Venegas - Borges, Eliot, Translation, Irony

7/24/2019 Venegas - Borges, Eliot, Translation, Irony

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JOS LUIS VENEGAS

ELIOT, BORGES, TRADITION, AND IRONY

IN LA MURALLA Y LOS LIBROS, Jorge Luis Borges comments on ChineseEmperor Shih Huang Tis decrees to wall his empire in and to burn all thebooks predating the time of his rule. In Borgess opinion, the interest in bothacts probably rests on their opposition, on the way they cancel each other out

by constructing and destroying on an enormous scale (Obras completas [OC]2:13). With its discussion of this enigmatic simultaneity of creation and anni-hilation, this short note suggests one of Borgess recurrent critical concerns,namely the dynamics between tradition and innovation. As happened with thewall and the books, this opposition, for Borges, becomes neutralized, becausehe considers every act of individual expression as inevitably adding to aninescapable, all-encompassing literary tradition. In this respect, Borgessideas seem to coincide with T. S. Eliots as articulated in his well-knownessays, Tradition and the Individual Talent and Ulysses, Order and Myth.

Despite their interest, these theoretical similarities between Borges and Eliothave received little critical attention. The only article that (to my knowledge)explores them in a systematic way is Nicolas Shumways Eliot, Borges andTradition. Shumway contends that there is a real affinity (266) betweentheir views on the role of tradition in literature, thus presenting Borgess crit-ical opinions as a mere adaptation of Eliots postulates.1 However, on closerscrutiny, these affinities, far from ultimately suggesting substantial agree-ment (Shumway 26263), actually expose Borgess ironic rewriting ofEliots classicism.

While this classicism relied on literary traditionparticularly on myth andparodyas a paradigmatic and organizing model for the fragmentariness ofthe modern world, Borges envisioned such tradition as an infinite regress thatdissolves any source of ultimate literary authority. Along these lines, this arti-cle proposes to argue that Borgess views on tradition and the individual tal-ent, although superficially in accordance with Eliots, can in fact be read astheir ironic reversal, because Borges continuously undermined the traditionalfoundations that Eliot identified as the cornerstone of Western literature. Adetailed textual analysis of Borgess El Inmortal as an ironic narrative adap-

tation of Eliots ideas will provide a suitable illustration of the theoreticalarguments discussed in the first part of this article.

h fi i l i il i i b h li h i f d


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238 SYMPOSIUM Winter 2006

Eliot, usually deals with the textual legacy of Western literary tradition

through parody (notably parodic allusion). However, textual parody (the imi-

tation of the style, themes, or characters of a previous work), as a hermeneu-tic practice that marks the intersection of innovation and critique in relation to

the discourse of the past, can never be said to radically depart from that dis-

course. As Linda Hutcheon puts it, [. . .] through a double process of

installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come

from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continu-

ity and difference (Politics 93). In other words, whatever difference is

achieved through parody is ultimately reinstated in the heart of similarity, thus

perpetuating the epistemological uniqueness of a given tradition. Whereas

Eliot, as we shall see, advocates this conception of parodic allusion to mythas a means toward eventual stability,2 Borges seems to expand the ironizing

semantic mechanism at work in parody so as to target the very idea of tradi-

tion, thus enacting a metaparodic or metacritical gesture, as it were.3 There-

fore, since parody implies expansion and continuation of tradition, we will use

the term irony4 to highlight Borgess epistemological resistance toand

inversion ofEliots classicist idea of parody-as-tradition.

A brief survey of Eliots most relevant criticism suffices to indicate his

classicist emphasis on the paradigmatic value of tradition as fundamental lit-

erary meaning. In Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), he assertsthat individual originality depends heavily on what has been inherited from

literary predecessors, to the point of declaring that the past should be

altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past (101).

Hence, literary value derives from the lessons imparted by past poets, a

standpoint that is radicalized by his proposal of an impersonal theory of

poetry (104). Thereby, poetry is an escape from personality (107) and

individual feelings, a move that is underscored by making ultimate appeal to

the ancients. In fact, the endpoint of this continual extinction of personality

demanded by the creative process is made to coincide with Homer. To find atrue poetic voice, Eliot points out, the artist should write with a feeling that

the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of

the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and compos-

es a simultaneous order (100; emphasis added). Although Eliot emphasizes

the commonality of the moderns and the ancients, of tradition and personal

creativity, he ultimately identifies Antiquity and Homer as the source of lit-

erary worth.

Eliots classicism is also apparent in his short note on James Joyces

Ulysses titled Ulysses, Order and Myth (1923). Here, Eliot hailed Ulyssesas a paradigmatic reworking of modern materials in keeping with the postu-

lates of tradition According to Eliot In using the myth in manipulating a


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Venegas SYMPOSIUM 239

This procedure prescribed by Eliot is what he termed the mythical

method, consisting in a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape

and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which iscontemporary history (270). It is the conceptual structures of mythof

Homeric myth in the case of Joyces narrativethat constitute the ultimate

framework for literary significance. For Eliot, the Homeric (parodic) subtext

in Ulysses is the perfect exemplification of the classicism he demands from

literary creation, since this reliance on the lessons of antiquity is the only way

to make the modern world possible for art (271). Although fragmentary, the

postGreat War world of Eliot and Joyce could gain stability by parodic asso-

ciation with the order of myth. An ultimate source of meaning is, therefore,

endorsed.Borges also delved into the problems that devolve from the interaction

between literary heritage and individual expression in El escritor argentino y

la tradicin (1932),5 an essay that recalls Eliots Tradition and the Individ-

ual Talent in its main points. Even though Borges, like Eliot, posited an

unavoidable link between tradition and individual expression, he went against

the grain of a unified literary tradition as advocated by Eliot. Instead, Borges

bastardizes that tradition from the ex-centric point of view of the Argentine

writer. Despite the fact that Borges affirms that the tradition of this writer is

toda la cultura occidental (OC1:272), he abandons any pretence of literarypurity. And he does so not only by assuming a marginal position in relation to

such culture but also by relativizing the question of tradition as a matter of

arbitrariness. According to Borges, what an Argentine writer produces is to be

considered a part of Argentine tradition irrespective of what the past prefig-

ured: Todo lo que hagamos con felicidad los escritores argentinos

pertenecer a la tradicin argentina (OC1:273). With this assertion, Borges

leads us to think that tradition does not conform to a cause-and-effect logic.

