A Footnote to Borges Studies: a Study of the Footnotes

UNIVERSITYOF LONDON INSTITUTEOF LATINAMERICAN STUDIES OCCASIONALPAPERS No. 26

A Footnote to BorgesStudies: A Study of the Footnotes

EaelynFishburn A FOOTNOTETO BORGESSTUDIES: A STUDYOF THE FOOTNOTES

EvelynFishburn

hrstitute of Latin American Studies 3l TavistockSquare London WCIH gHA The Instituteof Latin American Studiespublishes as OccasionalPapers select- ed seminarand conlbrencepapers and public lecturesdelivered at the Institute or by scholarsassociated with the work of the Institute.

Evelyn Fishburn rvasProfessor of Latin American Literary Studiesat University \\/hen the worl, of North London, and is currently Visiting Professorat University College, cameto an end London. Her books include Borgesand EuropeReuisited, Erelyn Fishburn (ed.) aboutthe great (II-AS, I 998); ShorlFiction b1 S4anis,h American llbmen (l 998);A BorgesDidtonarl' (in well-foundedfez collaboration r'vithP Hughes)(1990); and ThePortrqtal of Immigrationin J\|neteenth figure, would cc CenturltArgmtine Literature (1845-1902)(l98l). She has alsopublished on Borges with humour ar and England,humour, allusion, Cabbala, and theJewishimaginary. other one,that 1 Admittedly,l This paperwas first presentedas the valedictorylecture by ProfessorFishburn in the Argentinep the Henry Thomas Room, Universityof North London, on 7 February2001. havea'when I - andjudging surely havebeet ary history. But some 14biogral gradualreissues tion the invalu: Bernds, and tt Borgesianstudi, tenceby Borges alwaysthe sam, that the things changesis thev journey rather work is entire\ and his orvn de The key pn Borges'sperma OccasionalPapers, Nerv Series 1992- of literature,i.t ISSN 09536825 this idea today, critical attentio o Instituteof Latin American Studies I In 'The Makt Universityof London, 2002 vant referencesto 2 Borges, Oeuar, lbriacionesBorgu,. persselect- A Footnote to Borges Studies: heInstitute A Study of the Footnotes t University \{Ihen the rvorldrvidecelebrations of 1999,the centenaryof Borges'sbirth, ity College, came to an end it seemedas if nothing elsecould, or perhapsshould, be said ,hburn(ed.) about the greatwriter, yet passionateinterest in Borgescontinues. There rvasa Acionaryt(in well-foundedI'ear that the persona,in the form of anecdotesabout the literary inNneteenth figure,u,ould come to eclipsethe writer, a dichotomy that Borgesanticipated J on Borges with humour and subtletyin the lbmouspage 'Borgesand I': 'It's Borges,the otherone, that things happen to.'l Admittedly,hardly a day passeswithout someanecdotal reference to him in Fishburnin the Argentinepress, and there is not an intellectualto be found who doesnot uary2001. have a 'when I was with Borges'story - the presentspeaker is no exception - andjudging by all thosewho claim they werepresent at his death,his must surelyhave been the most crowdeddeath chamberin history at leastin literary history.But seriouscritical work continuesto be produced: apart frorn somel4 biographies,the proceedingsof the many syrnposiaheld in 1999,the gradualreissues of all his rvritings,and in the contextof this paper I must mention the invaluableannotated edition of his completervorks by Jean Pierre Bernis, and the growing importance of the journal dedicated solely to Borgesianstudies, Vaiaciones Borges, all testifyto this.2Yet, paraphrasinga sen- tenceby Borgeson literature,'The thingsthat can be said about literatureare alrvaysthe same:what changesis the way of sayingthem,' I stronglysuspect that the things that can be said about Borges are always the same: what changesis the way of saying.them.This emphasison the diflbrentroutes of the journey rather than the arrival on which I havetended to concentratein my work is entirely consistentwith Borges'sscepticism regarding anything novel and his own delight in the reworkingsof a lew basicideas. The key premiseeloquently argued by so many critics in the past is that Borges'spermanently open storiesare in themselvesexamples of the 'total book' of literature,i.e. palimpsestsin the senseof Genette's'livre infini'. In revisiting this idea today,I shouldlike to focuson an aspectthat hasnot yet recei'",eddue critical attention,namely, the footnotes,seeing these as imaginativedevices that

I In 'Tlre NIaker', ColkctedFictions, translated by A. Hurley (Nerv York, l99B), p. 323. All relevant referencesto Borges'swork rvill be to this edition- 2 Bo.ges,Oruztres complites, editcd b-vJcanPierre Bernds(Paris, vol. l, 1993;vol. 2, 1999)and lhiacionesBorses. Journal of PhiLosophl,Semioics and Litcrature (Aarhus). A Footnoteto BorgesStudies add to this lhreby generatingnew readings.To adapt a metaphor usedby William ing De hagishmu Rowe in a discussionon Borges,I seethe footnotesas 'readingmachines' that at the reasoning make holesin the text to redistributeit allowing for different configurations.3 the generalinto A Witer on theEdge is the title of one of the most important books of Borges The powerpc criticism to have been publishedin the last few years:4to approach Borgesfrorn ined. Grafton obr the edgesof the paper seemseminently appropriategiven his avowedattraction footnote can sim for /asoillas,rhe margins, and /osoilleros, those living at the margins of society, cation of the sou the 'hoodlums'as he calledthem in his EdwardianEnglish. It is alsoconsistent footnotecan act, with Borges'snew prominencein coursesdealing with bordersand border cross- the author'scolle ings, at the Unirarsity of North l,ondon (UNL) as well as in other universities. a stronginferenc But first, a few generalremarks about the footnote,usually thought of as an ans footnote ever additionalpiece of information, an adjunct,and almostby implication,of sec- recognised,slight ondary importance,something that intrudesand interrupts.As once observed sources:'no need by No6l Coward, and often quoted since:'having to read a footnoteresembles In pre-Webd havingto go downstairsto answerthe door while in the midst of makinglove'.S resourcesand pal The classicfootnote ser\/es to assurescientific exactness, and when usedin The ShorttrOt the Humanities it is to establisha kind of parity with the Sciences:it un- l84l, a somewha derwritesthe soundnessof an argumentrvith empirical support as it were.In century and an ir short,it guaranteesscholarship. the gap between The traditionaldir.ision betrveen scholarly texts and the restis often defined Various dates by the useof footnotes:an essay,conveying a personalargument is not annotat- teenth,the eighte ed, whereasal1 argument with academicpretensions is, as studentswell know.6 footnote,depend But to what extentis a footnotedreference an objectivetool or a rhetorical tationsor comm device? In recentyears the footnotehas become the subjectas well asa method traced very far I of scholarly commentary.TFor example, its complex trajectory has been than the margin nrapped by Antony Grafton in his lucid, and witty, The Footnote:A Curious the result of a History.BThis is a title which criesout to be footnotedwith the information that (l 776-88)is take the French title of Thehotnote: A CuiousHistory is announced as Izs oiginestrag- gance,and often iquesde I'irudition: une histoire de la noteen bas de page, the German translation read- supportand sub runderprinting 1 r 'Reading 1\,Iaclrine/HoleN,Iachine', in 'Hor'v European is it?', Borgesand Europe Reainted, edit- cheaperto proc ed by E. l'ishburn (London, l99B),pp. 3l -6. nomically, the fi + JorgeLuis llotges:A l|/titer on theEdge, edited byJohn King (London and New York, 1993). informationit a 5 B. Hillr..t, 'Elegy for Excursus:The Descent of the Footnote' , CollegeEnglislt, vol. 5 I ( I 989), note,leads me tr p. 401; r\. Gralion, Thelbotnote: A CutiousHistor2 (Cambidge, N{A, 1997) betweena footn 6 Tlr.r,e is norv a snrallftrotnote industry in the form of a computer sofware,NotaBene, adveftised as 'your bibliographic manager'.Another; put fonvald by the Department of Engineeringof a lead- chical relationst ing unirersity,sells its wareson the basisthat: 'Footnotesmake your documentslook really fanry'. 7 Hilbert (1989).Ironically, Hilbert's study is publishedin a periodical that does not accept footnotes (ColkgcEnglislz) I Grafton (1997). u Seclbotnote 5. A Stub d theFootnotes

