The theme of death in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges

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Authors Howey, Charlotte Stockdale, 1943-

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TIE THEME OF DEATH II THE SHORT STORIES OF

JORGE LUIS BORGES

by
Charlotte Stockdale Howey

A Thesis Smbmitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES

la Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
WITH A MAJOR IN SPANISH

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

19 7 0
I
 STATEMENT BY AWTHOR

This thesis has been submitted, in partial fulfill­

ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The Uni­
versity of Arizona and is deposited in the University
Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the
Libraryo

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable

without special permission» provided that accurate acknowl­
edgment of source is made* Requests for permission for
extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript
in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major
department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his
judgment the proposed use of the material is in the inter­
ests of scholarshipo In all other instances» however, per­
mission must be obtained from the authore

SIGNED s

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR

This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

!3 'h7o
GILBERT Eo EVANS Date
Professor of Romance Languages
 ACKM0WLEDG1MEMTS

I wish to thank Agapito Key and

Charles 01stad for reading and correcting

this thesiso Also» I should like to express

my very special gratitude to Gilbert Eo

Evans, my advisor» without whose patience»

insight, and guidance this thesis might never

have been eompletedo

 TABLE OF C O IM T iS

Page

ABSTKACT »

I, iraOBUeTlQ! ^ „ a. , » « » » ■ 1

II. CHAOS. All)'TBB SBAEOH FIE OHBEB , 0. - . 4

Endnotes to Chapter II 20

III. LABilllTHS AID MIRRORS OF TIME .

ilf -IIFIIITI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Endnotes to Chapter III 48

IV, DISSOLVING REALITY , 51

?. THE FACES OF MAI , , » , 69

 ABSTRACT V

In his short stories, Jorge Lmis Borges writes of

man's attempt to find order in the universeo For the pur­

pose of the short-story form, he reduces the universe to

arbitrary symbols of itself= Two of his most frequently

used metaphors for the universe and life are the labyrinth

and the mirroro

As Borges depicts him, man is aware of certain

realities which he accepts as hard and fasto The greatest

of these hard and fast realities is man's knowledge that he

will die* This knowledge of inevitable death prompts man

to look for order in the chaos of the surrounding universe

in the hope of finding a meaning or pattern to his own

lifeo Often, in Borges' stories, man takes refuge in fan­

tasy o The symbols, such as labyrinths and mirrors, which

man uses to represent the universe in his search for order,

offer him an escape from the very reality he wishes to

interpreto In these dreamworlds that man creates for him­

self, he may alter the circumstances of his life, change

his personality, and even stem the passage of timeo Ulti­

mately, however, Borges says that man's escape from reality

v
is ©mly temporary and that he eanmot alter the passage of

time and» with its passage, death*

 CHAPTER I

IMTRODUCTIOH

Jorge Luis Borges began writing in the qarly 1920 0 s

under the vanguard of Spanish Ultraismo Although born in

Argentina» Borges was educated in Switzerland during World

War I $ after the war he lived in Spain until 1921 and was

closely associated with the group of ultraistas presided

over by Rafael Cansinos Assenso Like so many of the fine

writers of his generation, Borges was caught up in the surge

of "isms" sweeping Europe in the wake of World War I* How­

ever, Borges soon disassociated himself from Ultraism,

eschewing many of the stylistic and thematic tendencies

which he had once endorsed: references to the mechanical

toys, cars, airplanes, and motors of a burgeoning industrial

civilizations the mention of bright colors and geometric

shapes; and the use of unconventional punctuationo Borges

did, however, make concentrated use of the metaphor, brevity,

a quality that was generally admired by the Wltraists, being

an enduring characteristic of his literatureo

Borges has excelled in three genres— poetry, the

essay, and the short storyo Of the three forms, the short

story is perhaps his most representativeo Borges, an

insatiably curious reader until he became almost totally

blind more than a decade ago# draws the inspiration for most

of his writings from literatureo In his short stories,

Borges gives free rein to his particularly literary turn of

mindo Hot only does he refer to known works and authors,

often imagining the circumstances under which works were

written, but also he creates his own writers, often making

them seem deceptively authentico

In Borges 0 stories, literature serves as a metaphor

for the universe, and it is of universal questions that

Borges writes: chaos, infinity, the passage of time, appear­

ance, and realityo Particularly, Borges deals with the

plight of the individual facing cosmic disordero The indi­

vidual is bewildered by the universe in which he liveso It

appears infinite and chaotic; appearances are deceptive and

man knows few absolute truthso He knows only that he is

alive and that he will die°

In the following pages, we-shall see how Borges pre­

sents his own sense of cosmic disorder and how his charac­

ters struggle to reconcile their intuition of an infinite

and chaotic universe with the knowledge of their own finite

nature o

Man is finite, and he must, therefore, deal with

finite symbols; thus he uses his own symbolic system, lan­

guage, to communicate his sense of anguish to otherso He is

limited by self-imposed abstractions in his attempt to

express his own sense of life0s ironies= life, and the

natural consequence of it which is death, is an unfathomable

mystery, and its secrets are comprehensible only when we

realize that we must accept them and can only hope to under­

stand them*
 CHAPTER I I

CHAOS AND THE SEARCH FOR ORDER

Jorge Lmis Borges » in his short stories, has given

expression to his vision of the universeo Whether he is

writing of his native Argentina or of am imaginary land, the

problems with which he deals are universal ones 8 life and

deatho fantasy and reality» chaos and infinity» the passage

of timeo Borges sees the universe as unordered and chaotic;

yet he seeks to reveal» or at least propose, an order to the

cosmos which he, and hopefully some of his readers» will find

meaningfulo To Borges, chaos signifies man's precarious sit­

uation in lifeo The individual is forever torn between his

desire to give to the universe an order and reason which he

intuitively senses must exist and his own intellectual com­

prehension that his knowledge of a universal order, if there

is one, must always remain incompleteo Furthermore, the in­

dividual perceives that his interpretation of the universe

may not coincide with that of otherso Borges can only hope

to point out the absurdity of the human condition by making

a subtle mockery of his own attempts at ordering the uni­

verse to his own liking by interpolating fantastic elements

in his stories to such an extent that, ironically, there is

no distinguishing reality from Borgesean fantasy,,

 As Borges sets it forth in his stories, the human

condition is a dilemmao Man is faced with the confusion of

a world in which he lives and which he wishes to understand,

and he is further faced with the inevitability of his own

extinction* Borges uses language, man's symbolic communica­

tion system and the means by which the individual communi­

cates his personal perceptions of the universe, to reduce

the macrocosm to a symbolic word portrait of itself* In a

few thousand words, he attempts to express the ineffable*

He delights in using the written word as a means of commu­

nicating his own sense of the infinite nature of the uni­

verse, yet he is inevitably frustrated by the very limits of

his own imagination*^

In his first brief short stories, Borges simply re­

worked themes borrowed from other sources to convey his

sense of the insanity of the human conditions "Derivan creo,

de mis relecturas de Stevenson y de Chesterton y aun de los

primeros films de von Sternberg* * * *"2 This first collec­

tion of fictional sketches, Historia universal de la in-

famia, published in 1935» represents Borges' transition from

poet to writer of narrative fiction*3 in it, appear short

sketches of villains and traitors which vaguely suggest the

themes of some of the stories of Ficciones, 1944, and El

Aleph, 194-9 o This slender volume also contains his first

real short story, "Hombre de la esquina rosada* '4

 6
"Hombre d.e la esqiona rosada” is basically a realis­

tic tale in which Borges shows» in his reproduction of the

speech of the orillero» a real affection for his native

Argentinao In it * Borges also shows his deep affinity with

modern detective fiction and the mystery storyo The plot

may well have been influenced by Agatha Christie’s 1928

classic. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, since.the narrator in

each story turns out to be the culprito Reality and illu­

sion are deliberately mixed in this mystery story gambit so

that the narrator seems like.an. impartial bystander rather

than a participant in the action., When the narrator admits

his own guilt, the reader is shocked and confused by the

sudden realization that life’s realities are deceptive and

that they are hard to knowo

With the publication of El jardin de senderos qme se

bifurcan 9 1942, Borges emerged as a refreshing and important

short-story writer, not only in Latin American but also in

international literature= In his stories, he asserts his

vision of a universq which is seemingly chaotic; yet he

seeks to glean the elements of order from this chaos 0 In

dqbar, orbis tertius," the first story of El jardfn

de semderos que se bifurcan, Borges presents an imaginary

planet created by philosopherso Since Tlon is a fantastic,

ideal product of the human imagination, all real things on

Tlon, to remain real, must be attested to constantly<, Tlon

is apparently a place ©f utter confusion, mirroring the real

world that i t representso The philosophers of TlSn are not

seeking after ultimate truth but rather they are men trying

to astonisho The metaphysicians of Tlon, having renounced

the search for ultimate values, are exponents, as is Borges

himself, of fantastic fiction as p h i l o s o p h y * ^ Mjmzgan que

la metafisiea es una rama. de la literatura f a n t a s t i c a * ” 6

However, for all the confusion and fantasy of Tlon, it does

have an ascertainable order to it, or at least Borges so.

contendsg MTlon sera mn laberinto pero es un laberinto

urdido por hombres, un laberinto destinado a que lo desei-

fran los hombres*"?

Borges has created in Tlon a limited universe*

Within itself a complete unit, Tlon is a symbolic represen­

tation of the universe, seemingly, and paradoxically, ■

chaotic in its unity* Tlon symbolizes the universe § yet

Tlon, unlike the universe, is limited by the order that the

minds of the men who created it have proposed for it* Its

limitations make it a finite symbol of a world which seem­

ingly offers an infinite and chaotic variety of experiences*

At the end of the story, Borges suggests that, once all the

missing volumes of the Encyclopedia of Tlon, which the phi­

losophers compiled, have been discovered, the philosophers'

dream of Tlon may replace the world that Tlon caricatureds

•"Eaton©©s desapareGeran del planeta el inglSs y al frameIs y.

el mero espamolo El mumdo sera Tlono"® Thms Borges implies

that there is am order to the universe but that man eamnot

understand it because its order« like the universe itself*

is infinite and man is finiteo Therefore, he can only sub­

stitute an order which he has created for an order which he

senseso

In "Las ruinas circulares," Borges intertwines the

symbol of concentric circles with an old man's dream to sug­

gest an infinite universe in which fantasy and reality mergeo

An old man retires to the jungle to live in an old native

ruin shaped in the form of concentric circleso There he

hopes to create a man in his dreams, a psychic, rather than

a physical, offsprings "El proposito que lo gmiaba no era

imposible kunque si sobrenatural= Querla sonar un hombres

querla sonarlo eon imtegridad mimueiosa e impomerlo a la

realidado"9

The dream son acquires form and substance as the old

man dreams, but his dream product is not animated 0 It lacks

the essence of a man until the fire god of the old native

temple appears to the old man, also in a dream, and instills

the son with life so that he may preside in another of the

god’s templess

Ese multiple dios le revelo que su nombre terrenal

era Fuego ? que en ese tempi© circular (y en otros
iguales) le habiam remdido saerificios y eulto y
que mSgicamente animarla al fantasma semade, de
suerte que to das las criaturas, el Fuego mi sib© y el
 9
sdSador* lo pernsaram mm homfere de carme y Mmesoo
Lo ordemS qme mma vez imstrmido em los rites, lo
enriara al otro tempi© despedazado emyas pirimides
persisten aguas abajo 9 para qme algmna voz lo
glorificara em aqmel edificio desiertoo Em el
suemo del hombre qme somaba* el somado se despertAo-®-®

There is a poetic vagmemess amd elmsivemess abomt

“las rmimas circmlareso" as if the dreamlike atmosphere were

created to emhamce the basic themeo" It has beem called "el

mi.3 poStieo de las cmemtos de Borgeo"^ The old man's

dreams are dreams within dreams» cyclical like the repeti­

tive circles of the decaying temple itselfo The old mam,

his dream sen# amd the'rained temples are ultimately de­

stroyed by a fire» the very fire which gave life to the

creative dream* Thus there is a cycle of creation amd death*

When the old man sees the fire approaching, he meets his

death as in a dream in which he awakens to the true meaning

of his existence 8

Camim6 contra los jirones de fmego* Estes no

mordierom sm earne, Sstos lo acariciarom y lo
inmndaron, sin calor y sin combustion* Com
alivio, eon hmmillaeiOn, con terror, compremdio
qme el tambilm era mma apariemeia, qme otro estaba
som&ndele * 1 2

"Las rmimas ciremlares" amd "Tlpn, Uqbar, orbis ter-

tims" deal with the introduction of mental creations into

the w o r l d * B o t h Tlon and the old mam's son are dreamed,

but on different levels* The son is a personal dream, amd

Tlon is the dream child of many* let, each acquires reality

within the context of the story to such an extent that they

become synonymous with the reality which they were meant to

represento The dream is an ordered, representation of the

reality it symbolizes; it is the author's proposed order for

•seeming chaos» an order which he does not necessarily under­

stand but rather dreams and feels intuitively =>

Borges compares life to a. tremendous lottery in "la

loterla en Babiloniao" The narrator represents himself as a

sort of Everymang "Como todos los hombres de Babilonia he

sido proconsulg com© todos esclavo; tambilm he eomoeid© la

omnipotencia, el oprobio» las ellreeleso He tells the

history of the Babylonian lotteries» explaining why the

first ones failedg "Su virtud moral era mulao Mo se

diriglan a todas las facultades del hombre g inieamente a su

esperanzao"15 Gradually, thelottery attracted theinterest

of the people because unlucky chances were put in with the

lucky ones» Just as in real life, luck favored some and not

others, but everybody had to play the gameo According to

the narrator, a group of merchants, called "La Compania,M

directed the lottery originally, but over the years the

"Compania" acquired a mysteriously omnipotent qualityo Its

influence was felt but never directly manifestedg

La Compania, com modestia divima, elude toda

publicidado Sus agentes, com© es natural, son
secretes; las Srdenes que imparts comtinuamemte
(quiz#, imcesamtememte) no difieren de las que
prodigam los impostoreso Ademas $ & quien podra
jaetarse de ser un mero impostor? El ebrio que
improvisa un mandate absurd©» el sonador que se
despierta de golpe y ahoga eon las manos a la mujer
 11
qme d m e m e a sm lado gno ejeomtam, aeaso, m a
seereta dleeisiim die la C®mpaE£a? Ese fmeionamiemt®
sileeioso» comparable al de Diosn provoea teda
suerte de conjeturaso Alguna abominablemente
imsinia qme haee ya siglos qme mo existe la CompaSia
y qme el saero desordem de nmestras vidas es pmra-
memte hereditario» tradiciomalg otra la jmzga Serma
y emsema qme perdmrard hasta la lltima moehe, emamdo
el ditime dios amomade el mundo» Otra deelara qme
la CompaSia es omnipotente» pero qme s6 lo imflmye em
eosas mimisemlas s em el grit© de mm pdjaro» em los
matices de la herrmmbre y del polv®»' em los emtre-
smemos del alba* Otra, por obra de heresiareas em-
masearados, "qme mo ha existido mmmea y mo existirdo”
Otra mo memos ril, razoma qme es imdiferemte afirmar
o megar la realidad de la temebrosa eorporaeiom,
porqme Babilomia mo es otra cosa qme mm imfimito
jmeg® de azaresold

Borges clearly emjoys toying with religions thoughto

In the preceding passage, he alludes to agnosticism, deism,

theism, pantheism, and atheisnio Bmt» ultimately, any reli­

gious interpretation of the universe is merely a symbolic

ordering of experience by which mem propose an order to a

chaotic:universe which they can only wish to comprehend,

knowing that the only real understanding of the universe ex­

ists in the realization that man cannot comprehend it, bmt

simply experience it»

nevertheless, Borges" protagonists, and a l l 'Ser­

ges earn heroes, are in some way Borges himself, are engaged

in a search for the unknowable, aware of the irony of such a

seareho In "La biblioteea de Babel," the protagonist em­

barks on a search for order in chaos and discovers that he

must content himself with the hope of finding meamimgo The

very word "Babel" demotes the utter confusion of the library.

