topics: |  fiction | latin-america | argentina | single-author

NYT Review: Geoffrey H. Hartman
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/31/reviews/borges-aleph.html

The reputation of Jorge Luis Borges in the United States is astonishing, and
less than a decade old. "Labyrinths" and "Ficciones," the first substantial
translations of his work, appeared in 1962, one year after he shared the
International Publishers' Prize with Beckett; by then he was 63 and well
known in his native Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America and Europe
(though not in Great Britain). These two volumes were followed by
"Dreamtigers" (1964) as well as collections of lesser note. Several books
have now been devoted to him; his conversation is avidly taped and printed;
he has served as a visiting professor on several American campuses; and the
claim is sometimes heard that he ranks with Joyce and Kafka. This despite the
fact that Borges has cultivated a methodical modesty and never departed from
the minor genres of essay, story and short poem.

    What can this new sampler tell us about the truth of his reputation? It
is devoted mainly to the stories, and has a wide chronological range, taking
us from 1933 to 1969. But it remains an incomplete gathering, since rights to
retranslate some of the most famous pieces (such as "Tiön, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius") could not be obtained. It is irritating to have Borges divided this
way by competing anthologies, but it may be a kind of justice since he is, in
fact, a scattered Orpheus whose prose-parts lament a fading power. The
inventor of the "Aleph," a miniaturized replica of all visionary experience,
knows that human kind cannot bear much fantasy. The present volume, with its
charming "Autobiographical Essay" and its chatty comments on the stories, is
well adapted to readers who wish to be reminded of great art rather than to
experience it. With Borges they can flee from too vivid an enchantment into a
little wilderness.

    There is an art which, like the sounds of a clavichord, provides a
perfect setting for thought and conversation. The art of Borges is generally
like that: cool, well-tempered, with a consciously easy pace. His questers
delay, or are delayed: and even in the most dangerous or baffling situation
they have time to look off at the trees, at a "sky broken into dark diamonds
of red, green and yellow." Lönnrot, the trapped detective in "Death and the
Compass," quietly offers his killer a mystico- mathematical reflection before
being shot. What is most human--the "irrelevant texture" of ordinary
life--escapes from a ruthless plot by running into such asides. Each story,
however, continues to demand its victim despite the intricate delay, the
charm of detail.

    The humanizing asides are felt even more in the stories about the gauchos
of Argentina. Here Borges, a reporter of traditions, weaves his thoughts
directly into the narrative. In his unusual blend of ballad bloodiness and
familiar essay there is sometimes as much reflection as plot: the brutal
knife-fight in "The Challenge," little more than a paragraph long, is swathed
in asides. Its naked brevity is relaxed by the narrator's comment on the
courage of the gauchos, their exact way of duelling, a canto from the
"Inferno," "Moby Dick," and so on. While time comes to a point which is also
a knife's point, the story swerves, a mental picaresque, from the pure moment
of encounter.

    No Borges story is without this pointed moment, this condensation of
time; yet it tends to be undercut by a mock-realistic setting or a whimsical
narrator. So the microcosmic Aleph is found in the cluttered cellar of a
second-rate poet, the unsavory Carlos Argentino Daneri. The only way that
Borges can conduct his narrative is, like so many symbolists before him, by
viewing ordinary life as a needful distraction from some symbolic purity. His
humorous realism--names, dates and nature- motifs formulaically
introduced--is a pseudo-realism. Even the gaucho stories, for all their local
color, are fantasies--knives are magical in them, and the knife-fighter's
sense of invunerability is like the eternity-experience recorded in so many
of the "fantastic" stories.

    The fatality of form, the humanity of the aside--these are the most
obvious pleasures given by Borges. There is, in addition, a wealth of small
invention, perfect handling of gradual disclosures, and an elegance that
makes life appear sloppy. Mixing, with charming ruthlessness, fantasy and
fact, Borges reverses that "decay of lying" which Oscar Wilde (one of his
favorite authors) had already deplored.

    Beyond all this we feel for the narrator, for his quest. He is clearly a
man trying to get into his own stories, that is, wishing to discover himself
rather than an image. Like the fire-priest in "The Circular Ruins" Borges
sets out to dream a real man but seems unable to dream of more than an
intruder. Thus in a great many stories a stranger or interloper comes onto
the scene and is given a predetermined lease on life before being
eliminated. This figure, whether person or magical agent, never effects a
lasting change: having played out its role, or lived its bit of dream, it is
"sacrificed" like the woman in the late story actually called "The Intruder"
(1966) or the upstart gaucho in "The Dead Man" (1946).

    Surely, Borges himself, as artist, is that intruder. He comes to art
belated--deeply conscious of traditions that both anticipate him and will
survive his bluff. He is their victim, a dreamer who finds he is dreamt by a
larger than personal symbolism--the formal world of legend and archetype with
which he must merge. He may think he has mastered the magical instruments
called symbols but they have their own will. "I began to wonder," he writes
of a strange knife-fight in "The Meeting," whether it was Maneco Uriarte who
killed Duncan or whether in some uncanny way it could have been the weapons,
not the men, which fought."