Villiam ing De hagishenursltriinge der deutschenfussnot (anphasis added; one can only marvel :s'that at the reasoningbehind this transbrmation of the curiousinto the tragic, and ts.'q the generalinto the German). Borges The powerpolitics of annotationare often more subtlethan is perhapsirnag- :sfrom ined. Grafton observesin a discussionrelated mainly to historytexts that while a raction footnote can simply be informative and give the detailsof the place and publi- tociety, cation of the source,if precededby the 'deadly' c.f. (compare,Latin conferre)the Nistent footnotecan act,and I quoteloosely, as 'an encodeddagger stuck in the backso{' t cross- the author's colleagues'.For rvhile it may indicate an alternatir,'eopinion, there is sities. a stronginference that it is one 'which is r,r'rong'.It appearsthat Italian histori- fasan ans footnote everyone,so that not to footnotesomeone becomes a veiled,but of sec- recognised,slight. The Germans,on the other hand,only referto older German rserved sources:'no needto admit the barbariansoutside', conjectures Grafton.g embles In pre-Web days, footnoteswere a useful indicator of the range of library love'.5 resourcesand particularly of economic and political bibliographical restrictions. rsedin '[he ShorterOxford DctionarT records the earliestuse of the term 'footnote' as it un- l94l, a somewhatlate date conside ring its widespreadpresence in the eighteenth 'ere.In centuryand an interestingexample, perhaps, of the belatednessof language,of the gap betweenreality and its linguistic codification. Jefined Various dateshave been mentioned ranging Irom the twelfth, the seven- nnotat- teenth,the eighteenthand the nineteenthcenturies as marking the birth of the :now.6 footnote,depending on one'sunderstanding of the term. If rve include anno- rtorical tations or commentaries,which is, after all, r,l,hatfootnotes are, thesecan be nethod traced very far back, but footnotesproper, commentsat the bottom, rather i been than the margins,of the page,appeared in the eighteenthcentury and were Curious the result of a printing trend. One quarter of Gibbon's Declineand full ln that (1776-88)istaken up with footnotes;the greathistorian rvas famous for the ele- estrag- gance?and often ironical personalobservations, of his footnotes,r,r'hich at once r read- support and subvertthe authority of his historicalaccount. Eventually, again under printing pressures,the footnote was relegatedto endnotes,which are ed, edit- cheaperto produce, but it seernsthat computer technologywill allow, eco- nomically,the footnote to regain its rightful place, on the samepage as the e93). information it annotates.'fhis last thought, regardingthe placing of the foot- qAq) / I note,leads me to ponder the basicquestion of what is the 'proper' relationship betrveena footnote and the text, or, put more polemicallli what is the hierar- vertised 'a lead- chical relationshipbetrveen commentary and text?The questionis prompted ancy'. accePt 9 Gralion (1997),pp. 10-l l. A Footnoteto BorgesSndiu by another: Which comesfirst, the footnote or the text? Also, where does a MrsuNffi nrip! ]lqu qry,* begin, or, as askedby one commentator:What exact- pdr Morc r &l Di ffi{ s lor I text stop and a fbotnote t|€n aF 1 lodnd if' .d sa d6 r .tlt tu of lkn $rs *m lm ly is 'hors d'oeuvre'?lo th. & sje 'flt. ddr

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This page from the Taln their discussion,seems to margin. Yet how fixet Spot can walk on his front paws. In this example:which is the 'text', which and centre is THE TEXT, th the gloss?Is the text an annotation to the picture? Or doesthe picture gloss mentariesand interpretati the text? Can a hierarchybe established?It is not my intentiort to answerthis in the centraltext or in tht question but to fantasisethe possibilitiesthat this illustration opens up for ing the readingof the tex' readingsof annotatedtexts . the margins. We accedetl it is they that shapeour un they have becomethe texr, Borgesoften expresset l0 SteplrenBarney(.ed.),AnnorationantlitsTixh(Oxford, l99l),p.vii.Thisisone inalistof basic interplay betweena seern for the questions that rvas sent out by the editor to his contributors, to establishthe parameters ings, a theme that permea symposium on annotations held at the university of caliibrnia at Irvine in April 1988. A Stud;yof theFtotnotes

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This page from the 'lalmud, the Jewish conlpilation of oral teachinss and their discussion, seems to present a clearly marked hierarchy betrveen centre )h and margin. Yet how fixed is this relationship? The passagein Hebrew at the it are com- SS centre is THE TEXT, the codified Oral Law, and surrounding ris mentaries and interpretations; where does the real, the practical authority lie' 0r in the central text or in the commentary which consistsof explanations direct- ing the reading of the text? The centre is no longer read without reference to the margins. \\te accede the central text from and through the commentaries; it is they that shape our understanding, direct our interpretation. We could say they have becomethe text. Borges often expressed fascination with the Talmud, particularly for the slc interplay between a seemingly 'fitrite' or fixed text and its multi-layered read- he ings, a theme that permeates his work' A Footnoteto BorgesStudtes

The issueof this relationship,focused on the boundariesof a text is play- Commentary in fiction fully dealt with by Derrida in Glas(1974), a work which mimes and plays on verting the unity of the tex the structuringof Rabbinical disquisitions.lI tral narrative. The parodic tations, is, interestingly,cor g-i .91" rioud'hui pour nou, ici, 49 miccmg . il 6l utl d'tt Rtnbtna d'm lftccl? 4ti lhlhl n ptitt accept this to be the writinl Poui aouq ici, uia&@: voilA e qu'6 !,ru pu unlt tln rlgeliar, ctlwt w alriaftr r c divix dAoarir- ma ru lui- qdu. In the prologue Cervan Pou ior, ic! oeialEet : G EoE @ d€ cib- tid4 dlit, tooio6, oour I'rwr epptir de iui, book must appear without e Qut luit Comrc le rcsts lation -'for, I can neither Sd me 6t 3i a@gr, DG l'aiglc Il -Cu tid h puisrucc ibparidc d hirtodquc. qui-ic proooou corc know what authors I have Dcu colom iodgdcr, f Ie tua5:lrq il y in q oc a&t ridicUo qsc iuq!,t dimt-ils, dort chrquc u mln polnt : lr tctitution, sdmmdquoo bfiilitilc, - ovdoppc ou grinc, iocdcu.lebloEt !6vsc, prefix them to the work pou qui I'e un po lu, u po Edm6q dc h ftoidnr in rtouc, nmplec, rcmcquc, trcupc l,eutrc. mgidralc d du r&icw imptubablc, I'riglc prir ds ta t|4 d r. gd. L'incrlculrblc dc t $i ,Jt nttl sc ctlctlc, him a useful tip, which Bo Soit riqi 691 lc philomphe @l,l{sl lhborc rcu hr oupr, le tord m lc lcbe&udc regard ca dlcrcg you! vour dpoircricz plu virc i ts to the practice of qu Qai lui ? L'riglc dc plomb oE d'or, bhc ou !oi!, n'r pr dga6 lc oc du srvoit rbrclu. E!@s tuio. I'ri8lo coapt t. Ch.quc pctit card sc d8imitc, chequc have nothing to do but to ser . ouge D"lllc@ o! Dc colomc s'eallve ara urc iolnsriblc n6rere ait uorc al Jr a AiE;;i.difiil.-;;ffi Pu d porrrut l'6ldert dc le conagioo, h circulrdoa *..ql€Mr;udfre,airn u tdq r do@a lid own memory will suggest,c inlinic dc ltquiwrlocc :-o]'11lgt1:tlh'!qhhp@ i u eq r,il e &{ gtaCnlc r.ppoitc ch.qw ieit .6dir,6ft pbn*, cheqnc bot, ch.qoc ooigron d'd*ituc The subsequent history ffiS*":Lr#."jf;0-' "o d .dUF c. $ ad I'd *r &tirq lnlrr,c"il daie (pr mglc t r) on / a'h.,. I chrguc eucc, dear 9anT*lTrq-eet.'-.u' I. @ rrit pu @- repeated here: some exam[ '#* "- orc r,il r'et hiir! + chaquc colou ct d'uc colomc I l'rutc ilc o kigG, !ign6, @si N st rclt in6u66r elcoleblc. on the critic gG. Pcuts&rc t r{-il uc iooopitibilite, ptu qu,ur Wooton, by in 'a oadicioo djdeiquq cotrc i,eigoc;ent lr litfltq u @tits d u rigoreir. Sc bimq pors notes to the Tale in Thleof a G E t!$€-r dgpq pcur{r. 6 &u ofdniioG ft A po pr&. pclffit