 12
and.» symbolically 9 of the nniverse« The library itself has

a symmetrical structure 0 but its very vastness precludes the

possibility of one person’s finding its beginning or end*

The library contains infinite combinations of letters and

words 9 and it is only by chance that a masterpiece or even a

readable work appears in its stackso

The narrator sustains himself within the confusion

of the library with the hope that 9 among the library’s in­

finite volumes 9 there will be a book that contains a key to

the universeo O r 9 this failing 9 he hopes to discover an

order within the seemingly infinite chaos of the library:

Yo me atrevo a imsimuar esta solueiSn del

antiguo problems: ola^liblioteca es ilimitada y
periodical Si un eterno viajero la atravesara en
-eualquier direcei$n» comprobarla al cab© de los
siglos que los mismos volfimenes se repiten en el
mismo desorden (que 9 repetido 9 serla un orden 9 el
Orden)= Mi sqledad se alegra com esa elegante
esperanza017

Borges often reduces life to a symbolic search for

ordero Here the librarian-narrator is man engaged in an

endless effort to catalogue his experiences so that he may

understand the universeo Man lives in helplessness 9 sus­

pecting that within the chaos that surrounds him there is

meamimgolB

Borges hints at the infiniteness of the universe by

presenting symbolic representations of ito the lot­

tery 9 and the library suggest the universe 9 but they are

reductions of it to a limited and recognizable symbolo This

attempt to reduce the universe to an ordered symbol of its

 13
own chaotie self is a recurrent theme in Borges 0 short

storieso In three stories of El Alephp he eoneentrates the

sum total of human experience in a small object or symbolo

In "El Z a k i r * a single coin, rather than a lottery$ con­

tains the secret of the universes in MLa eseritura del Bios,"

a. scant fourteen words, rather than a librarys in "El

Aleph," a single imaginary point in space, rather than a

planeto The Zakir, the Aleph, and the God's script— -all

offer a revelation of the universeo Yet, Borges hints that

possession of this secret knowledge is as absurd and chaotic

as is the universe itself<=19

The protagonist of "La eseritura del Dios" is an

Aztec priest imprisoned by Pedro de Alvarado = Having

nothing else to do, Tzimae&n, the priest,.contemplates the

mystery of the universeo He begins by counting the spots on

the jaguar in the cell next to his, hoping to discover a

pattern which will reveal an order to the cosmic scheme of

things 0 He finally gives that up and considers the problem

of perfect knowledge through language and the ramifications

of a single words

Consider# que aun en los lemguajes humanes no

hay proposieiSn que no impliqu# el universe enter© 5
deeir "el tigre" es deeir los tigres que lo
engendraron, los eiervos y tortogas que devoro, el
paste de que se alimentaron los eiervos, la tierra
, que fue madre del pasto, el eielo que diS luz a la
tierrao Consider# que en el lenguaje de un dios
toda palabra emuneiaria esa infinite eoneatenacion
de los heehos, y no de un mod© implicit©, simo ex­
plicit©, y no de un modo progresive, sin©
inmediat©o2 ©
 1*
Tzinao&m immerses himself in a dream life within the

narrow confines of his cell* much as didthe old man of "Las

ruinas eirculares*" hoping for a revelation from his godo

Finally* he experiences a mystical dream in which he sees a

wheel that reveals the whole universe to him 8

Vi el universe y vi los imtimos designios del uni-

verso o Vi los orlgenes gue narra el Libro del
Gomuno Vi las momtanas qme surgieron del agua* vi
los primeros hombres de palo» vi las timajas qme se
volvieron contra los hombres * vi los perros qme les
destrozaron las caraso Vi el dios sin cara que hay
detras de los dioseso Vi infinites proeesos que
formaban una sola felieidad y, entiSndolo todo*
aleancS tambiSn a entender la eseritura del tigreo^l

Before his dream* fzinacdn had complained of his im­

potence o as a jailed and outcast priesto In his eyes» his

circumstances had diminished himc "¥n hembre se confunde»

gradualmente* eon la forma de su destine; un hombre es» a la

larga* sms eireunstaneiaso m £s que un descifrador © un ven-

gador» mi.s que un saeerdote del dios» yo era un encarce-

ladOo " 2 2 After his mystical experience* TzinaeSn no longer

complains of his situation With -absolute knowledge * he has

also attained absolute powero He has only to utter the

fourteen words of the tiger god's script to be free, to do

anything he likes 8

Me bastaria decirla para abolir esta c&reel de

piedra* para qme el d£a emtrara en mi noehe* para
ser joven* para ser immortal* para qme el tigre
destrozara a Alvarado» para sumir el santo cuehillo
en pechos espamoles * para reconstruir la piramide *
para reconstruir el imperioo2 3
 15
However» Tzinae&m chooses to remain in his prisono He

realizes that his goal has been obtained, and, realizing

this, he knows his eircrastamees as an individual no longer

mattero His own circumstances are the circumstances of all

men, and his identity has been dwarfed and diminished in the

presence of the cosmoss

Que muera eonmigo el misterio que esti. escrito

en los tigreso Quien ha entrevisto el universe,
fmien ha entrevisto los ardientes designios del uni­
verse , no puede pemsar eh un hombre, en sus
triviales dichas o desvemtmras, aunque ese hombre
sea Sle Ese hombre "ha sido el" y ahora no le im-
portao Que le importa la smerte de aqmel etro, que
le importa la maoi 6 n de aquel etro, si el, ahora es
nadieo Per eso no pronuneio la formula, per eso
dejo que me olviden los d£as, aeostad© en la oscuri-
dado24

Borges himself is the protagonist of "El Zahir" in

which he again presents a microcosm of the universeo After

receiving a small coin, a Zahir, as change, Borges becomes

obsessed with it* He sees the Zahir as a symbol of the uni­

verse, and, try as he may to rid himself of the coin and his

obsession with it, he cannoto He sees money as an abstrac­

tion of the universes

El diner© es abstract©, repetx, el dinero es tiemp©

future* Puede ser una tarde en las afmeras, puede
ser mitsiea de Brahms, puede ser mapas, puede ser
ajedrez, puede ser oaf 6 , puede ser las palabras de
Epieteto, que emsenan el despreeio del ©rog es un
Proteo mas versHtil que el de la isla de Pharos»25

Borges investigates the history of the Zahir, and soon the

tiny coin becomes a symbol of the whole history and future

of the universeo The Zahir has superimposed itself on the

 16
real world, of his everyday existence mmtil it has become the

focal point of his life 8

El tiempo» que atenia los reeuerdos? agrava el

del Zahir» Antes 9 yo me figmraba el amverso y
despmSs el reverseb ahera, veo simmltaneamente
los doso Elio no oemrre come si fnera de eristal
el Zahir» pmes mna cara mo se superpeae a la otra;
m£s bien oemrre com© si la visi 6 n fmera esferica
y el Zahir oampeara en el eemtroo2©

Borges goes on to speak of Tennyson's "Flower in the Granny

Wall" in connection with his own search for meaning in the

Zahir 8

Dijo Tennyson que si pudioramos eompremder mna sola

flor sabrlamos qmiSnes semes y qmS es el iammdoo
Tal vez quiso deeir que no hay heoho, por humilde
que sea, que no impliqme la historia universal y sm
imfimita eomeatemaeiom de efectos y eamsaso Tal
vez quiso deeir que el mmndo visible se da enter©
en eada representaci 6 n» de igmal mamera que la
volmntad, segin Schopenhauer» se da emtera en cada
smjetoo Los cabalistas entendieron que el hombre
es un microcosm©, mn simbolico espejo del universe;
todo, seg€n Tennyson 1© serlao Tod© hasta el in­
tolerable Zahiro2?

In his search for meaning, Borges often equates man,

as in "Las rmimas circulares»" or man's creations, such as

Tlom, to a dream* The dream thus threatens to overcome the

reality which it representso Borges feels this threat with

the Zahirs

Ya no pereibirS el universe, pereibirS el Zahir=

Segin la doetrina idealista, los verbos vivir y
sonar son rigmrosamente siminimos; de miles de
apariencias pasarS a una; de un sueno muy complej©
a un sueno muy simple* Otros sonarin que estoy
loco y yo com el Zahir* Grnamdo todos los hombres
de la tierra piensem, dla y noche, en el Zahir,
Seuil seri, mn sueno y emal una realidad, la tierra
o el Zahir?2S
 17
AMs. eventually# the dream symbol may become as senseless as

that which it represents.s

Para perderse en Bios# los smfies repitem su propio

nombre o los moventa y mueve nombres divinos hasta
qme estos ya mada qmierem deciro Yo amhel© recorrer
esta semdao QmizS. yo aeabe por gas tar el Zahir a
fuerza de pemsarlo y de repemsarlo? tmizS detris de
la momeda est& Dios029

Again# in the title story of El Aleph# Borges writes

of the ultimate frustration of trying to express an order in

chaoso Here# his microcosm is an imaginary point in space#

the figment of a madman’s imagination# but a figment so

strong that it captures Borges” imagination*

As the story begins # Borges has gone to pay his re­

spects to the family of his old friend# Beatriz: Elena

Viterbo* Through the years# Borges forms an acquaintance

with Beatriz’s cousin# Carlos Argentine Baneri# a crackpot

poet* Finally# Bamari reveals the source of his poetic in­

spiration to Borges* He tells Borges that there is a spot

in the basement of his old house which reveals everything in

the universe to the beholder* When the old house is ordered

torn down# Baneri enlists Borges” help in saving it* Even­

tually# Borges goes to Baneri”s house to see the Aleph*

Upon seeing the Aleph# Borges feels that he truly

understands the futility of trying to give expression to a

chaotic universe* The Aleph# although tiny, is cosmic in

scope and# through it# Borges momentarily grasps all that

is# and w a s # and will be* Borges# the protagonist# like the
 18
librarians the narrator of "La loterla en Babilonia»” the

old man in "Las rminas eiremlaress" and Tzimao&n, realizes

that man is bmt an imperfect repliea of perfections groping

with his imperfect tools languages to express a perfect

order to infinity and chaos:

Arribo ahora al inefable eentro de mi relate;

empiezas aqmls mi desesperaeiln de eseritero Todo
lemguaje es mn alfabeto de slmbolos emy© ejereicio
presupone urn pasado que los interloeutores com-
parten; edmo transmitir a los otros el infinite
Alephs que mi temeresa memoria apenas abareao30

The attitude here is one of frustration and dissat­

isfaction with the writer’s verbal tools* Borges realizes

that Dameri’s poetry seemed silly and incomprehensible be­

cause Daneris as is Borges himself» was imperfectly equipped

to express the totality of his vision of the Alepho

The problem of language takes on a special signifi­

cance in the works of Borges* Language is am imperfects and

often deceptive» tool of individual expression; yet it is

also a necessity for intellectual and emotional expression*

Borges sees language as a necessary, and at the same time

unfortunate, aspect of human existence*31 Yet, Borges knows

that it is only through language that the thinking man, .

aware of his own helplessness in the face of cosmic disorder,

is able to express both his own individuality and his sense

of identity with all mankind* Gutierrez Girardot, in his

critical essay on Borges, sums up this attitude in the fol­

lowing manners
 El lemgmaje eomo medie de comtamieaciSiu el
lengmaje come elasifieaeiSn del infinite m i y e r s e »
el lemguaje eerae estrmetmra gramitieals este
lengmaje de mortales es mn engano de la eon-
eieneian aparieneia de mma realidad que ereernes
poseer y que se nos eseapa» dejande en nuestras
manes formas raelas para satisfaeer, con el
jmego, la neeesidad de deseifrar el e©sm©So32

In the last paragraph of "El Alepht," .Borges ex­

presses his own anguish at being unable to communicate the

absolute reality« the revelation of a perfect order to

chaos» because the ineffable moment of revelation is lost

forever in his minds

gExiste ese Aleph en le Intime de una piedra?

§1 .© he visto euando vi tadas las eosas y lo he
olvidado? Nuestra mente es pofosa para el olvido;
yo mismo estoy falseando y perdiend©» bajo la
trSgiea erosion de los anos, los rasgos de
Beatriz033

Perhaps Borges is saying here that the search for meaning

never really ends, for, when we believe we have glimpsed it,

it escapes from us, and, "along the way, it is less impor­

tant to know than to feelo"3^

 20

Endnotes to Chapter II

Marla Barren©cheas Borges, the Labyrinth Maker

(lew York! .lew York Iniyersity Pressp 196$), p* ??«
Cbsar Fern.6d.ez Moreno, Esouema de Borges (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Perrot, 195?), p% 28
% /
^Fernandez Moreno, p, 28»
h s
Fernandez Moreno, p, 29*
"'Andre Maurois, preface. Labyrinths, Selected
Stories, and Other Writings. Borges, eds* Donald A 0 Yates
and James E, Irby (lew York: lew Directions, 1964), P« x l t *
^Jorge Luis Borges, El jardim de senderos que se
bifurcan (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1942), p 0 21,
fBorges, ^ jardin, p, 34*

^Borges, El jardin. p, 35*

% o rg e Luis Borges, Flcciones (Buenos Aires: Emece
Editores, 1956), p,.60, "
10
Borges, Fieclones, pp. 63-64*
^Jose" Bios Patron, Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires:
Editorial landragora, 1995), P* 94*
^Borges, El jardin. p, 71*
^Barren©ehea, p, 122,

^Borges, Flcciones, p, 67*

• 15Borges, Ficciones.

^Borges.' Ficclones, pp* 74-75*

^^Borges,. Flcciones. p. 95,

Barrenechea, p, 58*
 21
^Rafael SmtiSrrez Girardot, J@rge Luis Borges >
Busayo de iaterpreta&i&a (Madrids Imsula» 1959)» P° 60o
^9Jorge Luis Borges» El Aleph» p° 118o

2lBorges» El A1 epli o p o 120 o

^^BorgeSp Alepkg po 119o
23iorgeSs El Aleph, ppo 120-121o
^^Borges, El Aleph, po 121o
25Borges, El Aleph, p 0 10?o

2&Borges, El Aleph, ppo 112-113°

2^Borges, El Aleph, p° 113°

Z^Borges, ^ Aleph, p° 113°

29sorges, El Aleph, po 11^°

30Borges, El Aleph, p° 163°

3lGirard©'fe, po 5^°
32Crirardot, p° 5^°

33Borges, El Aleph, p° 169°

3^'*Journey Without an End,” lime (larch 2#, 196?),

Volo 89 9 M©o 12 9 p o 9©°
 CHAPTER I I I

LABYRINTHS AND MIRRORS OF TIME AND INFINITY

Borges uses a number of symbols in his stories to

represent the universeo Tlon» the lottery» the library» and.

a coin have already been mentioned as metaphors for the uni­

verse o Perhaps the mirror, and especially the labyrinth,

are Borges' favorite symbols of the infinite, repetitive

cycle of lifeo The labyrinth assumes a variety of forms in

Borges' short stories; it may be a library, an imaginary

planet, a straight line, or a deserto Always, however, the

labyrinth represents the mystery of life and man's attempts

to find order and meaning in the midst of apparent eonfusiemo

Tlon, an imaginary planet, is also a labyrinth, and

Borges says that he owes its discovery to, at least in­

directly, a mirrors "Bebo a la conjuncion de un espejo y de

una eneiclopedia el deseubrimiento de Uqbaro Borges goes

on to explain how, through the mirror and the encyclopedia,

he enters a fantastic, imaginary world, much as Alice went

down the rabbit's hole or through the looking-glasso Borges

says that he and Bioy Gasares had been having a rather

heated literary discussion in a country house that they had

rented when they suddenly noticed the distorted reflections

 23
given @ff "by a mirror at the end of a hallway 0 This phenom­

enon prompted Bioy Casares to remark that one of the heresi-

archs of Wqbar had once observed that mirrors and copulation

are abominable because they increase the number of memo

Borges 9 intrigued by the comment» asked the source of it,

Bioy Gasares said he had seen the comment in The Amglo-

Ameriean Encyclopedia, but they could find no entry under

Uqbar or any possible variant spelling in the encyclopedia

set at the country house* Borges dismissed the comment as

his friend°s inventiono But the next day, Bioy Gasares

found an article on Wqbar in his own set of encyclopediaso

From this article, they discovered that Wqbar had vague

roots in the Middle East and that its literature is of a

fantastic mature, Tlpn being one of the imaginary lands

where its epics took place*

Thereafter, Borges discovers vague allusions to an

imaginary land, although he never finds another copy of the

encyclopedia which contains the article on Wqbar» Finally,

he has the luck to come into the possession of the eleventh

volume of A First Encyclopedia of Tlom.o He learns from this

that Tlpm is an imaginary planet, a "laberinto urdido por

hombreso” Tlon is seemingly as chaotic and distorted as the

world it representso He asserts that its reality is Berke-

leyiam in natureo Its reality is dependent upon the mental

processes of the men who have created it* There is no

spaeial perception.of objects in flSno Its languages con­

tain no nouns 9 and objects are but poetic creations of its

writers of fantastic literatureo

The philosophers of Tlom are also inconsistent and

contradictoryo Reality has no place in Tlono Its meta­

physicians "no buscan la verdad ni sidera la verosimilitud $

buscan el a s o m b r o o T i m e is especially a challenge to

their imaginations and there is a diversity of opinion about

it in T l o m .