For Borges, it is the effect rather than the cause that retrospectively leads to

an interpretation of the latter as such; whatever individual Argentine writerscomposenot what the past determineswill configure Argentine tradition.

In Kafka y sus precursores, a recasting of his ideas on influence, author-

ship, and tradition, Borges recycles this argument to further destabilize the

invariable influence of tradition on artistic creation defended by Eliot. Borges

maintains that Kafkas writing creates its own literary antecedents and not the

other way around. Echoing T. S. Eliot with an ironic intent, Borges writes that

the hecho es que cada escritor crea a sus precursores. Su labor modifica

nuestra concepcin del pasado, como ha de modificar el futuro (OC2:90).

This last sentence, to which a footnote citing T. S. Eliots Points of View(1941) is appended, conforms to the British writers critical views, but its con-

textual significance reverses them The reference is to pages 25 to 26 which


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cance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and

artists (Points of View 25). Nevertheless, Borges dislocates the direction of

influence posited by Eliot as he makes the emergence of a literary lineage con-tingent on individual talent. Therefore, according to Borges, influence

responds to a backward-forward dynamic instead of depending on the canon-

ical authority of the dead poets.

Perhaps the best fictional expression of Borgess critical assessment of the

interrelation between individual talent as authority and the legacy of the past

is found in Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote. Pierre Menards attempt to

rewrite El Quijote verbatim can be read as a reductio ad absurdum of the

inescapability of tradition. Such inescapability is rendered as the misterioso

deber de reconstruir literarlmente su [Cervantess] obra espontnea (OC1:448), binding Menard to a preceding work that, ironically, is the fruit of

chance (Cervantes, Menard affirms, did not reject la colaboracin del azar

(OC 1:448). However, irony does not stop here. Through the exaggerated

positing of the all-encompassing influence of past literature, Pierre Menard

emerges as an irreducible vindication of individual talent and of authorship,

precisely by conspicuously drawing attention to their silencing by tradition.

Menards (re)writing of Cervantess novel forcefully undermines the very idea

of tradition as meaning-production, as a horizon that is truly in motion, that

evolves from the interaction of past and present. Thus, tradition emerges as amere hermeneutical, albeit inescapable, mirage. The only possibility (for

Menard as well as for Borges) to resist it and assert literary individuality is by

effecting its (ironic) inversion: to ascertain the traces of individuality in

Menards work would need a second Pierre Menard invirtiendo el trabajo del

anterior (OC 1:450). Borges, following Menards practice of propagating

ideas que eran el estricto reverso de las preferidas por l (OC 1:449),

enforces the backward-forward dynamics of the interaction between individ-

ual writers and tradition. This ironic attitude turns against tradition its imper-

sonalizing power by calling into question its foundational stability and itspotential as a productive source of literary meaning.

Borges, then, acknowledges the inescapability of tradition, like Eliot does.

But instead of concluding that individual talent is merely a reorganizer of pre-

vious materials given by that self-perpetuating tradition (one of the functions

of parody and parodic allusion), he seems to reclaim the originality of an indi-

vidual authorial voice as perceived in the very act of ironically decentering

such a tradition. In this regard, Lucille Kerr argues that the effacement of the

author understood as a single and stable source of literary meaning that the

acceptance of tradition involves (as is the case in Pierre Menard), is not atodds with the revitalization of the author as a critical concept. Kerr points out

that attesting to the death of the author that Roland Barthes programmati


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even in texts that foster [the authors] disappearance or death, the figure of

the author may also be reclaimed (25). Borges regains this authorial figure

through the corrosive irony that undermines the cornerstones of the very tra-dition that traps and neutralizes individual talent. This irony can actually sur-

face precisely through the deferral of unified authority as symbolized by

Homer (as we will see presently). Thereby, authority is reclaimed by turning

the tables and identifying the impersonal author (Homer) with tradition, not

with individual talent.

Along the same lines, Borgess ironic rewriting of Eliots classicism also tar-

gets his impersonal theory of poetry (Tradition 104). In La postulacin de

la realidad, Borges returns to the problem of tradition and the individual talent

(authorship), in this case under the guise of the classical versus romanticdichotomy. Echoing T. S. Eliots impersonal theory, Borges explains that

para el concepto clsico, la pluralidad de los hombres y de los tiempos es acce-

soria, la literatura es siempre una sola (OC1:219). The notion of personality,

he goes on to argue, is completely alien to this understanding of literature. This

suppression of personality ties in with the tenets of philosophical idealism as

formulated, notably, by George Berkeley and David Hume. According to ideal-

ism, individualitythe Cartesian cogitois just an illusion that arises from the

combination of a certain array of perceptions. These perceptions become orga-

nized in strings of causes and effects owing to their contiguity in time andspace, not to the intellectual powers of a pre-existing cogito. These ideas are

Borgess central concern in a variety of essays, poems and short stories.7 In one

of these texts, La encrucijada de Berkeley, he claims that the implication of

the idealist dissolution of the I for the arts is inconsequential because the

artists conviction that he is working with individual experiences is neutralized

through the acts of creation and reception. Both processes extend these experi-

ences to the commonality of humankind, turning them into archetypical lore,

into tradition (Inquisiciones 93). This classicist annihilation of personality is,

indeed, another aspect that superficially brings Borges and Eliot together,although this association is never devoid of irony.