Se rignrq omc L p-.a"-ao *,O Il y e du retc, moralising digressions,add e orpu mir o'y rat sur-*opp"o doutipr toujours, qui sc rccoupcog lw. FIE.F.. -.^ dcu foncioq. tsdu. r. ! "*r:":'-^_ Sterne, in Tristram ifu in l Cce cft.- w ldgdd., Shand2, -I f:_$,. T,i . Nd ps uoc frblc i uc ldgodc. attention ;Tt *-'$ Nor pe rn roru, u om fioilhl to it as a created dts dr., rrE d PslNqe s'y rgit h fuillc dc llcgcl L'uc 1$uc, grrdc, erimilc, iftdfiotis, is, u ohtr d. di! wc lap6dc. idlelisc, rdivc h chutc dmr lc moaucut. Lr himself up as a critical ann EIc rc-prcturd pes donacr I lirc ;fl--.:'[fr chutc s'y oeiilicag cmbaraa ct. 6omi6c, monu- @re- lc tolt du @@, t4.l q d*rcis dc clarify o{morisc, s} tomc the poem but do wha , Hc8cl, wlcmot dro 6gru*. Plur - toEbc. Dong mis Fll.trEt tu fg@ cl tnin dc r,clhcc : du pr:egcr. coooc chutc, s'y Crigc. Fire (1962) does this more e) of do-it-yourself detective recently murdered poet, the Note the parodic intention here: the centripetal, or unifying force of the mediae- ly by the 'Editor', the equall val text has completely disappeared, making way to parallel texts whose relation- gestsitself, Moving on to La ship is to complicate meaning, not to elucidate it. The mediaeval text seeks final a highly experimental novel, h truth, an original truth, whereas Derrida's text affirms the pla\ of interpretation. chapters, presented as footn, Glas is about continuous deferral. It has no beginning, no end, no hierarchy: two a completely arbitrary fashic texts (one a discussion of Hegel and another of Genet) are juxtaposed, each a self- emotions, was developedlat contained pillar, yet in some way annotating the other. Glas is a text comment- Model lfrt, cannot be unders ing on itself commentins. I2 notes to Manuel Puig's Tlu I ed last one) extracts taken st t I See Geoflrey Hartman in Sauingthe Tixt (Bahimore, 1982).Hartman writes, 'Let no one mis- ries on homosexuality,but re take this nonbook: G/aris of the House of Galilee,'and relbrsto Derrida asReb Derissa(p. l9). l2 or origin, but affirms the play of ir Derrida dcalswith rabbinical interpretationsin 'EdmondJabdsand the Qyestion of the Book', 'This is Not an llkting andffirence (London, i97B). See/ 3. 'T'he 'rabbinical' interpretation of interpretation is Oral Footnote', in S l3 the one rvhich seeks a linal truth, r,vhich sees interpretation as an unfortunately necessary Cervantes, Don @ixote,translatr t4 road back to an original truth. The 'poetical' intcrpretation of interpretation doesnot seektruth tbid., p. 2z A SndT of theFootnotes is play- Commentary in fiction has, not surprisingly, concentrated more on sub- rlayson verting the unity of the text and destabilising, rather than affirming, the central narrative. The parodic mention of footnotes, in their older form of annotations, is, interestingly, contemporaneous with the birtli of the novel, if we accept this to be the writing of Don Quixote. In the prologue Cervantes apologises for his lack of erudition: 'Nolv, my book must appear without all these advantages'- I read from Smollet's translation - 'foq I can neither quote in the margin, nor note in the end: nor do I know what authors I have imitated, that I may, like the rest of my brethren, prefix them to the work in alphabetical order'.I3 The author's'friend'gives him a useful tip, which Borges will adopt with imagination and verve: 'with regard to the practice of quoting ... for the embellishment of your history, you have nothing to do but to seasonthe work with some Latin maxims, lvhich your own memory will suggest,or a little industry in searching, easily obtain ...'14 The subsequent history of marginal commentary is too lengthy to be repeated here: some examples worth mentioning are Swift, exacting re\renge on the critic Wooton, by incorporating his critical commentaries in the {bot- notes to the Tale in Taleof a Tub for obvious ridicule; Pope's satiric use of footnotes in the scribal persona of Scriblerus (in the Second Dunciad); Fielding's moralising digressions, addressing the reader directly to draw him/her in; Sterne, in Tistram Shand2, offering a counterpoint to the novel by drarving attention to it as a created literary product; Eliot, in The WasteLand, setting himself up as a critical annotator to his own poetry; though his notes do not clarify the poem but do what footnotes do: add another layer. Nabokov in Pale Fire (1962) does this more extravagantly. PaleFire has been described as 'a sort of do-it-yourself detective story': Ibur cantos or 69 pages of poetry @y a recently murdered poet, the fictionalJohn Shade) are annotated posthumous- mediae- ly by the 'Editor', the equally fictional Charles Kinbote, and a sinister plot sug- relation- gests itself. Moving on to Latin America, ayear later, Cort|zar in Hopscotch,Lis s a final highly experimental novel, had a whole section of what he called'expendable' fetation. chapters, presented as footnotes to the mainline story, to be inserted at will, in :\: two a completely arbitrary fashion. No 62, on the chemical basis of all thought and rh a self- emotions, was derrelopedlater into a full-length ludic novel, whose title, 62: A mment- Model lfit, cannot be understood outside reference to the footnote. The footnotes to Nlanuel Puig's The Ifiss of theSpider Woman are all (except for the invented last one) extracts taken straight from psychoanalytic and behaviourist theo- ) onemls- ries on homosexuality, but rather than supporting the story of the homosexual sa(p. l9). or origin, but affirms the play of interpretation'(p. 3ll). On G/ar and footnoting, seeJ. Derrida, theBook', 'This is Not an Oral Footnote', in Stephen Barney (ed.) lnnotation and ihText, pp. 192-205. retationis l3 necessary Cervantes, Don @ixote, translated by Tobias Smollet (London: l986), p. 22 t+ eektruth Ibid.. p. 23 A Footnoteto BorgesSndiu character they are meant to illustrate, they stand at odds, ironically, with it (I'm There are in all li afraid this irony gets lost in the film).ts Aleph. ('Ihis is the sor the page.) Some of th But where does Borges stand in all this? Compass'or'Emma i The most quintessentially Borgesian precedent in the use of footnotes that makes it difficult, and I could find was a satirical text published in Basle, in 1776, by Gottlieb theory to justify this s Wilhelm Rabener, entitled Hinkmars uonRepkow Noten ohneTixt. This work does the particular, in the c away completely with the central text and consists wholly of footnotes. as part of a larger pr< Rabener's straight-faced argument that if footnotes are a means of making 'Tl6n, Uqbar, Orb money and achieving fame, why not 'cut out the middleman' as it were and or disrupted, by six fo write only footnotes without bothering with a text to tie them to. l6 Even more A brief reminder < Borgesian is what followed: now, I cannot vouch entirely for what I am about clopaedia regarding i to say,my knowledge of German being too rudimentary to decipher the infor- what is described in t mation available, but it appears that the fantasy was surpassedand a text pro- which is entirely logic duced that stood in for the missing corpus of the footnotes. I could have sought of idealism.) In a pr clarification of this point, but I resisted.The idea is so perfectly Borgesian that description in a piratt whether this book existed in reality or imagined aq a Borgesian creation Tkin is not a metaphc became somehow irrelevant. cisely becauseit is 'per The importance attached by Borges to glossais hinted at in his well-known senses),totally imagir Credo such as set out in the Prologue to Fictions: begin to invade our o' It is a laborious madnessand an impoverishing one, the madnessof compos- As if to underline t ing vast books ... better to pretend that thosebooks alreadyexist, and offer a ('they are all more or I summary a commentary to them... A more reasonable,more inept, and more by Ronald Christ),te3 lazy rnan,I have chosento write notes to imaginary books.lT rative through the use Haslam, alias Borges, This statement encourages us to view many of the stories themselves as extended Uqbar, a sure give-aw: footnotes. For example, 'The End' is a gloss on an episode from Hern6ndez' The reference to hims Martin Fierro, and one can easily imagine Borges's story figuring as an annotalion in future editions of this work. Similarly, future editions of Cervantes' Q,uixote I Haslam was al could, in Part I, Chapter 9, carry a footnoted reference to a page from 'Pierre This is clearly a wink Menard, author of the Quixote' (to which I shall refer later), to say nothing of Iiterary image with wh 'Three Versions of Judas' appearing in future Ner,vTestament commentaries. these give-away self-in I have chosen to focus exclusively on the footnotes in Borges's fiction. scholarly credenceto 1 Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly perhaps, they are concentrated in the two collec- The second footno tions generally regarded as 'the canonical texts', the ones that in the spirit of Tlon, seek 'to amaze.astound'.lB 2 Russell(The Ann ed only momentsago l5 Fo. a {uller discussionol' this topic, seeDan Balderson,'sexualidad y revoluci6n:en torno links in all seriousness a las notas de El besode la mujerarafia', El deseo,morme cicatil lutninosa(Valencia, 1999),pp. 73-82. l6 Grafton(1997), p. 120. 19 Tht Norro*lrl (New Yc 17 Bo.g.r, 'Fictions',(ioltzctett Ficions, p. 67 lB 'Tlr;n'.n. 74. I I

