Labyrinths (31 page)

Bibliography

PRINCIPAL WORKS OF BORGES

All works were published in Buenos Aires unless otherwise noted. Those marked with an asterisk are now volumes in Borges's
Obras completas.

POETRY

El fervor de Buenos Aires
(Imprenta Serantes, 1923)

Luna de enfrente
(Proa, 1925)

Cuaderno San Martín
(Proa, 1929)

Poemas, 1922-1943
(Losada, 1943)

      *
Poemas, 1923-1953
(Emecé, 1953)

      *
Poemas, 1923-1958
(Emecé, 1958)

      *
El hacedor
(in part) (Emecé, 1960)

Antología personal
(in part) (Sur, 1961)

ESSAYS

Inquisiciones
(Proa, 1925)

El tamaño de mi esperanza
(Proa, 1926)

El idioma de los argentinos
(Gleizer, 1928)

      *
Evaristo Carriego
(Gleizer, 1930; Emece, 1955)

      *
Discusion
(Gleizer, 1932; Emece, 1957)

      *
Historia de la eternidad
(Viau y Zona, 1936; Emecé, 1953)

Aspectos de la literatura gauchesca
(Número, Montevideo, 1950)   
Antiguas literaturas germánicas
(Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 1951)

      *
Otras inquisiciones, 1931-1952
(Sur, 1952; Emecé, 1960)

El "Martín Fierro"
(Columba, 1953)

Leopoldo Lugones
(Troquel, 1955)

Antología personal
(in part) (Sur, 1961)

      The booklets
Las Kenningar
(Colombo, 1933) and
Nueva refutatión del tiempo
(Oportet Haereses, 1947) were later incorporated into
Historia de la eternidad
and
Otras inquisiciones,
respectively.

FICTION AND IMAGINATIVE PROSE

      *
Historia universal de la infamia
(Tor, 1935; Emecé, 1954)

      *
Ficciones
(Sur, 1945; Emecé, 1956)

* El Aleph
(Losada, 1949, 1952; Emecé, 1957)

      *
El hacedor
(in part) (Emecé, 1960)

Antología personal
(in part) (Sur, 1961)

      The narrative collection
El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan
(Sur, 1941) was later incorporated into
Ficciones.
The anthology
La muerte y la brújula
(Emecé, 1951) contains a selection of stories from all the earlier volumes.

      In collaboration with Adolfo Bioy Casares, using the joint pseudonyms of H. Bustos Domecq or B. Suárez Lynch, Borges has published the detective narratives
Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi
(Sur, 1942) and
Un modelo para la muerte
(Oportet Haereses, 1946), and the stories
Dos fantasías memorables
(Oportet Haereses, 1946). With Bioy Casares he has also published two film scripts:
Los orilleros
and
El paraíso de los creyentes
(Losada, 1955). Also with Bioy, Borges has edited two detective short story anthologies:
Los mejores cuentos policiales
(Emecé, 1943) and
Los mejores cuentos policiales, segunda serie
(Emecé, 1951) as well as the anthology
Libra del cielo y del infierno
(Sur, 1960). In collaboration with Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo he edited
Antología de la literatura fantástica
(Sudamericana, 1940).

OTHER TRANSLATIONS OF BORGES'S WORKS

IN ENGLISH

Ficciones,
New York, Grove Press, 1962 (translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Helen Temple, Ruthven Todd, Anthony Bonner, and Alastair Reid).

Dreamtigers,
Austin, Univ. of Texas Press, 1964 (prose translated by Mildred Boyer; poetry, by Harold Moreland). An English edition of
El hacedor.

      "Investigation of the Writings of Herbert Quain,"
New Directions 11,
1949, pp. 449-53 (translated by Mary Wells).

      "On the Classics,"
Panorama,
Washington, D. C., May 1942 (translator anonymous).

      Translations of Borges's early poems may be found in the following anthologies:

      Dudley Fitts (ed.),
Anthology of Contemporary Latin American
Poetry,
New Directions, 1942, pp. 64-73 (translated by Robert Stuart Fitzgerald).

      Patricio Gannon and Hugo Manning (eds.),
Argentine Anthology
of Modern Verse,
Buenos Aires, 1942, pp. 66-71 (translated by the editors).

            H. R. Hays (ed.),
Twelve Spanish American Poets,
New Haven, 1943, pp. 120-37 (translated by the editor).

            Harriet de Onís (ed.),
The Golden Land,
New York, 1948, pp. 222-23 (translated by the editor).

