El Sur

"El Sur"
por Jorge Luis Borges
Argentina, 1944

Uno de mis cuentos preferidos de Borges debido a su exquisita manipulación del tiempo y de la "realidad".  En este relato, Juan Dahlmann, el nieto patriótico de inmigrantes recientes, sufre un accidente en su depto bonaerense después de conseguir un ejemplar descabalado de Las mil y una noches más temprano en la tarde.  Luego de una visita prolongada en un sanitario, donde casi se muere de septicemia, el personaje viaja al Sur para visitar la estancia de sus abuelos como parte de su convalecencia.  En un viaje tratado como un regreso a su pasado familiar, la historia acaba con Dahlmann preparando a morirse en una acuchillada que parece tener lugar en un Sur mítico poblado de gauchos y rufianes decimonónicos.  ¿Ciencia ficción a la argentina?  Probablemente no.  Aunque nunca se habla de la muerte de Dahlmann con precisión, la genilidad del cuento de Borges es que se ha escrito de manera que el viaje del trén también probablemente se debe leer como un sueño-viaje soñado por el personaje.  Como la historia avanza, las pistas vienen a todo pitoto.  "Mañana me despertaré en la estancia, pensaba, y era como si a un tiempo fuera dos hombres: el que avanzaba por el día otoñal y por la geografía de la patria, y el otro, encarcelado en un sanatorio y sujeto a metodicos servidumbres" (564).  En la frase final, la realidad oneirica del viaje de Dahlmann y la realidad "de verdad" de la muerte del personaje se une como el "pretérito" del pasado se convierte en el "presente".  Un cuento estructuralmente perfecto que también juega con la historia argentina mitificada con respecto a las alusiones al épico gaucho Martín Fierro, los pensamientos de Sarmiento sobre la civilización o barbarie, y las guerras contra los indios.  Copado.
*
"The South"
by Jorge Luis Borges [translated from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan]
Argentina, 1944

One of my favorite shorts by Borges owing to its exquisite manipulation of time and "reality."  In this tale, Juan Dahlmann, the patriotic grandson of recent immigrants to Argentina, suffers an accident in his Buenos Aires apartment not too long after obtaining an incomplete copy of The 1,001 Nights earlier in the afternoon.  After a prolonged stay at a sanitarium where he almost dies from a blood infection, the character travels to the South to visit his grandparents' estancia as part of his convalescence.  In a trip portrayed as a return to his family roots, the story concludes with Dahlmann preparing to meet his end in a knife-fight that seems to take place in a mythical South peopled by 19th-century gauchos and thugs.  Argentinean science fiction?  Probably not.  Although Dahlmann's death is never specifically mentioned, the genius of Borges' story is that it's been written in such a way that the train trip probably ought to be read as a dream voyage that's only imagined by the dying character.  As the story progresses, the hints about Dahlmann's fate come fast and furious.  "Tomorrow I'll wake up at the ranch, he thought, and it was as if he were two men at a time: the man who traveled through the autumn day and across his native geography, and the other one, locked up in a sanitarium and subject to methodical servitude" (254-255).  In the final sentence, the dream reality of Dahlmann's trip and the actual reality of Dahlmann's death merge seamlessly as the past tense narration of the past shifts to the present tense of eternity.  A structurally perfect story that also riffs on Argentinean history and myth in its deployment of allusions to the gaucho epic Martín Fierro, Sarmiento-spawned notions of civilization and barbarism, and the Indian wars of the past.  Cool.

• Borges, Jorge Luis.  Obras completas I, 1923-1949.  Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2005, 562-567.
• Borges, Jorge Luis [translated by Anthony Kerrigan].  Borges: A Reader.  New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981, 252-257.