A Stud2of theFootnotes yith it (I'm Tlrere are in all l7 stories with footnotes: se\renin Fictionsand eight in Tlte Akph. (This is the sort of uselessinformation best relegated to the bottom of the page.) Some of the most brilliantly complex stories such as 'Death and the Compass'or'Emma Zunz', or'Funes, his Memory', are not footnoted, which :notesthat rnakes it di{ficult, and in any case not desirable, to think of a neat, overarcl-ring y Gottlieb theory to justify this study. The importance, as always for me in Borges, is in work does the particular, in the detail. What follorvs is a discussionof just a ferv footnotes, footnotes. as part of a larger project. rf making 'Tlcin, Uqbaq Orbis Teltius'is the most richly annotated story, enrbellished, were and or disrupted, by six footnotes. 0ven more A brief reminder of its gist; concerned lvith a mysterious entry in an ency- am about clopaedia regarding an unknown country (Uqbar) and its literature (T'lon), r the infor- what is described in the story is a totally fictional world, a fantastic universe a text pro- which is entirely logical and consistent with itself. (A true metaphor or conceit ave sought of idealism.) In a postscript, the rnystery of the creation of Tkin and its gesianthat description in a pirated encyclopaedia is explained, and it becomes clear that n creation Tkjn is not a metaphor of our universe but is diflerent from it (its reverse)pre- cisely because it is 'perfect' in its constructign. And yet, from this ideal (in both vell-known senses),totally imagined universe, strangely hot and heary objects, (hrdnir) begin to invade our own real universe ... As if to underline the subjective springboard that he lompos- claims for all his fiction d offer a ('they are all more or lessautobiographical' Borges confessedwhen interviewed nd more by Ronald Christ),te Borges inscribes himself cryptically into this fantastic narrative through the use of his paternal grandmother's name, Haslam. In the text, Haslam, alias Borges, is the only traceable source of the apocryphal history of x extended Uqbar, a sure give-away of the fabrication of his woulcl-be learned disquisition. {erndndez' The re{brence to hirnself is doubly emphasisedby the first footnote, annotation :s'Qpixote I Hurl^m was also the author of A GenerulHisktq,t oJ- La$,rinths. rom'Pierre Tliis is clearly a wink to the reader and prophetic self-mocking allusion to the nothing of literary image rvith u,hich he is so often identified. In fact, there is a netrvork of ntaries. these give-away self-inscriptions, camouflaged as markers of erudition adding es's liction. scholarly credence to the text. two collec- 'Ihe second footnote, rit of Ticin, 2 Rt,ssell(The Anafusi^s of A.findI i 92 I ] , p. I 59) positsthat the rvorlcllvas created only'momentsago, filled with human beingslvho 'remenrber'anilh-rsory past. en torno i6n: links in all seriousnessone of the schoolsof philosophy in Tlon to an idea pro- 9),pp. 73-82.

19 Th, ",Vorrourlrl (Neiv \b*, 1995), p1...2Bl-2. t0 A Footnoteto Borgu Studies

posed by Bertrand Russell in The Anal2sisof Mind, thereby suggesting would- This last footnote app, te philosophical and scientific respectability for this pure fantasy based on a serves to confirm the 'fan 'recollection' of a doubtful article in an encyclopaedia. But even this suggest- as an illuminating'factual' ed respectability is undermined by the footnoted explar-ration,which questions with time has been dulled the accuracy of memory. It should be read as a further invitation to view the pened since 1940... Allow whole recalled story with considerable scepticism: not only is the past illusory, onance in 1940. There ar, but the ability of remembering it is queried by the use of inverted commas. Immortal', published in I The third footuote, toes: 'The Aleph', writtet postscript, but this time di 3 ,century', duodecimal systcmin use on Tlon, is 4 in keeping with the 'The Approach to Al-. a period of 144years. name. So untutored in rea illustrates playfully the arbitrariness of all linguistic systems,warning us that close friends of his, order even the one we regard as nlost natural, the uumerical system' is but an arbi- reputed to have published trary convention if one hundred years in one culture can mean 144 in alloth- longest of all), I wish to sp er. A useful observation, today, for a postcolonial perspective.20 the story, 'that tlpe of n But the sting comes in the last footnote, mentioniDg as if in passing 'the veiled parallels between tt problem of the mateial from which some objects are made'. man is believed to enter tl I 6 'fh"r. is still, of' course,the problem of the mateialfrom which some I.t the courseof t ce u haps' Parlia objects are made. Co nferm [p din Abi Hamid Muhar These are the hot and hear,y 'objects' sent from the entirely ideal Tlon I men- who was murdered by r tionecl before, and I see two coexisting, yet conflicting, readings: one, based on when Nishapur wassac metaphor, would see these objects as embodiments, literally, material manifes- the splendid feathersof tations of the mind, illustrating the reification of ideas. A comment on the way the centre of China; o in lvhich ideas permeate ollr real world and acquire a presencein what lve con- resolveto find this king sider to be objective reality. The other, a more cynical and down-to-earth inter' Simurgh is each,and a objects arriving from an ideal pretation, shows that the real mystery, material Also in the Enneads,we rc ,rr-riv..se, has achmlfu not beenaddressed. This easily overlooked footnote in fact The sun is all stars,an( mocks the scholarly enterprise of footrloting, illustrating how under the dis- guise of academic respectability, the nub of a problem can be safely relegated And finally: to the bottom of the page and simply dismissed. The Mantiq al-Tair har It shows us another side of footllotes, as 'safe refuge for untenable English by Edward F hvpotheses'.21 Burton's I00l Nghts,vr M2stics:Attar (1932).

