Borges, Desire, and Sex Liverpool Latin American Studies Series Editor: Matthew Brown, University of Bristol Emeritus Series Editor: Professor John Fisher
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Borges, Desire, and Sex Liverpool Latin American Studies Series Editor: Matthew Brown, University of Bristol Emeritus Series Editor: Professor John Fisher 1 Business History in Latin 10 Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial America: The Experience of Tricks: Rewriting the Tropics in Seven Countries the novela de la selva Carlos Dávila and Rory Miller (eds) Lesley Wylie 2 Habsburg Peru: Images, 11 Argentina’s Partisan Past: Imagination and Memory Nationalism and the Politics of Peter T. Bradley and David Cahill History Michael Goebel 3 Knowledge and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic 12 The Reinvention of Mexico: Perspectives National Ideology in a Henry Stobart and Rosaleen Neoliberal Era Howard (eds) Gavin O’Toole 4 Bourbon Peru, 1750‒1824 13 Armies, Politics and Revolution: John Fisher Chile, 1808–1826 Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz 5 Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples 14 Andean Truths: Transitional and the Colonisation of the Justice, Ethnicity, and Chocó, 1510‒1753 Cultural Production in Caroline A. Williams Post-Shining Path Peru Anne Lambright 6 Shining Path: Guerilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands, 15 Positivism, Science, and ‘The 1980‒1997 Scientists’ in Porfirian Mexico: L ewis Taylor A Reappraisal Natalia Priego 7 South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text 16 Argentine Cinema and Catherine Davies, Claire Brewster National Identity (1966–1976) and Hilary Owen Carolina Rocha 8 Adventuring Through Spanish 17 Decadent Modernity: Civilization Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign and ‘Latinidad’ in Spanish Mercenaries and the Birth of America, 1880–1920 New Nations Michela Coletta Matthew Brown 9 British Trade with Spanish America, 1763‒1808 Adrian J. Pearce Liverpool Latin American Studies, New Series 18 Borges, Desire, and Sex Ariel de la Fuente Borges, Desire, and Sex LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS Cover image: Raphaelle Peale, American (1774–1825). Venus Rising From 1 1 the Sea—A Deception, ca. 1822. Oil on canvas, 29 /8 × 24 /8 inches (74 × 61.3 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 34-147. Photo courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services/Jamison Miller. First published 2018 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2018 Ariel de la Fuente The right of Ariel de la Fuente to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978 1 78694 150 3 epdf ISBN 978-1-78694-950-9 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster To the memory of my father To my mother To the memory of Marcela Duprat To Cecilia, Malena, and Agustina “En toda vasta obra suele haber rincones secretos” Jorge Luis Borges Prologue to Manuel Mujica Láinez’s Los ídolos “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book” John Donne, “The Ecstasy” “Es por el cuerpo que se llega al alma” Jorge Guillermo Borges*, La senda “Combien des jeux très lascivement agréables naissent de la manière honnête et pudique de parler des actes de l’amour!” Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais “Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito, a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído.” Jorge Luis Borges, “Un lector” * Jorge Guillermo Borges was Jorge Luis’s father. Contents Contents Acknowledgements viii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 On Borges’s Sexuality 19 2 Biography in Literature and the Reading of Desire and Sex in Borges 35 3 Borges’s Erotic Library: The Poetry Shelf 48 4 Sir Richard Burton’s Orientalist Erotica: The Thousand Nights and a Night and The Perfumed Garden 84 5 Schopenhauer and Montaigne, Philosophy and Sex 109 6 Desire and Sex in Buenos Aires: Borges’s Poetry on the Arrabal 129 7 Stoicism and Borges’s Writing of Women 145 8 “Emma Zunz”: Sex, Virtue, and Punishment 173 9 “La intrusa”: Incest and Gay Readings 187 Conclusions 206 Works Cited 209 Index 219 Acknowledgements Introduction The Department of History and the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University have supported the research and writing of this book, for which I am sincerely appreciative. I have also fundamentally benefitted from the expertise and professionalism of the staff at the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education Library, in particular the staff in the Interlibrary Loan Department, whose unfailing dedication made possible for me to consult all necessary materials. I equally thank the Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas (Austin), for giving me access to their Jorge Luis Borges’s Collection. I am also appreciative of Carmen Vasco, Inés, Silvia, and Sonia Fernández Moreno and the journal Variaciones Borges for their copyright permissions and of Donna Ferullo for her gracious advice regarding these matters. I am deeply grateful to Chloe Johnson, Commissioning Editor at Liverpool University Press, for her commitment to this project. Many colleagues generously