      Certain of the selections in the foregoing volume, here translated by the Editors, have been published in other English translations in periodicals and books, as follows:

      "The Garden of Forking Paths" translated by Anthony Boucher,
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
August, 1948.

      "The Circular Ruins" translated by Mary Wells,
New Directions 11,
1949.

      "Funes the Memorious" translated by Anthony Kerrigan,
Avon Modern Writing No. 2,
1954.

      "The Shape of the Sword" translated by Angel Flores,
Spanish Stories
(Bantam Books, 1960) and translated by Harriet de Onís,
New World Writing No. 4,
1953.

      "Death and the Compass" translated by Anthony Kerrigan,
New Mexico Quarterly,
Autumn 1954.

      "Three Versions of Judas" translated by Anthony Kerrigan,
Noonday No. 3,
1959.

      "The Immortal" translated by Julian Palley,
Portfolio and Art News Annual No. 2,
1960.

      "Emma Zunz" translated by E. C. Villicana,
Partisan Review,
September 1959.

IN OTHER LANGUAGES

Enquêtes, 1937-1952,
Paris, Gallimard, 1957 (translated by Paul and Sylvia Bénichou). A somewhat abridged version of
Otras inquisiciones.

Fictions,
Paris, Gallimard, 1951 (translated by Néstor Ibarra and Paul Verdevoye).

Labyrinthes,
Paris, Gallimard, 1953 (translated by Roger Caillois). Contains four stories from
El Aleph.

      L'Aleph,
Milan, Feltrinelli, 1959 (translated by Francesco Tentori Montalto).

Labyrinthe,
Munich, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1959 (translated by Karl August Horst, Eva Hesse, Wolfgang Luchting and Liselott Reger). Contains all stories from
Ficciones
and
El Aleph.

CRITICAL WRITINGS ON BORGES

      There have been few serious considerations of Borges's work written in English. Of interest are "The Labyrinths of Jorge Luis Borges, An Introduction to the Stories of
El Aleph"
by L. A. Murillo
(Modern Language Quarterly,
Vol. 20, No. 3, September, 1959), and "Borges on Literature,"
(Américas,
December, 1961). Readers of Spanish may consult the books by Issac Wolpert
(Jorge Luis Borges,
Buenos Aires, 1961), Ana María Barrenechea
(La expresión de la irrealidad en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges,
Mexico City, 1957), Marcial Tamayo and Adolfo Ruiz-Díaz
(Borges, enigma y clave,
Buenos Aires, 1955) and Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot
(Jorge Luis Borges, ensayo de interpretatión,
Madrid, 1959). The essays by Enrique Pezzoni ("Approximatión al último libro de Jorge Luis Borges,"
Sur,
Buenos Aires, nos. 217-18, Nov.-Dec. 1952, pp. 101-23) and Emir Rodríguez Monegal ("Borges: teoría y práctica,"
Número,
Montevideo, no. 27, Dec. 1955, pp. 124-57) are of particular interest. Readers of French may consult the essays by Paul Bénichou ("Le monde de José [sic] Luis Borges,"
Critique,
Paris, nos. 63-64, Aug.-Sept. 1952, pp. 675-87, and "Le monde et l'esprit chez Jorge Louis Borges,"
Les Lettres Nouvelles,
Paris, no. 21, Nov. 1954, pp. 680-99), Marcel Brion ("J. L. Borges et ses Labyrinthes,"
Le Monde,
Paris, Aug. 9, 1954) and René Etiemble ("Un homme a tuer: Jorge Luis Borges, cosmopolite,"
Les Temps Modernes,
Paris, no. 83, Sept. 1952, pp. 512-26, and in Etiemble's
Hygiène des lettres,
II, Paris, 1955, pp. 120-41). In German, the brief pieces by Karl August Horst ("Die Bedeutung des Gaucho bei Jorge Luis Borges,"
Merkur,
Stuttgart, no. 143, Jan. 1960, pp. 78-84) and Helmut Heissenbüttel ("Parabeln und Legenden,"
Neue Deutsche Hefte,
Gütersloh, March 1960, pp. 1156-57) are valuable.

Scan Notes, v3.0:
Proofed carefully, italics and special characters intact.

Notes

1
Haslam has also published
A General History of Labyrinths.

2
Russell
(The Analysis of Mind,
1921, page 159) supposes that the planet has been created a few minutes ago, furnished with a humanity that "remembers" an illusory past.

