Abstract
This chapter analyzes a selection of Borges’ short stories for their obvious medievalism, and in particular for their use of Germanic medievalism whether explicitly or not. In some cases it considers the fables already recognized as involving his interest in Old English and Old Norse, but in others it addresses texts not obviously medieval in their inspiration. The chapter concludes with consideration of the kinds of texts that Borges was prepared to use for his work, and his place in his own modern and Argentinian world.
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Notes
Borges the Fabulist
See, among very many other examples, Alfredo Alonso Estenoz, Los límites del texto: autoría y autoridad en Borges (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2013), pp. 15 and 2002. I have paraphrased Estenoz here.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” in Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York: New Directions, 1962), pp. 36–44, at p. 44.
Jorge Luis Borges, El informe de Brodie (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1970); here “Brodie’s Report” in Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie’s Report. Trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 1999), pp. 91–98.
Borges, “Brodie’s Report,” p. 96.
Borges, “Brodie’s Report,” p. 96.
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (Buenos Aires, Emecé, 1956); in English as Ficciones, intro. John Sturrock, various translators (New York: Knopf, 1993). “Funes, the Memorious” is pp. 82–91, translated by Anthony Kerrigan.
See Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (1990; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); see also “Mechanisms for the transmission of culture: the role of ‘place’ in the arts of inemory,” in Translatio: The Transmission of Culture in the Middle Ages. Ed. Laura Hollengreen. Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 1–26.
See Naomi Lindstrom, Jorge Luis Borges: A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990), p. 41.
Borges, “Funes, the Memorious,” p. 89.
Borges, “The Sect of the Phoenix,” in Ficciones, pp. 131–134. The quotation is p. 133.
Hernán Díaz, Borges, between History and Eternity (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 36–38. The quotation concerning the “fractal model of the universe” is p. 38. Díaz continues to elaborate the idea’s connections to many of Borges’ central beliefs and concerns through the rest of the chapter.
Borges, “The Sect of the Phoenix,” p. 133.
Borges, “The Sect of the Phoenix,” p. 133.
Jaime Alazraki, La Prosa narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1968).
See Jorge Luis Borges, El Libro de arena (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1977); “Ulrica” is pp. 15–19. The epigraph is given in Old Norse. The translation used here is Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand. Trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977), as “Ulrike,” pp. 21–25. Somewhat depressingly, in the English translation the epigraph is also given in English rather than its original Old Norse.
Borges, Professor Borges, p. 52. He states: “I think they wrote these verses because they felt them, and that they didn’t know they were doing something so extraordinary: how they were forcing an iron language, an epic language, to say something for which that language had not been forged—to express sadness and personal loneliness. But they managed to do it.”
The quotation is from Borges, “The Other” in The Book of Sand, p. 17.
“The Book of Sand,” in Borges, The Book of Sand, pp. 117–122; quotation is p. 120.
Borges, “The Book of Sand,” p. 120.
See Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa 1980, translated William Weaver, published in English as The Name of the Rose (New York: Harcourt, 1983). The villain, Jorge de Burgos, is an elderly blind librarian who will do anything to preserve a conservative status quo in the Christian church. Borges would have found this figure rather one-sided and dogmatic, I suspect.
“The Bribe,” in Borges, The Book of Sand, pp. 97–104.
Borges, “The Bribe,” p. 98.
Borges, “The Bribe,” p. 104.
“The Disk,” in Borges, The Book of Sand, pp. 113–116.
Alicia Jurado, one of the many women with whom Borges had a firm friendship and with whom he worked, notes that he was a “jugador,” someone who delighted to play with language, with expectations. She argues that he is the quintessential writer for other writers of his generation and after. See the chapters “El jugador” and “Las reglas del juego” (The rules of the game) in Alicia Jurado, Genio y Figura de Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1980), pp. 64–77, and pp. 78–9o.
“Mutations” in Borges, Dreamtigers, p. 41.
See Gene H. Bell-Villada, Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 243.
“The Witness,” in Borges, Dreamtigers, p. 39.
Alastair Reid, “Introduction,” in Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights. Trans. Eliot Weinberger (Mexico: New Directions, 1984), pp. 1–5, at p. 4.
Reid, “Introduction,” p. 4.
This chapter has not addressed more than a small percentage of the stories that are relevant to Borges’ medievalism; the aim has been to sketch out an approach. However, almost any other of Borges’ short story collections could have been analyzed in these terms. Also relevant would be his early papers in the journal he cofounded, now collected as Jorge Luis Borges en Sur1931–1980 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1999).
Borges freely answered questions about what literatures and authors he enjoyed, but he was not often asked about his preferences in Spanish literature. On one occasion, when the interviewer did pursue the point, he admits to liking Don Quixote (without on that occasion admitting that he read the epic novel in English first, and loved it most in that language) and Fray Luis de León. Pressed, he admitted to enjoying Saint John of the Cross (probably more as a mystic poem than as a Spanish one) and Garcilaso de la Vega, described as an “Italian poet gone astray in Spain” He found the Poema de Mio Cid “dull and unimaginative” and the Arcipreste de Hita not very important. His preference was for the Chanson de Roland, Anglo-Saxon epic poetry, and Scandinavian poetry. This interview is with Fernando Sorrentino, published first as Siete conversaciones con Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo, 1973), translated as Fernando Sorrentino, Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges. Trans. Clark M. Zlotchew (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1982); and republished as “Interview, 1973;” pp. 115–128 in Naomi Lindstrom, Jorge Luis Borges: A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne, 1990). The quotations are from p. 119, and the specific discussion is pp. 118–12o.
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Toswell, M.J. (2014). Borges the Fabulist. In: Borges the Unacknowledged Medievalist: Old English and Old Norse in His Life and Work. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444479_5
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