lima de las eseuelas de Tlon llega a negar el

tiemp© 8 razona que el presente es indefinido» que
el future no tiene realidad sino com© esperamza
presente 9 que el pasad© no tiere realidad sino come
reeuerd© presents* ©tra eseuela declare que ha
transeurrido ya todo el tiemp© y que mmestra vida
es apemas el reeuerd© e reflejo crepuscular 9 y sin
duda falseado y mutilado 9 de un proses® irrecu-
perable© 0 tra 9 que la historia del universe— y
en ella nuestras vidas y el m&s tenue detail© de
nuestras vidas— es la esoritura que produce un dios
subaltern© para entenderse eon un demonio» Otra
que el universo es comparable a esas criptograflas
que sueede eada treseientas noeheso ©tra 9 que
mientras dormimos aqul 9 estamos despiertos en otro
lado y que as! eada hombre es dos hombres 0 3

These TIBnian schools of thought have little in common ex­

cept that they deny the passage of time* The temporal flow

is replaced by a series of thoughts => Remembering that Tlom

is an imaginary planet 9 an idea and an ideal world created

by philosophers 9 we have something very like Berkeley's

idealism here» especially bearing in mind Borges" final ad­

monition that "el mundo sera Tlomo"

 25
Barreneehea has noted the impact of Berkeley°s idealism

on Borges" w r i t i n g s B e r k e l e y i a n idealism is particularly

apparent in ’’Tlon? Wqhar, orbis tertiuso,e Berkeley believed

that to exist an object or an idea had to be present in the

mind of a beholder or of the divinityo The Tlonian concepts

of time presuppose an awareness of time and its passage 9

just as Berkeley presupposes a beholder and his existenceo

Borges points up the paradox ®f Berkeley's hypothesis in

"Hueva refutacion del tiempo"s

Admit!do el argument© idealista, entiend© que es

posible— tal vez» inevitable— ir mis lejoso Para
Berkeleyp el tiempo es la smcesiln de ideas que
flmye uniformememte y de la que todos leg-seres par-
ticipano Sin embargo» negadas la materia y el es-
pfritup que son eontinuidadesp megado tambiin el
espaeio, no se con qui dereeh© retemdremos esa eon-
tinmidad que es el tiempoo5 .

The philosophers of florn have succeeded in nullifying time

by granting it existence only in the presentp or in an ar­

bitrarily described moments "Que solo es verdad lo que

sucede eada trescientas nocheso" Yetp Borges feels the pas­

sage of time and his own agingp and he can only justify his

feeling by indulging in fantasy— that he is immortal by

being anothers "Gada hombre es dos hombres»* or that an idea

will replace the reality which it represents and that T!$m»

indeedp will be the world=

In "La biblioteca de Babelp" Borges has created a

vast library as a metaphor of the universeo The library is

 26
labyrinthine in form and the mirrors in its corridors inti­

mate infinity 8

El universo (qme otros llaman la liblioteoa) es

eompone de um nimero indefiaido* y tal vez infinitei,
de galeries hexagomalesp eon vastos pozos de ven-
tilaeion en el medio» cereados por barandas
bajlsimaso Desde eualqmier hexigono» se ven los
pisos inferiores y superioress intermimablememteo
La distribuciSn de las galerlas es invariableo
Veinte anaqueles, a eineo largos anaqueles por lado,
embren todos los lados memos doss su altura» qme es
la de dos pisos» exeede apenas la de mm biblio-
teeario normalo Wna de las oaras librSs da a mm
angosto zaguino qme desemboea en otra galeria,
identica a la primera y a todaso A izqmierda y a
dereeha del zagmirn hay un espeje, qme fielmente
dmpliea las aparienciaso Los hombres smelen in- .
ferir de ese espeje qme la Biblioteea no es in-
fimita (si lo fmera realmente ga qme esa dmpliea-
eiom ilmsoria?)s yo prefiere solar qme las super­
ficies? brunidad figuran y prometem el infinite 0

The preceding passage describes the perfect symmetry

of a universe» the components of which repeat themselves in­

finitely o The idea of infinity in the library is pointed up

by the mention of the mirror 0 Borges finds in the mirrors

the promise of infinityo Some have suggested that the li­

brary is mot infinite for, if it were, there would be no

need for mirrors to duplicate it* Borges, however, by find­

ing a promise of infinity in the mirrors, suggests that am

illusion of infinity is adequate for man*

The promise of infinity is also found in the idea of

the Eternal Retmrmingo The geometrical symmetry of the li­

brary and the endless rows of books which all look alike are

a repetitive eyeleo The library itself is cyclical, and

within it there is a book* a book which implies all books«

"Ese libro eiclieo es Dioso"? Man is the eternal traveler

in the corridors« seeking an order which will be discernible

only because it repeats itselfo The librarian knows that

success lies in finding Mque los mismos vol&nenes se repiten

em el mism© desorden (que* repetido, ser£a un orden s el

©rden)ow®

Borges speaks again of cyclical search in "El

ae ere anient© a Alm@tl.simo" He cites The Approach to Al-

motasim, using the device of a story within a story, as an

imaginary novelo There are various versions of this work,

according to Borges s an illustrated edition is called The

Conversation with the Man Called Al-Mu 8 tasim, and it is sig­

nificantly subtitled "A Game with Shifting Mirrors0" As

Borges relates the story of the novel, it deals with a young

man's search for light and the man "que esuiguala esa elari-

dado”9 The young mam finally finds AlmotSsim in the same

place in which he started his search» This does not mean,

however, that the search is over: "o 0 ? tambien El Todo­

pe dero so ■esti. en busea de Alguien, y ese Alguien de Alguien

superior (o simplememte impreseimdible e igual) y asi hasta

el Fin— o mejor, el Sinfin— del Tiempo, o en forma

cielicao"1® Rather, it means that when we think it is over,

we must begin again»

In the title story of El jardin de sender©s que se

bifurcan, Borges uses the labyrinth as a central themeo

This story is one of Borges’ richest in its poetic

imageryoil it is also am excellent mystery story which may

be read solely for entertainment© lastly» it is one of

Borges 0 most revealing stories in terms of his amgmish over

the passage of time and his own attempts to rationalize ito

Tsmm, the protagonist, is a Chinese engaged on a

spy mission for the Germans in England daring World War lo

Seeking to complete his mission, and also, apparently, to

find refuge from a pmrsmimg agent, Tstm boards a train to go

to the house of Stephen Albert, a Sinologist who has devoted

himself to the study of a novel which Team’s great­

grandfather wroteo As Tsun travels towards his destination,

he indulges in fantasy, hoping to transcend time, the time

that is so important to the completion of his spy mission§

"El ejecutor de uma empresa atroz debe imaginar

fme ya ha eumplido, debe imponerse un porvemir que
sea irrevocable eomo el pasado o" As£ procedi yo
mientras mis ©jos de hombre ya muerto registraban
la fluencia de aquel d£a que era tal vez el Ultimo,
y la difusion de la moehe < > 1 2

Tsun is caught in the labyrinth of his own destiny,

knowing that, whether he completes his mission or not, his

pursuer will overtake him, and, as he travels towards its

exit, death, he thinks of another labyrinth which his great-

grandfather , T s ’ui Pen, had planned to buildo He becomes

entranced with the idea of a perfect labyrinth, "un laber-

imto de laberintos," and is able to divorce himself from his

present circumstancess "Absort© em esas ilusorias imSgemes,

 29
olvide mi destine de persegmid©o Mi sent! per un tiempo in-

determinado« pereibidor abstract®, del mnndoo”13 •

When Tsmn arrives at Albert0s homse, they enter int©

a discussion about fs'ui Pen* Tsun declares that his ances­

tor had never accomplished what he set out to do when he re­

tired from his job as a government official and started to

write a novel and build a labyrinth» because fs'ui Pen's

novel was quite incomprehensible and he had never built a

labyrinth at alio Albert, however, assures Tsun that Ts'ui -

Pen had finished his labyrinth, for his novel is a labyrin­

thine vision of times

El jardin de senderos que se bifmrean es una

imagem ineompleta, poro no falsa, del universe tal
eomo 1© concebfa fs'ui Pemo A diferemcia de lewton
y de Schopenhauer» su amtepasado no erela en un
tiempo uniforme, absolute» Orela em infinites
series de tiempo, en una red ereciemte y vertiginosa
de tiempos divergentes, eonvergentes y paraleloso
Ese trama de tiempos que se aproximan, se bifurcan,
se cortan o que seeularmente se igmoran, abarea
todas las posibilidadesol^

Albert goes on to elaborate this theory, declaring that

fs'ui Pen's novel is infinite because it allows for all pos­

sibilities in any sitmatiom In an eerie presaging of

things to come, he applies fs'ui Pen's philosophy to his own

relationship with fs.uns

Em todas las fieciones, eada vez que un hombre

se emfremta eon diversas alternatives, opta per una
y elimima las otras; en la del easi inextricable
f s ’ui Pen, opta-— simultSneamente— per todaso Grea,
as£, diverse porvenires, diversos tiempos, que
tambiSn proliferan y se bifureamo De ah£ las
 CQntradieciones de la novelao Fangs digames» tiene
nn secret©$ nn deseenoeido llama"a su paertai Fang
resuelve matarlo o

Nataralmente, hay varies desenlaees posibless

Fang puede matar al intruso» el intrmso puede matar
a Fangs amhos pueden salvarse, ambos pmeden morir,
et eSterao En la ©bra de Ts*ui Pen, todos los
desenlaees oeurrens eada uno es el punt© de partida
de otras biftireaeiemes« Alguna vez, los semderos
de ese laberinto ©omvergens por ejemplo, msted
llega a esta easa, per© en uno de los pasades.
posibles msted es mi enemigo, en otro mi amigo 0 ^ 5

Albert continues his exposition of Ts'ui Pen's philosophy of

time, suggesting again that he and Tsun, although they seem

to have established an instant rapport, will be enemiesg

Ho existimos en la mayorla de estos tiemposs en

algunos exists msted y no yo; en ©tros, ye, no
msted; ©tros, los doso En Sste, que un favorable
azar me depara, msted ha llegado a mi easa; en
otro, msted al atravesar el jardim, me ha enoon-
trado mmerto; en otro, yo dig© estas mismas pala-
bras, pero soy mn error, un famtasmao

— -En godos — ar.tieule no sin mn temblor— yo

agradeze© y venero su reereaoidm del jardin de
fs'ui Pen#

— Ho en todos — mmrmurd con mrna sonrisa— . El

tiempo se bifurca perpetuamente haeia innuMerables
futureso En uno de elles soy sm enemigoold

Borges subtly reminds the reader of the mystery by

hinting at menace« One remembers that Tsmn is being pursued

by an enemy and that he is wasting valuable time with Alberto

When Tsmn kills Albert a few moments later, the mystery

mountso The elements of Tsmn’s crime have all been intro­

duced to the story, but the reasons for his actions are not

clear until the final paragraph, as Borges himself says in

 31
his prologue to Fieeiemess "Sms leetores asistirin a la

ejeemeiSm y a todos los preliminares de mm crimen® emyo

proposito mo ignoram per© qme no compremderUm» me pareoe®

hasta el Ultimo parrafoo"!?

"El jardfn de semderos qme se bifmream" is much more

than a clever mystery story, howevero The real mystery is

life, and Tsmn, regretting the action he is going to take,

indulges in a dizzying, dreamy moment of fantasy; "Me

pareei 6 qme el himedo jardfn <pie rodeaha la casa estaba

satmrad© hasta lo infinite de invisibles personaso Esas

personas eram Albert y yo, secretes, atareados y mmltiformes

en ©tras dimemsiones di tiempoo"^® The images Tsmn sees are

blurred and eomfusedo His conscious mind is momentarily

dissolved in the awesome realization of the infiniteo Bar-

remeehea has observed that it is through images such as

these that

the ingenious detective story is intensifiedg a dis­

turbing atmosphere invades and converts it into the
symbol of our destiny as men lost in the universe»
While a labyrinth of time and space (another symbol
of infinity and chaos) surrounds the protagonist, he
sees himself immersed in a world teeming with its
own and the images of its victimo o o =19

Thus, for Tsun, time becomes subordinated to, and blurred

into., images of his own destiny, a destiny, or labyrinth,

which he himself has devised within the framework of a

larger destinyo Series of mental images often suggest laby­

rinths in Borges 0 storieso In "Funes el memories©," a short .

story whieh appears im the seeomd part of Fieoiones in a

section eailed "Artifioios," 1944, the hmraan mind symbolizes

infinity* The story treats of a paralyzed boy with a pro­

digious memory* This character, Ireneo Fumes, is seen

through the eyes,of the narrator, a friend of his who has

recorded some of'Fumes 0 amazing feats of memory* Fumes 0

mind is a maze of sensory memories: "Esos reeuerdos no eran

simples; cada imagen visual estaba ligada a sensaciones,

.musemlares» tSrmieas* * * *"2© So great is Fumes 0 awareness

of everything he has ever seen and experienced that he is

able to say: " M s reeuerdos temgo yo solo que los que habr&m

temido todos los hombres desde que el mumdo es mumd© *

Fumes uses his mental powers not only to recall past

experience but also to create new symbolic orders which are

meaningful only to him because his mind, with its tremendous

powers of recall, is bereft of logic* He has, for example,

devised a new number system, comprehensible only to himselfs

En lugar de siete mil treee, deela (por ejemplo)

Maximo Plrez; en lugar de siete mil catorce, El Fer-
rocarril; otros mimeros eran Luis Melian Lafinur,
Olimar, azufre, los bastos, la ballena, el gas, la
caldera, Hapolelm, Agustin de Vedia* En lugar de
qminientos decia nmeve* Cada palabra tenia um sign©
particular, una especie de marca; las- iltimas eran
muy eomplicadas* * * * Yo trate de expliearle que
que esa rapsodia de voces inconexas era precisamente
lo contrario de un sistema de numeraeion* Le dije
que deeir 365 era decir tres centenas, seis deeenas, •
cino unidades 5 anilisis que no exists en los
"nlmeros" El Hegro Timoteo © manta de earns* Fumes
no me entendio 0 no quiso entenderme *2 " 2
 33
Fanes also has considered devising a new language based on

separate images in which there would be no generic termso

Gertrude Stein’s rose would not be a rose for, in Fanes*

memory» each object that was and is and shall be would have

a separate designations

Locke em el siglo XVII, postal# (y reprobl) un

idioma imposible en el que cada eosa individual, cada
piedra, cada pajaro y cada rama tuviera un mombre
propio 5 Funes proyeet# alguna vez un idioma anSlogo,
pero lo deseeho por parecerle demasiado general,
demasiado ambigmo o En efeeto, Funes no solo re-
eordaba cada hoja de cada irbel de cada monte, simo
cada una de las veees que la habla pereibido o
imaginado023 '

The final irony, however, is that Funes, no matter

how infinite his mind may be, is finite, and Funes himself

understands this0 Often, Funes has tried to remember past

events but he is frustrated because memories are as time-

consuming as the moments they recalls "Dos o tres veees

habla reconstrmid© un dla enter©§ no habla dmdade nunca,

per© cada ree@mstruoci#n habla reguerid© un dia enter© o

At one time, Fanes had also planned to catalogue his mem­

ories , but he rejected the idea, not because it would have

proved too difficult but because he is mortal and would

never have had time to finish the jobs

Resolvio redueir cada, una de sus jormadas pre­

terites a umos setenta mil reeuerdos, que definirla
luego por eifraso Lo disuadieron dos eonsideraeiones s
la eoncieneia de que la tarea era interminable, la
eoncieneia de que era in&tilo Pens# que en la hora
de la muerte no habrla aeabado a&m de clasificar
todos los reeuerdos de la ninez025
 34

