Part 37 (1/2)
p.384: Mrs. Figueroa: Here, clear in the Spanish, though difficult to convey in the English, the judge slights Clara GlencairndeFigueroa by referring to her by her mar- ried name (Figueroa'swife) rather than by her ”personal” and ”professional” name, Clara Glencairn. She is looked down on, as the story subtly shows, for her social stand- ing, which is in contrast to thevie bohemethat she would like to think she had lived and the reputation as a painter she would like to think she had earned for herself. Note ”Clara Glencairn” throughout the paragraph on p. 383, for the more ”professional” or ”personally respectful” mode of naming, and note the way the story swings between the two modes as one or another of Clara's ”statuses” is being emphasized.
The Other Duel p.386:Adrogue:Inthe early years of the century, a town south of Buenos Aires (now simply a suburb or enclave of the city) whereBorgesand his family often spent vacations; a place of great nostalgia forBorges.
p.386: Battle ofManantiales:In Uruguay. For many years (ca. i837-ca. 1886) Uruguay was torn by rivalry and armed conflicts between theBlancos(the conserva- tive White party) led by, among others, ManuelOribeandTimoteo Aparicio(see be- low), and theColorados(the more liberal Red party) led byVenancio Floresand LorenzoBaiile.Manantiales(1871) marked the defeat of Aparicio'sBlancosby theColo- radosunder Batlle. Once Cardoso andSilveiraare seen joining up with Aparicio's forces, this understated sentence tells the Argentine or Uruguayan reader (or any other Latin American reader familiar, through little more than high school history cla.s.ses, with the history of the Southern Cone-these dates and places are the very stuff of Latin American history) that their end was fated to be b.l.o.o.d.y.
p.386:CerroLargo:A frontier area in northeast Uruguay, near the Brazilian bor- der.Apariciohad to recruit from all over the countryside, as he was faced by the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina, and the Uruguayan Colorado government.
p. 387:Thirty-three: This in homage to the tiny band of thirty-three soldiers who in 1825 crossed the Uruguay River along with Juan Antonio Lavalleja and ManuelOribein order to galvanize the Uruguayans to rise up against the Brazilians who at that time governed them. The flag of the Uruguayan rebellion against Brazil carried the motto Libertad o Muerte(”Liberty or Death”). ThusSilveiraa.s.serts himself as a tough, independent, and yet ”patriotic”gaucho.
p. 387:Aparicio's revolution: See the note to p. 386, above.
p. 387:Montoneros:Themontonerosweregaucho(Blanco, or White, party) forces, something like quasi-independent armies, organized under local leaders to fight the Unitarians (theColorados,or Red party) during the civil wars that followed the wars of independence.
p. 387:White badges: To identify them with theBlancos,as opposed to theColo- rados(Red party). The armies would have been somewhat ragtag groups, so these badges (or sometimes hatbands) would have been virtually the only way to distin- guish ally from enemy in the pitched battles of the civil war.
p. 388:Cut anybody's throat: Here and in many other places inBorges,the slas.h.i.+ng of opponents' throats is presented in the most matter-of-fact way. It was a custom of armies on the move not to take prisoners; what would they do with them? So as a mat- ter of course, and following the logic of this type of warfare (however ”barbaric” it may seem to us today), losers of battles were summarily executed in this way.
Guayaquil.
p. 390:Guayaquil: The name of this city in Ecuador would evoke for the Latin American reader one of the mostmomentous turns in the wars of independence, since it was here that GeneralsSimon BolivarandJose San Martinmet to decide on a strategy for the final expulsion of the Spaniards from Peru. After this meeting, San Martin left his armies under the command of Bolivar, who went on to defeat the Spaniards, but there is no record of what occurred at the meeting or of the reasons that led San Martin to retire from the command of his own army and leave the glory NOTES TO THE FICTIONS.
of liberation to Bolivar. A long historical controversy has been waged over the possible reasons, which the story briefly recounts. Clearly, the ”contest of wills” thought by some to have occurred between the two generals is reflected in the contest of wills be- tween the two modern historians. For a fuller (and very comprehensible) summary of this event and thehistoriographiecontroversy surrounding it, see Daniel Balderston,Out of Context: Historical Reference and the Representation of Reality inBorges(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 115-131. In this chapter Balderston also discussesBorges'equating of historywith fiction, providing us another important way of reading the story. See also, for a brief historical summary,The Penguin History of Latin America (Edwin Williams, New York/ London: Penguin, 1992), pp. 227-228 andpa.s.sim in that chapter.
