thorough renovation of poetic language on all possible levels,
through:
 cultisms and neologisms, including etymological hybrids composed of
Latin, Toscan and Castillian16
 rhetorical figures, conceptos (conceit: an extended metaphor)
 versification (probably for the first time in literary history, Góngora used
the silva, a free composition of verses consisting of 8 or 11 syllables, for a
longer poem)
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 305

 and a reinterpretation of the relationship between genre (form) and

theme (content) whereby the thematic multi-perspectivism reflected itself
formally, in the simultaneous employment of numerous poetic forms
(laudatory, epithalamic, bucolic-pastoral, epic).
Góngora’s critics saw the Soledades as a Babylonian confusion of forms
and tongues that a speculative interpretation had to project meaning into,
while Góngora himself claimed that his learned poems were only obscure
to ignorant readers – among these, he insinuated, his many critics.17 With
this historical polemic in mind, we may return to Borges’ text.
Góngora’s poetry can be seen as a distant predecessor of Argentino’s
ambition to represent the infinite Aleph: both believe that a thorough
reworking of poetic language on all levels, through the use of multiple
literary forms and perspectives, will eventually pave the way for the
complete representation of the infinite, beyond the limits of an ensuring,
unifying perspective. This comparison is, of course, highly general, but
several textual passages do support it or even encourage it. The fact that
the literary-theoretical implications of the Góngora controversy play an
important part in El Aleph is, indeed, quite obvious to any student of
Spanish Baroque literature, glossing over the passages which describe
Argentino’s poetry. Let us therefore take a look at the passages in
question. First, the narrator Borges pinpoints Argentino’s auto-analysis as
a retrospective projection of meaning into the originally chaotic and
meaningless text. As already explained, this was an important point in the
Góngora controversy:
By all means an interesting strophe, he declared. – The first verse wins the
applause of the teacher, the academic, the Hellenist, if not of the pseudo-
intellectual, a considerable sector of the readers; the second part goes from
Homer to Hesiodus (all an implicit homage, on the frontispiece of the flaming
edifice, to the father of didactic poetry), not without modernizing a procedure
whose origin is in Scripture, enumeration, collection or conglobation; the third –
baroque, decadence; purified cultivation and fanaticism of the form? – consists
of two twin hemstitches; the fourth, frankly bilingual, guarantees me the
unconditional support of every spirit sensible to the dispassionate suggestions of
cynicism. I won’t even mention the rare rime or the learning which permits me –
without pedantry – to accumulate in four verses three learned allusions,
comprehending thirty centuries of comprised literature […]. He read many more
strophes to me, which all had their approval and exuberant commentary. There
was nothing memorable in them; nor did I find them much worse than the
preceding. In this writing, application, resignation and chance had collaborated;
306 Sofie Kluge

the virtues that Daneri attributed to them were posterior. I understood that the
work of the poet wasn’t with poetry; it was with inventing the reasons why
poetry were admirable. (pp.179–180)

Not only the extreme erudition of Argentino’s poem, but pre-eminently the
use of forms from and allusions to the entire thirty centuries of literary
history from Greek Antiquity and the Holy Scripture onwards, the
bilingualism (or multilingualism) and rare rhyme – all these factors point
decisively in a Gongorine direction,18 just like the narrator-Borges’
sceptical comments point decisively towards the recurring Borgesian
interpretation of Quevedo as the paradoxical master and mistruster of
poetic language.19 Now, Argentino’s accumulation of all existing historical
forms may be taken to be catalogues of essentially the same kind as the
narrator Borges’ catalogues of Alephs, which were dominated by a mere
enumerative logic, and hence ultimately pointed to the arbitrary nature
and deep futility of linguistic and literary signification. Argentino surely
makes catalogues, too, with the decisive difference that they are motivated
by a mimetic ambition: if it were possible to establish an exhaustive
accumulation of forms (considered as perspectives), it would be possible to
see the world from all perspectives simultaneously. The catalogue is thus
only apparently arbitrary; in Argentino’s case, accumulation ultimately
has a mimetic function. Linguistic innovation and the accumulation of
languages and dialects, essentially a variation of the accumulative tendency
of Argentino’s poem, subsequently become the centre of Borges’ critique:
he makes fun of the many florid and/or neologized adjectives of The Earth,
and of the fact that Argentino (like Góngora) doesn’t understand his
critics’ objections:
He subsequently reread four or five pages of the poem to me. He had corrected
them in accordance with a depraved principle of verbal ostentation: Where he
originally had bluish, it now abounded in cerulean, ultramarine and even in
azure. The word milky wasn’t ugly enough for him; in the impetuous description
of a wool laundry, he prefered lacteal, lacteous, lactescent, lactating … He
denoted his critics with bitterness; eventually he compared them, more benignly,
with those ‘who lack precious metals and vapor engines, laminators and sulfuric
acid to coin treasures, but who may indicate to others where a treasure is hidden.’
(p.184)