Although Fumes finds it difficult to sleep, he lives

in an almost unbearable dream world of mental imageso In

the prologue of Artificios, Borges calls "Fumes el memories©"

"uma larga metSfora del imsemmieo"26 Fumes0 is a mental

world in which seemimgless endless symbols have replaced a

concrete reality; yet, paradoxically, through mental images

»
of darkness and monotony, he seeks rest from his mind”s

varietyo

Dormir es distraerse del mmndo; Fumes de es-

paldas en el catre, en la sombra, se figuraba cada
grieta y cada moldura de las easa preeisas fme 1 ©
rodeabano (Repit© q.ue el memos important© de sus
reeuerdos era mis minucios© y m£s vivo que muestra
percepciSn de um goee flsieo o de mn torment©
flsieoo) Hacia el Este, en un treeho no amamzanado,
habla casas nuevas, descon©eidas® Fanes las
imagimaba megras, compaetas, hechas de tiniebla
homogSnea; en esa direeeiln volvia la eara para
dormiro IambiSn solla imaginarse en el fond© del
r£o, meeido y anulado per la eorriemte<>27

The narrator senses a timelessness in Fumess

Irene© tenia dieeimueve anos; habla macid© en

1868? me pareciS monumental com© el bronee, mi.s am-
tiguo que Egipto, anterior a las profeelas y a las
pirlmideso Perns# que cada uma de mis palabras (que
cada un© de mis gestos) perdurarla. en sm implacable
memoria; me emtorpeeid el temor de multipliear
ademanes initileSo 2 8

Yet this quality is dissolved, ironically, by the passage of

time in his deaths "Irene© Fumes muril en 1889, de uma eon-

gestilm pulmonaro"29 Borges seems to be saying in "Fumes el

)

memories©" that man, by his intellectual nature, must for­

ever extract from the sum total of his experience to formu­

late generalizations and abstractions? and, in so doing, he

 35
erects the labyrinths of his own destinyo Man cannot stem

the inexorable flow of time» but he can make it stand still

or move faster as his mind desires»

Again$ in "la muerte y la br&jmla»" Borges uses the

human mind as an instrument to create and decipher the lab­

yrinth of a man's destinyo A criminal erects a labyrinth

around a detective so that he can avenge the death of his

brothero The detective, Erik Ipmnrot, studies three re­

lated crimes until he is sure that they are part of a caba­

listic plot to spell the Tetragrammatom, the secret name of

Gr©do He decides that another crime will be committed in

Triste-le-Roy, the villa of a gangster named Red Seharlacho

Lpmnrot goes to Triste-le-Roy at the time that he believes

the crime will be committed to find that he is the intended

vietimo Seharlaeh» to lure LjSnnrot to his villa, has

cleverly made use of a crime committed by one of his hench­

men to commit another crime and to stage a crime so that

iBnnrot will believe that the final part of the puzzle will

fall into place at Triste-le-Roy; and it does, for IBnnrot

finds his murderer=

"La muerte y la brijmla" is almost mathematical in

structureo Lonnrot analyzes the first three crimes dispas­

sionately, intellectuallyo He discovers that the crimes have

been committed at equidistant points, and he deduces that a

fourth crime will be committed at Seharlaeh“s villa, forming

a perfect rhombuso LoBhrot is mere interested in the mathe­

matical precision of the crimes than in the fact that two

men have been mmrdered and a third has mysteriously disap­

peared s "A LSnnrot no le intereaa? pues» la verdad entendida

com© conform!dad del juicio eon la situaeiSn objetiva* Pre-

fiere instalarse en la correeiom abstracta, en la idealidad

purao"3©

In Lpnnrot°s case* the labyrinth is a symbol of

mathematical perfectiono The locations of the four crimes

represent the four points of the compass* and, also, each of

the crimes represents one of the four letters in the secret

name of Godo The labyrinth which Seharlach has built for

linnrot thus becomes a symbol of the universe and its mean­

ing, as well as a symbol of Lpnnrot”s own destinyo It is

symmetrical and precise; yet, ironically, Lpnnrot is not

satisfied with it 0 When Seharlach tells the detective that

death is imminent, Llnnrot proposes another labyrinth he

feels would have been more fittings

Lpnnrot consider! per Ultima vez el problema de

las muertes simetricas y peri!dieaso

— En su laberimto sobran tres llneas — dijo por

fin— o Yo si de un laberimto griego que es uma
line a Ibiiea, recta,, En esa linea se han perdido
tantes fillsofos que bien puede perderse un mere
detective© Seharlach, cuando en otro avatar usted
me di Gaza* finja (o eometa) un crimen en A* luego
un segumdo crimen en B, a S kilimetros de A, luego
un tercer crimen en C, a 4 kilimetros de de A y de
B$ a mitad de camino entre los dos© Aguirdeme
despuis en D* a 2 kilimetros -de A y de G, de nuevo
a mitad de camino © iSteme en D, com© ahora va a
matarme em Triste-le-Hoy©
 37
— Para la ©tra vez que 1© mate— replied Sehar-
lack— le prometo ese laberinto» que eomsta de uma
sola l£nea reeta y que es invisible, ineesanteo31

Ipmmrot, moments before Seharlaeb shoots him, finds

the promise of infinity in the labyrinth that he suggests

to Soharlaeho In "El milagro seereto," the protagonist, a

Hungarian Jew held prisoner, transcends the barriers of time

to behold this same promise of the infinite and the eternal

as he faces his executioner» Jaromir Hladik, the protagon­

ist, has nothing but the prospect of his death to look for­

ward to as he sits in his prison cell, and he finds himself

imagining an infinite number of variations on his own final

minutes s

M© se cansaba de imagimar esas cicumstanciass

absurdamemte proeuraba agotar todas las variaeioneso
Antieipaba imfinitamemte el proeeso, desde el in-
somne amaneeer hasta la misteriosa descargao Antes
del d£a prefijadq por Julius Hothe, mmrid cemtemares
de mmertes, em patios euyas formas y cmyos Ingales
fatigabam la geometr£a, ametrallado por soldados
variables $ en nimero eambiante, que a voces 1 © mlti-
mabam desde lejos; otras, desde may e e r e a 032

Hladik1s fear of death is only intensified by his thoughts,

and he tries to rid himself of thoughts of death by consid­

ering himself immortal in the time he has lefts

Miserable en la noehe, proeuraba afirmarse de algin

modo en la sustaneia fugitive del tiempoo Sab£a que
Sste precipitaba hacia el alba del d£a veintinueve $
razonaba en vox altas "Ahora estoy en la noehe del
veintidlss mientras dure esta noehe (y seis rnoehes
mis) soy invulnerable, inmortalo”33

As the date for his execution draws nearer, Hladik, an ob­

scure author, looks back on his published works with

dissatisfaetiomo He begins to think abemt his unfinished

drama in verse, Los enemigos, and concludes that it will be

his redeeming worko H e •prays fervently to God to grant him

a year in which to finish it® The might before he is to be

executed, Hladik dreams that he is in a vast library, much

like the one in "La biblioteea de Babel o'' There he hears a

mysterious voice utter the words, "El tiemp© de tm labor ha

sido ©torgadOo"3^

As Hladik awakes, two soldiers come to take him to

the courtyard where he will face the firing squado While

Hladik faces the firing s<piad, time seems to stand still and

the whole year that he has prayed for passes before his

eyeso He thinks that time has stopped and then rejects this

ideas "Pens© 0 el tiempo se ha detenid©o” Luego reflexion#

que en tal easo, tambien se hubiera detenid© su pensa-

mientOo"35 He perceives that the true nature of the miracle

is not a passage of time but rather that God has granted him

a year in his mind which coincides with a second in his-

torys3& "Dios ©peraba para el urn milagro secret©s lo matarla

el plomo germamie© $ en la bora determimada, per© en su memte

tramsemrriria entre la orden y la ejeeuci#n de la ordemo"^?

Hladik uses the year God has granted him to write

his dramao The work is as secret as the miracle which al­

lows him to write ito Hladik is writing, in his mind, the

work that he feels will justify his life as a man and a

 39
writers and. ultimately foe has n© one t© account to but him­

self, not even the God. who has granted a miracles "He

trafoajS para la posteridad mi aim para Bios, de euyas pref­

er erneias literarias poco sab£a 0 Minmeiese, inmdvil,

secrete, urdiS en el tiempe sm alt© laberint© invisible o,I138

In "El Sur»" as in "El milagro secret©," a man is

granted the fulfillment of his destiny* In "El milagro

secret©," Hladik, because he chooses to believe in Gods has

a year, or, rather, a second, in which a year passes, to

write his play* The protagonist of "El Sur" recovers from a

severe head injury and goes to the South to recuperate in

the estancia of his maternal grandfather* Borges does not

mention God in this story, but, nevertheless, divine inter­

vention is implied*

Juan Dahlmamm, the descendant of a German minister,

is the hero of the story 8

El hombre que desembarco en Buenos Aires en 1871 se

llamaba Johannes Bafolmanm y era pastor de la iglesia
evangSlieag en 1939» urn© de sus mietos Juan Dahlmamm,
era seeretario de una biblioteca municipal en la
dalle Cdrdoba y se semtla hondamente argentine* Su
abmelo materno habla side aquel Francisco Flores,
del 2 de imfanterla de Ifmea, que murid en la from-
tera de Buenos Aires, lanceado por indios de Oatriel?
en la diseordia de sus dos linajes, Juan Dahlmamm
(tal vez a impulse de la samgre germamiea) eligie el
de ese amtepasado romamtieo, o de muerte r©md.ntiea*39

Dahlmamm, on his way home from work one evening, stumbles

into a door jamb and hurts his head* He-develops an infec­

tion and almost dies, but he rallies, and the doctors send
him to his Grandfather Flores0 estancia to convalesceo

Dahlmanm» however9 is destined to meet a muerte romantica,

as did his grandfather» before he ever reaches the estanciao

When he gets off the train» he goes to find transportation

to the rancht bmt he passes a bar and decides to eat firsts

In mna mesa comlan y bebiam ruidosamente nnos mmcha-

ehones» en los que Dahlmann» al principle, no se
fijlo En el smile» apoyado en el mostrader* se
aemrrueaba, inm6vil come mma eosa, mn hembre mmy
viej©o Los mmehos anos 1© habfam redmeide y pmlide
eomo las agmas a mna piedra o las generaeiones de
hombres a mna sentenciao Era oscmro, ehico y reseco,
y estaba com© fmera del tiempo, en mna eteraidado^®

After Dahlmann has eaten, one of the yommg tomghs

challenges him to a knife fighto Dahlmann finds that the

agents of his destiny have been assembled in the tavern, for

the old gameho, who represents the Somth that is Dahlmann0s

spiritual homeland, furnishes the knife with which Dahlmann

accepts the challenges

Desde mn rimeom, el viej© gameho extdtiee» en el

<pie Dahlmann viS mna cifra del Smr (del Smr qme era
smyo), le tirl mna daga desnmda qme vim© a eaer a
sms pieso Era eomo si el Smr hmbiera resmelt© qme
Dahlmann aeeptara el dmele o Dahlmann se inelino a
reeoger la daga y sintil dos eosaso La primera,
qme ese act© easi instintivo lo eomprometia a
pelearo La segmmda, qme el arma, en sm man© torpe,
no serviria para defenderlo, sin© para jmstifiear
qme lo mataramo^l

As Dahlmann and his adversary leave the tavern to

fight, Dahlmann realizes he had thought he was going to die

in the nursing home and that, if he eomld have chosen the

 #1

eiremmstamees of M s death» he then weald have ©hesen to die

in a knife fight:

Salierem, y si en Dahlmann mo habfa esperamza tam-

peee hahla temor* SintiS » al atravesar el mmhral,
<pie morir en tana pelea a ©aehille» a cielo abiert®
y aeometiendo» hubiera side mna liheracion para el,
tana felieidad y tana fiesta, en la primera noehe del
sanatorio, emamd® le elavaron la agaja* Simtio qtae
si Si emtomees, hmhiera pedido elegir @ sonar sta
mtaerte, esta es la nraerte qtae hmhiera elegido ©
sonado042

Hladik and Dahlmann both experience moments of ter­

ror before they die* Before they die, however, they each

have a private moment of fulfillment which mitigates the

agony of death and allows them to accept the inescapableo

”La espera," a story which appears in El Aleph, 1949, also

deals with a man's attempt to accept death while, at the

same time, he is trying to escape ito

Alejandro Tillari, a gangster fleeing from an under­

world vendetta in Uruguay, arrives in Buenos Aireso Having

assumed the name of the man who is chasing him, he leads as

unobtrusive a life as possible? he stays in a small room and

goes out only to the movieso Always present in his mind,

however, are the knowledge that he will be found and the

hope that he will escape death© He thinks about the passage

of time: "En otras reelusiones habfa cedido a la tentaci&m

de eontar los dfas y las horas, per©-esta reclusion era dis-

timta, porqme no tenia terrain© --salvo que el diario, una

raamana trajera la noticia de la muerte de Alejandro Vil-

lario"^3 He indulges in dreams and rejects them: "Tambiln

era posible qme Villari eya hmbiera mmerto 0 y eiatonces esta

vida era mn saeS©e Esa pesibilidad 1© imqmietaba, portae no

aeab6 de emtemder si se pareela al alivio © a la desdiehag

se dije ta@ era absurda y la reehazoo"1^

Ultimately, however, Villari finds ref age from death

in a dreamo Me has the same reearring dream in which he

kills the men who have eome to kill him* Finally/ thekill­

ers eome, and Villari tarns to the wall before they shoot

him g

6Lo hizo para despertar la misericordia de qaienes

lo mataron, o porqme es memos daro sobrellevar an
aconteeimient© espantoso qae imaginarlo y agaardarlo
sin fin, © — y esto es qmiza lo mils veroslmil— para
qae los asesinos faeram an smell®, come ya lo h'abiam
side tantas veees, en el mismo lagar, a la misma
hora?