22 20 I read footnotc 4 (discussingthe diflerencebctneen 'identity' and 'equality')as a reductioad Tlon, p. 78 23 absurdamof Plato'stheor-y of celcstialarchetypes, and lootnote 5,'Buckley was a freethinker,a The postscript to 'The Irr Iatalist,and a deli:ndcr of slavcry' as an exampleof Borges'sthrorvaw'ay use of dissonatttasso- Ronald Christ, Tlte Narrow At ciation to complicate our picture of reality. FamilyRomance (Minneapolis, I 2l G.W. Borversock,'TheArt of the Footnote',AmericanStlrolar, lVinter 83,/4,vol. 53, p. 6i. the S6batofootnote. A Studlt of the trbotnotes l1

'ould- This last footnote appears in a dubious postscript. Dated 1947 in 1940, it lon a servesto confirm the 'fantastic' element of the story, although it presents itself ggest- as an illuminating'factual' explanation of the mysteries.The impact of this play stions with time has been dulled over the years: the words 'So many things ha'uehap- w the pened since 1940... Allow me to recall some of them'22 had a more playful res- lusorlt, onance in 19,t0. There are other post-dated postscripts such as the one to 'The tas. Immortal', published in 1947 and dated 1950.23But Borges keeps us on our toes: 'The Aleph', written and published in 1945, again has an explanatory postscript, but this time dated earlier, in 1943. (I shall return to this story.) ,is 'T'he Approach to Al-Mu'tasim' is a rer,'iewof a non-existent book of that name. So untutored in reading Borges were his contemporaries that some) even s that close friends of his, ordered the book from the London antiquarian who was arbi- reputed to have published it. Regarding the story's single,very long footnote (the ,noth- longest of all), I wish to speculateon the fact that in annotating the last lvord of tlre story, 'that tlpe of metempsychosis is called ibbur', the footnote sussests g 'the veiled parallels between this form of meterlpsychosis (where the soul of a living man is believed to enter the soul of another) and literary intertextuality.

Tle I In the course of this article, I have referred to the N'Iantiq al-Tair, or Conlferencelperhaps 'Parliament] of theBirds, by the Persian mystic poet lhrid al- din Abi Hamid lvfuhamrnad ben Ibrahirn (knorvn as Attar, or'perlumer'), men- who was murdered by the soldiersunder'fuluy, the son of Genghis Khan, ed on when Nishapur was sacked.Perhaps I should summarisethat poem. One of mifes- the splendiclfeathers of the distant King of the Birds, the Sirnurgh,falls into e way the centre of China; other birds, weary rvith the present state of anarchy, 3 COn- resolveto fir.rdthis king ... They seethat they are the Simurgh and that the inter- Simurgh is each, and all, of them. ideal Also in the Enneads,we read: n fact e dis- Tl.resun is all stars,and eachstar is all starsand the sun ... :gated And finally: nable The Mantiq al-Tair hasbeen translatedinto French by Garcin de Tassy,into English by F)drvard Fitzgerald; for this note I have consulted Richard Burton's 1001 Niglls, r'ol. X, and Nlargaret Srrith's str,rclver.rtitled The Persian .L$stics:Auar (1932).

'uctioad 22 Tldn, p. 78 nker, a 23 The postscriptto 'The Immortal' has receiveclcxcellent critical attention.See particularly It asso- Ronald Christ, Iftr Aarron Art, pp. 227-44; and Dfelal Kadir, Qtuting Fictions;Ltnn Ameical Famij Romance(1\Iinneapolis, l986), pp. 67 9. Kadir''sargument placcs a more seriouslocus on .61. the S6batofootnote. T2 A Footnoteto BorgesSndies

The full footnote, and tl-retrajectory of its argument is too long to delineate 2 Ernesto S6bator here, but in a nutshell, it addressesthe main storyline, the quest that ends in gins of the lliadvtrtht self-discovery(in the novel, Approach to Al-N{u'tasim', and in the story of that the Italian who defen< title (the one we are reading) and in the Mantiq-al-Tair). Though also linked in l like Pluto or Achilles. the footnote to neoplatonism ('a paradisal extension of the principle of identi- I It too ascribes an insigl ty ... Anything is all things'), it shorvs how this topic has, through figurative r'vriter Elnesto S6bato.r metempsychosis, appeared in literature, at diflerent times, in diflerent guises Borges lvas apparently c (Garcin de Tassy's version, Fitzgerald's, The Arabian Margaret Smith's Nights, this elfect) by rvhat he c and now, Borees's). could be rvickedly vindic Not quite the way intertextuality is usually presented by its most eloquent elation'he attributesto I exponents (Kristeva, Bloom, Deleuze. Both metempsychosisand intertextuali- ily ascertainableand thr ty are suggestedobvious consequencesof Neoplatonism. Footnotesstand as inr 'The Library of Babel' has been read earnestly, and not necessarily erro- inner and outer-directec neously, as a metaphor for the universe, given its opening line: 'The universe present text) or suggesti (which others call the Library)' Borges, however, teasingly insists that the The single note to 'T phantasmagoric description of the Library, rvith its self-multiplying hexagons, will not be revealed unti and dark, cramped cubicles is not flantasybut corresponds exactly to the mis- I erable suburban library ('N,IiguelCan6') where he was working when he wrote 'Th. original rea the story. \Ve may conjecture that it corresponded more to his unhappiness conclude that when s; position his there. Remarking on how lowly his was, and how obscure incipi- It is a dry in-joke and ar ent fame, he recalled the time when a fellow librarian came across an ency- thought that the primitive clopaedia entry on the authorJorge Luis Borges and was amused by the coin- gers) and the gratuitous t cidence: 'funny that he should have the same name as you!'... teen) stands for infinity' I 'T'he Library of Babel's sombre tones are attenuated by the subtle humour beast. I r,'iewit as an aestl in the footnotes; I'll just me ntion the last where Borges gives the final word of the Nfinotaur. judgement on the manuscript of an old and venerated librarian to a well- 'The Two Kings and knorvn society lady, his friend Letizia Alvarez de Toledo, who summarily dis- Borges story that immedi misses the library as useless:'the vast library is pointless; strictly speaking, all his Labyrinth'. According that is required is a ingle uolume.... that would consist of an infinite number of | ' -,.t nls ls tne story infinitely thin pages ... each apparent page would open into other similar pages'. At the time of writing such a book seemed a flight of fantasy, a fantas- But instead of o{Iering ar tic joke, a literary homage to the utopian liureinfni,but its existence is becom- I his Labyrinth' it complic ing increasirrgly plausible: we recognise 'the total volume', as a perfect exam- l Borges himself adds to tl ple of the h;,pertext; the Library, an anticipated description of the Wcb.2a as the main text, is but a The footnote in 'The Immortal' norks on similar lines: 25 Presumablywhen not 'spr the mystical seven. 26 S.. the Afterword to the 2'1 Thi. ingle tolutneappears ap;ainas The Bookof Sondin the stor] of that name. Fol a discus- Kings in their Two Labyrinths sion of this footnote linked to Cavalieri'smathematical theory, see E. Ortiz 'The Transmission that this story had beenpublis of Sciencefrom Europe to Argentina and its Impact on Literature:from Lugonesto Borges', an Arabic Legend, and attribr Borgesand Europe Rntisited, p.l2Q. izarzor.However', Borges did e' A Stud1,of the Footnotes l3 neate 2 Ernesto S6bato suggeststhat the 'Giambattista' who discussedthe ori- ds in gins of the lliadwith the rare book dealer Cartaphilus is Giambattista Vico, 'that the Italiarl who defendedthe argument that Homer is a symbolic characteq edin I like Pluto or Achilles. lenti- It too ascribes an insight to someone well known, this time to the respected 'ative I rvriter Ernesto S6bato, with u'hom Borges had a less than cordial relationship. pises Borges was apparently displeased(to my mind rightly so, and I have written to nith's this e{I'ect)by rvhat he considered S6bato's reductive reading of his fiction; he could be wickedly vindictive and there may be some malice in the learned'rev- luent elation' he attributes to S6bato in this footnote, for this is an idea that was read- tuali- ily ascertainable and therefore neither original nor particularly insightful. Ibotnotes stand as intermediaries between author and reader; they are both erro- inner and outer-directed and can either give clues to the understanding of the verse present text, or suggestalternative readings. t the The single note to 'The House of Asterion' is a cryptic intimation of what gons) rvill not be revealed until the end. mis- {rote I 'Th. original reads'fourteen', but there is more than enough causeto riness conclude that when spoken by Asterion that number standsfor 'infinite'.25 rcipi- It is a dry in-joke and an obscure give-away in that Borges often expressed the lncy- thought that the primitive mind cannot cope with numbers much beyond ten (fin- coin- gers) and the gratuitous explanation that 'spoken by Asterion that number (fourteen) stands for infinity' hints that Asterion is not a person, but a primitir,e half- nour beast.I view it as an aestheticpreparation for the final disclosure,that Asterion is rd of the Minotaur. WCII- 'The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths' (1952) is allegedly a gloss on the 'dis- Borges story that immediately precedesit, 'Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in g all his Labyrinth'. According to a footnote, er of I Thi. is the story read by the rector from the pulpit. Seep. 257'. nilar ntas- But instead of oflering an explanation to 'Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in lom- his Labyrinth' it complicates it by opening it to further layers of interpretation. lam- Borges himself adds to this complication by claiming that 'Ibn-Hakam', set out as the main text, is but a variation of its 'footnote', 'The Two Kings'.z0