A closer look at the Borgesian notions of personality and their interaction

with literary creation will reveal these ironic and destabilizing implications.

For Eliot, Homer and the Homeric texts were the ultimate source of literary

value in Western literature, and the impersonal revitalization of myth, the pre-

scriptive avenue to literary creation. The ironic reversal of this order of things

on Borgess part comes when he extends his idealistic considerations to the

very source of traditional literary worth according to Eliot, namely Homer and

his legacy. In El hacedor, Borges tells the story of a common man who cre-ates out of his personal experiences of love and hatred. This man turns out to

be Homer whose personality and individual feelings end up becoming arche


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Homers individuality is the total absence of names and dates, thus implying

that it is his literary legacy, not his personality, that provides the Maker with

an identity.

8

With this critical move, Borges extends the principles of Eliotsimpersonal theory of poetry to the very foundation of Western tradition

Homerthus reformulating the idealist disruption of cause-and-effect logic in

a literary guise. By disseminating Homers individuality, Borges dismantles

Eliots hierarchical arrangement, which envisions Antiquity and Homer as the

stable cause of Western literary tradition. Borges is, in a sense, deconstructing

Eliots theory through the deferral of its cornerstone. Indeed, once the corro-

sive effects of impersonality and idealism are shown to be applicable to the

whole paradigm of what Eliot calls Western tradition, the binary tradition

vs. individual talent is rendered inoperative because its legitimizing origin(Antiquity as ciphered in Homer) is deferred. Whereas Eliots theoretical

scheme implied the firm grounding of tradition on Antiquity, Borges under-

mines such grounding with precisely the same arguments Eliot uses to sustain

it: the impersonality of the poet and the inescapable scope of tradition, which

refuses to acknowledge autonomous literary individualities. Instead of posit-

ing a hierarchical relationship between tradition and personal artistic creation,

Borges suggests a specular reflection between botha backward-forward

dynamicthrough his portrayal of Homer, the source of tradition, as an

impersonal hacedor. As Dominique Jullien has aptly put it, the Argentinewriters arguments link man and author in an endless, mirror-like conver-

sion pattern (137). This dislocation of the cause-and-effect relationship

between tradition and individual talent is what triggers Borgess ironic rever-

sal of Eliots ideas, which always rely on the endorsement of a dependable tra-

dition as the cause of the creative process.

Borgess treatment of Homers legacy also conforms to this ironic dis-

semination of origins through idealistic impersonality. In Las versiones

homricas, Borges addresses the question of Homeric translations, arguing

that el concepto de texto definitivo corresponde a la religin o al cansan-cio (OC1:239; emphasis in original).9 He goes on to point out that, given

the difficulty of determining what derives from Homer as author and what

pertains to language as a system, the notion of an authored original

becomes obsolete, thus allowing la posibilidad de tantas versiones, todas

sinceras, genuinas y divergentes (OC 1:240). Therefore, the translations

stand on an equal footing with the Homeric prototext in comprising the sub-

stance of what we know as the Iliadand the Odyssey. Again, we are faced

with the same reciprocal, backward-forward dynamic between tradition and

innovationbetween the original and its translations, in this casethatironically disjoints the causal direction of literary influence posited by

Eliot Indeed with the deconstruction of authorial and textual origins in El


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Contrary to Eliots stable classicist order, Borgess stance on the problem-

atic relationship between innovation and tradition exposes a playfully decen-

tralized approach that resolves nothing. An illustrative fictionalization ofBorgess ideas is found in El Inmortal, a short story published inEl Aleph

(1949) that also problematizes Homers individuality and literary heritage. In

this sense, El Inmortal can be regarded as a narrative response to the

polemics between tradition and personal expression, in general, and to the

implications of Eliots literary prescriptions, in particular. Just as Borgess crit-

ical essays distort and deconstruct Eliots well-arranged classicist system, El

Inmortal poses an ironic questioning of the possibilities of the mythical

method in literature.10 By extension, Borgess story enters into an intertextu-

al dialogue not only with the work that inspired T. S. Eliots method (JamesJoyces Ulysses), but also with Eliots own artistic elaboration of this method,

The Waste Land. These literary links will reveal a multilayered ironic structure

suggested by the narrative and themes of El Inmortal, which show how, by

manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity

(Eliot, Ulysses 270), the mythical method can actually dissolve an aprior-

istic tradition in the labyrinths of destabilizing disorder.

The story follows the convention of the found manuscript, which in His-

panic letters can be traced back to CervantessEl Quijote. The central narra-

tive is thus deferred through the mediation of a frame that tells about anti-quarian Joseph Cartaphiluss encounter with the Princess of Lucinge. She

buys from him a copy of HomersIliadin six volumes, the last of which con-

tains the manuscript. This structure of deferral is further emphasized by the

fact that the found manuscript is written in English, but the transcription

offered in El Inmortal is in Spanish. The linguistic situation is complicated

by the clarification that the original est escrito en ingls y abunda en latin-

ismos (OC1:533). This subtle mention of the Latinisms calls attention to

the fact that the English original is actually a translation from Latin. There-

fore, not only the structure, but also the linguistic texture of the narration,imply a deferral of ultimate meanings and cast an ironic light on concepts

such as original.