Argentino’s poem thus represents an ambition to transgress the premises

of literary language, an ambition assuming cosmic proportions and
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 307

involving a thorough renovation of poetic language. On the contrary, the

recently reality-adjusted narrator Borges sceptically holds that literature
must content itself with anaemic artificiality. This virtual discussion is set
on the background of a reflection on temporality – motivated thematically
by Beatriz’ death and Borges’ attempt to remember her despite the ever
increasing temporal distance – because temporality has a crucial impact on
language and on the ability of literature to fixate and represent the infinite.
Although the two opposed literary-theoretical positions of the protago-
nists each get their say in the virtual forum of El Aleph, the point of
departure remains the sceptical, iconoclastic or formalist position of the
narrator Borges, a point of departure technically imposed by the narrative
structure of the text, conceding to Borges the power of narration. Vis-à-vis
this concession, however, stands the apparently paradoxical fact of
Argentino’s receiving the national literary prize and public appreciation.
Somebody seems to think that The Earth is a brilliant poem, and not just
vain and pompous ideas. Following the Gongorine lead, which I assume to
be the very heart of the characterization of Argentino’s person and poetry,
it may be held that the extreme artificiality and self-referentiality of
literature is just a first step, allowing the subsequent – indirect, artificial,
but nonetheless intended – presentation of the ineffable through the
exploration of literary language.

4. Conclusion
I have identified in El Aleph two opposing views of the problem that
temporal and language-bound consciousness is separated by an abyss from
the infinite world as the ultimate object of a mimetically oriented literature.
Both views problematize language, but apart from this common point of
departure they are absolute opposites. One view represents an unsurpass-
able mistrust of human consciousness and language; the other affirms the
ability of literature to suggest the infinite, despite the limitations imposed
on consciousness by temporality, through the exploration of poetic
language and cultural tradition. I have identified these views with the
two main characters of El Aleph, and suggested that the text inserts the
‘discussion’ between these views in a virtual discussion between literary
mystics and literary sceptics, and projects the story about Argentino and
Borges onto the historical feud, following the publication of Góngora’s
308 Sofie Kluge