Em esa magia estaba euamdo lo borro la des-

cargao^5

The protagonist of "El immortal" says*

La mmerte (o sa alasiSn) haee preoiosos y

patltioos a los hombres* Estos eonmaevem por sa
condiciln de fantasmasg oada act© qae ejeomtam paede
ser iltim© g no hay rostro qae no este por dedi-
bajarse eome. el rostro de an smenoo Tod®, entre los
mortales, tiene el valor de 1© irreeaperable y de lo
azarosoo^©

Borges’ protagonists often alleviate the pain and horror of

knowing that they are mortal by dreaming or believing that

they participate in a secret knowledge of reality at the

moment of deatho This is what ooears in "El milagro

secret©," "El Sar," and "La espera-o** In "El immortal," this

process is reversedo Instead of suffering the agony of

 43

knowing that he is mortal» the protagonist suffers the agony

of being immortal and. of having to live through the ageso

The passage of time becomes blurred in the memory

of the protagonisto At different times, he is a tribunal in

the Roman legions, Homer, and a wandering Jew® Marc©

Fiaminio Rufo heads an expedition through the African desert,

searching for the City of the Immortalso After all his

legionnaires have mutinied or died, he stumbles, alone and

at the point of death, upon a deserted labyrinthine struc­

ture =,. As Rufo explores the city, his reaction changes from

that of awe to one of confusion: " 'Este palacio es fUbriea

d.e los dieses,” pens6 primeramente => ExplorS los inhabitados

reeintos y corregf ”Los dioses quo lo edificaron han

muertOo” NotS sus peculiaridades y dije: los dioses que lo

edificaron estaban locoso As he wanders, he realizes

that the city is a chaos, more confusing than a man-made

labyrinth even:

A la impresidn de enorme antiguedad se agregaron

otras: la de lo interminable, la de lo atroz, la de
lo oomplejamemte insensate«, lo habla cruzado urn
laberinto, pero la nltida laberinto es una casa la-
brada para eonfundir a los hombres; su arquiteetmra,
prSdiga en simetrias, estS. subordinada a ese fine
Em el palacio qme iraperfectamente explore, la arqui-
teetura careola de fine^B

Finally, he is utterly repelled by the Gity of the Immortals:

" ”Esta Giudad” (pens#) ”es tan horrible qme su mera exis-

temcia y perduraeiSn, aumque en el centre de un desierto

secret©, comtamima el pasado y el porvenir y de algim modo

eompromete a l©s astroso Mientras perdure* madia em. el

mtamdo podri. ser valeroso © feliZocM^9

Whem Rmfo emerges from the city# one of the troglo­

dytes that dwell around the city begins to follow him. This

strange creature intrigues him and he calls him “Argos»"

after Ulysses0 dogo Rufo tries to communicate with Argos »

and finally the creature essays a few words in Greeko In

Oomversatioms with Jorge Luis Borges > Borges discusses the

germination of the story with Richard Bur gin» o » = I

thought of Homer forgetting his Greeks forgetting that he had

composed the Iliado. » » ' Argos discloses in his first

halting words in Greek that he is Homer and that the troglo­

dytes who live around the labyrinthine city are the Immor­

tals who have built and deserted the eityo Rufo and Homer

restore their mortality, feeling that, since they became im­

mortal from drinking the water of the river that flowed

through the desert, there must be another river which will

nullify its effecto Rufo and Homer finally separate, and

Rmfo wanders through the world for centuries, indifferent to

everythingo When he scratches his hand on a thorny bush at

a river’s edge and feels the pain, he knows that he is mor­

tal againo

It is this knowledge of his own mortality, Borges

asserts, which makes man unique among the creatures of the

earths "Ser inmortal es baladf; memos el hombre todas las

 #5
eriaturas lo s©m» pues igmoran la iiuerte § 1© divin© 1© ter­

rible » 1© incomprensible» es saberse inmortal o Knowing

that he will die gives rise to mam's eomeept ©f the infiniteo

Man longs for immortality which would be the possession of

the infinite and the eternal; yet, if he believed himself t®

be immortal, Borges suggests here» he would feel robbed of

his sense of purpose in seeking to know what he cannot know

but only feelo

As Borges suggests, it is the dream or illusion of

immortality which allows man to think that he may be able to

grasp the infinite, labyrinthine complexities of the uni­

verse in which he lives* In "El muerto»" Benjamin Ot&lora,

a simple young man from the slums of Buenos Aires, takes

over an outlaw band from its notorious leader, Bandeira*

OtHlora feels that he is in charge of everything and that

the universe is taking care of things for him8 "11 universe

parece eonspirar eon Si y apresura los heehos* "-52 ge de­

lights in his power and preens himself before the mem and

Bamdeira, the old leader, who watches him like a great

silent Buddhas "Em la eabeeera de la mesa, Otllora, bor-

racho, erige exhultaciSm sobre exhultaeiln, jibilo sobre

jSbilo; esa torre de vlrtigos es un simbolo de su irresis­

tible destine* Bamdeira, taciturn© entre los que gritam,

deja que fluya clamorosa la moehe*"53 otSlora soon is to

understand the true mature of his "irresistible destine ,"

 46

howevero For his commandl has been ©mly a temporary illusion

whioh Bandeira> the real leader, permitted him8 "OtSlora

comprende, antes de morir, que desde el prineipio lo han

traioionado, que ha side condenad© a muerte, que le han per-

mitido el amor, el mando y el triunfo, porque lo daban por

muerte, porque para Bamdeira ya estaba m u e r t e o"54

Qtilera’s destiny is that of all memo He has ful­

filled his ambitions only to find that life has been an elu­

sive dream which ends in the awakening that is deatho In

"El milagr© seereto»" Hladik had also awakened from his

dream, to die before the firing squado Even the immortal

realizes, after he has become mortal again, that his

memories of the time when he was immortal have been reduced

to the words that he has used to write them with; "Guando

se aeerca el fin, ya no quedan imllgenes del recuerde; solo

quedan palabraso"55

In his revised edition of El Aleph, 1952, Borges

added a postdate to the story of "El inmortal" in which he

comments on Rufo's final words g "Palabras, palabras des-

plazadas y mutiladas, palabras de otros fme la pobre limosna

que le dejarem las horas y los sigloso"56 Here, as in "El

Aleph," when Borges says, "cG6m© transmitir a los otros el

infinite Aleph, que mi temorosa memoria apenas a b a r c a ? " 5 7

the experience of the infinite and the chaotic can only be

expressed by words, which are but an inadequate symbol of

the experience itself*

 4?
Borges deals with ahstraetieas» for the htamam heimg

is bewildered by the variety of experiences which life

offers him, and he is frightened by the knowledge that his

own experience will terminate with death« Thms, Borges0

characters— Borges himself, the librarian, fsun, Lonnrot,

Bahlmaam, Yillari, Otilora, and the Immortal— all use sym­

bolic representations smeh as mirrors, which distort am

already tenuous reality, and labyrinths, of various shapes

and forms, as abstractions for the universe => Ultimately,

however, Borges realizes that he has built these symbolic

dream worlds with words, which are but symbols themselves of

individually perceived realitieso

 Endnotes to Chapter III

^Borges;, Fi6elonesa p» 13*

2Borgess FiecloneSo p» 23*

^Borges, Flcciones, pp*

^Barreneoheas, p* 121* '

^Jorge Luis Borgess nllueva refutation del tl©fflp©s
Antolo^xa •personal (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur9 1966)s
P* 59* ' '
^Borges, Floclones* p, 85»
^Borges $ Fie clones;* p„ 86*
^Borges, Ficclones* p* 95*

^Borges9 M -lard^n* p* 42*

• 1GBorges9 El .lardfn* p* 44* '
^ S i o s Patron^ p= 91*
12Borges9 Flo clones*•p* 101*..
^BorgesS' Flcclones n p* .102*
^Borges 9 Flo clones* pp* 109-110*
^^BorgeSg Ficclones* p* 10?*
^^Borges, Flcclones* p» 110*
1^Borges, Flcclones* p* 11*
^Borges s Flc clones* p* 110*
^GBarrenechea9 p* 36*
^GBorg6S9 Flc clones* p*. 123*
2:LBorges9 Flc clones* p* 123,
 2?B©rgess> 9 pp© 12^=12^©

^^Barges* Fic^iQHes 9 p© 125°

2^Berges» Fieei^mesp P* 123?

^5B©rg6S» FiocioH 8 S g po 125°

2^B©rges 9 FiGciQB.e8 g p© 115°

Borgos 9 Ficcx©B.e8 & p © 126©

2®B©rg6S9 Fieaionesg p© 12?©
29BorgeSg FiocxoiiBS9 p© 127©

195517 P° 33»
3lBo]rgsSs Pieeioaes ? pp« 157",15§°

‘32g®rges» FieeioneSf pp» iS0-l6lo

33Borges» Pieel©mes» p° l 6 lo

3^B©rges 0 Piociones» p° 16^0

35 BorgeSs FiccioHes» po 1 6 6 »

3^Barreneehea» p« 105°

37B©rges 9 Pieeieaes.* po 1660

3§B©rges 8 Pieeiones» po 1670

39B©rgess PidcioaQS» p o 187©

^^Berges» Pieeioaes» p= 193o

Borges» Ficcioaes» p© 195 °

^^Berges» Fieeioaes» p© 195©

43Borges, 21 Aleph., p© 139©

^ B o r g e s 0 El Aleph, p© 139©

i*'5Borges, El Aleph, p© 1^2o

 5©
^ B o r g e s » El Alephg Po 22o

^/'Berges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 14 0

Borgesp El Aleph 9 ppo 14-15 0

^gorges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 15=

50Richard Bar gin» Conversations with Jorge Itais

Borges (New Yorks Holt 9 Rinehart and Winston 9 1968 ) 9 po 37

5lBorges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 20o

52Borges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 32 0

53Borges9 El Aleph 9 Po 33 0

5^Borges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 33o

55Borgesg El Aleph 9 Po 25 0

5^Borges 9 El Aleph 9 Po 26o

5?’Borges 9 El Aleph 9 p 0 1 6 3 0
 CHAPTER IV

BISSiliVIMG REALITY

Most of Borges’ short stories belong to what he has

labeled "el gSnero famti.stis©o" Borges’ own arbitrary .

classification of his short stories reflects his conviction

that mem, at least sensitive and intelligent men, must in­

dulge in some sort of fantasy jmst as they mast try to

understand the universe in which they live© In fact, Borges

suggests that philosophy is simply a form of dreaming, a

necessary escape from the reality of day-to-day existences

I think that people who have no philosophy live

a poor kind of life, no? People who are too sure
about reality and themselveso I think that phi­
losophy helps you to live* For example, if you
think of life as a dream, there may be something
gruesome or uncanny about it, and you may some­
times feel that you are living in a nightmare, but
if you think of reality as something hard and fast,
that’s still worse, no? I think that philosophy
may give the world a kind of haziness, but that
haziness is all to the goodo If you’re a material­
ist, if you believe in hard and fast things, them
yo u ’re tied down by reality or by what you call
realityd So that, in a sense, philosophy dissolves
reality, but as reality is not always too pleasant,
you will be helped by that dissolmtiono Well,
those are very obvious thoughts, of course, though
they are none the less true for being obvious <>1

Barreneehea has called Borges a writer "pledged to

destroy reality and convert Man into a s h a d o w o H o w e v e r ,

the preceding quotation shows an agonizing awareness that it

51
 52
is impossible to destroy realityo Instead» Borges blurs its

sharp edges by allowing symbolic representations to encroach

upon the universeo Labyrinths» mirrors, and dreams sym­

bolize the universe and the passage of timeo Reality is

dissolved in Borges” symbols of it, and the passage of time

is made less painful by images of infinity? Ts”ui Pen's per­

petually bifurcating garden, Fumes” memory, Lonmrot's

straight line, the Aleph, the Zahir, the vertiginous dream

sequences in "El milagro secret©" and "La eseritura del

Dioso" Certain characters also impart a sense of timeless­

ness, such as those of Bandeira who watches like a great

silent Buddha in "El mmerto" or the old gaucho in "El Suro"

The description of the gaucho in "El Sur" is also given in

"El hombre en el umbral" which appears in El Aleph? "Los

much©s anos 1© hablam redueid© y pulid© com© las aguas a

una piedra o las generaeiones dfe los hombres a una sem-

t e n c i a o "3

In "El hombre en el umbral," Borges accomplishes the

dissolution of reality and, at the same time, hints at the

cyclical repetition of events by making an event seem to oc­

cur long before it actually happenso tBorges relates a story

which an Englishman has told him and Bioy Csares© The Eng­

lishman at one time had served as an official in a city

somewhere in India© A Scotchman named David Alexander Glen-

c a l m arrives in the city to quell a Moslem uprising©

 53
Gleneairn is apparently sueeessfmlp tent he suddenly and. mys­

teriously disappears, and the Englishman sets out to find

hinio After many fruitless inquiries» he receives a summons

to a house where a Moslem festival is taking placeo There

he stumbles across an. old man sitting on the threshold of

one of the patioso

The Englishman speaks to the old man, although he

feels that the old man lives in the past and knows nothing

of the presents

Le hablS sin pre&mbulos, porqme ya hahla perdido

to da esperanzap de David Alexander Gleaeaim* io
me entendii (tal vez no me oyS) y hube de expliear
que era un juez y 1© buscabao Sent£? al decir
estas palabrasp lo irrisorio de interrogar a aquel
hombre antiguop para quien el presents era apenas
urn indefimid© rumor

The Englishman has despaired of finding Glencairn so he

listens patiently to a story the old man tells him about

something that happened long ag©o An Englishman who over­

stepped his political power in a city in India was kidnapped

by the natives to be tried and condemned in a kangaroo court

presided over by a madmano This story of the past is con­

verted into a present reality for the Englishman as he

leaves the houseo Passing through one of the patios9 he

sees a crowd gatherings

Em el Ultimo patio me eruee con un hombre desmudop

eoronado de flores amarillas, a quien tod.es
besaban y agasajabamp y eon mna espada en la manoo
La espada sueia» porque habfa dado muerte^ a •Glea-
eairnp cuyo cad&ver mutilado encontrS en las
eaballerizas del fondOo5
The story ends•here» but the mystery remainse The English­

man knows that Gleneairn is dead, but he, and the reader,

will never know if there are two stories or one* The old

man may have told a true story of something that happened in

the past and, indeed, may even be unaware, living as he

seems to in the past, of Gleneairn"s deatho Or he may

simply have been preparing the Englishman for what he will

encounter as he leaves the houseo There is also the third

possibility--that the old man knows of Gleneairn"s death but

that he has recounted a similar event that really oeeurredo

Borges delights in such multiple variations on one

theme for one event or thing may suggest a, multiplicity of

related things„ The reality of a single moment is dissolved

in the many, or infinite, ramifications it suggests» Most

often, Borges uses dreams to effect his literary dissolution

of reality, because dreams offer an escapee A dream, such

as Hladik°s in "El milagro secret©," which transpires in a

moment, may occupy hours, or months, or even years in the

dreamer"s mimdo Through these fantasies, the dreamer

creates his own alternative to reality=

The dreamer completes this disintegration process

when the dream supersedes reality in the dreamer's mindo

Thus, for Borges, Tlbn threatens to replace the real worlds

"El contact© y el hUbito de Tlpm ham desintegrado este

mumdoo"^ Or the magician of "Las ruinas circulares" wants

 55
to impose his dreams on reality? “Querla sonar mn homhres

qmerla sonarlo eon integridad mimmeiosa e imponerl© a la

realidado”? Or the gangster in "La espera" turns to the

wall just before his pursuers kill him to recapture his re­

curring dream of killing them?

El estruendo del arma lo despertaba, pero siempre

era un sueno y en otro sueno el atafme se repetla
y eh otro sueno tenia que volver a matarloso o o «

Con una sena les pidi<§ que esperaran y se die

vuelta contra la pared com© si retomara el sueno„o

Borges makes this superimposition of fantasy on

reality the central theme in "La otra muerte*" An old mam,

Pedro Damian, whom Borges had known briefly and had re­

spected, dieso After his death in 19^6, Borges hears sev­

eral conflicting reports about Damian"s conduct during the

battle of Masoller in 1904* Pedro Damian was a coward,

Pedro Damian was a hero; he even hears that DamiSn died

courageously in the battleo Borges muses over this problem

and finally finds a key to its solution which he finds phi­

losophically acceptable in a passage written by Pier

Damiani s

o o o Pier Damiani sostiene, contra AristSteles y

contra Fredegario de fours, que Dios pmede efeetuar
que no haya sido lo que alguma vez fuSo Lei esas
viejas discusiones teologieas y empeeS a cqmprender
la ir&giea historia de don Pedro Damia.no

La adivino as£o Damiin se port© eomo un eobarde

sn el camp© de Masoller, y dedieS la Vida a eorregir
esa bochornosa flaquezao 7©lviS a Entre Rios; no
alzS la man© a nimgim hombre, no mareo a nadie, no
bused fama de valiente, per© en los eampos del
.lameay se hizo duro, lidiamd© eon el monte y la
 56
hacienda chiearao Pal preparand®» sin duda sin
saberl®, el milagroo Pens® con 1® mis homdos Si el
destine me trae ©tra batalla, y® sabrl mereeerla»
Durante enarenta anos la aguard! eon oseara es-
peranza, y el destine al fin se la traj®, en la
hora de sa mmerteo La trajo en forma de delirio
per® ya los griegos saMam. que somos las somhras
de an saenoo Em la agohla revivil sa batalla, y se
eondajo com® an hombre y eneabezl la carga final y
ana bala lo aeertl en plemo peehoo Asi,'em 1946,
por obra de ana larga pasiln, Pedro Damiln murio en
la derrota de M a s o l l e r q m e oearrio entre el in-
viermo y la primavera de 1904o9