Another detail that adds to this process of deferral is that theIliadwhere

the manuscript is found is not Homers Greek original, but Popes English

translation. This reference to a Homeric translation points in the same direc-

tion as the structure of the found manuscript and its linguistic idiosyn-

crasies. Conjuring up the main arguments in Las versiones homricas, this

allusion to Popes rendering of Homer elicits a reconsideration of concepts

such as authorship, tradition, and original. Therefore, both the narrative frameof El Inmortal and the physical frame of its manuscripta Homeric trans-

lation suggest an infinite regress that is reiterated by the main thematic


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This focus on mediating structures heralds the problematization of

autonomous personality, one of the main thematic threads of El Inmortal.

The composite character of Homer and the Homeric texts permeates the narra-tive at various levels. The narrator of the story, Marco Flaminio Rufo (a Span-

ish rendering of the Latin original Marcus Flaminius Rufus) is presented as

an avatar of Homer, and his story, as recounted in the manuscript, is presented

as a little Odyssey, which associates him with Ulysses, too. Nevertheless, rather

than coming home to the City of the Immortals, Rufos arrival, ironically,

becomes the point of departure for his aimless wanderings around the globe

and across the centuries. After drinking from the river running by the City of

the Immortals, whose waters provide eternal life, Rufo also becomes a para-

digmatic reincarnation of the Wandering Jew. This analogy is strengthened inthe postscript to the story by fictional critic Nahum Cordoveros attribution of

the manuscript to the antiquarian Joseph Cartaphilus, who merges with

Flaminio RufoHomer. Significantly, Joseph Cartaphilus was the original

name of the Wandering Jew.11 This juxtaposition of the myth of Ulyssean

homecoming and the legend of the everlasting journey defers a stable endpoint

or centre, just as Homers personality and his literary legacy are disseminated

in El hacedor and Las versiones homricas. This ironic coupling is further

suggested by the first words Rufo pronounces after becoming an immortal and

being damned to the archetypical torture of the Wandering Jew: Los ricos teu-cros de Zelea que beben el agua negra del Esepo (OC1:535). As the narrator

himself specifies later in the story, these Greek words (offered in their Spanish

translation) are homricas y pueden buscarse en el fin del catlogo de las

naves in the Iliad(OC1:543). Therefore, Rufo, by virtue of the immortal

waters, becomes Homer and also a wanderer like the legendary Jew.

Homer is also presented in the story as a troglodyte, a member of the tribe

of immortals who live in the desolate desert (a sort of waste land) that sur-

rounds the city. He becomes Rufos loyal companion as well. Homer, like his

fellow immortals, has reverted to a state of mute quietism, the ultimate stage ofascetic intellectualism. Ironically, Rufo interprets this quietism as a sign of sav-

agery and sets out to teach Homer a few words, including the name he gives

him, Argos, which is also the name of Ulyssess dog in the Odyssey.

Arguably, this pedagogical relationship between Rufo and Homer reproduces

the multidirectional, backward-forward movement of literary influence that

Borges suggested in his critical writings, particularly in El escritor argentino

y la tradicin and Kafka y sus precursores. Marcos Aguinis has comment-

ed on the reversal of roles that their relationship enacts, noticing how Rufo,

after becoming a son-figure upon his birth to immortality, assumes the role ofthe father by teaching words to Homer, the traditional literary patriarch (32).

This linguistic dependence of Homer on his predecessor which reverses the


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rhapsodist would (OC 1:540). Also, in the relation of the events of Rufo-

Homers life, Homer the author is turned into Homer the reader because the

narrator is said to copy in the thirteenth century the adventures of Sinbad,another Ulysses, and to discover after many centuries, en un reino boreal y un

idioma brbaro, las formas de su Iliada (OC 1:543). This role-swap renders

the figure of Homer as a void to be filled, as an author that comes into being

by virtue of what his predecessors (or translators) make of him. Similarly, his

silence enters into a destabilizing dialogue with the traditional perception of his

immortality as the foundational voice of Western literature. In this regard,

Borgess ironical reaction to the possibilities of using Homers legacy as the

basis of a creative method (i.e. that Eliots mythical method) becomes appar-

ent when we read statements that claim the best part of a poets work is that inwhich dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously

(Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent 100) in light of Homers portray-

al in El Inmortal. Here, Homers immortality, far from being the vigorous

inspiration of new literary creation, is equated with decadence and silence.

This abrogation of a fixed authorial figure is also brought out by the fluc-

tuations in the narrators own identity. Immortality, for Marco Flaminio Rufo,

means not only becoming Homer and the Wandering Jew, but everybody,

since memory and forgetfulness, along with historical change, interact in the

configuration of an endless multiplicity of identities. As he confesses, Nadiees alguien, un solo hombre inmortal es todos los hombres. Como Cornelio

Agrippa, soy dios, soy hroe, soy filsofo, soy demonio y soy mundo, lo cual

es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy (OC 1:541). Nadie (Greek

Outis), the name Ulysses assumes when confronted by Polyphemus in the

Odyssey, instead of designating the Homeric archetype, is here invoked to

suggest the dissemination of identity: in this case, Homers. Homers immor-

tality, Borges seems to suggest, far from providing a cornerstone for the mon-

uments of a stable tradition, triggers a specular labyrinth of echoes without an

identifiable source. And, as the narrator argues, no hay cosa que no estcomo perdida entre infatigables espejos (OC1:542).

These considerations of authority, identity, and tradition as mirages are

reformulated through the narrators presentation of the religious ideas of

metempsychosis and individual salvation:

Israelitas, cristianos y musulmanes profesan la inmortalidad, pero la ven-

eracin que tributan al primer siglo prueba que slo creen en l, ya que

destinan todos los dems, en nmero infinito, a premiarlo o a castigarlo.