OTROS LECTORES
Claire
E.L. Fay

Nicole
Rise

La biblioteca de Babel

"The Library of Babel" ["La biblioteca de Babel"]
by Jorge Luis Borges [translated from the Spanish by James E. Irby]
Argentina, 1942

"If you look at theology or philosophy as fantastic literature, you'll see that they are much more ambitious than poetry."  --Borges in an interview from 1984

I guess I should start by admitting that I tend to prefer humorous Borges to cosmological Borges.  I'm also not that big a fan of "The Library of Babel" from an entertainment standpoint.  For me, the payoff is much more on the conceptual side of things if that makes any sense.  To help explain all this, I should note that this story (for me, one of the most enigmatic and challenging of all Borges' signature pieces) is striking for the amount of cosmic angst and striving for the infinite contained within its slender confines.  An unnamed narrator begins by telling us that the universe is a Library "composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries" filled with every type of book imaginable (51).  While describing his vaguely otherworldly surroundings with an almost mathematical precision, the narrator also owns up to the difficulties faced by "man, the imperfect librarian" (52) in his attempts to impose order on this chaos of bookly and geometrical riches.  We learn, for example, that the Library houses both magical texts that can predict the future and explain the past and any number of false texts written to counter such prophetic revelations.  Not surprisingly given the title of the work, there are kabbalistic digressions on the value of letters and numbers and the spaces between characters in written languages.  To avoid leaving you with a banal summary of what's a very abstruse tale, I'll get ready to close by saying that the narrator's allusions to seekers and suicides hints at a Tarkovsky-like sense of metaphysical disquiet that hovers over the search for truth and meaning within the Library's archives.  To add to the sense that something just isn't quite right, it also becomes apparent that the "editor" responsible for the footnotes isn't the same person as the one who's been narrating the tale.  What kind of a text are we reading anyway?  And how old is it?  While "The Library of Babel" is way less than a fave for me as a diversion, I think I appreciate its speculative side more the more I think of Borges approaching mathematics, philosophy, and theology as so many branches of the fantastic literature family tree.  Now there's a concept I can wrap my mind around!

• Borges, Jorge Luis.  "La biblioteca de Babel".  Narraciones.  Madrid: Cátedra, 2002, 105-114.
• Borges, Jorge Luis [translated by James E. Irby].  "The Library of Babel."  Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings.  New York: New Directions, 2007, 51-58.

Alberto Manguel has a fine piece on "The Library of Babel" here.  He's also way less conflicted about the story than I am.

OTHER READERS
Claire
E.L. Fay
Emily
Frances
Jill
Nicole
Rise
Sarah

The Divine Comedy Readalong

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

che la diritta via era smarrita."

(Dante, Canto I of Inferno)

One of my biggest regrets from my college days is never having signed up for one of those semester- or year-long surveys on Dante that would have taken me all the way through The Divine Comedy with a Trecento specialist as my guide.  Another thing I could look back and complain about is not yet having pursued Italian beyond the one (marvelous) year I studied it in a night class not so very long ago.  To help make up for these two, how shall I say, distinctly nerdy tragedies, I've decided to host a Dante group read/readalong July through September this year.  If any of you are interested in joining me for any or all of the "program," please get in touch as it would be great to have a lot of minds/opinions weighing in on this medieval poetry classic.  The target dates for discussion posts of The Divine Comedy (all timed to coincide with the first weekend of each month) are as follows:

July 2-4: Inferno

August 6-8: Purgatorio

September 3-5: Paradiso

I'll leave a list of projected participants below, but please don't hesitate to forward me any questions if you have any.  Also,  any recommendations on a translation that you're particularly keen on would be very welcome (I'll prob. be using Pinsky's Inferno and W.S. Merwin's Purgatorio since I already have them at home, but I'm not sure what the consensus top translation choice is these days).  Finally, feel free to join in on any of the discussions whether you have time to read along with us or not...and post whenever it's convenient for you should you choose to read along with us.  Should be fun!

Other Readers

Allie (A Literary Odyssey)

Amanda (Simpler Pastimes)

Avid Reader (The Avid Reader's Musings)

Bellezza (Dolce Bellezza)

Claire (kiss a cloud)

E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends)

Iris (Iris on Books)

Lynda (Lynda's Book Blog)

Mel U (The Reading Life)

Michele (A Reader's Respite)

Rebecca (Rebecca Reads)

Tea (I Love to Read)

Thomas (My Porch)

Francisco de Quevedo, autor del Buscón

TO THE READER

DEAR Reader or Listener (for the blind cannot read) I can just imagine how much you want to read about my delightful Don Pablos, Prince of the Roving Life.