first Soledad, which it illuminates in a very interesting manner. El Aleph

thereby becomes a kind of palimpsest, a subtle literary structure consisting
of several different layers. It distances itself from the mystical and mimetic
position of Argentino, but still seeks to present – albeit only indirectly and
partially – the infinite beheld in the Aleph by quoting from Argentino’s
poem, but filtered through the scepticism of the narrator Borges and the
sceptical element inherent in Argentino’s own problematizing of literary
language. El Aleph may thus be seen to employ a technique of ‘one step
forward, one step back’, switching between the two positions.
Identifying this technique solely with the sceptical position, disillusion-
ment and aestheticism of the narrator Borges is (however tempting) highly
reductive,20 and it further depends on a naive identification of the narrator
with the narrative voice of the text: the rather inconsistent and conflicting
‘message’ of El Aleph is constituted in the interplay of its heterogeneous
and possibly incompatible elements. Assuming a relationship of duplicity
and complementarity between Argentino and the narrator Borges, and
relating it to the controversy between Góngora and Quevedo, the
interpreter discovers a far more subtle and complex concept of literature
in El Aleph, in a mystical fervor aiming at representing the infinite, but all
the same sceptically renouncing on any direct mimetic representation, and
advancing one step only to regress back into sceptical safety immediately
afterwards. The outcome is a text that doesn’t renounce completely the
mimetic representation of the infinite, but in a virtuoso enumeration of
sceptical objections definitely does not facilitate this representation either.
The paradoxical mixture in El Aleph of a mimetically oriented mysticism
and a pronounced perspectivistic scepticism is, I think, highly character-
istic of Jorge Luis Borges’ œuvre in general, and this feature it shares with
Spanish Baroque literature. It is fundamentally torn between a mystical
trend, aiming at the total mimetic representation of something infinitely
vast beyond the boundaries of human conscience (depending on the writer,
either the universe or God), and a sceptical trend, recurring to the safety of
perspective and/or the autoreferentiality of language, endlessly signifying
itself. This essential conflict of Spanish Baroque aesthetics is crystallized by
Borges in the conflict between two of the greatest writers of seventeenth-
century Spain, Góngora and Quevedo, who may be said to represent the
complementary extremes of the baroque aesthetic spectrum. By identifying
a secular mystical element in Góngora’s aesthetics, aiming at the mimetic
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 309

representation of the universe, and a perspectivist aesthetic in Quevedo,

emphasizing the necessary artificiality and self-referentiality of literature,
El Aleph contributes greatly to the understanding of the Góngora-
controversy, which Jorge Luis Borges suggests was actually about the
heretical world view inherent in the orientation of the Soledades towards a
multi-perspectivist mimetic representation of the infinite, conceived of as
an object to be geographically and poetically explored beyond the
limitations imposed on human enterprise by a traditional theological
world view. This incredible ambition would, indeed, have appeared as the
greatest heresy to Francisco de Quevedo, a fervent Catholic, knight of the
Order of Santiago and later to be author of the Polı´tica de Dios y gobierno
de Christo (1626), and it certainly illuminates his fervent attacks on
Góngora’s poems. However, by means of the palimpsest technique,
projecting a personal aesthetic preoccupation onto the Góngora-contro-
versy, Borges not only succeeds in illustrating this central literary historical
feud, but also in drawing a comprehensive portrait of his own highly
conflicting poetic, torn between literary mysticism and scepticism, but all
too often identified exclusively with the latter.

NOTES

1. The Borgesian oeuvre may generally be seen to spring from a critical dialogue with
Baroque aesthetics, the artistic paradigm of Hispanic Golden Age literature. Cf. the
famous prologue to the 1954 edition of Historia universal de la infamia, which
reflects on the Baroque style of the work in the following manner: ‘Yo dirı́a que
barroco es aquel estilo que deliberadamente agota (o quiere agotar) sus possibil-
idades y que linda con su propia caricatura. […] Barroco (Baroco) es el nombre de
uno de los modos del silogismo; el siglo XVIII lo aplicó a determinados abusos
de la arquitectura y de la pintura del XVII; yo dirı́a que es barroca la etapa final de
todo arte, cuando éste exhibe y dilapida sus medios. […] Ya el excesivo tı́tulo de
estas páginas proclama su naturaleza barroca…’
2. Cf. Gongorismo in Humanidades, vol. 15/1927; ‘El culteranismo,’ ‘Un soneto de
don Francisco de Quevedo,’ ‘Para el centenario de Góngora’ and ‘La conducta
novelı́stica de Cervantes’ in: El idioma de los argentinos; ‘Menoscabo y grandeza de
Quevedo’ in Inquisiciones; ‘Examen de un soneto de Góngora’ in El tamaño de mi
esperanza); ‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’ in Ficciones; ‘Quevedo’ and ‘Magias
parciales del Quijote’ in Otras inquisiciones. To this impressive list must be added
the many essays and short fiction, the titles of which don’t refer explicitly to authors
of the Spanish Golden Age, but which are anyway preoccupied with it, cf. mainly
the essays on literary form, language, metaphors and images, such as ‘La
adjetivación’ in El tamaño de mi esperanza; ‘Examen de metáforas’ and ‘Ejecución
310 Sofie Kluge