Ms razonable me parece la rueda de ciertas religiones del Indostan; en

esa rueda, que no tiene principio ni fin, cada vida es efecto de la anteriory engendra la siguiente, pero ninguna determina el conjunto. (OC1:540)


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vidual salvation and reincarnation presuppose immortality, Eliot and Borges

agree on the inescapability of tradition. In both cases, the difference is one of

emphasis. Eliot, like the Israelites, Christians, and Moslems, endows a foun-dational originAntiquity or Homerwith special value, thus making the

course of subsequent literature dependent on it.12 Eliots own religious con-

victions seem to support this equation. His views on literature largely match

his religious beliefs, as he often openly expressed how ethics should guide

criticism. InReligion and Literature (1934), he declared that literary criticism

should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological

standpoint, adding that the greatness of literature cannot be determined

solely by literary standards (Points of View 145). Ethical and mythical mod-

els work along the same lines in Eliots poetics, as they seem to be inter-changeable as dogmatic touchstones for literary worth. As Timothy Materer

has put it, the terms Tradition and the Individual, or Classic and Roman-

tic, are drastically narrowed down when they are transformed, in After

Strange Gods, into Orthodoxy and Heresy (58). By contrast, Borges

upholds a literary metempsychosis of sorts by acknowledging the influence of

predecessors but also by rejecting any linear or hierarchical ordering in favor

of a constant recycling of tradition. Borges was not so explicit as to his reli-

gious principles, but his aesthetics in general, and El Inmortal in particular,

have been related to Gnosticism.

13

Jorge Ayora has pointed out that the Gnos-tic idea of circular time, whereby man is condemned to be reborn in an inces-

sant cycle of reincarnations, is central to the characterization of the narrator

(595). He goes on to say that nothing in Borges accepts the linearity of time

[of Christianity], nor its optimistic outlook, nor its finiteness. His anguish and

revolt before the omnipresent power of time echoes very clearly, on the other

hand, the Gnostic anguish (595).

The specularity of the narrators personality finds a corollary not only in these

religious notions but also in the allusive texture of the story, which also under-

mines Eliots classicist dogmatism. Instead of expanding Western tradition, thisallusive texture short-circuits it. As noted above, although Eliot embraces paro-

dic (mythical) allusion to past texts as a meaning-producing mechanism, Borges

uses the same allusive technique precisely to show the arbitrariness of the claims

of Western tradition as the only legitimate horizon of literary (knowledge) pro-

duction. Radical exteriority from such a frame of reference is implied by ironic

labyrinthine decentering stemming from allusion. This labyrinthine system of

literary references in El Inmortal is suggested by the dream that Rufo has right

after he envisions the towers of the City of the Immortals:

Insoportablemente so con un exiguo y ntido laberinto: en el centro

haba un cntaro; mis manos casi lo tocaban mis ojos lo vean pero tan


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Michael Evans, in a perceptive article that traces the sources of the intertex-

tual references in El Inmortal,14 has related the decentered textual universe

that this dream suggests to the evanescent figure of Homer: Homer is thename which stands for the source of all writing: a source which, like the water

jar in Rufuss dream, remains eternally out of reach (280). Homer, like his

Odyssey, is constantly evoked by the allusive tissue of El Inmortal, as noted

above. Nevertheless, the text, precisely through these allusions to the Homer-

ic epicsas demanded by the mythical methodand to their author, frus-

trates any claims to originality or to the centrality of any sort of meaning.15

This ironic dissemination of a source through the very act of allusion is

prefigured by the theme and technique of an early piece by Borges that

becomes relevant for our concerns because it includes an explicit reference toJoyces Ulysses and to its Homeric parallels as allusive technique, which lies

at the core of Eliots mythical method. El acercamiento a Almotsim con-

sists of a review of an imaginary book, Mir Bahadur Als The Approach to Al-

Mutasim. The plot summary provided in Borgess note underscores the infi-

nite regress triggered by this game of allusions to an imaginary source

because it recounts the quest of a young law student from Bombay who

embarks on a journey to find Almotsim, a man from whom intellectual clar-

ity irradiates to humanity as a whole. The narrative finishes just as the pro-

tagonist is about to see Almotsims face. The short commentary that followsthis summary dismisses the kind of literary scholarship devoted to the hunt for

sources, which appears to contradict the thematic and structural configuration

suggested for The Approach.16 That contradiction is clarified if we understand

Borgess game of allusions as a disseminating mechanism rather than a pro-

cedure to reconstruct a literary source from an assortment of dispersed refer-

ences. It is in this context that we need to understand his disapproval of the

search for Homeric parallels in Joyces Ulysses: Los repetidos pero insignif-

icantes contactos del Ulises de Joyce con la Odisea homrica siguen

escuchandonunca sabr porqula atolondrada admiracin de la crtica(OC1:41718; emphasis added). The order and myth that Eliot praised in

Ulysses, Borges dubs as insignificant. Allusion for Eliot means method; for

Borges, displacement.

Exploring Eliots and Borgess respective appraisals of Joyces novel in

greater detail can actually sharpen our understanding of their conflicting

views on literature. Indeed, their respective reactions to Ulysses correlate their

diverging uses of allusion as well as their treatment of the symbol of the city

in El Inmortal and The Waste Land. As Baudelaire claimed in The Painter

of Modern life, modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it isone half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable (100). This

description of modernity is also suitable for Ulysses which as Borges said


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book, highlighting only those aspects that fitted their respective literary pro-

grams. On a superficial level, T. S. Eliots intention in his already-discussed

Ulysses, Order and Myth is to refute Richard Aldingtons assessment ofJoyces novel as an invitation to chaos (Ulysses, Order and Myth 269).

His real agenda, however, seems to be to offer a normative interpretation of

Joyces chaotic narrative by selectively reading its eternal side as a para-

digm of classicist order. In this respect, A. Walton Litz maintained that Eliot

was troubled from the start by the threat which Joyces diverse and rambunc-

tious prose might pose to the classicist (14), adding that, like a devoted but

somewhat timid child, Eliot was trying to process Joyces novel into a conge-

nial world of authority and tradition (15).

