BORGES AND FICTION

Borges reorganizes Argentine literature

establishes a cultural tradition dialogues

that continues the XIX century with universal texts

How to write literature in a culturally peripheral nation?

In Borges, tension between:
a) local dimension

b) philosophic subjects, British literature, system of quotations, encyclopedias, symbols, Nordic mythologies and Cabala.

 

meshes the great Western and Eastern traditions, intersecting them in the regional space of Buenos Aires.

BORGES CREATES AN AESTHETIC OF THE MARGIN

 

WRITING BASED ON READING. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THE REPRESENTATION OF REALITY.

 

 

 

ORDER AND THE FANTASTIC

Form is prevalent for Borges: pastiche, parody, irony, labyrinths, mise en abîme, duplication and repetitions. Literature is a discourse of discourses, and the construction determines the efficacy of the invention.

1931-1935 à Mixes marginal and popular with high cultureà democracy of the literary system.

1935. Universal History of Infamy

* Literature is one text, infinitely variable

* Good readers are rarer than good writers

* Representation of reality does not provide aesthetic value. Books are the condition of literature.

* Theory of Argentine literature: a) the universal tradition is the tradition of Argentine literature b) marginals have more freedom to interpret the great traditions.

 

 

 

Fantastic Short Stories and Essays

3 aesthetic questions

1) Source of the literary material

2) Strategies to construct an imaginary world

3) Relation among language, narration, and representation.

Two tenets in Borges' fiction

a) Perfect plots =narrative discipline that overcomes the chaotic nature of the world (which we can not know).

b) Freedom of the fantastic literature (against psychological analysis and realist mimesis)

Sociological reading

Fantastic order and literary invention of a past = response to an unbearable reality.

Philosophical reading

Borges' fiction = philosophical hypothesis

The form of the ideas provide the plot.

=è strategies to disorient (contradictions, open or hidden quotes, false references, heterogeneous classifications)è

Philosophical-narrative situations

a) mise en abîme: tension between what can be logically acepted and what is perceived by the senses.

b) paradox: something impossible in reality that could be logically proven against common sense and perception.

Achilles runs ten times faster than the tortoise and gives the animal a headstart of ten meters. Achilles runs those ten meters, the tortoise one; Achilles runs that meter, the tortoise runs a decimeter; Achilles runs that decimeter, the tortoise runs a centimeter; Achilles runs that centimeter, the tortoise, a millimeter; Fleet-footed Ahcilles, the millimeter, the tortoise, a tenth of a millimeter, and so on to infinity, without the tortoise evver being overtaken…. ("Avatars of the Tortoise").

Bibliography

Alazraki, Jaime. Borges and the Kaballah : and other essays on his fiction and poetry. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Borges, J.L. Borges oral. Buenos Aires: Emece, 1979.

Sarlo, Beatriz. Borges, un escritor en las orillas. Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1995.