Here you will find all the tricks of the low life or those which I think most people enjoy reading about: craftiness, deceit, subterfuge and swindles, born of laziness to enable you to live on lies; and if you attend to the lesson you will get quite a lot of benefit from it.  And even if you don't, study the sermons, for I doubt if anyone buys a book as coarse as this in order to avoid the inclinations of his own depraved nature.  Let it serve you as you like; praise it, for it certainly deserves applause, and praise the genius of its author who has enough common sense to know it is a lot more amusing to read about low life when the story is written with spirit, than about other more serious topics.

You already know who the author is.

You are well aware of the price of the book, as you already have it, unless you are looking through it in the bookshop, a practice which is very tiresome for the bookseller and ought to be suppressed with the utmost rigour of the law.  You see, there are people who steal a free read as sparrows pick at a meal, and some who read books here and there and then piece the story together; and this is a great pity because they criticize the book even though it hasn't cost them anything; which is a mean swindle, as foul as anything I described in my Knights of the Princess.  Dear Reader, may God protect you from bad books, police, and nagging, moon-faced, fair-haired women.

(Francisco de Quevedo, The Swindler [translated from the Spanish by Michael Alpert], 83)

Although Borges mentions Francisco de Quevedo two or three times in "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," that's not my main reason for "introducing" him here now (the timing, I'll agree, was fortuitous).  In fact, I have two or three essentially disconnected reasons for mentioning Quevedo at all.  The first is that I've finally started reading Quevedo's 1626 El Buscón [usually translated in English as The Swindler] and am heartily enjoying its post-Lazarillo de Tormes approach to the picaresque novel format.  Gotta love those early explorations in first-person storytelling that build up laughs at the expense of the series of misfortunes that befall their poor, beleagued narrators!  The second reason has to do with the excerpt above.  I'm an extreme sucker for the captatio benevolentiae and other forms of writing where the writer directly addresses the reader, and this one's insult-laden tone ("I doubt if anyone buys a book as coarse as this in order to avoid the inclinations of his own depraved nature") and acknowledgement that readers can be swindlers, too, displays more genius to me than all the Man Booker prize winners combined.  The only catch is that the excerpt above doesn't appear in my Spanish-language version of the text.  In fact, it's kind of bogus.  Which brings us to the third thing I wanted to talk about, translations.  Although the extra "Quevedo" introduction that appears in the English version of The Swindler likely has to do with an editorial decision rather than a translation decision (see note below* if interested), I'm still bothered by at least two choices that translator Michael Alpert has made.  In chapter four, for example, the narrator Pablos arrives at an inn of ill repute on the road to the university town of Alcalá de Henares.  In Spanish, the text reads: "Metióme adentro, y estaban dos rufianes con unas mujercillas, un cura rezando al olor" (33).  In English, Alpert's translation reads: "I went inside where there were a couple of roughs with some whores, a priest saying his prayers to protect himself from their stink..." (101).  While the casual reader could read the English translation without finding anything much amiss, there's a small but not inconsequential joke missing in Alpert's reproduction.  My lovingly-annotated Spanish version of the text explains that the priest's act of praying "al olor" or "to the smell or scent" of the prostitutes actually means to say that the priest was "atraído por la presencia de las mujeres" ("attracted by the presence of the women") rather than praying to protect himself from their stink (33).  In other words, the priest is a target of Quevedo's barbs and not just an innocent bystander at the scene.  While I'd like to think that this was just an innocent mistake that could happen to anyone, Alpert's introduction to the work leaves me concerned that so-called good taste might have competed with accurate translating on his list of priorities: "Oaths and obscenities are a problem as Spanish uses them in profusion," he writes in the 1969 edition.  "I have tried to produce the same effect without being either crude or mealy-mouthed.  I have certainly not been afraid to use four-letter words when I thought they were what the author intended" (16).  Am I reading too much into Alpert's thoughts about translation strategies?  Perhaps.  But it bothers me that a professional translator would be worried about being "crude" when he or she should really be more concerned with being faithful (a slippery concept, I know) to the source text.  Thanks to Quevedo and/or "Quevedo" for the timely reminder.

