Part 34 (1/2)
p. 12: ”I walked four days.. .my course for Natchez”:HereBorgesis quoting/trans- lating fairly directly from Twain'sLife on the Mississippi, pp. 214-215 (Penguined.cited in the note just above). Throughout this story, JLB inserts a phrase here, a sentence there from Twain, but then, when he says he is quoting, as in the case of the preaching and horse thieving, he is in reality inventing the quotation and imagining a scene that Twain only suggests.
The Widow Ching-Pirate p. 19: Aixa's rebuke to Boabdil:Boabdil isAbu Abdallah,the last Moorish king of Granada (r. 1482-1492); Aixa was his mother. The reproof that supposedly was given Boabdil by Aixa upon the Moors' defeat and expulsion from what had been Islamic Spain is substantially asBorgesreports it here, and the words here given Anne Bonney are substantially those given inGosse's.h.i.+story of Piracy,p. 203. (See the ”Index of Sources” p. 64.) p.21: Rules for pirates: These may actually be found, as quoted, but in a different order, inGosse's.h.i.+story of Piracy,p.
272. (See ”Index of Sources,” p. 64, for biblio- graphical information.) p. 24: Quotation on peace in the waters of China:Gosse, p.278. Note also that the widow's new name, while indeed given inGosse,is attributed to another personage who learned a lesson from the emperor. This is but one of countless examples of the way JLB changes things, even dates, to fit his purposes, purposes that one must confess sometimes are enigmatic. Why change the date of Tom Castro's being found guilty from February 26 to February 27? Monk Eastman's death from December 26 to De- cember 25? The spelling of Morell/Murrell/Murell's name? Here the theory of transla- tion must needs be a theory of artistic creativity.
Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities p. 25: Resigned:Borgesuses this curious word, which I have not wanted to ”inter- pret,” apparently to indicate the fatedness, or ritual aspect, of this duel. It is as though the word indicated ”resigned to fate.” This aspect of violence, of duels, can be seen throughoutBorges;I would especially refer the reader to the story t.i.tled ”The En- counter,” in the volumeBrodie's Report, p. 364.
p. 28: Junin:Site of a famous battle in the wars of independence. The Battle of Junin took place in the then department of Peru; on August 6,1824, a cavalry engage- ment was fought betweenSimonBolivar's nationalist forces and the royalist forces underJose de Canterac.The tide was turning against the independence forces until the royalist rear was attacked by a force of Peruvian hussars under the command ofIsidoro Suarez-one of JLB's forebears and a man who in varying degrees and under varying permutations lends his name to JLB's fictions. The royalists were routed.
p. 30: The Death of Monk Eastman:This story is taken, as JLB indicates, from As-bury'sThe Gangs of New York, generally pp. 274-298, but also, for the quotation about ”nicks in his stick,” p. xviii. Where JLB has clearly borrowed directly from Asbury and it has been possible to use Asbury's words, the translator has done so; in other cases, the translator has just borrowed the appropriate terminology, such as the ”Mikado tuck-ups” and the ”stuss” games.
The Disinterested Killer BillHarrigan p. 32: Always coiled and ready to strike:One of the sources that JLB gives for this story is Frederick Watson'sA Century of Gunmen, though the truth is, there is not much there that JLB seems actually to have used. With, that is, the possible exception of this phrase,siempre aculebradoin the Spanish, which the translator has rendered conjecturally in this way.”Aculebrado,”from the Spanishculebra,”snake,” calls to mind in the native Spanish speaker the notion of ”coiled, like a snake” and also of ”snakelike, slithering.” On page 77 of his book, Watson quotes an old western novel, which says this: ”It's not the custom to war without fresh offence, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot an unarmed man, and you must not shoot anunwarned man-----The rattlesnake's code, to warn before he strikes, no better, [i.e., there's no better extant code for a man of the West] : a queer, lop-sided, topsy-turvy, jumbled and senseless code- but a code for all that.” Thus it seems that JLB may have wanted to paint Billy the Kid as an even worse ”varmint”
than the rattlesnake, since the rattlesnake at least gives fair warning, unlike Billy, who, as we see in a moment, shoots the MexicanVillagranbefore Villagran knows what's happening. Perhaps, in fact, that was what made Billy the Kid so dangerous-so dangerous that hisfriend Pat Garrison shot him in cold blood. But whatever JLB's motivation for this word, it is a very mysterious one to use here, however related to all the other animal imagery used throughout this volume.