de tres palabras in Inquisiciones; ‘Otra vez la metáfora’ and ‘La simulación de la

imagen’ in El idioma de los argentinos.
3. Cf. Paul de Man’s reading of Borgesian aesthetics, ‘A Modern Master,’ in Alazraki,
1987).
4. Cf. the reading of Maurice Blanchot, Le litte´raire infini: L’Aleph. (1959). On the
problem of poetic language in literary mysticism, see Kluge, 2003.
5. The fact that the narrator Borges’ beloved is called Beatriz is of course no mere
accident, but establishes a direct link to Dante’s ethereal muse. Borges has written
extensively on Dante, pre-eminently in Nueve ensayos dantescos (1982). There is a
clear accentuation of the hopeless and doting nature of Borges’ affections, e.g., that
‘mi vana devoción la habı́a exasperado’ (p. 176). El Aleph generally represents
Borges’ courtship after the model of courtly love; he used to bring Beatriz presents
as an excuse to see her (No estarı́a obligado, como otras veces, a justificar mi
presencia con módicas ofrendas de libros, p. 176).
6. Freud, to whom J.L. Borges is indeed very much indebted, actually saw art as
parallel to a successful mourning process, conceiving of the artist as someone who
has realized and accepted the loss of his love-object and seeks to replace it by
creating a new one, instead of fixating on the loss. Both activities, the successful
mourning process and art, are thus based on the recognition and acceptance of loss.
(Trauer und Melancholia, 1917).
7. I term this essentially reality-oriented position ‘mimetic’ (as the term ‘realist’ is too
closely associated with nineteenth- century literature), and conceive of it in this
context as the counterpart of a formalist poetic, focusing exclusively on the
mechanisms of language, not on any exterior object to be represented. However,
this opposition does not imply any view of the mimetic position as formally naive.
To the contrary, mimetic literature may even be very stylistically sophisticated, as
the case of Góngora will subsequently demonstrate.
8. Jorge Luis Borges himself once had a mystical experience walking at night in
Buenos Aires, which he subsequently condensed into a number of literary images,
scattered all over his oeuvre, e.g. the ‘zahir’ in El zahir (also in the Aleph collection),
the endless book from El jardı´n de senderos que se bifurcan or the man with the
endless memory in ‘Funes el memorioso in Ficciones.
9. Góngora was rehabilitated in the early twentieth century by the writer/critics of the
so-called ‘generation of 1927,’ preeminently Dámaso Alonso, who has written
extensively on Góngora and Gongorism.
10. Cf. the above-mentioned essays (note 2).
11. Cf. Quevedo’s recurrent references to Góngora and the phenomenon of culteran-
ismo in prose texts such as ‘La culta latiniparla’ and ‘Aguja de navegar cultos’ with
its ‘Receta para hacer ‘‘Soledades’’ en un dia,’ and in satirical poems such as Contra
Don Luis de Góngora y su poesı´a. Moreover, in his description of Hell (in ‘El sueño
del infierno’ from the Sueños collection), Quevedo presents culteranist poets as
infamous heretics, who have given up representing the divine and devoted them-
selves completely to the mysteries of literary form. See also my article on Quevedo’s
infernal visions (Kluge, 2004).
12. See also my article on the first Soledad, the first part of which treats the Góngora
feud (Kluge, 2002).
Góngora vs. Quevedo in Borges 311