*There are three source manuscripts for Quevedo's text.  In his edition of the Buscón, Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza writes that "La 'Carta dedicatoria' que figura en los manuscritos S y C y el prologuillo 'Al lector', incluido en la primera edición, tampoco parecen deberse a Quevedo" ("Neither the 'Dedicatory Letter' appearing in manuscripts S and C nor the little prologue 'To the Reader' included in the first edition appear to owe themselves to Quevedo") [8].

**To add to the "Pierre Menard"-like atmosphere surrounding the apocryphal note to the reader above, I should note that Quevedo, considered one of Spain's greatest Siglo de Oro poets, wouldn't own up to authoring The Swindler even though it was commonly attributed to him by both his contemporaries and most modern scholars.

• Francisco de Quevedo (edición de Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza). La vida del Buscón.  Barcelona: Crítica, n.d.
• Michael Alpert, ed.  Two Spanish Picaresque Novels: Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler (El Buscón).  London: Penguin, 1975.

Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote

"Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote"
por Jorge Luis Borges
Argentina, 1942

No sé si diría que "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote" es mi cuento preferido de Borges, pero sí diría que es uno de sus más "borgesianos".  Según el narrador del relato, un excéntrico que se presenta como un buen académico a pesar de su debilidad por los salones literarios de menos confianza, Pierre Menard fue un novelista y poeta francés cuyo proyecto estético tenía que ver con la re-escritura de dos capítulos y un fragmento de otro de la primera parte de Don Quijote.  "No quería componer otro Quijote --lo cual es fácil-- sino el Quijote.  Inútil agregar que no encaró nunca una transcripción mecánica del original; no se proponía copiarlo.  Su admirable ambición era producir unas páginas que coincidieran  --palabra por palabra y línea por línea-- con las de Miguel de Cervantes" (90).  Que esto sea una tarea asombrosa o sea una especie de locura queda una pregunta abierta, por supuesto, pero el narrador genialmente llama la atención a la manera en cual el Quijote de Menard es más digno de atención al Quijote de Cervantes en cuanto al mensaje y al estilo.  Aunque no quiero decir mucho más sobre esta enorme tomadura de pelo por parte de Borges, es difícil ignorar su posición como un obvio y valioso precursor a novelas como La Vida instrucciones de uso, de Perec, y La literatura nazi en América, de Bolaño, en cuanto a su construcción de una "vida imaginaria" con bibliografías falsas, notas a pie de página ficticias, etc.  Al mismo tiempo, este cuento es un homenaje a la lectura como un acto creativo con guiños literarios exquisitos (el capítulo noveno del Quijote de Cervantes, por ejemplo, tiene que ver con la confesión del supuesto autor de la obra que un tal Cide Hamete Benengeli, "historiador arábigo", era el auténtico autor de la Historia de don Quijote de la Mancha) e irónicos (el narrador de "Pierre Menard", tan absorto en su trabajo ensayístico "factual", no duda en cantar las alabanzas de una obra invisible como la obra maestra de nuestros tiempos).  En resumen, una muy buena diversion llena de encantos metaficcionalizados.
*
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"
by Jorge Luis Borges [translated by James E. Irby]
Argentina, 1942