The Uncivil Teacher of Court EtiquetteKotsukenoSuke p. 36:Ronins:In A. B. Mitford'sTales of Old j.a.pan, which is the source of much of this story, Mitford inevitably uses this word for the ”loyal retainers” of the dead n.o.ble- man. The word”Ronin”means literally a ”wave-man,” one who is tossed about hither and thither, as a wave of the sea. It is used ”to designate persons of gentle blood, enti- tled to bear arms, who, having become separated from their feudal lords [or in this case, of course, vice versa], wander about the country in the capacity of knights-errant. Some went into trade, and became simple wardsmen” (Mitford).
WhileBorges.h.i.+mself does not use this word, the word is inevitably used in English reports of the phenomenon, and so the translator has thought it appropriate to translate what the Spanish has as ”retainers,” ”captains,” etc., by the technical word.
It is possible, of course, that JLB is doing with the Chinese system of loyalties what he did to the world's architecture: remaking it in the likeness of Argentina's. One notes that virtually all the houses that JLB uses in his fictions have long, narrow en- trances and interior patios, the very floor plan of the Buenos Aires house of the end of the nineteenth century. Likewise, one senses that JLB may have used the word ”cap- tains” in the story to indicate the sort of relations.h.i.+p between the lord and his retain- ers that was common in the Argentina ofcaudillosandtheir captains. Thus the translator recognizes that if JLB was trying, consciously or not, to produce this effect, it may be somewhat risky to go all the way to the source, to”Ronin,”for the ”transla- tion.” The reader is notified. Likewise, ”Chus.h.i.+ngura” is the name by which the dra- mas, poems, and films are inevitably known in English, so the translator has incorporated that inevitable cultural reference. From its absence in the Spanish text, one supposes that in Spanish the word ”Chus.h.i.+ngura” was not used.
p.39:The source for this story: Much of this story is indeed taken from Mitford'sTales of Old j.a.pan, pp. 3-19. The translator has taken the spelling of the characters' names and several quotations, such as the ”Satsumi man's,” from there.
Man on Pink Corner p. 45: t.i.tle:The t.i.tle of this story in Spanish is”Hombre de la esquina rosada”;it presents many intriguing possibilities, and therefore many problems, to the translator, not so much for the words as for the cultural a.s.sumptions underlying them. This story is in a way a portrait of thecompadrito(the tough guy of the slums) or the cuchillero(knife fighter) and his life; as such, many items of that ”local color” thatBorgesdeplored in, for example, stories of the ”exotic” Orient are found, though casu- ally and unemphatically presented. The first thing that must be dealt with is perhaps that ”pink corner.”Esquina(”corner”) is both the actual street corner (as other trans- lations of this story have given it, without the colorful adjective) and the neighbor- hood general-store-and-bar, generally located on corners, which was the hangout for the lowlife of the barrio. The reader can see this establishment clearly in ”Unworthy” (in the volume tidedBrodie's Report) and more fieetingly in many other stories. What of the adjective ”pink”(rosada) then? The Buenos Aires of JLB's memory and imagi- nation still had high, thick stucco or plastered brick walls lining the streets, such as the reader may see in the colonial cities of the Caribbean and Central and South America even today: Havana, San Juan, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, etc. Those walls in Buenos Aires were painted generally bright pastel colors;Borgesrefers to ”sky blue” walls more even than to pink ones.