Borges proposes a heroic death for BamiSm who lived for

forty years with the knowledge of a moment of past cowardiceo

Damian, in his death-bed delirium as an old man, is thas en­

abled to die as a twenty-year-old hero on the battlefield at

Masollero

In '’La otra mmerte,” Borges exeemtes his dissolution

of reality in a two-step processo First, he creates a story

around a man who, at least for the purposes of his story, if

not in fact, really livedo He endows Pedro Damian with life

and with a dream, a dream with which Damilm enriched, and

changed, the circumstances of that life© Then, however, he

goes on to suggest that he is not even sure of the facts

around which he erected the fantasy© Pedro Damilm's name,

am obvious hispanicized form of Pier Bamiani $ and his story

may simply have been a figment of Borges0 imagination

brought on by his reading of the medieval Italian religious

reformers

Por lo pronto, no estoy seguro de haber eserito

siempre la verdad© Sospecho que Pedro DamiSn (si
 57
existU) no se llamo Pedro Dami&m, y qne yo lo
recmerdo bajo ese nombre para oreer algin d£a qme -
su M s t o r i a me fme smgerida per los argmmentos de
Pier DamianiolO

On a rather more poetic level in "Las ruimas eireu-

lares»" Borges also used this device of one fantasy within

another to entertain the thought that man is but a dream of

So do The old magician created a dream son who became real

in his own eyes, but, as he prepared to meet his own death,

he realized that he was also a dreams "Con alivio, com

humillaeiSn, eon terror, comprendiS que el tambiim era una

apariencia, que otro estaba son&mdoloo

Borges extends this dream sequence of "Las ruinas

eireulares" to another story in El jardim de senderos que se

bifurcan, "Examem de la obra de Herbert Qualm*M In this

story, Borges makes critical analyses of the work of an

imaginary author, often comparing his works to those of

well-known writers* Qualm»•Borges' imagined writer, be­

lieved firmly in the importance of the power of invention in

literature* In one of his stories, he even went so far as

to suggest that readers, who are simply frustrated authors

lacking invention, can invent their own storiess

Afirmaba tambilm que de las diversas felieidades

que puede ministrar la literatmra, la mas alta era
la imvemcion* Ya que no todos son capaees de esa
felicidad, muchos habrlm de eontentarse eon. simu-
laeroso Para esos "imperfectos eseriteres»w cuyo
nombre es legiln, Quain redact# los ocho relates
del libro Statements* Gada uno de ellos prefigure
o promote un buen argument©, voluntariamemte frus-
trado por el amtor* Alguno — no el mejor—
 insimia "dos" argumentoso El lector, distraido
per la vanidad, cree haberlos imveatado*!^

The story ends with Borges0 remark that one of Her­

bert Qualm's tales inspired "Las rmimas eircialareso" A Bor-

geseam seqmenee of dreams implying infinity thms mnwindss

"He o o o makes one of his own dreams, Herbert Qualm» dream

a book from which Borges derives "The Circular Ruins"j the

personal dream evolves into a. chain of dreams ="13

Often Borges reverses this process of attacking

reality by creating dreams which seem as real as those

things whose validity we readily g r a n t I n s t e a d , he will

set up a thing or event, or series of events» which the

reader accepts as true for the purposes of the storyo Them

he will jar the reader with a trick ending, rather in the

manner of 0 'Henry» These stories with surprise endings are

usually tales of treachery and violence, themes which have

long interested Borgeso

"Zombre de la esquima rosada" is such a story of in­

trigue and violemeeo Basically a realistic tale in which

Borges reproduces the speech of the Argentine ©rillero, it

appeared in Historia universal de la infamia, 1935 k a col­

lection of brief sketches about the misdeeds of villains and

traitorso Borges shows his affinity with modern detective

fiction in "Hombre de la esquina rosada," whose plot may

have been suggested by Agatha Christie's 1928 mystery

classic, The Murder of Roger Aokroyd, since the narrator in

eaefe story tiaras oat to be the culprito Apparently as an

impartial observer, the narrator tells the story of a knife

fight between two memo In the final paragraph, however, the

i
narrator reveals that he was one of the participants and

that he deliberately murdered the other mane

Borges employ a similar twist at the end of "El

jardin de senderos que-se bifmreano" He distracts the

reader with a long philosophical discussion between Tsun and

Albert about fs'mi P e n ’s philosophy of time* The reader is

deliberately sidetracked, by this friendly chat between two

men who seem to like and respect each other, into forgetting

that Tsun is a dangerous spy who has vowed to complete his

mission* Tsun's sudden murder of Albert both shocks and

mystifies, until Tsun explains that it was the only way he

could think of to tell the Germans to bomb the city of Al­

bert before he was captured, although he knows he will be

sentenced and hanged for Albert’s murder*

Tsun prefaces his explanation of his actions by say­

ing, "Lo demis es irreal, insignifieante*"-^ Thus, Borges

has again introduced multiple levels of reality into a story*

The interlude in Albert’s garden is a story within another

story* Tsun °s statement that what happens to him afterwards

is unreal indicates a wish to return to the h&nedd jardin

where he found a temporary escape from a life he disliked

 and found an explanation to a problem that he had wished to

solve for yearso

Tsun realizes» however» that the past and past ac­

tions are irretrievableo He knows that his own sense of

honor dictated that he complete his spy mission at all

, costsi yetg although he has completed this mission9 he re­

grets his action9 not because he will be executed but be­

cause he killed Alberto He has won at best a Pyrrhic

victory § Abomianablement e he vemeido s he comumieado a Ber­

lin el nombre seereto de la ciudad que deben atacar < , 0 0 0

Ho sabe [el jefe] (nadie puede saber) mi innumerable comtri-

ciSn y eansaneioo"16

In "La forma de la espada," Borges again uses the

surprise-ending device to create an illusion which he

abruptly destroyso He relates a story which he has heard

from a rancher with a mysterious sear on his faeeg about

his experiences as an independence fighter for the Irish

Free State in the early 1920 °So The Irishman tells of aid­

ing a green9 and rather cowardlyg companion to escape from

the Black and Tamso They hide out in a houseg and one day

he hears his companiong Vincent M®om» informing on him over

the telephoneo In anger g he chases the young man and soars

his face with a sword hanging frbm one of the walls in the

houseo As he concludes his story9 one realizes that the

Irishman is really Vincent Moons the man he so vehemently

condemns for his cowardice and treachery,,

To tell this story of his past, Moon resorts to a

form of fantasy by assuming the identity of the man he has

betrayed and by imagining that mam's emotion® However, Moon

realizes that this attempt to dissolve a past reality, by

reversing the eiremmstamees of the past, is doomed to

failure, for he had promised to tell Borges abomt his soar

under the condition "de no mitigar mimgiha oprobio, ninguna

cireunstaneia de infamia®"17 But Moon's conscience of his

past betrayal of a friend and his sense of the irretrieva-

bility of the past are so strong that when Borges fails to

recognize his story as a confession, Moon violates his own

condition® He cries out the fact of his guilt and asks for

the condemnation that he feels he deserves: "|No ve que

llevo eserita en la eara la marea de mi infamia? Le he nar-

rad© la historia de este mod© para que msted la oyera hasta

el fin® Yo he demuneiado el hombre que me ampar6: y© soy

Vincent Moon® Ahora desprSeieme®

In "Emma Zmmz," which appears in El Aleph, Borges

again uses a violent theme, premeditated revenge, as an ex­

pression of unreality® The protagonist, Emma Zunz, bril­

liantly contrives the murder of the man who is responsible

for the ignominious death of her f a t h e r A l t h o u g h Borges

himself calls."Emma Zunz" "a very drab, a very gray

story*”2® he endows i t » from the second paragraph when Emma

Zunz first learns of her father’s death, with a sense of the

fantasticg

Emma dejo caer el papel« Sn primera impresiSn

fuS de malestar en el vientre y en las rodillas;
luego de ciega culpa, de irrealidad, de frio, de
temor; luego, quiso ya estar en el d£a siguienteo
Act© continue compremdi6 que esa voluntad era
initil porqme la muerte de su padre era lo inieo
que hab£a sueedido en el mumdo y seguir£a su-
cediendo sin fino^l

With a swift and single-minded determination, Emma

elaborates her plan for vengeance against her boss, Loewen-

thal, who had. let her father take the blame for a crime he

had committed* She calls loewenthal and arranges to meet him

in his office one evening on a business matter* On the

afternoon of the day she is to meet Loewenthal, Emma, a

rather prudish virgin, picks up a Scandinavian sailor and

goes to a hotel room with him* After she leaves the hotel,

she goes to Loewenthal°s office, shoots him with his own gun,

musses the room, and tells people that Loewenthal attacked

her and that she killed him in self-defense*

Emma’s story is believed because it has the sem­

blance of truths

La historia era inere£ble, en efeeto, per© se

impuso a todos, porque sustaneialmente era eierta*
Verdadero era el tono de Emma Zunz, verdadero el
pudor, verdadero el odio* Yerdero tambiSn en el
ultraje que hab£a padecido; solo eran falsas las
eircunstaneias, la hora y uno e dos mombres pro-
pios*22
Timst Emma creates a reality built on her dream of revengeo

Mmoh as Hladik in "El milagro secrete" or the old magician

in "Las ruimas ciremlarea* or Pedro BamiSn in "La etra

mmerte" did, she builds a dream which superimposes itself on

realityo Indeed, in Emma Zunz" case, the dream becomes a

physical reality, but Borges endows her actions with a cer­

tain sense of unrealityg "Beferir com alguma realidad los

heehos de esa tarde serla diflcil y quizS improcedenteo Wn

atributo de lo infernal es la irrealidad, unatribmt© que

parece mitigar sus terrores y que los agrava tal vez<>"23

This feeling of vagueness tends to make Emma's crime less

evil for she seems to move towards her goal strangely di­

vorced from what is happening to her, as if she were in a

trances and only because she is able to maintain this self-

induced trance is she able to carry her plan ©uto Borges

muses about her encounter with the sailor in the following

manner s

qEu aquel tiempo fuera del tiempo, en aquel

desorden perplej© de sensaciones inconexas y
atroces pens6 Emma Zunz una sola vez en el muerto
que motivaba el sacrifieio? Yo tengo para m£ que
pensS Ina vez y qye en ese moment© peligrS su
desesperado propositoc PensS (no pud© no pensar)
que su padre habla heeho a su madre la eosa hor­
rible a ella ahora le haelano Lo pensS eon dSbil
asombr© y se refugio, on seguida, en el vSrtigOo^

The implication here, as in "El jardin de sender©s que se

bifurean" and "La forma de la espada," is that there is

something unreal about violence and evil, for it is only

when the persen wh© eommits a treaeherems ©r vengefml aet

takes refuge in a sort ©f fantasy that he ©an lose his con­

science because ©f his aeto Ultimately, however, Tsmn and

Vincent Eo©n are unable to escape, in their own minds, the

consequences of their acts of treachery* Even Emma Zunz,

Borges hints, is unable to escape the consequences of her

act of vengeances "oCSm© haeer veroslmil una accion en la

que easi no erey4 quien la ejecutaba, com© reeuperar ese

breve eaos que hoy la memoria de Emma Zunz repudia y com-

funde?M25 instead, she takes refuge in the same diabolical

insanity, or indulgence in fantasy, which led her to carry

out her aet of revenge*

In The Marrow Act, Ronald Christ observes that "the

radix of all Borges0 important writing * * * is the fantas­

tic* " He goes on to point out that Borges directs his at­

tention to the "immanence of the fantastic in the real

world, and it is the goal of much that he writes to awaken

our awareness to that immanence, to stimulate and reveal

it*"26

Borges finds the fantastic, perhaps with the excep­

tion of Tl©n, in the real world* His characters fantasize

within the context of basic realitiess that is, their dreams

reveal certain truths within the context of Borges" stories*

Borges discovers his Aleph in a basement, his Zahir in a

coins Herbert Quain, Pedro Damian, and "El hombre en el

umbral > and even flpn» are suggested direetly or indirectly

either by his readings or by his conversations with Bioy

Casareso ’’Hombre de la esquina rosada," "la forma de la es-

pada»" "El jardim de senderos que se bifurean*" and "Emma

Zunz"— all have points of inspiration in historical or na­

tional realitieso Borges reaches out for his inspiration in

theology and philosophy» notably that of Berkeley, and in

basic realities, realities such as those of his native

Argentina and the works of other writers— often English

(Be Quineey, Chesterton, Wells, Stevenson)= He senses in

this chaos of reality, which is his life’s experience, a

hidden order, which is perhaps only a dream, but a dream

which may be simply another realityo Thus, Borges reveals

two realities to us:

If Borges’ attempts to embody the apparent

chaos of reality and a secret order of meta­
physics, his work is ultimately realistic in the
sense that it tries to present the world both as
it appears— that is, as we register it with our
sense— and as it may be understood— as we can art­
fully organize it in our m i r n d o It is finally
wrong to call his work anti-realistic because he
never denies our sensation of multiple, or as he
would say vertiginous realityo Rather, he says
that we know another reality— either by guess or
desire— amd it is this reality, hidden in the
muddle of our sensations, which his work tries to
revealo He attempts to extract an inexorable
(but incredible) order from the nightmare; he is
very much in tune with the modern feeling that
the only reality left to us is that of the dream;
•that we feel most real in recognizing what has
traditionally been called unr e a l o 27

So, again, we return in Borges’ short stories to the

problem of symbolic interpretationo Human beings must

forever remain limited by the abstractions of reality which

they impose upon themselveso Ten m e n » or a hundred men,

speaking as many different languages» may see a river as a

river d each using a different word to represent ito Or they

may see their own faces reflected in its waters, together or

separately, and each will perceive his own reality, nonethe­

less real for being different from the next m a n ’so

 EndBOtes to Chapter IT

•^Burgia, pp0 142-143»

^‘Barrenecheas p 0 144 =>

^Borges* El M e p h s p c 145,

^Boi'gesg El Alepho p» 146,

^BorgeSg El Alepho pp» 149-150,

^BorgeSg El jardlm, p» 34,

^Borges s El jar din ^ p.a. 6 4 ,

^Borges, El Alepho pp., 141-142»

El Alepho pp» 77-78. ■

lOBorgeSg El Alepho p* 79,

^Borges, El jardiBo p 0 71,

^Borges,' m jardiio p, -92,

^Barren.echeas p, 130,

^BarreBeoh@a$ p, 122,. . ■

^Borges, El .iardlko p, 123,

■^^BorgeSg El jard^a., p, 124,

^^BorgeSg llccloaeSo p» 130,

^-^Borgess Ficclones, p, 135,

>: .19Honald Christ, Ihe Marrow Act (lew Tork$ lew fork
Tjnlveriity Press, 1 9 6 9 ) 9 p, 60,

^%prgim, p, 23,

21Borges,-El Aleph, p, 59,

22Borges» El Aleph,pp. 65-66.
23B©rges» El Aleph, pp. 61-62.

2^Borgess El Aleph»pp. 62-63°

25B©rges» El Alephup. 62.

^^Ghrist» p. 1@2.