13. Most documents relevant to the controversy, including Quevedo’s Aguja and a
great number of satirical poems (also by Góngora himself, directed at Quevedo) are
collected in Arancón, 1978.
14. This is of course my interpretation, which is elaborated in Kluge, 2002.
15. Jorge Luis Borges was almost obsessed with infinity as an aesthetic and linguistic
problem (See the essays ‘El idioma infinito’ in El tamaño de mi esperanza, or ‘El
idioma analı́tico de John Wilkins’ in Otras inquisiciones. For the many attempts to
exhaust a theme, see the Historia universal de la infamia or the Historia de la
eternidad. In a different way, the Libro de los sueños (basically a Quevedean exer-
cise, inspired by Los sueños of ‘Don Francisco,’ as Borges sometimes writes) rep-
resents a similar endeavour, among many other examples.
16. To get a grasp of cultisms and neologisms attributed to Góngora, one may take a
look at Quevedo’s Receta:

Quien quisiere ser Góngora en un dı́a

La jeri (aprenderá) gonza siguiente:
Fulgores, arrogar, joven, presiente,
Candor, construye, métrica, armonı́a;

17. See the letter of Góngora in response to the letters and pamphlets circulating at the
court in Madrid, in Arancón, 1978, pp. 42–44).
18. See the list of Gongorine errors, presented by Jorge Luis Borges in the essay ‘El
culteranismo’ in El idioma de los argentinos, p. 61: ‘El consenso crı́tico ha señalado
tres equivocaciones que fueron las preferidas de Góngora: el abuso de metáforas, el
de latinismos, el de ficciones griegas.’
19. See the essay ‘Menoscabo y grandeza de Quevedo,’ in Inquisiciones, p. 46: ‘Una
realzada gustación verbal, sabiamente regida por una austera desconfianza sobre la
eficacia del idioma, constituye la esencia de Quevedo.’
20. Cf. the influential reading of Paul de Man (op.cit.), who, after having stated that
‘[Borges’] stories are about the style in which they are written’ (p.57), writes that:

In actual experience, time appears to us as continuous but infinite; this

continuity may seem reassuring, since it gives us some feeling of identity, but it is
also terrifying, since it drags us irrevocably towards an unknowable future. Our
‘real’ universe is like space : stable but chaotic. If, by an act of mind comparable
to Borges’ will to style, we order this chaos, we may well succeed in achieving an
order of some sorts, but we dissolve the binding, spatial substance that held our
chaotic universe together. Instead of an infinite mass of substance, we have an
infinite number of isolated events incapable of establishing relations among one
another. […] This style in Borges becomes the ordering, but dissolving act that
transforms the unity of experience into the enumeration of its discontinuous
parts. Hence his rejection of style lie´ and his preference for what grammarians
call parataxis, the mere placing of events side by side, without conjunctions.
(p. 60)

According to de Man, Borgesian enumeration thus represents a ‘will to style,’

preoccupied solely with the mechanisms of literary language and renouncing sceptically
any kind of mimetic representation.
312 Sofie Kluge

REFERENCES

Arancón, Ana Marı́a. 1978, La batalla en torno a Góngora, Bosch, Barcelona.

Blanchot, Maurice. 1959, Le littéraire infini: L’Aleph, In: Le livre à venir, Gallimard,
Paris.
De Man, Paul. 1987, A Modern Master, In: Alazraki ed. Critical Essays on Jorge Luis
Borges, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston.
Kluge, Sofie. 2004, The Dialectics of Redemption: Fiction, Heresy and Divine Truth in
Francisco de Quevedo’s El sueño del infierno, Orbis Litterarum, 59, 6.
–. 2002, Góngoras Soledades: Der barocke Traum von der enzyklopädischen
Beherrschung der Welt, Orbis Litterarum, 57, 3.
–. 2003, Ästhetisches Bild und Christliche Mystik im Cántico espiritual des San Juans
de la Cruz, Orbis Litterarum, 58, 5.

Sofie Kluge. Born 1975. Ph.D. student, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies,
University of Copenhagen. Author of several articles on Spanish Golden Age litera-
ture, and a forthcoming book on the critical reception of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don
Quixote.