Copyright by Isela Maria Verdugo 2005 the Dissertation Commi Ttee for Isela Maria Verdugo Certifies That This Is the Approved Version of the Foll Owing Dissertation
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Copyright by Isela Maria Verdugo 2005 The Dissertation Commi ttee for Isela Maria Verdugo certifies that this is the approved version of the foll owing dissertation : Borges as Reader: Keats’ Nightingale in the Garden of Forking Paths Committee: Nicolas Shumway, Supervisor Jacqueline Barn itz César Salgado Enrique Fierro Nik olai Grube Borges as Reader: Keats’ Nightingale in The Garden of Forking Paths by Isela Maria Ver dugo , Lic. ; MA. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosop hy The University of Texas at Austin May 2005 Este es el laberinto de Creta. Este es el laberinto de Cr eta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro. Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya red se perdieron tantas generaciones. Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya red se perdieron tantas generaciones como María Kodama y yo nos perdimos. Este es el laberinto de Creta cuyo centro fue el Minotauro que Dante imaginó como un toro con cabeza de hombre y en cuya re d se perdieron tantas generaciones como María Kodama y yo nos perdimos en aquella mañana y seguimos perdidos en el tiempo, ese otro laberinto. —Borges , “El laberinto ” Acknowledgements I offer my thanks to the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología for its financial support, without which I could not have embarked on this project. v Borges as Reader: Keat s’ Nightingale in The Garden of Forking Paths Publication No._____________ Isela Maria Verdugo, Ph .D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Nicolas Shumway This study investigates Borges’ solution to the problem of universals, and how this solution relates to his time labyrinth as it appears in “The Garden of Forking Paths”; to his concep tion of literature as a living labyrinth; a nd to the aesthetic and me taphysical ideas in his poem “The Art of Poetry”. Chapter 1 analyzes Borges’ essays on Zeno’s paradox of the tortoise, and his “Penultimate Version of Reality”. I show that Borges’ discussion of the parad oxes associated with the n otion of the universe that presupposes that time and space are absolute, uniform, and symmetrical , and his idea that only time is essential to the intellect, leads him to propose an artistic model of the universe made of time or music. This model, however, does not guarantee that the universe is an organic whole, or cosmos. This issue is discussed in Chapter 2, which also examines how Borges vi links language with his notion of time and the problem of causality. Additionally, I consider the implication of Borg es’ take on language and causality with regard to the art of narration and the aesthetic emotion ( hecho estético ). Chapter 3 discusses the problem of time in connection with the notions of eternal recurrence and eternity, and shows how these relate to Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Forms, and to Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers. Chapte r 4 discusses the connection between Cantor’s theory and those visual and literary artworks where fiction lives within fiction, and considers Borges’ re -examination of eternal recurrence and Plato’s notion of eternity . It also examines how Borges combines Cantor’s and Schopenhauer’s theories with the notion of eternity, to create his time labyrinth , which he concretized for the first time in “The Garden of Forking Paths”. Chapter 5 is devoted to the analysis of this story, where Borges alludes to his own search for the solution to the riddle of the universe, and to th e immortal bird of Keats’ “Ode to the Nightingale” . Then it briefly consider s how the c ollection of short stories The Garden of Forking Paths compares to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Finally, I discuss in Chapter 5 the problem of free will vis -à-vis determinism in connection with the time labyrinth, and the way in wh ich this relates to modern scie nce , fractal geometry and chaos theory. C hapter 6 examines how Borges developed his literary labyrinth, and how it relates to the time labyrinth and the aest hetic emotion. Finally, I show that Borges’ “The Art of Poetry ” comprises the poetic and metaphysic al elements of both, the time and the literary labyrinths. vii Table of Contents List of Abbreviations..............................................................................................ix Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The World is Music ............................................................................ 13 Chapter 2: Aesthetics, chaos and order ................................................................ 40 Chapter 3: History of Eternity and the Doctrine of the Cycles ............................ 72 Chapter 4: The Eternal Recurrence Reconsidered ............................................. 