Part 36 (1/2)

Everything and Nothing p. 319: t.i.tle:In italics here because the story was tided originally in this way byJLB, in English.

Ragnarok p. 321: PedroHenriquez Urena:Henriquez Urena(1884-1946), originally from theDominican Republic, lived for years in Buenos Aires and was an early contributor toSur,the magazine dial Victoria Ocampo founded and that JLB a.s.siduously worked on. It was throughHenriquez Urena,who had lived for a time in Mexico City, dial JLB met another friend, the Mexican humanist Alfonso Reyes.Henriquez Urenaand JLB collaborated on dieAntologia de la literatura argentina(1937), and diey were very close friends.

In Memoriam, J.F.K.

p. 326:Avelino Arredondo:The a.s.sa.s.sin, as the story says, of the president of Uruguay, Juan IdiarteBorda(1844-1897).

See the story”Avelino Arredondo”in the vol- umeThe Book of Sand.

Notes toIn Praise of Darkness, pp. 329-342

Foreword.

p. 332:Ascasubi:Hilario Ascasubi(1807-1875) was a prolific, if not always success- ful, writer ofgauchopoetry and prose.

(TheDiccionarioOxfordde Literatura Espanola e Hispano-Americanagives several tides of little magazines begun by Ascasubi that didn't last beyond the first number.) He was a fervid opponent of the Rosas regime and was jailed for his opposition, escaping in 1832 to Uruguay. There and in Paris he produced most of his work.

PedroSalvadores p. 336:A dictator: Juan ManueldeRosas (1793-1877). InBorges,Rosas is variously called ”the tyrant” and ”the dictator”; as leader of the Federalist party he ruled Argentina under an iron hand for almost two decades, from 1835 to 1852. Thus the ”vast shadow,” which cast its pall especially over the mostly urban, mostly professional (and generally landowning) members of the Unitarian party, such as, here, PedroSalvadores.Rosas confiscated lands and property belonging to the Unitarians in order to finance his cam- paigns and systematically hara.s.sed and even a.s.sa.s.sinated Unitarian party members.

p. 336:Battle of MonteCaseros:At this battle, in 1852, Rosas was defeated by forces commanded byJusto Jose Urquiza,and his tyranny ended.

p. 336:Unitarian party: The Unitarian party was a Buenos Aires-based party whose leaders tended to be European-educated liberals who wished to unite Ar- gentina's several regions and economies (the Argentinian Confederation) into a single nation and wished also to unite that new Argentine economy with Europe's, through expanded exports: hence the party's name. The party's color was sky blue; thus the de- tail, later in the story, of the ”sky blue china” in PedroSalvadores'house.

p. 336:They lived ... onCalle Suipacha,not far from the corner of Temple:Thus, in what was at this time a northern suburb of Buenos Aires about a mile north of the Plazade Mayo.This area, later to become the BarrioNorte,was clearly respectable but not yet fas.h.i.+onable (as it was to become after the yellow fever outbreak of 1871 fright- ened the uppercla.s.ses out of the area south of the Plazade Mayoup into the more northern district).

p. 336:The tyrant's posse: TheMazorca(or ”corn cob,” so called to stress its agrari- an rather than urban roots), Rosas'

private army, or secret police. TheMazorcawas beyond the control of the populace, the army, or any other inst.i.tution, and it system- atically terrorized Argentina during the Rosas years.

p. 337:Smashed all the sky blue china: The color of the china used in the house is the color symbolizing the Unitarian party (see above, note to p. 336) and denouncesSalvadoresas a follower.

Notes toBrodie's Report, pp. 343-408

Foreword.

p.345:”In the House ofSuddhoo”:Borgesoften drops hints as to where one might look to find clues not only to the story or essay in question but also to other stories or essays; he gives signposts to his own ”intertextuality.” In this case, the reader who looks at this Kipling story will find that there is a character in it named Bhagwan Da.s.s; the name, and to a degree the character, reappear in ”Blue Tigers,” in the volumeShake- speare's Memory.

p.345:Hormiga Negra:”The Black Ant,”a gauchobandit.Borgesincludes a note onHormiga Negrain his essay on Martin Fierro:”During the last years of the nine- teenth century,Guillermo Hoyo,better known as the 'Black Ant,' a bandit from the de- partment ofSan Nicolas,fought (according to the testimony ofEduardo Gutierrez)withbolos[stones tied to the ends of rope] and knife”(Obras completas en colabo- racion[Buenos Aires: Emece,1979],p.546,trans. A.H.).