ThusBorgeswas able to evoke in two words(esquina rosada)an old neighborhood of Buenos Aires, populated by toughs and knife fighters, and characterized by bars and bordellos in which that ”scandalous” dance the tango was danced. (In its beginnings, the tango was so scandalous that no respectable woman would dance it, and one would see two men-compadritos-dancing together on street corners; nor would the tenement houses, which had moved into the large old houses vacated by the higher cla.s.ses, allow such goings-on, even though theseconven- tillos,as they were called, might be none too ”respectable”-certainly none too ”genteel”-themselves.) In evoking that old Buenos Aires,Borges alsoevoked ”the man”-here, theYardmaster,Rosendo Juarez,and the nameless narrator of the story, all of whom partic.i.p.ate in the coldly violentethos of theorillero, the (to us, today) ex- aggeratedly macho slum dweller (especially along the banks of the Maldonado [see note below]) who defended his honor against even the most imagined slight. How- ever, certain aspects of this ”man” will probably strike the non-Argentine reader as cu- rious -for example, those ”boots with high-stacked heels” (in the original Spanish, ”women's shoes”) and that ”red carnation” in the first paragraph of the story ”Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities,” the same sort of carnation that appears in this story. There is also the shawl worn by the gaucholikeYardmaster.These elements, however, were authentic ”touches”; thecompadritoaffected these appearances. Previous transla- tions have apparently tried to give all this ”information” by calling the story ”Street-corner Man,” emphasizing the ”tough guy hanging out on the corner” aspect of the story, and one can be sympathetic to that solution. Another intriguing possibility, however, is suggested byBernesin the first volume of theGallimardedition of JLB'sOeuvres completes.I translate the relevant paragraph: ”The t.i.tle of the original publi- cation, which omits the definite article, reminds the reader of the t.i.tle of apainting given in the catalog of an art exhibit. It stresses the graphic aspect of the scene, whichBorges,in the preface to the 1935 edition, called the 'pictorial intention' of his work. One should think of some t.i.tle of a piece by PedroFigari-----[p. 1497] ” This ”impres- sionist” tide, then, should perhaps be retained; what one loses in ”information”
one gains in suggestion.
p. 45: Maldonado:The Maldonado was a creek that at the time of this story (and many others of JLB's stories) marked the northern boundary of the city of Buenos Aires. The neighborhood around this area was called Palermo, or also Maldonado. This story evokes its atmosphere at one period (perhaps partly legendary); the Mal- donado (barrio) was a rough place, and the creek was terribly polluted by the tanner- ies along its banks.
p. 45: Don NicolasParedes... Morel:Paredeswas a famous knife fighter and ward boss for the conservative party in Palermo; Morel was another famed political boss, orcaudillo.
p. 52:1 couldn't say whether they gutted him:Here and elsewhere inBorges(one thinks, of course, especially of the story tided ” The Story fromRosendo Juarez”in the volumeBrodie's Report and the story in this volume tided ”The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell”), a corpse is gutted, or somebody thinks about gutting it. This, ac- cording to folk wisdom, is to keep the body from floating up and revealing the murder before die culprit has had good time to get away.Apparenty agutted body did not produce as much gas, or the gas (obviously) would not be contained in an inner cavity. Thusdiereis an unacknowledged ”piece of information” here that the ruffians of the Maldonado and odier such neighborhoods tacitiy shared-tacitly because it was so obvious that no one needed to spell it out.
Etcetera
A THEOLOGIAN IN DEATH.
p.54: Attribution: TheSwedenborgConcordance: A Complete Work of Reference to the Theological Writings ofEmanuelSwedenborg,based on the original Latin writings of the author,compiled, edited, and translated by the Rev. John Faulkner Potts, B.A., 4vols.(London:SwedenborgSociety, 1888). The text quoted here appears in the index ( p. 622 of the appropriate volume) under ”Melancthon” and is a mixture of the entries indicating two differentSwedenborgtexts:A Continuation of the Last Judgment andThe True Christian Religion. The reader may find the text under ”C.J. 47” and”1.797, 1-4.” The full entry on Melancthon in the Concordance runs to p. 624.
THE CHAMBER OF STATUES.
p.56: Attribution: Freely taken from Sir Richard Burton'sBook of the Thousand Nights and a Night (New York: Heritage Press, 1934 [1962] ), pp. 1319-1321. The reader is referred to A Note on the Translation for more detailed comment on JLB's and the translator's uses of translations.
THE STORY OF THE TWO DREAMERS.
p. 57:Attribution: This is freely adapted from a different version of the1001 Nights, Edward William Lane'sThe Arabian Nights Entertainments -orThe Thousand and One Nights (New York: TudorPubi.,1927), p. 1156. There are several other editions of this work, so the reader may find the tale in another place; Lane does not divide his book quite in the way JLB indicates.
THE MIRROR OF INK.
p. 62: Attribution:One would not want to spoil JLB's little joke, if joke it is, but others before me have pointed out the discrepancy between this attribution and the fact. This story appears nowhere in Burton'sLake Regions and only sketchily in the volume thatdiGiovanni and many others give as the source: Edward William Lane'sManners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1837). Nonetheless, whereBorgesdoes seem to be translating (or calquing) the words of the last-named book, I have incor- porated Lane's wording and word choices.
mahomed's double p.63: Attribution:EmanuelSwedenborg,The True Christian Religion, containing the Universal Theology of the New Church, foretold by the LordmDanielVII,13,14, and in the Apocalypse XXI, i, 2, translated from the Latin ofES (NewYork: AmericanSwe- denborgPrinting and Publis.h.i.+ng Society, 1886),iJ.829-830.