The multifaceted nature of Ulysses is resistant to this sort of reductive val-uation, though, thus leaving room for a wider spectrum of critical responses.

Borgess critique is also symptomatic of his own literary and philosophical

outlook. Even though Borgess writings on Joyce tend to be ambiguous,18 it

can be safely stated that he, like Eliot, read Ulysses according to his own aes-

thetics. A few selected references to these writings will prove the point. His

literary interaction with Ulysses began three years after the publication of the

novel, in 1925, with a commendatory article, El Ulises de Joyce (Inquisi-

ciones 2025), accompanied by a translation of the last page of the work.

More critical was a short biographical sketch about Joyce published in ElHogarin 1937, where Borges argues that ms que la obra de un solo hom-

bre, el Ulises parece la labor de muchas generaciones. A primera vista es

catico; el libro expositivo de GilbertJames Joyces Ulysses, 1930

declara sus estrictas y ocultas leyes (OC4:251). Four years later, in a short

opinion piece published in Sur on the occasion of Joyces death, Borges

referred to his novel as indescifrablemente catica (Pginas de Jorge Luis

Borges 168). In this short note, he also dismissed the Homeric parallels that

Stuart Gilbert made the object of his study and Eliot took as the foundation

of his mythical method, referring to them as tics voluntarios. Similarly, forBorges, the revered severa construccin y la disciplina clsica de la obra

(168) was simply insignificante.

The labyrinthine chaosmos of ocultas leyes that Borges highlighted in

Ulysses is actually what he considered to be the perfect expression for the

descendant of the novel form. In Vindicacin de Bouvard et Pcuchet,

Borges recognizes in Ulysses the death of the novel as genre: no es el Ulis-

es, con sus planos y horarios y precisiones, la esplendida agona de un

gnero? (OC1:262). Again, he coincides with T. S. Eliot, who saw in Ulysses

the beginning of a new genre as well. The novel, he argued, ended withFlaubert and with James (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270), and Joyce inau-

gurated a more ambitious and orderly form with his book However instead


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novelistic narrative should reproduce the chancy disorder of life through a

contrived set of correspondences, presenting chaos under the guise of order

and determinism as coincidence. This arrangement would emphasize theinterrelation of the transient, the fleeting, the contingent of experience, irre-

spective of an overarching organizing model. According to Borges, la ilus-

tracin ms cabal de un orbe autnomo de corroboraciones, de presagios, de

monumentos, es el predestinado Ulises de Joyce (OC 1:222). Therefore,

although Eliot selected the eternal side of Joyces work to legitimize his clas-

sicist program and its distillation in the mythical method, Borges focused on

the chaotic interrelation of the fleeting as an illustration of his idea of order as

a decentered structure, of literature as a labyrinth.

Baudelaires definition of modernity applies not only to Joyces Ulysses,but also to the city as a locus where historical heritage and the turmoil of

everyday life coexist. As such, Eliots and Borgess artistic appraisals of the

city are bound to reiterate their diverging views on tradition. Arguably, in El

Inmortal, Borgess response to Joyce, and, by extension, to tradition (Homer)

and innovation, order and chaos, is ciphered in the irony surrounding the sym-

bolic significance of the City of the Immortals, a significance that runs

counter to the implications of the Unreal City in Eliots The Waste Land.

Critical studies bringing these two texts together have focused on their sim-

ilarities rather than their differences. Ronald Christ sees The Waste Landasproviding not only an analogous form but parallel content as well. In a word,

both The Waste Landand El Inmortal are centos which come to pretty much

the same conclusion (214), namely fragmentation. He goes on to offer a list

of parallels that is expanded and complemented by Joseph Rosenblums study

of the themes and symbols common to both texts. Rosenblum does not prob-

lematize the relationship between them either, presenting it as a matter of

dependence or influence (183, 186). Departing from these superficial similar-

ities, it can be argued that El Inmortal casts an uncanny, ironic light on The

Waste Landas well as on the critical program that it epitomizes. One of theparallels that Christ points out is that both texts employ literary allusion as

matter and method (215). As with their critical views, the most evident points

of contact between Eliot and Borges in these texts are those that generate the

strongest ironic effect. Indeed, the allusive methods of Eliots poem and

Borgess short story, though superficially similar, are indicative of these

authors conflicting views on tradition.

The connection of these allusive methods to the central symbol of the city

in both texts is one way to articulate that tension. The city in The Waste Land

is the material representation of Eliots negative conception of contemporarylife. London is presented as an Unreal City (l.60, l.207) that evokes Dantes

Inferno Also it merges with urban centers past and present to conjure up


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What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towersJerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal. (ll. 37277)

The modern city is, thus, associated with the threat of disorder. The poets

reaction to this bleak scenery is ciphered by his rhetorical question Shall I set

my lands in order? (l. 426). And the answer is, we might venture, yes. To

undertake this enterprise, he is only left with These fragments I have shored

against my ruins (l. 431). Those fragments, fragments from a better past, cor-respond, in literary terms, to the lessons of the dead poets and tradition, which

are the only adequate means to buttress the chaos that the city and modern life

represent. In this context, Desmond Harding has characterized the modernist,

post-Great War, industrial city as a menacing force beyond the capacity of

human experience to control or even sometimes comprehend (13), offering

Eliots poem as a paradigmatic negative response to this modernity. Therefore,

for Eliot, the threat of the modernist city elicits a similar response as the dis-

ruptive, unruly aspects of Joyces prose in Ulysses that he blatantly strove to

fit into an organized, mythical pattern.It is in this light that we have to read the notes appended to The Waste

Land. These scholarly notes detailing the literary sources of several lines scat-

tered throughout the poem can be regarded as stemming from Eliots compul-

sion to order what he called the immense panorama of futility and anarchy

which is contemporary history (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270). This

acknowledgement of the material borrowed from past poets can be read as an

act of control aimed to arrest the fragmentation of the broken images that

compose the poem. Thus, disorder is presented just to be re-inscribed into an

authoritative frame that signifies order. Eliots allusive method is, then,designed to underwrite his sense of tradition as firm grounding. Within this

context, the metaphor of the modern city as chaos gains special significance

when contrasted with the image of the monument that Eliot used to refer to

the dead poets configuring tradition. In his own words, the existing monu-

ments form an ideal order among themselves (Tradition and the Individual

Talent 101).

