Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - The Giovanni Translations (63 page)
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Authors: Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by N.T. di Giovanni)
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The Cheshire Cat and the Kilkenny Cats
Everyone is familiar with the phrases ‘grin like a Cheshire cat’, which means of course to put on a sardonic face. Many explanations of its origin have been attempted. One is that in Cheshire cheeses were sold in the shape of the grinning head of a cat. Another, that Cheshire is a Palatine county or earldom and that this mark of nobility provoked the hilarity of its cats. Still another is that in the time of Richard III there was a gamewarden named Caterling who used to break into an angry smile whenever he crossed swords with poachers.
In Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865, Lewis Carroll endowed the Cheshire Cat with the faculty of slowly disappearing to the point of leaving only its grin without teeth and without a mouth. Of the Kilkenny Cats it is told that they got into raging quarrels and devoured each other, leaving behind no more than their tails. This story goes back to the eighteenth century.
The Chimera
The first mention we have of the Chimera is in Book VI of the
Iliad
. There Homer writes that it came of divine stock and was a lion in its foreparts, a goat in the middle, and a serpent in its hindparts, and that from its mouth it vomited flames, and finally was killed by the handsome Bellerophon, the son of Glaucus, following the signs of the gods. A lion’s head, goat’s belly, and serpent’s tail is the most obvious image conveyed by Homer’s words, but Hesiod’s
Theogony
describes the Chimera as having three heads, and this is the way it is depicted in the famous Arezzo bronze that dates from the fifth century. Springing from the middle of the animal’s back is the head of a goat, while at one end it has a snake’s head and at the other a lion’s.
The Chimera reappears in the sixth book of the
Aeneid
, ‘armed with flame’; Virgil’s commentator Servius Honoratus observed that, according to all authorities, the monster was native to Lycia, where there was a volcano bearing its name. The base of this mountain was infested with serpents, higher up on its flanks were meadows and goats, and towards its desolate top, which belched out flames, a pride of lions had its resort. The Chimera would seem to be a metaphor of this strange elevation. Earlier, Plutarch suggested that Chimera was the name of a pirate captain who adorned his ships with the images of a lion, a goat, and a snake.
These absurd hypotheses are proof that the Chimera was beginning to bore people. Easier than imagining it was to translate it into something else. As a beast it was too heterogeneous; the lion, goat, and snake (in some texts, dragon) do not readily make up a single animal. With time the Chimera tended to become ‘chimerical’; a celebrated joke of Rabelais (‘Can a chimera, swinging in the void, swallow second intentions?’) clearly marks the transition. The patchwork image disappeared but the word remained, signifying the impossible. A vain or foolish fancy is the definition of Chimera that we now find in dictionaries.
The Chinese Dragon
Chinese cosmogony teaches that the Ten Thousand Beings or Archetypes (the world) are born of the rhythmic conjunction of the two complementary eternal principles, the yin and the yang. Corresponding to the yin are concentration, darkness, passivity, even numbers, and cold; to the yang, growth, light, activity, odd numbers, and heat. Symbols of the yin are women, the earth, the colour orange, valleys, riverbeds, and the tiger; of the yang, men, the sky, blue, mountains, pillars, the dragon.
The Chinese Dragon, the lung, is one of the four magic animals. (The others are the unicorn, the phoenix, and the tortoise.) At best, the Western Dragon spreads terror; at worst, it is a figure of fun. The lung of Chinese myth, however, is divine and is like an angel that is also a lion. We read in the
Historical Record of Ssu-ma Ch’ien
that Confucius went to consult the archivist or librarian Lao-tzu, and after his visit said:
Birds fly, fish swim, animals run. The running animal can be caught in a trap, the swimmer in a net, and the flyer by an arrow. But there is the Dragon; I don’t know how it rides on the wind or how it reaches the heavens. Today I met Lao-tzu and I can say that I have seen the Dragon.
It was a Dragon, or a Dragon Horse, which emerged from the Yellow River to reveal to an emperor the famous circular diagram symbolizing the reciprocal play of the yang and yin. A certain king had in his stables saddle Dragons and draft Dragons; one emperor fed on Dragons, and his kingdom prospered. A famous poet, to illustrate the risks of greatness, wrote: ‘The unicorn ends up coldcuts; the dragon as meat pie.’ In the
I Ching
or Book of Changes, the Dragon signifies wisdom. For centuries it was the imperial emblem. The emperor’s throne was called the Dragon Throne, his face the Dragon Face. On announcing an emperor’s death, it was said that he had ascended to heaven on the back of a Dragon.