    This living sacrifice of person to myth, of the individual to magic
instrument, haunts Borges and is a source of his peculiar pathos. "I live,"
he says in "Borges and Myself," "I let myself live so that Borges can weave
his tales and poems, and those tales and poems are my justification." We are
not far, after all, from Mallarmé's remark that the world was meant to become
a book. The symbols that purify us also trap us in the end. Symbolism may be
nothing more than the religion of over-cultured men; and Borges--curious
bibliophile, ardent comparatist--its perfected priest.

Amazon.com:
Glen Engel Cox "www.engel-cox.org" (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia):
... an excellent introduction to Borges, and clearly shows how
he revolutionized the short story and became the pater familias of a new
genre classification.

"The Aleph"--Like most of his stories, this one is brief but packs a lot
of information into its short length. (For those who don't read outside of
SF, imagine a J.G. Ballard condensed novel with more connections and a higher
sense of the fantastic. Hmm, that was a worthless description. It is hard to
find a match for Borges in the genre, because he was always succinct, and
could never have survived in the dog-eat-dog world of pay by word.) The
gimmick is simple--the aleph is to space what eternity is to time--but the
method by which the author discovers it is unusual. I like Borges because his
approach to a fantastic concept is unlike any found in the genre. Genre
writing seems to emphasize the gimmick, in mainstream writing it is simply
one part of the landscape against which the characters are placed. Only in
Borges do all elements seem equal, similar in concept to his own aleph, to
return in a style similar to Borges himself.

"Streetcorner Man"--A first-person tale of one night in the barrio, when the
ones who talk big get their comeuppance by the quiet ones. OK, but I like my
stories to have a little something more. [Spanish: "El hombre de las esquinas
rosadas" - pink corner = unsavoury neighbourhood]

"The Approach to aI-Mu'tasim"--A review of a fictional book which reads,
again, like a condensed novel, only in this case it truly is one. The
literary device is ingenious, allowing Borges to comment on literary
criticism at the same time he is creating literature.

"The Circular Ruins"--One of Borges' favorite subjects is the concept of
infinity, another is creation. Here he bends the two together in a story that
is also a metaphor for the process of setting and achieving goals.

"Death and the Compass"--A logic problem to a mystery story, almost like
Poe. Poe, though, would have stretched it out to twice its length.

"The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)"--I did not quite follow this
one. At one point I thought that maybe Cruz was going to be killing his own
father, but instead he goes to the aid of himself?

"The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths"--A fable, or a sermon, that
addresses what is a labyrinth. Highly appropriate subject for a Borges
collection.

"The Dead Man"--A gaucho story. Think of it as a Louis L'amour story with
Argentines and Brazilians instead of Mexicans and Texans. Okay, but it's
still a western at heart.

"The Other Death"--This is what I look for in Borges: a fantastical study of
memory and history, reality and dream. Pedro did not act like a hero in the
battle... or did he?

"Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth"--Another great story of mazes
and mystery. Borges has an unusual way of framing his tales, usually with an
objective third person narrator, that shortens the stories tremendously. I
guess he did not get paid by the word.

"The Man On the Threshold"--Another mystery, but not quite as fantastic as
the others. Some Of these stories are morality or revenge plays, that do not
require much speculation.

"The Challenge"--A rehash of some of the gaucho themes, certainly my last
favorite of his tropes. What I find interesting is the references to other
stories flirt makes this seem like a reference article instead of a story.

"The Captive"--A short short about a boy captured as a young child by
natives. Borges here formulates a question about the nature of memory.

"Borges and Myself"--Here, as in "Isidore Cruz" above, Borges talks about the
nature of identity. When you look at how others perceive you and realize that
that is not how you perceive yourself is a crisis of identity (as in here),
or how people might perceive a younger version of you. I often look at my
current life and wonder. There is no way that Glen circa. 1980 could have
ever dreamed of becoming the Glen of 1998. Thoughts and hopes and goals are
all so mutable. The funny thing is that I will reread these words 10 or more
years from now and be struck by the same strangeness.

"The Maker"--A discussion of what it means to go blind, nominally about
Homer, but also about Borges' own condition. I had not realized that Borges
had gone blind before his death.

"The Intruder"--Borges says that his mother, who he dictated this story to,
hated it, and I can see why. It's not something I would recommend to any
woman, as it is quite misogynstic. However, it is an incredible story, and a
fairly straightforward one for Borges, about friendship and brotherhood.

"The Immortals"--A science fiction tale, strangely incongruous here. Well
done, but it seems much more dated than almost everything else in this
collection (stories from 1933 to 1969).

"The Meeting"--Clever little tale about people and weapons. Almost a trick
story, because the title refers to something other than what you expect.

"Pedro Salvadores"--Short short about dictatorships and living "underground"
(actually, both literally and figuratively). Borges had a real knack for the
short short, never an easy thing to write.

"Rosendo's Tale"--To come almost entirely full circle, this tale is a sequel
or antidote to the second story, "Streetcorner Man." The gaucho here is more
realistic, not so macho, and I find myself appreciating this more because of
having seen the Hemingway-ish earlier story.

Finally, there is an autobiographical essay at the end, for those of us who
wonder how Borges evolved (as Borges himself does in "Borges and Myself").