Interestingly, Ronald Bush has pointed out that Ulysses, Order and Myth,

often invoked to identify the techniques lying behind the construction of The

Waste Land, belongs to the period when Eliot was reshaping, not composing,his poem (71),19 when he was adding, among other things, the notes. Eliot

wrote the first version of the poem while suffering from severe bouts of


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terized as a sprawling, chaotic poem (Eliot qtd. in Bush 70). Therefore, the

notes comply with a strategy to regain control over personal and literary tur-

moil, eventually leading to the re-inscription of order, authority, and tradition.They are a critical move to turn ruins into monuments.

Eliots process of allusive reconstruction through his references to the orig-

inal sources is countered by Borgess ironic endless mirror images of a nonex-

istent model. Borgess practice of allusion, like his treatment of Homer and

his foundational legacy, deconstructs any sort of original source rather than its

reinscription. Thus, the postscript to El Inmortal distorts the contours of the

notes in The Waste Landand sets up a mise en abme through the ironic impli-

cations of fictional critic Nahum Cordoveros study on El Inmortal,A Coat

of Many Colours (OC1:544). Cordovero categorizes El Inmortal as a cen-tn, comparing it to Eliots poems, and drawing the readers attention to the

borrowings from previous sources embedded in the story. His already-dis-

cussed attribution of the manuscript to the antiquarian Joseph Cartaphilus

strengthens the connections between him and Flaminio RufoHomerthe

Wandering Jew. However, instead of reestablishing order with his identifica-

tion of sources and his proof of authority, Cordovero becomes one more mir-

ror reflection of an unreachable original image, Homer. As Christ has

observed, both the title, A Coat of Many Colours, and the authors name,

Nahum Cordovero, [. . .] disclose an artifice within artifice which is the hall-mark of Borges (212). Indeed, Cordoveros Jewish name relates him to

Joseph Cartaphilus, and, by extension, to Homer, to the Wandering Jew and,

ultimately, to No one. Similarly, the title of his book is reminiscent of the

biblical Joseph and his coat of many colors. This coat is, etymologically, a

cento, which is Latin for patchwork quilt. This etymology ironically relates

Cordoveros study to its subject matter in a specular fashion. This specular

relationship is also noticed in the merger of author, critic, and character

through the identification of Cordovero with Cartaphilus-Rufo-Homer, which

provides a fictional example of the idealistic implications of El hacedor.Therefore, whereas Eliots notes restore canonical authorship, Borgess post-

script fictionalizes and ultimately dissolves it through an endless succession

of mirror reflections.

As in The Waste Land, the elaboration of the motif of the city in El Inmor-

tal proves a valid illustration of Borgess allusive method and its relation to

tradition and literary creation. Flaminio Rufo describes the entrance to the

City of the Immortals as a dark labyrinth consisting of an indefinite number

of geometrically regular chambers with doors endlessly leading from cham-

ber to chamber. When he eventually emerges from this symmetricallyarranged chaos, Rufo encounters a fascinating city of enorme antigedad

that strikes him as interminable atroz and complejamente insensat[a]


16/20


su arquitectura, prodiga en simetras, est subordinada a este fin. En el pala-

cio que imperfectamente explor, la arquitectura careca de fin (OC1:537).

In Rufos references to the city and its entrance, emphasis is placed on thecoexistence of order and chaos, which brings to mind the literary conse-

quences of Borgess own allusive method. Both Borgesian allusion and

labyrinths annihilate ultimate order, precisely through their infinite projection

in a regressive structure.

Furthermore, the city arguably becomes a symbolic projection of Joyces

Ulysses as selectively read by Borges. Ulysses, as presented in El arte narra-

tivo y la magia, is, like the City of El Inmortals, a labyrinth of symmetries that

lacks any finality. Moreover, Rufo argues that un caos de palabras het-

erogneasterms reminiscent of Borgess opinion about Ulyssescan be anapproximate image to describe the city. The order within chaos seen in the city

is also invoked by Borges when, in an interview with Roberto Alifano, he was

asked whether he thought that Joyce used Homeric symbolism to provide an

integral vision of human experience. To this question, Borges answered that

esa visin no alcanza a ser integral. Al cabo de la lectura de Ulysses el lector

tiene la sensacin de caos. Sin embargo, la obra abunda en simetras y ese caos

es ms bien un cosmos, pero un cosmos secreto (114). This link is strength-

ened by the fact that the city that Rufo sees is merely a replica of the original

City of El Inmortals, just asUlysses is founded on Homers poem. In this sense,the construction of the City parallels the narrative composition of Ulysses, as

they both produce ordered chaos from fragments of a previous model.