25 Presumably when not 'spoken by Asterion' fourteen may stanclfor infinity as a multiple of the mysticalseven. 26 See the Aftenvord to the secondedition of TheAbph h. 2SS).The footnote to 'The Two scus- Kings in their Two Labyrinths', and its referencein the Afterword are deliberateiy misleading in ssion that this story had beenpublished separately many vearseallier, on l6June 1939,in El Hogaras :ges" an Arabic Legend, and attributed to Sir Richard Burton, and in 1946, in Cuentosbreusl extraod- rnarios.However, Borges did eventually adrnit to having written it. T+ A Footnoteto BorgesStudies

The footnote to 'The Theologians' acts as a synecdoche of the story. tells us that the Naz Concerned with the factional controversiesbetween orthodox and heretics that family history and ca divided the mediaeval Church, the ultimate irrelevance of their diflerences is its ownJudaic herital suggestedin the story's concluding lines. This cancelling of di{Ierence is fore- all too clear. The idr told in the footnote, which draws attention to Runic crosses: poet DavidJerusalen part of himself is ob I hr Runic crossesthe two enemy emblems co-existintertwinecl. two footnotes, one wl These 'wheeled crosses'fusing Viking culture with Celtic Christianiqr are not, I 3 It is rumoure, think, to be read as a ryrnbol of peaceful harrnony, but as encapsulating the gist (the insignificance ideological ol' the story of controversies)in a graphic represen- and the other under tation of its laconic ending: Aurelian discovered that in the eyes of the unfath- Zur Linde was wour omable deity, he andJohn of Pannonia (the orthodox and the heretic, the abom- as I suggest,sacrificr inator and the abominated, the accuser and the victim) were a single person.'27 As is clear by now, Ibotnotes add layers to a text. The following footnote, on 5 I.t neither tl the opening page of 'The Garden of Forking Paths', does so in a particularly name appear. Nor relevant context. It puts into practice the utopian (if chaotic) no.i'elposited irr do not, however, the story one in which all possible outcornes are potentially pursued along lectuals were tortl 'eternally forking paths'. Linde, among thr perhaps a symbol I A bi"urr. and despicablesupposition. The Prussian spy Hans Rabener, l, 1943;on Marcl alias Mktor Runeberg, had turned an automatic pistol on his arresting o{fi- So far I have comm( cer, Capt. Richard Madden. N{adden, in self-defence,inflicted the u'ounds but the storiesthems on Rabener that causedhis subsequentdeath. [ed. note.] ments made by Borp This footnote, of course, is an advance example of these forking paths, itself a this I mean that Bor' suggestion of another narrative line in addition to those pursued in the main being too baroque, text. Linked to a historical topic, as is this story, the footnote also suggestsnot used, in English. He only the proliferation o1' alternative stoies but alternative histoies. written it, which he 'Deutsches Requiem' is a much-maligned story written in lament not for the tary does that which defeat of German2as its title might suggest,but for its cultural self-mutilation in dialogue with the through the destruction of what had been an irnportant strand in its heritage, 'The Aleph', on Judaism. The annotations are by an omniscient outside editor, giving this spe- four rersions of the cial insight to the first-personnarrative. ferently coloured in The first, trvo or more simultz ing of the annotate, I It is significant that Zur Lincle has omittecl his most illustrious forebeaq nally conceived as the theologian and Hebraist fbrkel (1779-1846),who applied Johannes was to have been' Hegel's dialectics to Christology arrd whose literal translation of some of the and Daneri, D'Has Apocrypha earned him the censure of Hengstenberg and the praise of Thilo Islamic Mihrab, (th and Gesenius.[Ed.]

27 'Los teologos',p. 207 2B Information taken ical edition,to whichI A Snd2 of theFootnotes t5

the story. tells us that the Nazi commander had suppressed a Hebraist ancestor from his retics that family history and can be read as a metaphor for Nazi Germany's suppression of brencesis its ownJudaic heritage. The parallels between Nazi Germany and Zur Linde are ce is fore- all too clear. The idea that in causing the suicide of the highly symbolic Jewish poet DavidJerusalem, the Nazi commander, emblematic of Germany, had killed part of himself is obliquely suggestedby the information given in the following tlvo footnotes, one which draws attention to the consequencesof a wound, 'are not, I 3 .ng the gist It is rurnoured that the wound had extremely seriousconsequences.fEd.] c represen- and the other underlining the similarities of the dates, I March 1939, when .he unfath- Zur Linde was wounded, and I March 1943, when DavidJerusalem killed, or, the abom- as I suggest,sacrificed in self-immolation: PeISon.'27 )otnote,on 5 I,. neither the files nor the published work of Sorgel doesJerusalem's rarticularly name appear. Nor does one find it in the historiesof German literature. I lpositedin do not, however, think that this is an invented figure. N{any Jewish intel- sued along lectuals were tortured in Tarnowitz on the orders of Otto Dietrich Zur Linde, among them the pianist Emma Rosenzweig.'David Jerusalem' is perhaps a symbol for many indivicluals. We are told that he died on Nlarch Rabener, 1, 1943;on N{arch l, 1939,the narrator had beenwounded at Tilsit.[Ed.] ting ofli- So far I have commented on footnotes that are an integral part of the stories, : wounds but the stories themselvesare by now heavily footnoted, particularly with com- ments made by Borges in other contexts. 'The Immortal'is a case in point: by lths, itself a this I rnean that Borges, as his own editor; has commented upon it critically as in the main being too baroque, too luxurious, too sonorous, oaerwitlenwas the wclrd he iuggestsnot used, in English. He also made some suggestionsas to how he might have re- written it, which he didn't do. Taken as a footnote to the story the commen- t not for the tary does that which interesting footnotes do, it makes us re-read this text, now [-mutilation in dialogue with the imagined new version. its heritage, 'The Aleph', on the other hand, can be read in dialogue with the earlier ng this spe- four versions of the final manuscript, where alterations were scribbled, in dif- ferently coloured ink, in the rnargins, or on additional pages, thereby o{Iering trvo or rnore simultaneous renditions of the story. From this palimpsestic reading of the annotated 'Aleph'we learn that Carlos Argentino Daneri was origi- forebeaq nally conceived as brotheq not cousin to Beatnz, that his surname therefore applied was to have been Viterbo, (not Daneri), Argentino was originally Argentina oe of the and Daneri, D'Hastanghi (meaning from Hasting$. The title changed from the of Thilo Islamic N{ihrab, (the focal point in a mosque) to Aleph.28