2?Christs p. 105°
 CHAPTER ¥

THE FACES OF MAI

There is a pervasive sense of human helplessness and

confusion in Borges0 storieso His characters are often am­

bivalent; they grope towards an assertion of their special

individuality in life; yet, at the same time, they feel that

the knowledge of their own mortality makes this search some­

how futile for, in death, all individuality is losto Thus

does Borges maintain a constant tension between what Ronald

Christ calls "the certainty of individuality and the intui­

tion of unityo

Vincent Moon, in "La forma de la espada," is an

example of this Borgesean ironyo Telling his story as the

other man, the man he betrayed, he says8

Lo que haee un hombre es eomo si lo hicieran todos

los hombreso For eso no es injusto que uma deso-
bedieneia en un jardxn contamine al genero human©;
per eso no es. imjusto que la crucifixion de un solo
judlo baste para salvarloo Acaso Schopenhauer
tieme raz^ns yo soy los otros, eualquier hombre es
todos los hombres, Shakespeare es de algdm modo el
miserable John Vincent M o o n =2

loon realizes that, in a universal sense, his crime is no

worse than many others, committed by many other men, but he

finally makes am agonizing confession of his crime because,

as an individual, he cannot rationalize his crimeo He can

only attempt t© merge his opmscienee of it with the eon-

seienee of all mamkimd for all its crimeso

Borges also uses the theme of treachery in "El tema

del traidor y del heroe," a story set in nineteenth-centmry

Ireland, to point ont the universal destiny of the individ­

ual » Ryan, the great-grandson of Fergus Kilpatrick, inves­

tigates Kilpatrick 6 s life story to write a biography for the

centennial of his deatho Kilpatrick died by an unknown

assassin°s bullet, and Ryan, after careful study, decides

that his great-grandfather was a conspirator in his own

killingo Kilpatrick had betrayed his group of conspirators

in their struggle for independence and had been discovered

by James Rolan, another member of the group» His friends

determined to execute, and Nolan proposed a plan whereby

Kilpatrick cam redeem himself by dying and still serve the

causes

Nolan propuso un plan que hizo de la ejecusi&n del

traidor el instrument© para la emaneipaeiSn de le
patriao SugiriS qme el comdenado mmriera a mamos
de un asesino deseonoeido, en eircumstancias de-
liberadamente dramatieas, que se grabaran en la
imaginaeiln popular y que apresuraran la rebeliSno
Kilpatrick jurS eolaborar en ese proyeeto, que le
daba oeasiSn de redimirse y qme rubricaria sm
muerteo3

Nolan planned Kilpatrick’s^ assassination as if he

were writing a play 0 In fact, he borrowed scenes from

Julius Caesar and Macbeth for Kilpatrick to act with the

other conspiratorso Kilpatrick finally died a martyred

 71
hero» and in his death he becomes identified with other

assassinated political figures<, Ryan sees an eerie resem­

blance between the circumstances of Kilpatrick"s death and

those of Caesar's? he senses a repetitive cycle to history

in which Kilpatrick's and Caesar's identities are merged,

"piemsa que antes de ser Fergus Kilpatrick, Fergus Kilpat­

rick fuS Julie e S s a r o . He also sees in Kilpatrick's death

in 1824 a foreshadowing of Abraham Lincoln's assassination:

"As! fue desplegindose en el tiempo el populoso drama, hasta

qu el 6 de agosto de 1824, en un palco de funerarias cbr-

tinas que prefigmraba el de Lincoln, un balazo anhelado

entrS en el peehe del traidor y del heroe» o » o ”5

Kilpatrick emerges as an ambiguous figureo He has

no identity of his own? rather, he bears certain obvious re­

semblances to several fictitious and real memo He is both

hero and traitor, capable of base and noble actions, in

short, a sort of Everyman, a composite of historical fact

and literary fiction,,

Often, in his stories dealing with the identity of

the individual, Borges juxtaposes two people of different

backgrounds or opinions* Sometimes they are even physical

antagonists* In two such stories, "El fin," in Ficciomes,

and "Biografla de fade© Isidore Cruz," in El Aleph, Borges

draws his inspiration from JosS Hernimdez” gaueho epic,

Martin Fierro*
 72
In "El fin»" Borges gives his version of Martin

Fierro,® s deatho There are only three eharaoters— Reeabar-

ren» the paralyzed saloon-keeper who observes the aetion* a

Negro gaueho» and Martin Fierro« From the beginning of the

story» Borges eomnterbalanees the elements of the pampas 9 a

sense of vastness and timelessness 9 and an arid, everyday

existence 8

Reeabarren» tendidog entreabri6 los ojos y viS

el ©blicu© eielo raso de juneoo Be la otra pieza
le llegaba tm rasqmeo de guitarrag una suerte de
pobrisim© laberimto qne se enredaba y desataba
infinitamente 0 0 0 0 leeobrS pee© a poe© la r©ali­
dad » las eosas eotidiamas qme ya no eambaria nmmea
por otrao&

One day Martin Fierro enters the pmlperiai the Negro 9 the

brother of a man Martin had .killed, challenges him to a

knife fighto Martin Fierro, a man tired of his violent,

reckless existence 9 accepts the challenge and dies while

Reeabarren looks on 0 As he walks away from the body of the

man he has just killed, the black gaueho®s identity suddenly

becomes merged with that of his victim,, His desire for re­

venge satiated, he lacks purpose and individualityg "Gum-

plida sm tarea de justioiero, ahora era nadieo Mejor dieh©

era el otrog no tenia destino sobre la tierra y habia ma-

tado a un hombreo"?

"Biografia de Tadeo Isidore Gruz" is a psychological

study of the sergeant who deserted his men to fight at Mar­

tin Fierro's side and to aid him escapeo Borges presents

 73
him as a sensitive and complicated man, although he was il­

literate and had never even seen a eitjo fade© Cruz, as

Borges sees him, was a man seeking happiness and self-

fulfillment o Although he had a family and had risen to the

rank of sergeant, he was dissatisfieds

Hahla corregido el pasado s en aquel tiempo debio

de considerarse feliz, aunque pro fundamente no lo
erao (Lo esperaba, seereta en el porvenir, una
lieida noche fundamentalg la noehe en qrne por fin
vii su propia cara, la noche en que por fin es-
emeho su nombre . . , ) Gualquier destino, per
largo y complieado que sea, ceasta en realidad de
un solo momento s el moment© em que el hombre sabe
para siempre quien eso®

When Cruz and his men receive their orders to hunt down a

criminal, he has his moment of self-revelation, the moment

in which he realizes that a man has to come to grips with

his own destiny, the moment in which he recognizes his lone­

liness and the loneliness of all men at that moments "Gom-

prendiS que un destino no es me 3 or que otro, per© que todo

hombre debe aeatar el que lleva adentro <= 0 0 0 GomprendiS

su Intimo destino de lobo, no de perro.gregario 5 comprendil

que el otro era Slo"9

This realization of the "otherness” of one's own

identity also comes to Harems Aurelius in "Los teSlogoso"

This story, in direct contrast with "El fin" and "Biografia

de Tadeo Isidore Cruz," deals with a purely intellectual

antagonism between Marcus Aurelius and another theologian,

Juan de Panomia, of whose works Borges says, "SSle han per*

durad© veinte palabraso”10 Juan de Panomia always seems to

 74
surpass lareus Aurelius in his theological studieso le al­

ways seems to make some startling discovery just before Mar­

cus Aurelius makes the same discovery» and his perceptions

seem to Aurelius more acute than his .©wile Aurelius feels a

festering resentment towards the man 0 Finally» Juan de

Panonia is denounced for heresy; he is tried and condemned

to deatho Borges imagines a scene in heaven when Marcus

Aurelius dies years later:

El final de la historia s6 lo es referible en

rnetHforas» ya que pasa en el rein© de los eielos,
domde no hay tiempOo Tal vez cabrla decir que
Aureliano converse con Dios y Este se interesa tan
poe© en difereneias religiosas que lo tomS por
Juan de Panoniao Elio, sin embargo» insinmaria
una eonfusiSn de la mente divinao Mis eorrecto es
decir que en el paraiso, Aureliano supo que para
la insondable divimidad, el y Juan y Panonia (el
ortodoxo y el hereje» el aborrecedor y el aborre-
eido o el aeusador y la victima) formaban uma sola
persona <,1 1 -

In "Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva," Borges

again hints that a person's individuality is lost in the

presence of the divine<> Borges draws parallels between the

lives of two startling different people» One is Droctulft»

a barbarian warrior during Roman times, and the other is an

Englishwoman in nineteenth-century Argentina» about whom he

had heard from his grandmothero Droetulft died a hero when

he deserted his tribe to fight for Rome during the siege of

Ravenna; the Englishwoman» after having lived as a captive of

Indians for years, had opted of her own free will to forsake

her culture permanently and had become as barbarous as her

 75
former captorso These two people are seeming oppositess

one, a mam, had forsaken barbarism to defend a decadent cul­

ture* the other, a woman, had given tip civilization for a

life among savages =>

Speaking of Droetulft» Borges imagines him as an

individual and as a types

Imagimemos, sub specie aetermitatis» a

Droctmlft no al individuo Droetmlft, que sin duda
fue inico e ihsondable (todos los individuos 1®
son), sin© al tip© generico que de Si y de otros
muehos oorao el ha heoho la tradieiSn, que es obra
del olvido y de la memoriae12

Here, Borges suggests an agonizing irony of life and deaths

the individual is only unforgettable in a lifetime, but he

may suggest a type of individual that endures through the

ageso He goes on to say that time has, also blurred the in­

dividuality of the Englishwoman and that the impulse which

drove her to give up her own culture differs, not in nature

but in kind, from the impulse which seized Uroetulfts

Mil trescientos anos y el mar median entre el

destine de la eautiva y el destine de Droctulfto
Los dos, ahora, son igualmente irreeuperables => La
figura del blrbaro que abraza la causa de Ravena,
la figura de la mujer europea que opta per el
desierto, pueden apareeer antagSnieaso Sin em­
bargo a los dos arrebatS un impetu secret©, un
Impetu que no hubieram sabido jmstifiearo Aeaso
las historias que he referido son una sola his­
torian El anverso y el reverse de esta moneda
son, para Dios, iguales013

Paces fascinate Borges, as if in some way they re­

veal the individual to himselfo In "La forma de la espada,"

Moon is obsessed with the facial sear which serves as a

constant reminder of his own guilt s "©Ho ve que llev® es-

erita en la eara la marea de mi infamia?" In "Los te6 -

loges»" Marcus Aurelius is haunted by the face of Juan de

Panonia, not realizing that the face reminds him of his own:

"Aureliano viS por primera y titima vez el rostro del

odiadoo Le recordo el de alguiem pero no pudo preeisar el

de quieno"!^ In "Biografia de lade© Isidore Grmz»" Gruz°

moment of self-revelation would come on "la noche en que por

fin vi 6 su propia earao"

"AbenjaeSn el Bojarl, muerto en su laberinto" is a

mystery story about a murdered man whose face is smashed be­

yond recognition* Dumravem, who lives in a huge labyrin­

thine house on the Cornish coast» tells his house guest the

history of his house* A deposed Middle Eastern potentate

built the house in the nineteenth century as a hideout from

the ghost of his cousin» whom he has killed* One day the

bodies of the Bojarig his servant, and his lion are found in

the central room of the labyrinth with their faces smashed

beyond recognition* Dunravem° s friend» Unwins considers the

mystery of this strange murder and decides that the man who

built the labyrinth was really Zaidg the treacherous cousin

of AbenjacSn* Unwin decides that Zaid absconded with the

Bojarl”s money but he lacked the courage to kill him at the

time* Zaid built his labyrinthg not to hide, but to attract

Abenjaean to him* He found that it was not the money that .

he wantedg but his cousin"s life:

 77
ZaidU si tu eonjetura es e©rreeta» proeedio mrgid©
p©r el ©die y per el temor y mo por la eodieiao
BobS el tesor© y luego eompremdi 6 que el tesero mo
era 1© eseneial para elo L© esemeial era qme Abem-
jae&m pereeierao Simml© ser Abemjaean» matS a
Abenjaedm y fimalmente fme Aben.iaGario15

Zaid ©rushed the faees of all his victims to hide

his imposture, for, Wmwim suggests, if he had only destroyed

the king’s face he might have awakened suspicion about the

king’s identity® But, in destroying the face of his victim,

Zaid destroyed the mark of Abemjac&n’s individuality, and

thus he was able to become Abemjacimo

Unwin unravels the mystery Sf Abemjao&m and his lab­

yrinth after dreaming about another labyrinth and the mon­

strous figure that dwelt within it® He tells Dumraven that

the Minotaur of Crete, whether he had the head of a bull and

the body of a man or had, as Dante had pictured him, the

face of a. man and the body of a bull, was a monstrous crea­

ture and that the labyrinth somehow suited him but that

Abemjaean’s story that he had built his labyrinth to escape

)

his cousin’s ghost somehow seemed incongruouss ”Lo que im-

porta es la eorrespondeneia de la casa momstuoso® El mimo-

taur© justifica eon ereces la existeneia del laberinto®

Nadie dira 1 © mism© de uma amenaza pereibida en un suemo®"l&

In "La casa de Asteriom," Borges writes a sustained

tour de force® It is the story of AsteriSn, the Minotaur,

as narrated by the Minotaur himself® Borges does not reveal

the identity of the protagonist until the end of the story,

bmt throughout he tosses out broad hints as to his identity,,

Asterion thinks of himself as a unique and lonely creature?

a virtual prisoner in his vast houseo The few times that he

has ventured out he has been terrified by the faces of the

people, who are likewise frightened of him 8

For lo demas, algin atardeeer he pisado la ealles

si antes de la noehe volvl, lo hiee por el temor .
que me infundieron las caras de la plebe» earas
deseoloridas y aplanadas, como la mano abiertao Ya
se habla puesto el sol, per© el desvalido llanto de
urn nino y las toseas plegarias de la grey dijeron
que me hablan reeonocido ol?

Borges describes Asterion”s labyrinth, studiously

avoiding the use of the word? The labyrinth is vast and

repetitive, like the library of Babel» Each part of the

house seems to repeat itself fourteen times, but, in As-

teri6 n°s mind, "fourteen" is synonymous with "infinite," im­

plying perhaps the numberless human sacrifices which he has

consumedo Asteri&n perceives only two things in his sur­

roundings which are unique 8 "Todo esta muehas veces, per©

eosas hay en el mundo que parecen estar una sola yezs ar-

riba el intrimcado sols abajo, Asteriono"^^

Asteri&n sees himself as a godlike figure, perhaps

even as the Creators "QuizS. ye he creado las estrellas y el

sol y la enorme easa, pero ya no me aeuerdo o"-*-9 He also de­

stroys , but Asteridn sees his destruction of human life as a

liberation for his victims s "Sada nueve altos entran en la

20
easa nueve hombres para que y© los libere de todo malo"
 79
AsteriSm longs for the same sort of liberation that he gives

his victimso A lonely creature, without identity as man or

beasts his only hope for escape from his unhappy situation

is death at the hand of the redeemer, who, one of his vic­

tims prophesied, would free him* Asterion wonders about the

appearance of his redeemers H^0 Smo seri mi redentor?, me

preguntOo Seri un tore' o un hombre? Seri tal vez un tore

con eara de hombre? @ 0 seri com© yo ? " 2 1

In '%a easa de AsteriSn," Borges writes about a mon­

ster with certain human sensibilities» AsteriSn has an

identity which is uniquely his, yet he longs for an escape

from that identity* He senses that the only escape will be

in the sameness which is death* In "Deutsches Requiem,"

Borges deals with another sort of monster, a Hazi war crim­

inal, on the eve of his execution as he wrests with his con­

science*

Otto Dietrich zur Linde tells of his experiences as

a soldier and the assistant director of a concentration

camp* He attempts to come to grips with himself and analyze

the historical significance of the movement in which he par­

ticipated* He is particularly haunted by one experience he

had in the concentration camp* To purge himself of an in­

sidious pity he felt for David Jerusalem, a Jewish poet whom

he admired, he abused the mam unmercifully* Jerusalem

finally went mad and eventually succeeded in committing

suicideo He realizes that in persecuting Jerusalem he was

trying to destroy a part of himself and that his identity

became merged with that of his antagonist:

ignore si Jerusalem comprendio qme si yo lo

destruf, fuS para destruir mi piedado Ante mis
ejos, no era un homfcre» mi siqmiera mn judfo; se
hab£a tramsfermado em el sfmobolo [sic] de mna de-
testada zona de mi alma<> Yo agonice com el, yo
mor£ com ll» yo de algdn modo me he perdido eon Sit
por eso, fui implacableo22

As he prepares to die, zur U n d e looks at himself in

the mirror, seeking to know himself: "liro me cara en el es-

pejo para saber qmiem soy, para saber elm© me portarl dentro

de unas horas, euando me emfremte eon el fimo"23 Yet he has

already observed, while thinking of his ancestors, that, as

death approaches, his identity has joined theirs: "Manana,

euando el reloj de la prisln de las nueve, yo habre entrado

en la muerte 5 es natural que piense en mis mayores, ya que

tan cerea estoy de su sombra, ya qme de algim mod© soy

elloSo"24

The idea that the past is simply a reflection of the

present is a recurrent theme in Borgeso When a man dies,

his identity merges with that of his ancestors and, during

his life, he has merely been a composite of those who have

lived before him» Yet, paradoxically, Borges feels that the

individual is unique and the circumstances surrounding his

life make what he does unique, mo matter how similar he and

his works may be to another man and his workso Borges

blended these concepts of unity and diversity in one of his

earliest short stories, "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,"

one of the eight stories collected in El jardin de senderos

due se Mfureano

In "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote," Borges

imagines a twentieth-century author who recreates Cervantes 0

Quijoteo Except for a few omissions, Menard’s Quijote is

exactly like Cervantes"o Yet Borges considers them entirely

different novels because of the authors and the times in

which these authors wrote* He cites a particular passage and

analyzes it in both contextss

Redactada en el siglo diecisiete, redaetada per

el "ingenie lego" Cervantes, esa enumeraeiSn es un
mere elogio retSrieo de la historia* Menard, en
eambio, escribe s