p. 391:Gen. Jose de San Martin:Asthe note just above indicates, San Martin (1778-1850), an Argentine, was one of the two most important generals of the wars of independence, the other beingSimonBolivar, a Venezuelan. This story is subtly writ- ten from the Argentine point of view, because it deals with the reasons-psychological, perhaps, or perhaps military, or, indeed, perhaps other-for which San Martin, after winning extraordinary battles in his own country and in Peru (where he came to be called Protector of Peru), turned his entire army over to Bolivar so that Bolivar could go on to win the independence of the continent from Spain. The enigma of San Martin is one that absorbed the Argentine historical mind for decades, and perhaps still does, so any letters that might have even the slightest, or the most self-serving (if Argentines will forgive me that possible slur on the general's psyche), explanation for his actions would be of supreme importance to Argentine history. This story, then, is filled with those pulls and tugs between one sort of (or nationality of) history and an- other, one sort of ”rationale” and another.
Fishburn and Hughes note that the Masonic lodge mentioned in the story (p- 395) is theLogia Lautaro,of which San Martin was indeed a member. Masonic lodges were famed as centers of progressive, not to say revolutionary, thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Modern Freemasonry was founded in the seven- teenth century.
p. 392:CalleChile:It is Fishburn and Hughes's contention that the physical, geo- graphical location of this street is not really important here, though they give that lo- cation as ”in the southern part of Buenos Aires,... some ten blocks from PlazaConst.i.tucion”;their interesting view of this street's mention here is, rather, that it is a symbolic name, linking JLB (that library he had inhabited [see”Juan Murana”in this volume], the house, and perhaps some of theobjets de la gloirethat JLB had inherited from his grandfather and other members of his family) with the narrator of ”Guayaquil”: ”The narrator lives in a street called Chile,Borgeslived in a street calledMaipuand both names are a.s.sociated in the Argentine mind, since San Martin's great victory in Chile was the battle ofMaipu.”
The Gospel According to Mark p.397:Baltasar Espinosa:The Spanish reader will sooner or later a.s.sociate the young man's surname,Espinosa(”th.o.r.n.y”) with the Christian ”crown of thorns” evoked at the end of this story.
p.397:Ramos Mejia: ”A part of Buenos Aires in which the rich had weekendhouses containing an English colony; now an industrial suburb” (Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 399: A couple of chapters of [DonSegundo Sombra]:The next sentence is perhaps not altogether opaque, but both its sense and its humor are clearer if the reader knows the novel in question.DonSegundo Sombradeals with the life ofa gaucho(considerably romanticized by nostalgia) and the customs of life on the pampas. Therefore, Gutreperesees nothing in it for him; indeed, thegauchesconovel was an urban form, a manifesta- tion perhaps of what Marie Antoinette's critics were wont to callnostalgie de la boue,or so ”The Gospel According to Mark” would seem to imply. JLB himself makes reference to this ”urban nostalgia” in the story t.i.tled ”The Duel,” above, on p. 384.
Brodie's Report.
p. 404: Qzr:The English reader will not, probably, be able to perceive the fine irony here. Brodie has said that these barbarous people do not have vowels, so he will call them Yahoos. He then gives a few words in their language. Here, the word for ”citadel,”qzr, is the Spanish word for citadel,alcazar,with the vowels removed. But the Spanish derives from the Arabic, which does not have vowels; the vowels are some- times marked, sometimes not; thus,qzr is a transliteration of a word that any Spanish speaker would recognize as being fully and legitimately Arabic. Thus the Yahoos are, or might be, Arabs. HereBorges'”traveler's satire” is acute: one can find ”barbarism” even in the most refined and advanced of societies.
Notes toThe Book of Sand, pp. 409-486
The Other p. 413: Another Rosas in 1946, much like our kinsman in the first one:The second Rosas, of course, is Juan DomingoPeron,the Fascist military leader who in 1945 was asked to resign all his commissions and retire, and who did so, only (Napoleon-like) to return eight days later to address huge crowds of people and later, in 1946, to be elected president. All this information is from Rodriguez Monegal, who then adds: ”he was Argentina's first king” (390-391).
As for ”our kinsman,” the details are a bit blurry, butBorgesseems to have been related, on his father's side, to Rosas.