3
A century, according to the duodecimal system, signifies a period of a hundred and forty-four years.

4
Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare
are
William Shakespeare.

5
Buckley was a freethinker, a fatalist and a defender of slavery.

6
There remains, of course, the problem of the
material
of some objects.

7
An hypothesis both hateful and odd. The Prussian spy Hans Rabener, alias Viktor Runeberg, attacked with drawn automatic the bearer of the warrant for his arrest, Captain Richard Madden. The latter, in self-defense, inflicted the wound which brought about Runeberg's death. (Editor's note.)

8
Madame Henri Bachelier also lists a literal translation of Quevedo's literal translation of the
Introduction
à la vie dévote
of St. Francis of Sales. There are no traces of such a work in Menard's library. It must have been a jest of our friend, misunderstood by the lady.

9
I also had the secondary intention of sketching a personal portrait of Pierre Menard. But how could I dare to compete with the golden pages which, I am told, the Baroness de Bacourt is preparing or with the delicate and punctual pencil of Carolus Hourcade?

10
I remember his quadricular notebooks, his black crossed-out passages, his peculiar typographical symbols and his insect-like handwriting. In the afternoons he liked to go out for a walk around the outskirts of Nîmes; he would take a notebook with him and make a merry bonfire.

11
The original manuscript does not contain digits or capital letters. The punctuation has been limited to the comma and the period. These two signs, the space and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet are the twenty-five symbols considered sufficient by this unknown author.
(Editor's note.)

12
Before, there was a man for every three hexagons. Suicide and pulmonary diseases have destroyed that proportion. A memory of unspeakable melancholy: at times I have traveled for many nights through corridors and along polished stairways without finding a single librarian.

13
I repeat: it suffices that a book be possible for it to exist. Only the impossible is excluded. For example: no book can be a ladder, although no doubt there are books which discuss and negate and demonstrate this possibility and others whose structure corresponds to that of a ladder.

14
Letizia
Álvarez de Toledo has observed that this vast Library is useless: rigorously speaking,
a single volume
would be sufficient, a volume of ordinary format, printed in nine or ten point type, containing an infinite number of infinitely thin leaves. (In the early seventeenth century, Cavalieri said that all solid bodies are the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.) The handling of this silky vade mecum would not be convenient: each apparent page would unfold into other analogous ones; the inconceivable middle page would have no reverse.

15
Borelius inquires mockingly: "Why didn't he renounce his renunciation? Or renounce the idea of renouncing his renunciation?"

16
Euclides da Cunha, in a book unknown to Runeberg, notes that for the heresiarch of Canudos, Antonio Conselheiro, virtue "was almost an impiety." The Argentine reader will recall analogous passages in the work of Almafuerte. In the symbolist sheet
Sju insegel,
Runeberg published an assiduous descriptive poem,
The Secret Waters;
the first stanzas narrate the events of a tumultuous day; the last, the discovery of a glacial pond; the poet suggests that the permanence of those silent waters corrects our useless violence and in some way allows and absolves it. The poem ends as follows: "The waters of the forest are good; we can be evil and suffer."

17
Maurice Abramowicz observes:
"Jesus, d'après ce scandinave, a toujours le beau rôle; ses déboires, grâce à la science des typographes, jouissent d'une réputation polyglotte; sa résidence de trente-trois ans parmi les humains ne fut, en somrne, qu'une villégiature"
Erfjord, in the third appendix to the
Christelige Dogmatik,
refutes this passage. He notes that the crucifixion of God has not ceased, for what has happened once in time is repeated ceaselessly in eternity. Judas,
now,
goes on receiving his pieces of silver, goes on kissing Christ, goes on throwing the coins into the temple, goes on making a noose in the rope on the field of blood. (Erfjord, in order to justify this affirmation, invokes the last chapter of the first volume of Jaromir Hladik's
Vindication of Eternity.)

18
There is an erasure in the manuscript; perhaps the name of the port has been removed.

19
Ernesto Sabato suggests that the "Giambattista" who discussed the formation of the
Iliad
with the antique dealer Cartaphilus is Giambattista Vico; this Italian defended the idea that Homer is a symbolic character, after the manner of Pluto or Achilles.

20
In the Runic crosses the two contrary emblems coexist entwined.

21
Also Gibbon
(Decline and Fall,
XLV) transcribes these verses.

22
The original says
fourteen,
but there is ample reason to infer that, as used by Asterion, this numeral stands for
infinite.