offered their knowledge and support and I am certainly indebted to them for any virtue this book may have: I thank Jeremy Adelman, Víctor Aizenman, Germán Alvarez, Daniel Balderston, Mariela Blanco, Pablo Brescia, Barbara Brown, Susan Clawson, Susan Curtis, Chuck Cutter, Paul Dixon, Nils Jacobsen, Guillermo Martínez, Alberto Rojo, Laura Rosato, Marcia Stephenson, and Dawn Stinchcomb. It would have been impossible to bring this book to completion without the kindness of my cousins Alma Saravia and Eli Eitan, and the friendship of Gustavo Paz, Luis Alberto Lozano, Fernando Boro, Ananth and Vidhya Iyer, Claudio and Claudia Aguilar, Stacey Smythe and Avi Kak, Marcelo Carignano and Claudia Guerin, Carlos Gambirazio, Ruth Abramovitz, Esteban Fernández Juricic and Gabriela Sincich, John and Kim Reisman, Dave and Char Warner and the “Grill Nighters”. This book is dedicated to the people to whom I owe everything in my life: to my parents, for their love and generosity; to Marcela Duprat, who gave me the opportunity to discover beauty in the world and “bonté” in human beings; to Malena and Agustina, for their endless love; and to Cecilia, whose literary insights and unfailing patience made the writing of the book (as of the rest of our life) a shared adventure. Abbreviations Abbreviations “Auto” Jorge Luis Borges. “An Autobiographical Essay,” in Critical Essays on Jorge Luis Borges. Jaime Alazraki (ed.). Boston: Hall and Co., 1987, 21–55. BES Jorge Luis Borges. Jorge Luis Borges en Sur, 1931–1980. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1999. BH Jorge Luis Borges. Borges en El Hogar, 1935–1958. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2000. BLL Jorge Luis Borges. Borges, libros y lecturas. Laura Rosato and Germán Alvarez (eds.). Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional, 2010. BOW Jorge Luis Borges. Borges on Writing. N. T. Di Giovanni, D. Halpern, and Frank MacShane (eds.). New York: Allen Lane, 1973. BP Jorge Luis Borges. Borges Profesor: Curso de literatura inglesa en la universidad de Buenos Aires. Martín Arias and Martín Hadis (eds.). Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2000. Cartas del Fervor Jorge Luis Borges. Cartas del fervor: correspondencia con Maurice Abramowicz y Jacobo Sureda (1919–1928). Edited with prologue and notes by Joaquín Marco, Carlos García, and Cristóbal Pera. Barcelona: Emecé, 1999. CS Jorge Luis Borges. El círculo secreto. Prólogos y notas. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2003. CSM Jorge Luis Borges. Cuaderno San Martín. Buenos Aires: Cuadernos del Plata, 1929. CV Jorge Luis Borges. This Craft of Verse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. ET Jorge Luis Borges. El tango: cuatro conferencias. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2016. FBA Jorge Luis Borges. Fervor de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Serantes, 1923. Edición de autor, sin foliación]. x borges, desire, and sex IA Jorge Luis Borges. El idioma de los argentinos. Madrid: Alianza, 1999. ILN Jorge Luis Borges. Introducción a la literatura norteameri- cana. Buenos Aires: Editorial Columba, 1967. Inq. Jorge Luis Borges. Inquisiciones. Madrid: Alianza, 1998. LE Jorge Luis Borges. Luna de enfrente. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1925. LDS Jorge Luis Borges. Libro de sueños. Buenos Aires: Random House Mondadori, 2013. NRSVA The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. The New Revised Standard Version (third edition). Michael Coogan (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. OC [1974] Jorge Luis Borges. Obras completas. 4 vols. Buenos Aires and Barcelona: Emecé. 1974–96. OC [2009] Jorge Luis Borges. Obras completas. 3 vols. Critical edition annotated by Rolando Costa Picazo and Irma Zángara. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2009–11. OC [2010] Jorge Luis Borges. Oeuvres Completes. Jean-Pierre Bernes, editor. Paris: Gallimard, 2010. OCC Jorge Luis Borges. Obras completas en colaboración. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1979. TME Jorge Luis Borges. El tamaño de mi esperanza. Madrid: Alianza, 1998. TR1 Jorge Luis Borges. Textos recobrados (1919–1929). Barcelona: Emecé, 1997. TR2 Jorge Luis Borges. Textos recobrados (1931–1955). Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2001. TR3 Jorge Luis Borges. Textos recobrados (1956–1986). Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2003. WWR Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. E. F. J. Payne trans. New York: Dover, 1969. Introduction Introduction One of the personal traits that defined Jorge Luis Borges in the eyes of his friends and other contemporaries was his troubled sexuality. Estela Canto, who maintained a close romantic relationship with Borges in the 1940s, said that “la realización sexual era aterradora para él.”1 Dr Miguel Kohan Miller, the psychoanalyst who about the same time treated him for his “impotencia sexual,” also observed that Borges, “como toda persona que tiene una disminución de su potencia sexual, [vivía] acosado por el problema de la sexualidad.”2 This emotionally overwhelming condition significantly shaped Borges’s literary experience: he often read, thought, and wrote about desire and sex.