"o * * la verdad, cuya madre es la historia,

e'mula del itempo, deposit© de las aceiomes, tes-
tigo de lo pasado, ejempl© y aviso de lo presente,
advertencia de lo por venir*"

La historia, madre de la verdad; la idea es

asombrosa* Menard, eontemporaneo de William James,
no define la historia eomo una indagaeiSm de la
realidad sino eomo su origen* La verdad histdrica
para el, no es lo que sucediS; es lo que juzgamos
smcedioo Las eliusulas finales --"ejempl© y aviso
de lo presente, advertencia de 1 © por venir"-- son
desearadamente pragmlltieaso 25

Borges suggests, in "pierre Menard, autor del Qui­

jote?" that individual identity is a matter of personal

interpretation* Every person and every thing are in some

way a reflection of other things and other people, and

Menard’s Quijote, although seemingly an almost exact copy of

Cervantes'» is different beeamse of the eireumstamees and

the man who wrote ito

In "Tres versiones de Judas 9 “ Borges proposes again

that the circumstances determine the interpretation of a

man's life and his actionso He takes as his point of de­

parture De Qmineey's hypothesis that Judas betrayed Christ

to force him to reveal his divinity so that his followers

would revolt against Roman tyramnyo

The main character of "Tres versiones de Judas»•"

like those of Menard and Herbert Qualm, is an imaginary lit­

erary figure» Mils Runeberg, a Swedish theologian => Borges

describes a threefold process in Runeberg's workso First,

Rmneberg argued that Judas was simply a reflection of Jesuss

"El orden inferior es un espejo del orden superiors las

formas de la tierra eorrespomden a las formas del oielo; las

manchas de la piel son un mapa de las incorruptibles eon-

stelaciones; Judas refleja de algtin modo a Jesiso"26 Here,

we have a simple inversion of identities» Good and evil are

simply distortions of each othero The image distorts the

truth 9 but the truth is a distortion of the imageo Rmneberg

went on to suggest that both the concepts of good and evil

were necessary for the redemption of mankind and that God’s

sacrifice could only be perfect if Jesus and Judas were both

divine Redeemers g

Dios» arguye Mils Rmneberg, se rebajo a ser hombre

para la redeneion del gSnero human©? cabe
 83
eonj etmrar q.ue fue perfect© el saerificio ©Tarado
por n© invalidad© © atemmado per omisioneso
Limiter 1© qme padeci© a la agonla de mna tarde ea
la ermz es Masfematerio <>2 ?

laaeberg finally decided that the distortion of the image of

Christj Jmdass was God's true form as a mans

Dios totalmente se hizo hembre per© hombre hasta

la infamia, hombre hasta la repr©baei6n y el
abism©o Para salvarmos, pud© elegir eualquiera
de los destines que traman la perpleja red de la
historia? pud© ser Alejandro o Pitdgoras © Rurik
o Jesisi eligio mn imfimo destines fuS Judas028

Convinced that he had ferreted out a secret not meant

to be revealed» Runeberg consoled himself with the scorn and

indifference of his fellow philosophers and theologianss

"Runeberg inuyd en esa indiferencia ecumenica una easi mila-

grosa eonfirmaeiSno Dios ordenaba esa indiferencia$ Dios no

queria que se propalara en la tierra Su terrible secret©o"29

Runeberg”s intuition of the identity of Judas as a redeemer

is a secret one. He convinced himself that he shared a

divine secret 9 one that was meant for him alone« Runeberg

hoped to die 9 sharing hell, not heaven, with Judas whom he

saw as the true Redeemers "Ebrio de insommio y de verti­

gines a dialletiea, Nils Runeberg errd por las ealles de

Malmp 9 rogando a voces que le fuera deparada la graeia de

compartir eon el Redentor el Infiernoo"3© Borges concludes

Runeberg's story by stating the date of his death, and the

reader is left to wonder whether Runeberg"s wish was ful­

filled* Here, Borges implies that all men share a common

seeret at the moment of death when their individual beliefs

and aspirations are erased by a common destinyo

In "La seota del Fenixs” Borges again writes of the

aura of seerecy which surrounds man's common fate* He

speaks of a secret rite in which all people at one time or

another participates

Sin un libro sagrado que los eongregme como la

Eseritura a Israel» sin una memoria eomun» sin esa
otra memoria que es un idiema, desparramados por
la faz de la tierra» divers©s de color y de rasgos»
una sola cosa — el Secret©— los mne y los unira
hasta el fin de los d£aso 31

"La seota del Fenix" has usually been interpreted as an al­

lusion to the propagation of the species by sexual inter­

course o However» Ronald Christ's brilliant explication of

this briefly stated riddle leaves little doubt that Borges

is actually referring to deatho Professor Christ says that

he found the key to the cult of the Phoenix in the work of

one of Borges’ favorite writers , De Quineey 8

In "Secret Societies" De Quimeey speaks of

those he has read about and offers several bits of
information which are appropriate to Borges' storyo
De Quineey's startling point about the most famous
of seeret societies— the Eleusiniam Mysteries and
Freemasonry— is that they have no secrets the rite
they guard is nonexistent or vulgarly commonplace
and therefore cannot be revealed because no one
would believe it to be a mystery 0 In this account ,
one can see an impetus for.the form of "The Cult
of the Phoenixo" ' The second fact is that most
such societies are concerned with immortalityo 3 2

Considering Borges’ metaphysical twist of mind and the sig­

nificance of the Phoenix as a symbol of death and rebirth»

 85
Christ’s theory seems eminently more suitable to the story

than the explanation that eomes more readily to mind— of

propagation through sexual intercourse 0

A sense of mystery and seereey often pervades Borges 6

stories , but it is a sense of shared seereey„ The individ­

ual is alone when he perceives some secret knowledge of him­

self or the universe» as Vincent Moon and Fergus Kilpatrick

were alone in their guilto Yet, they each had a need to re­

veal that guilt and try to atone for it, Tadeo Cruz, Droe-

tulft, and the Englishwoman of "El guerrer© y la eautive,"

in forsaking one set of values, espoused another, In doing

so, they had a sense of intimate identity with others, as

did zur Linde when he faced death and the Megro after he

killed Martin Fierro, Asteri<Sn and Runeberg each felt that

they possessed a private knowledge of the universe, yet they

identified with their respective redeemers. In '"Pierre

Menard, autor del Quijote," there is also this juxtaposition

of sameness and diversity, Menard created a unique work?

although it was a word-for-word replica of Cervantes” mas­

terpiece, the change wrought by three centuries endowed it

with new dimensions. In "La seeta del Fenix," Borges says

)

that the members of the cult often experienced a sense of

personal aversion, but that the cult enduress

He mereeido em tres eontinentes la amistad de

muehos devotos del Fenix? me eonsta que el secret©,
al principio, les parecio baladl, penoso, vulgar y
(lo que aun es m£.s extrano) increlble, No se
avenlan a admitir que sus padres se hubieran
 86
rebajado a tales manejos= Lo rare es que el
Secret© no se haya perdido hace tiempos a despech©
de las vieisitmdes del @rbe, a despech© de las
guerras y de los exodos» llega» trememdamemte, a
todos los fieleso Alguien no ha vaeilado en afir-
mar que ya es instintiv©o33

So» here again, the sense of the personal» the individual,

evolves into a common sharing of experienceo

Borges weaves many of the labyrinthine threads of

his short stories together in ’’La busea de Averroes," which

appears in El Alepho Here he provides us with a search for

meaning which the seeker feels is hopeless, a sense of the

illusory quality of life, man's sense of helplessness when

confronted with chaos and the infinite, the problems of

identity and death»

Averroes, the twelfth-century Cordoban philosopher,

is engaged in a fruitless search for the Aristotelian mean­

ing of the words, "comedy" and "tragedyo" In the narrative

part of the story, Borges describes Averroes” labyrinthine

house and gardens and recounts a discussion between Aver­

roes and some of his friendSo After his friends leave,

Averroes realizes that the meaning of "tragedy" and "comedy"

must be felt rather than defined* He looks into a mirror

and disappears as if he and all that surrounded him had

never existed:

'Simtii sueno, sintio urn poeo de frlOo Des-

cenid© el turbamte, se mirS en un espejo de metalo
No se lo que vierom sus ojos, porque mingim his-
toriador ha descrit© las formas de su earau Se
que desapareeil bruseamente, com© si lo fulminara
 87
tan fmego sin lta2» y que eon el desaparecieren la
easa y el invisible surtidor y los libros y los
raanuseritos y las palomas y las muchas esclavas
de pel© negro y la trSarala eselava de pelo rojo y
Faraeh y AMlci.sim y los resales y tal vez el
Gmadalqiiivir o3^

Averroes” glanee into the mirror is symbolic of

man's precarious reality in his ora eyeso Gutierrez Girar-

dot has commented on the symbolic significance of mirrors in

Borges" work in the following manners ME1 espej© sugiere la

idea de la reflexion, no tamto en el pur© sentido optico,

sino en sentido figmrados el individno se conoee en el es­

pej© y este eomoeimiento es la comeiencia que el tiene de

s£o o o o,,35 This would suggest that Averroes recognized in

the mirror his own insubstantial mature before he disap­

peared* Borges reaffirms this illusory quality of human ex­

istence in his final comment on the story* Just as in “Las

ruinas circulares," the dreamer„ Borges, is as much a dream

as is Averroes» because the dream and the dreamer are

mutually and infinitely dependents

Gentle en la iltima p£gina» que mi marraoi&n era um

simbolo del hombre que yo ful, mientras la eseribla
y que'para redaetar ese marraeiSn» yo tuve que ser
aqmel hombre y qye» para ser aquel hombre» ye tuve
que redactor esa marraei£m-» y as! hasta 1 © infinite*
(En el instante en que yo dejo de creer en Sl»
"Averroes” desapareee*)38

Thus, the individual is lost in a dream world* He

has a precarious sense of his own individuality, precarious

because he knows that his identity is an illusion* In life,

the corporeal substance disappears with death, and all that

can remain is an image in the minds of others of what onee

waso As a writer, Borges recreates images, endowing them

with separate identities and then pointing out the agonizing

irony of lifeo Death is the final reality and it is from

his knowledge of this reality that all man's hopes, dreams,

and fantasies of immortality proceed,.

 Endnotes to Chapter V

^Christ, po 27»
2B©rgess Ficclones0 p» 153*
•^Borges, Flcolones* p* 53e
^Borges, Flcclones, P* 159<»
^Borgess FlcclohoSs P« 1^1*
^Borges, FlccloneSo p» 177*
^Borgesp B'lcclone.s<, p« ISO,
^Borgesp El Alephp p= 55*
9Borg@Sp El Alepfaq PP* 56-57*
1QBorgeSp EL Alephg P* 39*

^Borges 9 E l .ilephg P « 45 *
^ Borges9 El Aleph, P* 48*
^Borgesp El ■Aleph9 pp» 51” 52*

^4piorgeSp 11 Alephp p* 44*

^^BorgeSp 13* A1$P&; B° 134*

^■^BorgeSp El. Alephp p» 131*

17Borges9-S,. i M S s PP- 6?-68#

■^^BorgeSp El Alephp p* 69*

^BorgeSp El P* '69*

2®Borgess ®L. Alflfeg P* 69*

2^BorgeSp-KL Alephg P* 70*
 Borges» El Aleph; P°

2^B©rges» 11 Aleph, p= Bio.

2 5 BorgeS 9 El -iardin. pp= 58-59»

26Borges» Pieeiomes, p» 171°

27Borges» Pioeiomes, p° 173°

28Bor g e s » Fieciomes, pp° 174-175°

29Borges6 FioeioneSs P° 175°

30Borges» Fieoiomes, p° 175°

31Borges 9 FiociQBes» p° 183°

32christ» p° 156°
33sorges, Ficoiones, pp° 184-185°

34iorges, 11 Aleph, PP° 100-101°

35sirardot 9 Borges, p° 116°

36Borges» m Aleph, p° 101°

 CHAPTER VI

SUMMARY

In the preceding pages» we have seen several aspects

©f Jorge Luis Borges 1 vision of the universeo Borges sees

the universe as infinite and chaotico In attempting to

order this chaos, Borges proposes various metaphors for the

universe, and it is through these symbolic representations

of the universe that he hopes to discern an order which

would, by implication, indicate an order to the cosmos

itselfo

Most specifically, the problem with which Borges

deals is the manner in which the individual confronts the

universeo Borges sees man as a creature engaged in a

search for ultimate values, as one who is inevitably frus­

trated in his search by his own limitationso Being finite,

man is poorly equipped to challenge a universe which appears

boundlesso Yet, by his very nature, man must question and

strive to understand the universeo His sense of his own

individuality demands that he seek a meaning and an order in

the universe so that he may perhaps find some reason for his

own existenceo

Man lives in loneliness and confusion, confronted

with the knowledge of inevitable death and a sense of an

'91
infinite universe whieh is semehow irreconcilable with his

knowledge of his own finite natmre» So man takes refuge in

various fantasies to escape from the realities of his exis-

temeeo He creates dream worlds> he glorifies or creates

false circumstances of his own life; he imagines himself to

be a completely different person» In this shadow world» man

is as confused by seeming realities as he is by the figures

the shadows represento Ultimately? however» man cannot es­

cape the knowledge or shadow of death; he is evanescent

and he can hope only for immortality in the knowledge of his

own mortality whieh he leaves for otherso

Individual meaning lies only in such an abstractive

heritageo Words $ as individual symbols» may lie or tell the

truth? as each person interprets them* John Updike has said

of Borges that he "hopes seriously for immortality*" But it

is an abstract and general immortality that Borges hopes for

— the immortality of all mankind» which, particularized?

would be some small heritage from every individual? whieh

heritage unites him to the human race* So man is both

unique and abstract? but? ©nee we make the distinction? we

find that we have gone back to the starting point of a

circle which never ends? like the cycle of life and death in

"Las ruinas eireulareso"

 LIST OF REFERENCES

Primary Sources

Books;

Borges, Jorge Luis* Antologia personal* Buenos Aires*

Sur, 1961.

_______ • Ficciones* Buenos Aires * EmecS Editores, S.A.,

1 9 5 ^

_______ • Historia universal de la infamia* Buenos Aires:

Emec§ Editores, S.A., 195^»

_______ • El .jardin de senderos que se bifur can. Buenos

Aires: Sur, 1942*

_______ • Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings*

Eds*, Donald A* Yates and James E. Irby. "Preface"
by AndrA Maurois. New York: New Directions, 1964.

Secondary Sources

Books %

Barrenechea, Ana Maria. Borges, the Labyrinth Maker* Edi­

tor and translator 1 Robert Lima. New York: New York
University Press, 1 9 6 5 #

_______ * La expressidn de la irrealidad en la obra de Jorge

Luis Borges* Mexico D. F.* Fondo de Cultura
Econdmica, 1957*

Burgin, Richard. Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges. New

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Christ, Ronald. The Narrow Act. New York* New York Uni­
versity Press, 1 9 6 9 .

93
 94

Fernandez Moreno* cSsar. Esquema de Borges. Buenos Aires*

Editorial Perrot, 1957*

GuitiSrrez Girardot, Rafael. Jorge Luis Borges, Ensayo de

interpretaci6n. Madrid: Insula* 1959•

Maurois, Andrl. "Preface" in Labyrinths * Selected Stories

and Other Writings. Eds., Donald A. Yates and
James E. Irby. New York * New Directions, 1964.

Rios Patrdn, Josl Luis. Jorge Luis Borges. Buenos Aires:

Editorial La MandrAgora, 1955*

Tamayo, Marcial and Adolfo Ruiz-Dlaz. Borges: enigma y

clave. Buenos Aires * Editorial Nuestro Tiempo,
1955.

Periodicals *

"Journey Without an End," Time (March 24, 196?), Vol. 8 9 ,

No. 12, 90.

Updike, John. "The Author as Librarian," The New Yorker

(October 30, 1 9 6 5 ) 1 Vol. XLI, No. 37. 223-24^