23
lt is significant that the narrator has omitted the name of his most illustrious ancestor, the theologian and Hebraist Johannes Forkel (1799-1846), who applied the Hegelian dialectic to Christology, and whose literal version of several books of the Apocrypha merited the censure of Hengstenberg and the approval of Thilo and Gesenius. (Editor's note.)

24
Other nations live innocently, in themselves and for themselves, like minerals or meteors; Germany is the universal mirror which receives all, the consciousness of the world
(das Weltbewusstsein).
Goethe is the prototype of that ecumenic comprehension. I do not censure him, but I do not see in him the Faust-like man of Spengler's thesis.

25
It has been rumored that the consequences of this wound were very serious. (Editor's note.)

26
It has been necessary to omit a few lines here. (Editor's note.)

27
We have been unable to find any reference to the name of Jerusalem, even in Soergel's work. Nor is he mentioned in the histories of German literature. Nevertheless, I do not believe that he is fictitious. Many Jewish intellectuals were tortured at Tarnowitz under orders of Otto Dietrich zur Linde; among them, the pianist Emma Rosenzweig. "David Jerusalem" is perhaps a symbol of several individuals. It is said that he died March first, 1943; on March first, 1939, the narrator was wounded in Tilsit. (Editor's note.)

28
Such is Taylor's spelling of the word.

29
Barlach observes that Yaúq is mentioned in the Koran (71, 23) and that the Prophet is Al-Mokanna (the Veiled One), and that no one except Philip Meadows Taylor's surprising informant has identified them with the Zahir.

30
Nonrecognition of the sacred animal and its opprobrious or accidental death at the hands of the people are traditional themes in Chinese literature. See the last chapter of Jung's
Psychologie und Alchemie
(Zürich, 1944), which contains two curious illustrations.

31
See T. S. Eliot:
Points of View
(1941), pp. 25-26.

32
A century later, the Chinese sophist Hui Tzu reasoned that a staff cut in two every day is interminable (H. A. Giles:
Chuang Tzu,
1889, page 453).

33
In the
Parmenides
― whose Zenonian character is irrefutable ― Plato expounds a very similar argument to demonstrate that the one is really many. If the one exists, it participates in being; therefore, there are two parts in it, which are being and the one, but each of these parts is one and exists, so that they enclose two more parts, which in turn enclose two more, infinitely. Russell
(Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,
1919, page 138) substitutes for Plato's geometrical progression an arithmetical one. If one exists, it participates in being: but since being and the one are different, duality exists; but since being and two are different, trinity exists, etc. Chuang Tzu (Waley:
Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China,
page 25) resorts to the same interminable
regressus
against the monists who declared that the Ten Thousand Things (the Universe) are one. In the first place ― he argues ― cosmic unity and the declaration of that unity are already two things; these two and the declaration of their duality are already three; those three and the declaration of their trinity are already four . . . Russell believes that the vagueness of the term
being
is sufficient to invalidate this reasoning. He adds that numbers do not exist, that they are mere logical fictions.

34
An echo of this proof, now defunct, resounds in the first verse of the
Paradiso:

La gloria di Colui che tutto move.

35
I follow the exposition by James
(A Pluralistic Universe,
1909, pages 55-60). Cf. Wentscher:
Fechner und Lotze,
1924, pages 166-171.

36
Writings,
1896, Vol. I, page 129.

37
What is a divine mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does not define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.

38
Thus Milton and Dante interpreted them, to judge by certain passages which seem to be imitative. In the
Commedia (Inferno,
I, 60; V, 28) we have:
dogni luce muto
and
dove il sol tace
to signify dark places; in the
Samson Agonistes
(86-89):

        The Sun to me is dark

        And silent as the Moon

        When she deserts the night

        Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Cf. E. M. W. Tillyard:
The Miltonic Setting,
101.

39
And in Swedenborg. In
Man and Superman
we read that Hell is not a penal establishment but rather a state dead sinners elect for reasons of intimate affinity, just as the blessed do with Heaven; the treatise
De Coelo et Inferno
by Swedenborg, published in 1758, expounds the same doctrine.

40
For the convenience of the reader I have selected a moment between two periods of sleep, a literary moment, not a historical one. If anyone suspects a fallacy, he may substitute another example, one from his own life if he so chooses.

41
And, earlier, by Newton, who maintained: "Each particle of space is eternal, each indivisible moment of duration is everywhere"
(Principia,
III, 42).