THE ENIGMAS OF BORGES, AND THE ENIGMA OF BORGES Peter Gyngell, B.A. Thesis submitted to Cardiff University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2012 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks go to my grandson, Brad, currently a student of engineering, who made me write this thesis; to my wife, Jean, whose patience during the last four years has been inexhaustible; and to my supervisor, Dr Richard Gwyn, whose gentle guidance and encouragement have been of incalculable value. Peter Gyngell March 26, 2012 iii CONTENTS PREFACE 1 INTRODUCTION 2 PART 1: THE ENIGMAS OF BORGES CHAPTER 1: BORGES AND HUMOUR 23 CHAPTER 2: BORGES AND HIS OBSESSION WITH DEATH 85 CHAPTER 3: BORGES AND HIS PRECIOUS GIFT OF DOUBT 130 CHAPTER 4: BORGES AND HUMILITY 179 PART 2: THE ENIGMA OF BORGES CHAPTER 5: SOME LECTURES AND FICTIONS 209 CHAPTER 6: SOME ESSAYS AND REVIEWS 246 SUMMARY 282 POSTSCRIPT 291 BIBLIOGRAPHY 292 1 PREFACE A number of the quoted texts were published originally in English; I have no Spanish, and the remaining texts are quoted in translation. Where possible, translations of Borges’ fictions will be taken from The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969 [Borges, 1971]; they are limited in number but, because of the involvement of Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, they are taken to have the greater authority; in the opinion of Emir Rodriguez Monegal, a close friend of Borges, these translations are ‘the best one can ask for’ [461]; furthermore, this book contains Borges’ ‘Autobiographical Essay’, together with his Commentaries on each story. Otherwise, the translations made by Andrew Hurley and published in Collected Fictions [Borges, 1998a] will be used. Translations of Borges’ poetry will be taken primarily from Selected Poems 1923-1967 [Borges, 1972], since these translations again result from the collaboration of di Giovanni and Borges; others will be taken from Selected Poems [Borges, 2000a], and from the papers given at a symposium on Borges’ poetry at the University of Arkansas in 1983 [Cortínez; 97-347]. Having no Spanish, I shall generally confine myself to commenting on what Borges says in his poetry, rather than how he says it. Translations of Borges’ non-fictions will be taken from Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952 [Borges, 1964] and from The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922-1986 [Borges, 2001]. 2 INTRODUCTION The enigmas mentioned in the first part of the title of this thesis arise from a study of Borges’ fictions. Some result from Borges’ occasional desire to hoodwink his readers, but most of them arise from an apparent unwillingness or inability on the part of many of his critics to understand those stories fully. The enigma that Borges himself presents, however, is of an entirely different nature; it stems primarily from his apparent inability to deal appropriately with many of the topics that he addresses not only in some of his lectures and essays, but also in a small number of his fictions. The ‘enigmas’ in Part 1 are therefore illusions, while the ‘enigma’ in Part 2 is very real. In this thesis my aim is to demystify some examples of the former, and to examine some aspects of the latter. The thesis is therefore in two parts. The first, which deals primarily with the enigmas presented by Borges’ fiction, will be discussed in Chapters 1-4. It will be suggested that the principal characteristics of his fiction are wit, a fascination with death, a sense of doubt, and a deep appreciation of humility. No poetry will be quoted in Chapter 1, which deals with his wit, since his poetry is not relevant to that topic; but the poems quoted in Chapters 2 and 3 are intended to assist in establishing the importance and depth of, first, his obsession with death, and secondly, his ‘precious gift’ of doubt, as Borges put it. Some of the fictions discussed in Chapter 4, which illustrate his views on humility, are, I suggest, amongst his finest. 3 The second part of the thesis, dealing with the enigma which Borges himself presents, will be addressed in Chapters 5 and 6. A more detailed résumé of the contents of the individual chapters will be provided later; before that, however, it is necessary to consider certain topics which are relevant to a number of the chapters. To assume that any study of Jorge Luis Borges should commence at his birth in 1899, or even with his first appearance in print only ten years later, would be a mistake. As far as Borges was concerned, his ancestors were his beginning. It is necessary to study them briefly, if Borges’ work is to be put into perspective. The following details are provided by his three biographers, Monegal, Williamson and Woodall, and by Borges’ own ‘Autobiographical Essay’ [1971; 135-185]. According to Williamson [3], the ancestors of Borges ‘were among the first Europeans to arrive in America’. In the century preceding Borges’ birth some of his maternal ancestors were distinguished soldiers; in the early 1800’s Manuel Isodoro Acevedo, the grandfather of Borges’ mother, fought in the wars of independence against the Spanish forces; in 1820 Borges’ great-great-uncle, Miguel Estanislao Soler, was involved in the same wars, and became governor of Buenos Aires. Soler’s daughter married Isodoro de Acevedo Laprida, who ‘had fought in the civil war against Rosas, the tyrant who ruled Argentina’ for seventeen years [Monegal; 4]; and their daughter, Leonor, who was born in 1876, was to become Borges’ mother. Borges’ paternal grandfather, who later became Colonel Francisco Borges, had been involved in the same wars from the age of fifteen; later he fought in Paraguay, and in frontier wars in the south and east. His wife, however, was an 4 English woman called Frances (Fanny) Haslam; and her father, Edward Young Haslam, was a distinguished journalist. He was also distinguished as one of the first recipients of ‘an innovative operation performed on his eyes: his condition, unfortunately for his daughter, her son and then her grandson [Borges] was, like colour-blindness, heritable’ [Woodall; 7]. Fanny Haslam had two sons; the elder followed his father into the military; the younger was to become Borges’ father. Fanny Haslam’s marriage to Colonel Borges did not last long; he was killed in a military uprising only seven months after his second son’s birth. She was a great reader, Borges tells us, as was Borges’ father; it was Borges’ father who showed him the paradoxes of Zeno, which intrigued his son throughout his life [Borges, 1971; 138]. Borges’ mother, Leonor Acevedo de Borges, was not only a great reader but also translated books by Hawthorne, Herbert Read, Melville, Virginia Woolf and Faulkner [Borges, 1971; 139], as well as by Katherine Mansfield — ‘probably her best translation’, according to Williamson [372]. Woodall describes her as Borges’ ‘life partner’ [242], her death preceding that of her son by only eleven years. As will be seen, his military heritage was to have a considerable influence on Borges’ writing, not only in his fictions but even more frequently in his poems; in a paper on one book of Borges’ poetry, The Iron Coin [Borges, 2000a; 369- 387], one critic writes of Borges’ ‘awareness of his ancestors as being part of himself’ [Poust; 311]. But it will also be seen that his less warlike grandfather on his mother’s side — in particular, the contents of that grandfather’s library — as well as his 5 ever worsening eyesight were also to be of considerable influence. Borges’ father inherited that library; in his Prologue to the book of poems The Self and the Other, published in 1964, Borges tells his readers: ‘Less than by the classroom I received my education in a library — my father’s library; despite the vicissitudes of time and geography, I believe that I have not read those esteemed volumes in vain’ [2000a; 149]. In a poem entitled ‘Poem of the Gifts’ [Borges, 1972; 117-119; tr. Ben Bellitt] he describes himself as one ‘for whom Paradise was always a metaphor, / An image of libraries’. Later, in his Autobiographical Essay, Borges writes: ‘If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library. In fact, I sometimes think that I have never strayed outside that library’ [1971; 140]. According to Williamson [35], ‘the little boy would spend hours lying on the floor with his head stuck in a book’. It was partly because he spent so much time there, Borges tells us, that he was ‘expected to be a writer’ [1971; 142]; it was also the reason for his repeated statement during the seminars at the University of Arkansas in 1983 that ‘I’ve done most of my reading in English’ [Cortínez; 9; 72]. At first Borges lost his sight only gradually, but it left him almost entirely in 1955; according to Monegal, he was ‘the sixth generation of the Borgeses to be so afflicted’ [5]. This process affected not only what he wrote — his poems refer often to his blindness — but also how he wrote; for a time he became addicted to the sonnet-form, since he could more easily remember the lines that he had formed in his head [Borges, 1971; 177]. 6 I shall suggest that there are two reasons why it has become necessary to demystify Borges’ fictions; first, because Borges went out of his way to conceal his intentions, especially in those earlier fictions that are dealt with in Chapter 1; and secondly, because a great deal of the commentary which his fictions have inspired has had the effect of making many of them appear unnecessarily enigmatic.