105 Chapter 5: The Garden of Forking Paths ........................................................... 150 I. The immortal bird sings in the “Garden of Forking Paths” .............. 150 II. The Garden , The 1001 Nights , and Dante’s Divine Comedy ............ 161 III. The Garden , the problem of free will, and science ........................... 171 Chapter 6: The Metaphor and the Literary Labyrinth ........................................ 187 Conclusion........................................................................................................... 208 Literature Cited ................................................................................................... 212 Vita 221 viii List of Abbreviations AE Autobiographical Essay AOS Aleph and Other Stories BES Bo rges en Sur BRM Borges en Revista Multicolor CF Collected Fictions CV This Craft of Verse ECE Evaristo Carriego (English) LY Labyrinths MF El "Martín Fierro" OC Obras Completas OIE Other Inquisitions OP Obra Poética PA Personal Anthology SNE Seven Nights SNF Selected Non-Fictions SP Selected Poems ix Introduction I think that there is an eternity in beauty; and this, of course, is what Keats had in mind when he wrote ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ —JLB, “A Poets Creed” In the last of the “lost” Norton Lectures that Borges delivered at Harvard in 1967-1968 entitled “A Poet’s Creed,” Borges declared that poetry –along with his destiny as a man of letters — was revealed to him at a very young age when he heard the seventh stanza of John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale ” (CV, 99-100). 1 In 1952, the mature Borges devoted the essay “ El ruiseñor de Keats ” [Keats’ Nightingale] to the analysis of the famous stanza, which stands out not only for its musicality, but also for its content: Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self -same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the ali en corn… ([1819] 1985, 348; lines 61-7) Apart from the obvious reference to the eighth pastoral of the Old Testament, there is in this verse an ambiguity related to the “problem of universals,” i.e., the long-standing metaphysical debate between those who believe in universals and those who reject them. Broadly speaking, Keats’ stanza is an example of a literary 1 The lecture was delivered on April 10, 1968, and was the last of a series of six, which were collected and published in book form some thirty -two years later under the title This Craft of Verse (2000). 1 work that brings together subjects in which the Argentine poet was very much interested, namely, aesthetics, religion, and metaphysics. This study investigates Borges’ solution to the problem of universals, and how this relates to his aesthetic and metaphysical ideas as they appear in his poem “Arte poética” [The Art of Poetry], which stands as an encapsulated expression of his poetic vision. Let us take a closer look at this problem and what it entails. In his essay Borges indicates that at first glance, it would seem that in referring to the bird Keats draws a distinction between the individual and the species, rejecting the former in favor of the l atter. However, the English poet also refers to the fugacity of the human life, which seems to imply that for him only individuals are real. If th is is the case, Keats’ characterizati on of the bird as immortal can be regarded as a mere poetic device. Accordingly, one could say that he is indeed referring to the particular nightingale singing at that moment, not to the species. The solution that Borges provides to this ambiguity is of a peculiar character, comprising both poetic and metaphysical elements in a way that makes it possible to reconcile both points of view. In explaining how such reconciliation may be accomplished Borges first cites American critic Amy Lowell (1925, 2:252): “‘El lector que tenga una chispa de sentido imaginativo o poético intuirá inmediatamente que Keats no se refiere al ruiseñor que cantaba en ese momento, sino a la especie’” (OC, 2:95). [The reader who had a spark of imaginative or poetic sense would perceive at once that Keats did not refer to the nightingale singing at that moment, but to the species ( OIE , 122).] According to Borges, s uch interpretation, though not entirely vain, is not correct. We cannot object to the 2 idea that a spark of imaginative or poetic sense is needed in order to understand the stanza, but under this as sumption we cannot be expected to seriously entertain the idea that there is indeed a difference between the individual and the species. For, as Arthur Schopenhauer says, it is absurd to assume, on the one hand, that individual beings arise out of nothing and that their death is an absolute annihilation. On the other, it is impossible for us not to see that what vanishes when individual beings pass away and what appears in their place when new individuals like them come into existence, is one and the same t hing ([1844], 1966, 2:476).