Fishburn and Hughes talk about a ”relative of Borges's great-great-grandfather.”Borgeshated and despised both these men.p. 416: ”Whitman is incapable of falsehood”:Daniel Balderston believes that he has identified this poem: ”When I heard at the close of the day,” in Walt Whitman,Com- plete Poetry and Collected Prose,ed. JustinKaplan (New York: Library of America), 1982, pp. 276-277. The essay in which Balderston identifies the poem referred to by the older”Borges”is ”The 'Fecal Dialectic': h.o.m.os.e.xual Panic and the Origin of Writing inBorges,”inEntiendes?:Queer Readings, Hispanic Writing,ed. EmilieL. Bergmannand Paul Julian Smith (Durham/London: Duke University Press), 1995, pp. 29-45. While these notes are not intended to add ”scholarly” information to the text ofBorges,this remarkable identification, and the reading that accompanies it, in the translator's view warrants mention. The old man/young man motif, the public/private motif, the issue of ”s.e.x in theoeuvreofBorges,”readings of a number of im- portant stories, and, to a degree, the issue of violence in the fictions-all of these ques- tions are impacted by Balderston's contentions in this essay.
The Congress.
p. 423: The newspaperUltimaHora:The t.i.tle can be translated in two ways,The Eleventh Hour orThe Latest News, depending on whether one wishes to give it an apocalyptic reading or a quotidian one.
p. 424:Confiteriadel Gas:This pastry shop (see also the note to p. 446,”Cafe aguila,”in the story ”The Night of the Gifts” in this volume, for a further explanation of this sort of establishment) is located on Alsina between Bolivar andDefensa,about two blocks from theCasa de Gobierno(or as mostPortenosknow it, theCasa Rosada,or Pink House), at the River Plate end of the avenue that runs from theCasa de Gobi- ernoto the Plaza delCongreso.I have not been able to learn where this cafe's curious name came from, perhaps a gas-company office in the neighborhood; the problem with translating it into something such asCafe Gasis, as the English-language reader will immediately perceive, the hint of indigestion that it (the translation and the name) leaves. Nor is it a truck stop. Clearly, in locating theconfiteriain this neighbor- hood, JLB is attempting to a.s.sociate one ”congress” with that of the inst.i.tutionalized government in whose neighborhood it takes up residence.Portenosknow this par- ticularconfiteriaas more of a pastry shop thana cafeperse;we are told that the meringues withcreme de Chantillyare the house specialty.
p. 426: Rancher from the eastern province:Before Uruguay became a country, in 1828, it was a Spanish colony which, because it lay east of the Uruguay River, was called theBandaOriental, or ”eastern sh.o.r.e.” (The Uruguay meets theParanato create the huge estuary system called theRio de laPlata, or River Plate; Montevideo is on the eastern bank of this river, Buenos Aires on the west.)”La BandaOriental” is an old-fas.h.i.+oned name for the country, then, and ”orientales,”or ”Easterners,” is the equally old-fas.h.i.+oned name for those who live or were born there. Here, the narrator refers to ”the eastern province” because for a very long time the s.h.i.+fting status of Uruguay- colony and protectorate of Spain, annex of Brazil and/or Argentina, etc.-led the na- tionalistic elements in Buenos Aires to consider it an ”eastern province” of Argentina. Uruguay was founded on cattle raising.
p. 426:Artigas:Jose Gervasio Artigas(1764-1850), Uruguayan, a political and mili- tary leader who opposed first the Spaniards and then the Argentines who wished to keep theBandaOriental (the east bank of the River Plate) in fealty to one or another of those powers. When Argentina, instead of supporting theBandaOriental's independence from Spain, a.s.serted Spain's authority over the area (in part to keep the Brazilians/ Portuguese out),Artigasled a huge exodus of citizens out of Montevideo and ”into the wilderness.” Recognized as a hero in Uruguay, he might not have been so regarded by a cosmopolite such as Glencoe, especially because of his legendary (but perhaps exagger- ated) bloodthirstiness and his a.s.sociation with ”the provinces” rather than ”the city.”
p. 427:Wops:”Gringo” was the somewhat pejorative term used for immigrant Ital- ians; the closest English equivalent is ”wop.” As with all such designations, the tone of voice with which it is spoken will determine the level of offense; it can even be affec- tionate if spoken appropriately.