p.345:Rosas:Juan Manuel de Rosas(1793-1877), tyrannical ruler ofArgentinafrom 1835 to 1852, was in many ways a typical Latin Americancaudillo.He was the leader of the Federalist party and allied himself with thegauchosagainst the ”city slickers” of Buenos Aires, whom he hara.s.sed and even murdered once he came to power. Other appearances of Rosas may be found in ”PedroSalvadores”(In Praise of Darkness)and ”The Elderly Lady” (in this volume).

p. 346: And I prefer...Here theObras completa.s.seems to have a textual error; the text readsapto(adjective: ”germane, apt, appropriate”) when logic would dictateopto(verb: ”I prefer, I choose, I opt.”).

p. 346: Hugo Ramirez Moroni:JLB was fond of putting real people's names into his fictions; of course, he also put ”just names” into his fictions. But into his fore- words? Nevertheless, the translator has not been able to discover who this person, if person he be, was.

p. 347: The golden-pink coat of a certain horse famous in our literature:The refer- ence is to thegauchesco poem”Faus...o...b..EstanislaodelCampo,which was fiercely criticized by Paul Groussac, among others, though praised byCalixto Oyuela(”never charitable withgauchescowriters,” in JLB's own words) and others. The color of the hero's horse (it was anovero rosado)came in for a great deal of attack; RafaelHernan- dez,for instance, said such a color had never been found in a fast horse; it would be, he said, ”like finding a three-colored cat.” Lugones also said this color would be found only on a horse suited for farm work or running ch.o.r.es. (This information from JLB,”La poesia gauchesca,”Discusion[1932].)

The Interloper p. 348:2 Reyes 1:26:This citation corresponds to what in most English Bibles is the Second Book of Samuel (2 Samuel); the first chapter of the ”Second Book of Kings” has only eighteen verses, as the reader will note. In theNew Catholic Bible, however,iand 2 Samuel are indexed in the Table of Contents asiand 2 Kings, with the King James'siand 2 Kings b.u.mped to 3 and 4 Kings. Though the translator's Spanish-language Bible uses the same divisions as the King James, one presumes that JLB was working from a ”Catholic Bible” in Spanish. In a conversation with Norman ThomasdiGiovanni,Borgesinsisted that this was a ”prettier” name than ”Samuel,” so this text respects that sentiment. The text in question reads: ”I am distressed for thee, my brother: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, pa.s.sing the love of women.” (See Daniel Balderston, ”The 'Fecal Dialectic': h.o.m.os.e.xual Panic and the Origin of Writing inBorges,” inEntiendes?:Queer Readings, Hispanic Writ- ings,ed.

EmilieL. Bergmannand Paul Julian Smith [Durham: Duke University Press, 1995]. PP- 29-45, for an intriguing reading of this story and others.) p. 349: Those twocriollos:There is no good word or short phrase for the Spanish wordcriollo.It is a word that indicates race, and so cla.s.s; it always indicates a white-skinned person (and therefore presumed to be ”superior”) born in the New World colonies, and generally, though not always, to parents of Spanish descent (another pu- tative mark of superiority). Here, however, clearly that last characteristic does not ap- ply. JLB is saying with this word that the genetic or cultural roots of these men lie in Europe, and that their family's blood has apparently not mixed with black or Indian blood, and that they are fully naturalized as New Worlders and Argentines. The im- plicit reference to cla.s.s (which an Argentine would immediately understand) is openly ironic.

p. 349: CostaBrava:”Asmall town in the district of Ramallo, a province of Buenos Aires, not to be confused with the island of the same name in theParanaRiver, scene of various battles, including a naval defeat of Garibaldi” (Fishburn and Hughes).Bravo/a means ”tough, mean, angry,” etc.; in Spanish, therefore,Borgescan say the toughs gave CostaBravaitsname, while in translation one can only say they gave the town its reputation.