Popular imagination links the Dragon to clouds, to the rainfall needed by farmers, and to great rivers. The earth couples with the dragon’ is a common phrase for rain. About the sixth century, Chang Seng-yu executed a wall painting that depicted four Dragons. Viewers complained that he had left out their eyes. Annoyed, Chang picked up his brushes again and completed two of the twisted figures. Then ‘the air was filled with thunder and lightning, the wall cracked and the Dragons ascended to heaven. But the other two eyeless Dragons remained in place’.
The Chinese Dragon has horns, claws, and scales, and its backbone prickles with spines. It is commonly pictured with a pearl, which it swallows or spits up. In this pearl lies its power; the Dragon is tamed if the pearl is taken from it.
Chuang Tzu tells us of a determined man who at the end of three thankless years mastered the art of slaying Dragons, and for the rest of his days was not given a single chance to put his art into practice.
The Chinese Fox
In everyday zoology the Chinese Fox differs little from other Foxes, but not so in fantastic zoology. Statistics give it a lifespan that varies between eight hundred and a thousand years. The animal is considered a bad omen, and each part of its anatomy enjoys some special power. It has only to strike the ground with its tail to start a fire; it can see into the future; and it can change into many forms, preferably into old men, young ladies, and scholars. It is astute, wary, and sceptical; its pleasures lie in playing pranks and in causing torment. Men, when they die, may transmigrate with the body of a Fox. Its dwelling is close by graves. There are thousands of stories and legends concerning it; we transcribe one, a tale by the ninth-century poet Niu Chiao, which is not without its humorous side:
Wang saw two Foxes standing on their hind legs and leaning against a tree. One of them held a sheet of paper in its hand, and they laughed together as though they were sharing a joke. Wang tried to frighten them off but they stood their ground, and finally he shot at the one holding the page. The Fox was hit in the eye and Wang took away the piece of paper. At the inn Wang told the story to the other guests. While he spoke a gentleman having a bandaged eye came in. He listened to Wang’s story with interest and asked if he might not be shown the paper. Wang was just about to produce it when the innkeeper noticed that the newcomer had a tail. ‘He’s a Fox!’ he shouted, and on the spot the gentleman turned into a Fox and fled. The Foxes tried time after time to recover the paper, which was filled with indecipherable writing, but were repeatedly set back. Wang decided at last to return home. On the road he met his whole family, who were on their way to the capital. They said that he had ordered them to undertake the journey, and his mother showed him the letter in which he asked them to sell off all their property and join him in the city. Wang, studying the letter, saw that the page was blank. Although they no longer had a roof over their heads, he ordered, ‘Let’s go back.’
One day a younger brother appeared whom everyone had given up for dead. He asked about the family’s misfortunes and Wang told him the whole story. ‘Ah,’ said the brother when Wang came to the part about the Foxes, ‘there lies the root of all the evil.’ Wang showed him the page in question. Tearing it from Wang’s hand, the brother stuffed the sheet into his pocket and said, ‘At last I have back what I wanted.’ Then, changing himself into a Fox, he made his escape.
The Chinese Phoenix
The sacred books of the Chinese may be disappointing for the reason that they lack the pathetic element to which we have been accustomed by the Bible. But occasionally, all at once in their even-tempered discourse, we are moved by some intimacy. This one, for instance, recorded in Book VII of the Confucian
Analects
(Waley translation):
The Master said, How utterly have things gone to the bad with me! It is long now indeed since I dreamed that I saw the Duke of Chou.
Or this one from Book IX:
The Master said, The phoenix does not come; the river gives forth no chart. It is all over with me!
The chart, or sign (explain the commentaries), refers to an inscription on the back of a magical tortoise. As for the Phoenix, it is a bird of brilliant colours, not unlike the pheasant and peacock. In prehistoric times it visited the gardens and palaces of virtuous emperors as a visible token of celestial favour. The male (Feng), which had three legs, lived in the sun. The female is the Huang; together they are the emblem of everlasting love.
In the first century
a
.
d
.
, the daring unbeliever Wang
Ch’ung denied that the Phoenix constituted a determined species. He said that just as the serpent turns into a fish and the rat into a tortoise, the stag in times of widespread prosperity takes the form of the unicorn, and the goose that of the Phoenix. He explained these mutations by the ‘well-
known liquid’ which, some 2,356 years
b
.
c
.
, in the courtyard
of Yao who was one of the model emperors had made the grass grow scarlet. As may be seen, his information was deficient, or rather, excessive. In the Infernal Regions there is an imaginary structure known as the Tower of the Phoenix.