28 Inlormation taken from a footnote to the story inJean Bernds' magisterial two-volume critical edition, to rvhich I referredearlier (p. 1602). l6 A Footnoteto Borgu Studies

ortega 3 I recall his squar An exhaustive study of this story based upon its manuscript byJulio graphicalsymbok, and' is still awaited, but we know so far from him and from the story's dedicatee, squared out for walks on the Estela canto, that Borges wrote the story in an exercise book' on terms bookand make a chet paper and in a small handwriting. He used brackets to insert alternative for words he had crossedout. 'Pierre Menard, Autho a As the manuscript of 'The Aleph' is not readily available, I shall offer generations of student the copy of a letter Borges wrote to Estela Canto at the time he was writing Will there be editions r story as an example of his 'insect-like handrvriting'' that the author of th Certainly there are tht author and annotated: 'Pierre Menard'is tl ry approach'- the ter all absolutist notions of let me remind You very s;tmbolistpoet: this is to tage point. Like Cervar mother is history rival plar and adviserto the Although this new t to be written by Pierr twentieth century its I history': what was mel brazenly pragmatic Pt for di{Ierent ideasof 't what this implies (and inhnite possibilitiesof author to have been' , be by Cervantes, or b ine. So too can any ot.

That technique'requ read the 0d1se7astht Lejadin du Cmtmreu

The narrator clearlYc so obviously ghosted

per- My point is to link this evidenceof his handwritingto the final footnotein 29 Pier.e Menard featurer to hup, Borg.r's best known story 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Q,gixote" 3o 'Po*t-od..nism in Lat argue th; this is how Borges has self-mockinglyinscribed himself as the D'haen and H. Bertens(Al 3l pJantic Pierre Menard in the story of that name. There are) admittedly, 'Pi.rre Menard',p. 94. 32 other veiled indicators of this, which the footnote seryesto confirm. lbid.,p.95 1- A Stub of theFoolnotes lt

3 rlio Ortega I recall his square-rulcdnotebook, his btackcrossings-out, his peculiar fltpo- dedicatee, graphicals2mbols, and his insect-likehandzuiing. In the evening he liked to go rn squared out for walks on the outskirts of Nimes; he would often carry along a note- ative terms bookand make a cheery bonfire (emphasis added).

'Pierre lVlenard, Author of Don Quixote': to think that there may be future hall ofler a generations of students deprived of feeling the frisson intended in this title ! writing the Will there be editions of this story with a footnote providing the information that the author of the Q,uixote was, in fact, Don Miguel de Cervantes? Certainly there are those who mistook the fictional Pierre Menard for a real author and annotated accordingly.29 'Pierre Menard'is the story that best exemplifies Borges's f;amous 'annotato- 30 ry approach' - the term isJulio Ortega's - in that it completely demolishes all absolutist notions of a finite text. It is too well known to warrant re-telling, but let me remind you very briefly of the great endeavour of the eponl.rnous French sltmbolistpoet: this is to re-write, ratheq to write, the Q3rixote from his own van- tage point. Like Cervantes before him, he writes the famous lines 'truth, whose mother is history rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exem- plar and adviser to the present, and the future's counsellor'.3l Although this new text coincides word for word with Cervantes's,if judged to be written by Pierre Menard (argues the narrator), in Nimes, and in the twentieth century its meaning is radically different. 'Truth, whose mother is history': what was mere rhetorical praise in the Spaniard's text has become a brazenly pragmatic proposition when written by a twentieth century author, for di{ferent ideas of 'truth' and 'history'prevail. Taken to logical conclusions, what this implies (and this is Menard's great legacy) is that every text offers infinite possibilities of interpretation, according to rvho the reader imagines the author to have been. A volume of Don Quixote on our library shelves could be by Cervantes, or by Pierre Menard, or by anyone else we choose to imagine. So too can any other book:

That technique, requiring infinite patience and concentration,encourages us to read the )d2xel as though it came after theAeneid, to read Mme. Henri Bachelier's h jardin da Cmtaureas though it were written by Mme. Henri Bachelier.32

The narrator clearly did not like poor Mme Henri Bachelieq whose novel was so obviously ghosted. (Can anyone imagine her wnting anything?) In an

,otnotein per- 29 Piert. Nfenard featuresas a real author in a French PhD. r Q,uixote',to 30'Port-od.rnisminLatinAmerica',PostmodernFictioninEuropeandtheAmericas,editedbyT. imself as the D'haen and H. Bertens(Antwerp, l9BB),p. 195. :, admittedly, 3l 'Pi.r.. IVlenard',p. 94 rnfirm. 32 lbid.,p.95 IB A Footnoteto BorgesStudies

earlier footnote he explains for the sake of scholarly accuracy that Mme page to draw attentionnot I Bachelier had included in her list of Pierre Menard's oeuureanorher work, but glossesthe list, a lantasticFl that this work had not been found, and concludes patronisingly that this was illustrationis basedon an or clearly a joke on the part of the poet: a humorouspictorial comm( I 'Nlrrr.. Henri Bachelier also lists a literal translation of Ql.revedo'slit- eral translation of St. Francis de Sales'sIntroduction a la uic deuote.In Pierre Menard's library there is no trace of such a work. This must be an instance of one of our lriend's droll jokes, misheard or misunderstood.

But what is the mystery of the omitted book? Readers complicitous in the narrator's contempt for mature society ladies'literary insiglrt har,e taken the footnote at face value. After all, it so seamlesslyfits the stereot)?e of thefemme sauante... But Borges is not a writer who deals in stereotypes:the joke, of course, is on the pompous narrator, and on his too tmsting readers. For the lady about rvhom the narrator is so superiorly dismissive has understood what he, himself, clearly failed to do: that Menard not only (re-)wrote Cervantes's text, but re-wrote Qruevedo's in the same way. The literal translation of Q.uevedo's literal translation is, of course, by Pierre Menard, and coexistsin Qyevedo's text. This annotation turns the tables on the confident and arrogant narratot but { the cruelty of this unwitting self-exposure melts into laughter once rrverealise that tl the narrator, a mirror-image of the pedantically erudite Menard, is also a take-off of Borges himself. It stands as a self-mocking judgement of the absurd main storyline, but perhaps even more importantly, it stands as a self-mocking reference to the unrecognised limitations of our subjective, and prejudiced, understanding. 'Understanding' this footnote, when no other critic of Borges has either noticed Another footnote to Borgesii or considered it worthy of comment, has sen'ed to highlight for me horv much him, particularly thosein cel there is still to uncover, what hidden pleasuresawait readers of this liureinftni. tongue-in-cheekparodies, otJ I should like to conclude by considering briefly footnotes not in but lo the In a dillerent classof foo work of Borges. By this I mean the wav in which Borges has used in the been Borges,and their gulliblerec, sense of a conventional footnote, that is, as supporting evidence conferring whose spoof review appeare intellectual authority to another work. There are the almost obligatory refer- poem entitled,Irutnnbs, has ences to Borges in the exposition of new ideas of literary theory such as made Nlexicanwriter ElenaPoniatr by Genette, in Palimpsesfes,Foucault, most famously in lzt mots et les choses, as one of his, and Borges,w Derrida, in 'La Pharmacie de Platon'. Blanchot, Macherey, Bclurdieu are just demur; this seemedto confir some of the names that could be added to this long list. Modern fiction writers in whose work Borges's influence is clearly felt are 33 legion: indeed Borges once claimed, in interview, that he had to change his style Borges'soriginal drawing is he 34 of writing becauseothers were doing it so much better than he was. There is a As an example of a centenary tBtrenosAires, 1999). This is comp is website that gives numerous examples of these writels, but there a Borgesian ers, celebrating the Borgesiannotir to on essay 'Ka{ka his Precursors' this argument be made, based the and that 35 Siempre3l/1645 (2Januaryl9t influence can be lelt in all literature, past as well as present. I mentioned this rveb was published by Emec€in 1984. 19 A Studl of theFootnotes