Unworthy p. 353: The Maldonado:The Maldonado was a stream that formed the northern boundary of the city of Buenos Aires at the turn of the century; the neighborhood around it, Palermo, was known as a rough part of town, and JLB makes reference to it repeatedly in his work. See the story ”Juan Murafia,” p. 370, for example. Thus, Fisch-bein and his family lived on the tough outskirts of the city. See also mention of this area on p. 359, below.p. 354:1 had started calling myself Santiago ... but there was nothing I could do about theFischbein:The terrible thing here, which most Spanish-language readers would immediately perceive, is that the little red-headed Jewish boy has given himself a saint's name: Santiago is ”Saint James,” andas St. James is the patron saint of Spain, SantiagoMatamoros,St. James the Moor Slayer. The boy's perhaps unwitting self-hatred and clearly conscious attempt to ”fit in” are implicitly but most efficiently com- municated by JLB in these few words.

P-355-JuanMoreira:Agauchoturned outlaw (1819-1874) who was famous during his lifetime and legendary after death. Like Jesse James and Billy the Kid in the United States, he was seen as a kind of folk hero, handy with (in Moreira's case) a knife, and hunted down and killed by a corrupt police. Like the U.S. outlaws, his fictionalized life, byEduardo Gutierrez,was published serially in a widely read magazine,La PatriaArgentina,and then dramatized, most famously byJosede Podesta.See below, in note to ”The Encounter,” p. 368).

p.355:Little Sheeny: Fishburn and Hughes gloss this nickname (in Spanishel rusito, literally ”Little Russian”) as being a ”slang term for Ashken.a.z.i Jews ... (as op- posed to immigrants from the Middle East, who were known asturcos, 'Turks').” An earlier English translation gave this, therefore, as ”sheeny,” and I follow that solution. The slang used in Buenos Aires for ethnic groups was (and is) of course different from that of the English-speaking world, which leads to a barber of Italian extraction being called, strange to our ears, a gringo in the original Spanish version of the story ”JuanMurana”in this volume.

p.355:Calle Junin:In Buenos Aires, running from the Plaza del Once to the pros- perous northern district of the city; during the early years of the century, a stretch ofJuninnear the center of the city was the brothel district.

p. 356:Lunfardo:For an explanation of this supposed ”thieves' jargon,” see the Foreword to this volume, p. 347.

The Story fromRosendo Juarez p. 358: The corner of Bolivar and Venezuela:Now in the center of the city, near the Plazade Mayo,and about two blocks from the National Library, whereBorges wasthe director. Thus the narrator(”Borges”)is entering a place he would probably have been known to frequent (in ”Guayaquil,” the narrator says that ”everyone knows” that he lives onCalleChile, which also is but a block or so distant); the impression the man gives, of having been sitting at the table a good while, reinforces the impression that he'd been waiting for”Borges.”But this area, some six blocks south of Rivadavia, the street ”where the Southside began,” also marks more or less the northern boundary of the neighborhood known as San Telmo, whereRosendo Juarezsays he himself lives.

p. 358: His neck scarf:HereRosendo Juarezis wearing the tough guy's equivalent of a tie, thechalina,a scarf worn much like an ascot, doubled over, the jacket b.u.t.toned up tight to make a large ”bloom” under the chin. This garb marks a certain ”type” of character.

p.358: ”You've put the story in a novel”: Here ”the man sitting at the table,”Rosendo Juarez,is referring to what was once perhaps JLB's most famous story, ”Man on Pink Corner,” inA Universal History of Iniquity, q.v., though he calls it a novel rather than a story.

p.359:Neighborhood of the Maldonado: The Maldonado was the creek marking the northern boundary of the city of Buenos Aires around the turn of the century;Rosendo Juarez”words about the creek are true and mark the story as being told many years after the fact. The neighborhood itself would have been Palermo.

p. 360:CalleCabrera:In Palermo, a street in a rough neighborhood not far from the center of the city.

p. 360: A kid in black that wrote poems:ProbablyEvaristo Carriego,JLB's neighbor in Palermo who was the first to make poetry about the ”riffraff ”-the knife fighters and petty toughs-of the slums. JLB wrote a volume of essays dedicated toCarriego.

p. 361:Moreira:See note to ”Unworthy,” p. 355.

p. 362:Chacarita:one of the city's two large cemeteries;La Recoletawas where the elite buried their dead, soChacaritawas the graveyard of the ”commoners.”

p. 363: San Telmo:One of the city's oldest districts, it was a famously rough neigh- borhood by the time of the story's telling. Fishburn and Hughes a.s.sociate it with apopular song that boasts of its ”fighting spirit” and note that the song would have given ”an ironic twist to the last sentence of the story.”

The Encounter p. 365:Lunfardo:For an explanation of this supposed ”thieves' jargon,” see the Foreword to this volume, p. 347.