While I'm not sure I'd say that "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is my favorite short story by Borges, it's definitely one of the ones I think of as among his most "Borgesian."  According to the narrator of the piece, an eccentric who tries to hide his taste for crackpot literary salons behind a suspect academic veneer, Pierre Menard was a French novelist and poet whose grand project had to do with the never quite completed rewriting of two chapters and fragments of a third from Book One of Don Quixote.  "He did not want to compose another Quixote--which is easy--but the Quixote itself.  Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it.  His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes" (39).  Although it's of course open to interpretation whether such a plan would really constitute a signal challenge or just a simple act of lunacy, the narrator rather ingeniously calls attention to the ways in which Menard's Quixote is qualitatively superior to Cervantes' Quixote in terms of its message and its style!  While I don't want to divulge too many more details about Borges' enormous prank here, it's clear that "Pierre Menard" offered up a marvelous blueprint of sorts for novels like Perec's Life A User's Manual and Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas in terms of its "imaginary life" replete with fake bibliographies, fake footnotes, etc.  At the same time, the story positions itself as an homage to reading as a creative act with all sorts of exquisite literary in-jokes (note, for example, that the ninth chapter of Cervantes' Quixote that Menard wishes to rewrite itself has to do with the supposed "original" author's confession that one Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian, was the true author of Don Quixote of La Mancha) and ironies (the narrator of "Pierre Menard," seemingly so absorbed in presenting a "factual" work of essay-writing, doesn't hesitate to sing the praises of an invisible work as the masterpiece of our day and age) attached.  In short, a very entertaining story stocked full of all sorts of nifty, metafictional delights.

• Borges, Jorge Luis.  "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote".  Narraciones.  Madrid: Cátedra, 2002, 85-96.
• Borges, Jorge Luis [translated by James E. Irby].  "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote."  Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings.  New York: New Directions, 2007, 36-44.

OTROS LECTORES
Claire
E.L. Fay

Emily
Nicole
Rise
Sarah

Borges, Anyone?

Just a quick note to let you know that my non-structured reading group partners in crime  and I have recently decided to add some Jorge Luis Borges appetizers to the menu for our shared reads in May.  If you're interested in reading and discussing some Borges short stories with us this month, please join us on participating blogs on the following dates: Friday, 5/7: "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote" ["Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"]; Friday, 5/14: "La biblioteca de Babel" ["The Library of Babel"]; Friday, 5/21: "El Sur" ["The South"].  Although at least two of us will be reading these short short stories (only about 10 pages each) in their original Spanish as available in Borges' Ficciones and elsewhere, most of the group will be reading them in English from Penguin's Collected Fictions Borges compilation.  So no worries if your Spanish isn't up to snuff as the discussions will take place in English!  P.S. Those curious about our main (longer, non-Borgesian) shared read for the month are also encouraged to think about joining us on Friday, 5/28, when we'll be discussing Sarah's pick, Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels.

Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge

Calling all movie buffs!  As I mentioned not too long ago, I'll be hosting an international film challenge off and on this year as a spinoff from Bethany's Orbis Terrarum 2010 Reading Challenge.  While the tentative plan is to do this every other month throughout the length of the challenge (i.e. May, July, September, and November), here's all you need to know for May if you want to join in.

If you review any foreign films on your blog this month (be they new favorites or ones you just enjoyed trashing), send me a link to your post with the name of the film and the name of the director included somewhere.  Please note that a movie's "foreign" status will be determined both by where you live (no American movies for U.S. bloggers) and the director's place of birth (and not the setting): Krzysztof Kieslowski's great Three Colors trilogy, for example, while mostly set in and associated with France, counts as a Polish film for the challenge, while Rob Marshall's virtually unwatchable Memoirs of a Geisha, although set in Japan, rather embarrassingly counts as an American film!

I'll add the links to the bottom of this post as the month progresses, and then hopefully people will feel free to hop around from blog to blog reading about and/or discussing the films in question.  In the meantime, please be aware that you don't need to be a participant in the main Orbis Terrarum 2010 Challenge to hang out at this film festival.  In fact, we can start talking movies now if you want to share your memories of some of your all-time favorites.  At Bethany's suggestion, I'll list a handful of my many foreign film favorites here to get the ball rolling.  1) Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (France, 2001).  2) Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong, 2000).  3) Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (Japan, 1963).  4)  Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (Italy, 1961).  5) Carlos Saura's Cría cuervos (Spain, 1976).  Any questions?  Let me know!

Richard, The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany, 2008)