Index of Sources p. 64: Source for ”The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro”:The source given byBorgeshere is the PhilipGossebookThe History of Piracy; as one can clearly see, it is the same source cited for ”The Widow Ching-Pirate,” just below it. In my view, this attribution is the result of an initial error seized upon byBorgesfor another of his ”plays with sources”; as he subsequently admitted freely, and as many critics havenoted, much of this story comes from the EncyclopcediaBritannica,Eleventh Edition, in the article t.i.tled ”Tichborne Claimant.” Here again, where JLB is clearly translating or calquing that source, I have followed it without slavish ”transliteration” of JLB's Spanish.
p. 64: Source for ”The Disinterested Killer BillHarrigan”:Neither the Walter n.o.ble Burns book nor the Frederick Watson book contains anything remotely approaching the story given byBorgeshere. Some details are ”correct” (if that is the word), such as Billy's long and blasphemous dying, spewing Spanish curses, but little in the larger pattern of the ”biography” seems to conform to ”life.” WhileBorgesclaimed in the ”Autobiographical Essay” (written with Norman ThomasdiGiovanni and published inThe Aleph and Other Stories [1970]) that he was ”in flagrant contradiction” of his ”chosen authorities],” the truth is that he followed the authorities fairly closely for all thecharacters herein portrayedexcept that of Billy the Kid. He did, of course, ”change and distort” the stories to suit his own purposes, but none is so cut from whole cloth as that of this gunfighter of the Wild West. The lesson in the ”Autobiographical Essay” is perhaps that JLB's predilection for the red herring was lifelong.
Notes toFictions (”The Garden of Forking Paths” and ”Artifices”), pp. 65-128; 129-180.
p. 65: t.i.tle:First published asFicciones(1935-1944) by EditorialSur in1944, this book was made up of two volumes:El jardin de senderosque sebifurcan(”The Garden of Forking Paths”), which had originally been published in 1941-1942, andArtificios(”Artifices”), dated 1944 and never before published as a book. Each volume in the 1944 edition had its own t.i.tle page and its own preface. (In that edition, and in all suc- cessive editions,The Garden of Forking Paths included the story”El acercamientoa Al-motasim” (The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim”), collected first inHistoria de la eternidad(”History of Eternity”), 1936, and reprinted in each successive edition of that volume until 1953; this story now appears in theObras CompletasinHistoria de la eternidad,but.i.t is included here as a ”fiction” rather than an ”essay”) In 1956Emecepublished a volume t.i.tledFicciones,which was identical to the 1944 EditorialSuredition except for the inclusion inArtifices of three new stories (”The End,” ”The Cult of the Phoenix,” and ”The South”) and a ”Postscript” to the 1944 preface toArtifices. It is this edition ofFictions, plus ”The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim,” that is translated for this book.
THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS.
Foreword.
p. 67: The eight stories:The eighth story, here printed as the second, ”The Ap- proach to Al-Mu'tasim,” was included in all editions subsequent to the 1941-1942 original edition. It had originally been published (1936) inHistoria de la eternidad(”AHistory of Eternity”). Ordinals and cardinals used in the Foreword have been adjusted to reflect the presence of this story.
p. 67:Sur:”[T]hemost influential literary publication in Latin America” (Rodriguez Monegal, p. 233), it was started by Victoria Ocampo, with the aid of theArgentine novelistEduardoMalicaand the American novelist Waldo Frank.Borgeswas one of the journal's first contributors, certainly one of its most notable (thoughSurpublished or discussed virtually every major poet, writer, and essayist of the New or Old World) and he acted for three decades as one of its ”guardian angels.” Many of JLB's fictions, some of his poetry, and many critical essays and reviews appeared for the first time in the pages ofSur.
Tlon,Uqbar, Orbis Tertius p.68: Ramos Mejia: ”A part of Buenos Aires in which the rich had weekend houses containing an English colony. It is now an industrial suburb” (Hughes and Fishburn).