The master of paradox
By Julio Ortega

On AUG. 24, the centenary of Jorge Luis Borges, a worldwide celebration of the most paradoxical of modern writers, comes to an end. One of the greatest writers of the Spanish language, Borges was universal and at the same time truly local; he was famous and influential but always a modest man; he had a reputation for vast erudition, but his work is a collection of variations on a set of basic topics, to the point that "rewriting" was central to his work. He was considered a cosmopolitan, a European, perhaps even an English writer, but he is totally exotic to the European reader: Only an Argentine could have an appetite for such diverse traditions, and for that uncommon set of English favorites (De Quincey, Stevenson, Chesterton, Wells, et al.). On the other hand, only a Latin American writer could transform Western tradition in an unfolding, free-spirited combination of topics and authors. In one of his most important essays, "The Argentine Writer and Tradition," Borges wrote: "I believe that our tradition is the whole of Western culture, and I also believe that we have the right to this tradition, a greater right than that which the inhabitants of one Western nation or another may have. . . . We can take on all the European subjects, take them on without superstition and with an irreverence that can have, and already has had, fortunate consequences." Not less paradoxical is the fact that this essay from 1951 was a distillation of his ideas from the 1930s. Borges always wrote in the form of a prologue what in fact was an epilogue.

This free alignment of Greek heroes and Chinese scholars, English adventurers and Gaucho sagas, Arab kings and street bravos is what makes Borges's page a crossroads of mingled conversions, equivalencies, and unforeseen developments. On this bright and paradoxical page many different readings have been possible. In fact, each reader has seen a different story in Borges's slender volumes of "ficciones," poetry, and essays. Maurice Blanchot believed he was looking at literary infinity, while John Barth concluded that this fiction proves the exhaustion of literature. Michel Foucault, of course, took inspiration for "The Order of Things" from Borges's quotation of a supposed Chinese encyclopedia in which are divided those things that a) belong to the Emperor, h) are included in this classification, k) are sketched with a fine brush of camel hair, m) have just broken a vase, etc., proving that the activity of classifying is in itself arbitrary but amusing. Even Jacques Derrida seems to be paraphrasing Borges when he writes that to say "I am" is to declare "I am mortal" - which refers to the Borges story "The Immortal," where nobody can say "I am" because, being free of time, the immortal is nobody and digresses into the boredom of not being.

The publication of three volumes of selected writings in new English translations is probably the best way to commemorate the anniversary of Borges's birth. In Spanish, different editions have multiplied the impression of a work still being discovered, recovered, divulged. In the hotels of Buenos Aires, the usual copy of the Bible has been replaced by scrolls with Borges sentences; even his translation of Wilde's "Happy Prince" (done when Borges was 9) has been reissued. In French, two formidable volumes in the classical Biblioteque Pleiade are a scholarly landmark. In English, Viking has published the "Collected Fictions," a new translation by Andrew Hurley; "Selected Poems," edited by Alexander Coleman with superb translations; and now this massive compilation of essays edited by Eliot Weinberger, a well-known poet, essayist, and translator.

"Selected Non-Fictions" is an accessible, even festive invitation to indulge in Borges's company. Here we listen again to his peculiar voice, made of a direct phrasing and, at the same time, of periphrasis. We recognize his unique sense of humor, made of a sort of Voltairian irony (that mocking tone, his readiness to laugh, his subtle, oblique commentary) that was his way of being at the margins, always surprised by his own success and joking first about fame and literary destinies. His essays are the open-ended, sometimes casual, other times deliberate, commentary of a man of letters reacting to both current readings and more durable ideas.

With eloquence first, and later with astute economy and even with persuasion, Borges moves at ease among books, authors, topics, ideas, films, and political events. The American reader will think not of Eliot, a man of longstanding convictions and a granite essayist, but of Pound, whose capacity for immediate answers and gusto for diverse sources, for a collage of tradition, is closest to Borges's appetite. Nevertheless, there is a major difference: Pound was a militant of his own credo, and looked to advance his ideas on the new. Borges's literary project is more radical: He pretends to change the function of reading. That is, he works to persuade us that we, the readers, are the changing center of literature, of interpretation and validation, and even the force that fulfills the text.

In "Kafka and His Precursors" (1951) Borges formulated an old idea of his: Every important writer creates his own forebears. That is, in opening a new space he also establishes a map of his past, not as a mere genealogy but as an actualization of a new territory. This is a most Borgesian allegory of reading - a demonstration of the powers of reading as a new order of the library. In fact, he explored in these essays, as well as in his "ficciones," the nature of reading (as a force for debasing, untying, deconstructing systems, belief, and normativity). Because of that he is probably a precursor of the French "new critics" as well as of some American deconstructionists. Of course, today we don't take so seriously the origin of anybody, and for that matter, the genealogy of a book, because we are more interested in processes than in normativity, in change more than in validation.

Eliot Weinberger has managed to keep in English the peculiar Spanish of Borges. His language was, in his youth, elaborate, almost baroque. Later it was fascinated by local colorful topics and oral values of diction. Next, by an expositive, synthetic view of the essay as commentary, probably in the tradition of the English chronicle (the lively combination of fact and opinion, of erudition and speculation). Later, by the format of the lecture. Borges was so timid about public talks that he used to stammer; but after a period of famous long silences, when he was already blind, he managed to perform a sort of monologue. Also in the English tradition of the public lecture, this was not a matter of reading a paper but the rendering of a well-rounded, fresh, articulated, and informative performance. That is why in most of this book one recognizes the tone of familiarity, that intimation of dialogue, even the complicity of fun.

It is a pity that the editor, envisioning an American reader, had to suppress the essays related to Argentine topics. Borges, in fact, was eager to promote his somber gauchos to be the band of Macbeth. To miss the Argentine Borges is to lose his point of view, the very cultural difference that makes of him such a unique writer. Borges's native language was Spanish; he soon was taught to read in English; and he had to learn French for his schooling in Geneva. But some critics chose to believe that English was almost native to him. Borges, of course, found delight in this paradox of origins, and was guilty of a longstanding joke: He used to say that as a child he read Cervantes first in English! We know by different testimonies and by his own confession that he read it first in Spanish. Obviously, he was parodying Byron, who used to scandalize the imperial souls by repeating that he read Shakespeare first in Italian.