The immortals, we are told, with las reliquias de su ruina [of the original

City] erigieron, en el mismo lugar, la desatinada ciudad que yo recorr: una

suerte de parodia o reverso [. . .] (OC1:540). This inverted parody stands not

only for Ulysses as interpreted by Borges, but also for Borgess own allusive

method as well as for his critical take on tradition. Although the city and

Ulysses are, for T. S. Eliot, potentially subversive realities controlled through

a (mythical) method designed to reinstate order, for Borges, they representparadigms of infinite regress, of chaos under the guise of order. From the ruins

of the past, Eliot chooses to reerect monuments that conform to (or transform

through parody) the lessons of antiquity, leading back to Homer. Borges, on

the other hand, disseminates Homers authority and turns those ruins into

labyrinths where no center is to be found by frustrating any stable recon-

struction from the ruins revealed through irony (Booth 240). Meaning, for

Eliot, can be reconstructed; for Borges, it is infinitely deferred. Along these

lines, the themes and structure of El Inmortal pose an ironic reinterpretation

of Eliots postulates, showing how manipulating a continuous parallelbetween contemporaneity and antiquity (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270),

the order prescribed by the mythical method can actually result in uncontrol


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and their critical positions might deceitfully suggest real affinities

(Shumway 266), the intonations of their theories and creative procedures have

been shown to be conflicting. Indeed, it might well be that, after all, la his-toria universal es la historia de la diversa entonacin de algunas metforas

(Borges, OC2:16).

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

1. More adequate seem Waismans conclusions about Eliots and Borgess use of DantesDivine Comedy as a subtext. While Eliots references to Dante in The Waste Land reinforceWestern canonical traditions, Borges, in his short stories (e.g. El Aleph), displaces one of

the fathers of the Western canon [Dante] onto the shores of the Ro de la Plata (148).2. Hutcheon actually refers to Eliots historical sense (Theory 2, 4), as well as to the classi-

cist stance of Greek, Latin, and Renaissance writers in order to illustrate the concept of parody. Inher own words, this positive method of dealing with the past [parody or parodic allusion] recallsin many ways the classical and Renaissance attitude to their classical patrimony (Theory 4).

3. For Hutcheon, the interrelation between irony and parody responds to a model where theformer is inscribed within the latter, although by no means in an exclusive fashion. Irony is a fig-ure of speech that effects a semantic inversion of the literal meaning of a given statement. Thisdisruptive semantic inversion enacted through irony (what Hutcheon calls its edge) is whatgives parody its critical dimension (Ironys Edge 4, 3756; Theory 6, 52). However, this edge isnot restrictively circumscribed within the realm of parody. Irony, Hutcheon argues, involves adivision or contrast of meanings [semantic dimension], and also a questioning, a judging [prag-

matic dimension] (Theory 53). The semantic inversion that irony effects can resist reinscription(through the furthering of a given tradition) when its questioning targets the very idea of tradi-tion as an exclusive and ultimately stable source of (literary) meaning.

4. According to Booths terminology, Borgesian irony would be unstable, since no stablereconstruction can be made out of the ruins revealed through irony (240).

5 That Borges was acquainted with T. S. Eliots work is a well documented fact. He pub-lished a short biographical piece on T. S. Eliot in 1937, detailing all his works to that date (OC4:29596), and a review of F. O. Mathiessens study on Eliot (The Achievement of T. S. Eliot) (OC

4:21314). In this last text, he refers to Eliots poetry as a universo limitado, arbitrario, pero sin-gularmente intenso (214). For an exhaustive catalogue of Borgess references to Eliot in hiswork, see Balderston 48.

6. The Death of the Author inImage-Music-Text(New York: Hill and Wang, 1977) 14248.

7. See La nadera de la personalidad and La encrucijada de Berkeley in Inquisiciones(1925); Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius in Ficciones (1944); or Nueva refutacin del tiempo, inOtras inquisiciones (1952).

8. Borgess essays on Shakespeare, notably De alguien a nadie and Everything and Noth-ing, also display a similar take on the issues of personality and authorship. Shakespeare, who,like Homer, is another canonical Maker, is shown as an everyman whose personality becomesfragmented through his literary activity.

9. The process of rewriting and simulation triggered by translation is another theoreticalaspect that attracted Borgess critical attention and that has an important bearing on his ideas oninnovation and tradition. See Waisman for a thorough treatment of this issue.

10. Other Borgesian fictions display the same ironic approach to Eliots mythical proposal.Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, for instance, has been said to derive its ironic power from

the way it lambastes what T. S. Eliot called the mythical method in the Joycean modernistnovel (Salgado 73).

11. See Jullien 13739.


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argues that in its attempt to reconcile progress and the legacy of the past by making recourse tothe idea of a stable tradition, this theory ha requisado una Eternidad, pero de carcter esttico(Textos recobrados 50).

13. For Borgess listing of his own readings on Gnosticism, seeBorges at Eighty 94. In thesame interview, he also says: I am not a Catholic. I cannot believe in theology. I cannot believein the idea of punishment or reward (93).

14. See also Christ 192228 for an exhaustive analysis of these references.15. This textual practice had a notable impact in the formulation of poststructuralist thought.

Derrida and Foucault, among others, drew on Borgess fiction to articulate their theoretical points.See Rodrguez Monegal for a comparative study of Derridas philosophy and Borgess fiction.Wicks studies the similarities between Foucault and Borges.

16. In this commentary, where Eliot is also mentioned, Borges interestingly suggests a theoryof metempsychosis by the cabbalist Isaac Luria as a likely source for The Approach.

17. In a poem titled James Joyce, Borges writes, obviously evoking Bloomsday: En un dadel hombre estn los das / del tiempo, desde aquel inconcebible / da inicial del tiempo [. . .]

Entre el alba y la noche est la historia / universal (OC2:361).18. Borgess writings on Joyce and his work have provided the topic for a few studies. SeeLevine, Rice, Salgado, and Waisman 157201.

19. For a discussion of the editorial history of these notes, see Sultan 16167.

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Venegas - Borges, Eliot, Translation, Irony

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