and the illustration that heads not to its contentsbut to page to draw attention human faces'This l4me gyaru-h.ua.a .r"u*.-tptouting the list, u ,ur,,^iJ as slosses no'gt''" It may beunderstood ', but ;;;;fti;al drawing uy i-llustrationis based misreading" i was the noiio" of 'creative a humorous pictorial t;;;;on it- 're rce e nar- otnote tntt... on the )m the 1failed :vedo's n is, of tor, but lisethat take-off rain sto- renceto rding. others : noticed AnotherfootnotetoBorgesianaarethestorieswrittenspecifica\intributeto;l Stme are'serious' rWmUCh him, particutu.rytrto'"i"ittt#t*" l:^:*""ary' frni. ,."*.-ii,1,*-.ry:::ti,;,ffm.l;,iJ**il::i:.*::f il:i$; ut ,o the ffgf a'egedrvbvBorges' ;;;;; Etnombre isarake"nover :d in the u":;l *Til3|,'J;il. a *oil:l,oeriodical'35 *:t-l:':^'o*covery'' lnferring whosespoof review " a causecekbre' \Nhen the ";;;;i;has become of rry refer- poem entitl ed'Instanii thepoem to him poniatowskaintervieweJB-o.g.r, -1tltiti"S she read asmade N{exicanwriter Elena tutt'l]T""td' did not *tt" aia t": healrand lcs choses, asone of his, u"a nt'g;' "ti;t movedon to his authorshipas the conversation u arejust demur;this seemed;";f;;

'. . Virginia's\ r:-;-i-'" SpecialS-ecial CollCollecbon' are held in the Univeniry of ly felt 33 Borges'soriginal atu*i[i' stYle a.centenary homage, ttt writ- ;e his 34 A, u,., exampreexample of ...;;;; l"T"*''"'::!:::,:::"':u;::;;"'#::r"T;":r'#frry:(::''t'tl;;;; i"i'g., ,,.ri., by 14 Argentine ", This is compilation-of Ihere is a 8".;;;, l'999)' .re-wntrr i'" ..j.0'"""* the borgesian has 215 pages and Borgesian ":tll:."::n'n*":::;.-, ln us that the novel (2 l9B5)' The revrew J that this 35 Sremltre3l / 1645 January bY Emec6in l9B4 ' :d thisweb *u, orrblirh.d 20 A Footnoteto BorgesSndies

other things. It was N{aria Kodama who first expressedoutrage that such an obr.'i- However, in Nicolas Ro ously clich6d work should have been ignorantly attributed to Borges. Many read- on the screen itself; the bat ers,including some notable academics,were taken in. But it is not the scandalthat aloud of unidentified extr is interesting in this context but one of the incidents that ensued, and which would labyrinthine motif, and the I make a fitting posthumous footnote to 'The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero', as a character's fatal encoun ('fhis story tells of a foreseen political stratagem, the cover up of a hero's treason might also be suicide. In tril in order to help the cause he betrayed.) Fragments of the newly discovered poem end. The connection to Bor were used without attribution by a Spanish Insurance Company on a TV adr.ert; In music, severalcompc some incensed viewers wanted the company to be sued lor plagiarising Borges, tango (Piazzola) to pop to I which was exactly the response the company had cynically anticipated as good Iiragments', 'Limites' (a Bc publicity. The controversy as to whether the poem was, or was not, by Borges (the revised title of his Man would only add to successof the publicity36 In the visual arts, his wt Borges wrote extensively on film and his influence in film criticism dates ter Francisco Toledo, who from the early 1960s when the adjective 'Borgesian' began to be persistently mentioned Manual de/oolog invoked in Cahiersdu Cinima and other film journals.3T

36 For a minutely recorded resume of this affair, seeIvan Almeida's witty article in trhiaciones Borgu, lO/2000, pp. 227-46. Alemeida points out the ultimate irony, that Borges sl.rouldbe 'defended'of plagiarism,which he had alrvaysconsidered a',irtue (p. 239).Extensive ramifica- tions of this extraordinary story of ongoing plagiarism can be searchedon the Web under the title 'I'd pick more daisies'. 38 37 S.. Edgardo Cozarinsky,Borges in/and/on Frin (Neu'\brk, lgBB), pp. 77-86. Thi, is 'The South'.On Borp A Studl of theFootnotes 2l

rvi- Hower.,er,in NicolasRoeg's famous 1970film Per;formance,thereferences are ad- on the screenitself: the bathroom where much goeson, including the reading .hat aloud of unidentified extracts from a Borges story3B is decorated with a ruld labyrinthine motif, and the film's storylinefollows severalBorgesian themes such rot, as a character'sfatal encounterwith his double, and the idea of a murder which .son might also be suicide.In tribute, Borges's(shattered) photograph appearsat the )em end. The connection to Borgesis highlighted in the above poster, 'ert; In music,several compositions were inspiredby the works of Borges,from tango (Piazzola)to pop to contemporary'classical' with tides such as 'Borges 8es' ood Fragments','Limites' (a Borgespoem) and 'The Book of Imaginary Beings'

TOeq (the revisedtitle of his Manual de Fantdstica). 'D'" /oologia In the visual arts,his work has inspired,among others,the Mexican pain- ates ter FranciscoToledo, who produced magnificentillustrations to the above- ntly mentioned Manual de/oologta Fantdstica.

cnnet dbe ifica- r the

3B Tlris is 'The South'. On Borgesand, Performance, see Cozarinsky, pp. 90-1. 22 A FootnotetoBorges Studies

Photography Sean Kernan's The SecretBoolts consists of 43 photographs inspired by Borges's writings. It exists in book form, or, n'ith spectacular flash effbcts, on the Web. The artist confessesthat his rvork 'doesn't attempt to illustrate Borges, and it doesn't aspire to be a collaboration - as an artist I couldn't hold his coat', but shows photographs that stand as parallel meditations to some Borges stories.3e

Information, news and e-mail discussionsconcerning Borges proliferate on the Web, in a 'garden of forking paths'.4oOne last footnote: on one of the "'eritable many sites on the lVeb devoted to entirely to 'Borgesiana' there is a srnall library whose virtual shelvesare filled with books that Borges never wrote, but And the world will be Tliin' which figure in his stories and are here inventively summarised. On anotherr,ve tinues to be written and sites find the perfect example of ltrijnir in beautifully illustrated covers to these imag- the mouse bringing to light i ined books, which now have a firmer existence in our visual imasinary.4l Borges has permeated n, rvorld, in Uqbar; in Tldn an,

39 In Kernan's words, he found inspiration in 'the joining of things that don't logically go together' and 'Borges's'way of standingamong the ordinary and pointing to possibilitiesthat were unexpectedand prolound and alarnring'. 40 Thir is the nanre of a nou, larnous Borgeswcbsitc; others are the excellentJorge Luis Borges Centre' and'The Nfodern Word.com/Borges'. 4l The Vakalo Schoolof Art and Dcsicn in Athens. A Stub d theFootnotes 23

e e ll lt And the rvorld will be Tlon': And the world is Borges', as the Total Book con- e tinues to be written and sitescontinue to proliferate in cyberspace,each click of f- the mouse bringing to light a different'footnote'to Borges studies. Borges has permeated not only our thinking but our way of being in the '"vorld,in Uqbar; in T'lon and in Orbis Tertius.