Talk:Jorge Luis Borges

Contents

1 Archived talk 1.1 Borges in the Modern and Postmodern Context (linked) 1.2 Other archived content 2 Current questions 2.1 "Borges as Argentine and as World Citizen" 2.2 "compadrito" vs. "matrero" 2.3 Did Borges have Jewish ancestry? 2.4 Current questions and remarks relating to list of works 3 Where do we want to take this article? 4 20 Feb 04, edits 5 Jmabel remarks on state of article 22 Feb 2004 6 Tlön 7 compadrito is not a matrero 8 Borges's influence 9 Borges not the first at fake reviews 10 Confirmed Borges Hoaxes 11 Recent edits 12 "foremost writers" 13 Bibliography

Archived talk

Borges in the Modern and Postmodern Context (linked)

Because the article length exceeded 32kb, this text was moved here from the main body for further discussion. Feel free to "mine" it for content for the article:

• Borges in the Modern and Postmodern Context

I've mined this for the articles George Herbert, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, and The Book of Sand. I doubt there is much of value that has not been taken, but a devotee of Derrida might disagree. -- Jmabel 08:19, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Other archived content

• Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive: Full content of this page archived 15 March 2004. It was 47KB, and includes a lot of discussion about where we want to take the article, most of which has now been done. Weeding this page down to things that are either recent or unresolved.

Current questions

"Borges as Argentine and as World Citizen"

22 August 2004 I moved the staged contribution from this page to the main Borges article. Hopefully, that resolves a lot of old issues and some naive POVs that were dogging the article for more than a year. A little squeamish about how long the article's getting, but I included the subsection about "Martin Fierro" after all. Still, that subsection could be shortened, with parts moved to the linked Borges on Martín Fierro page. In coming weeks I or someone might reorganize this section of the Talk:Borges page to reflect all open issues/questions, separating out older issues, maybe onto an archive page. munge

4 August 2004 Still struggling with how to integrate. Renoved remarks about "Borges on Martin Fierro" from this discussion page and moved to the Talk:Borges on Martín Fierro page. I propose to remove the existing 2 paragrphs on that topic from the Borges article, and add link inside the article to the Borges on Martín Fierro page. Any objections? My reasoning: There's no point being redundant here considering there's an article whose subject is the book El "Martín Fierro". And the current article is 38 kbytes.

I think we should at least have a sentence or two here and an explicit link to that article. It's important that readers find this easily: after all, this is the most important 20th century Argentine writer's reaction to the most important 19th century Argentine work of literature. -- Jmabel 00:57, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding that article, I have a question: Anyone able to confirm there is/was a tradition of improvised song or poetry contests in the Argentine countryside?

Yes and it's called payada. Usually using the milonga rhythm, usually in six- or ten-verse shots. The Martin Fierro ends with the description of one such payada. For more on that, Google for "payada", "payador", "gabino ezeiza" etc. (Alex, 19/Oct/2004)

Ideally the article will be more concise when the stubby thing is fixed. How serious should I take it when Wikipedia warns us that the article is 38 kbyte, and should be 32 kbyte? (I take it that older browsers have trouble w/editing forms containing >32 kbyte, but I'm not sure that's the real problem, if any.) munge

26 March 2004 I now have something pasted at the bottom of this page, ready for review. Hope that's OK to do that on this page; goal would be to get comments, corrections, formatting, and fill in more examples. Then, move it to the main article in coming weeks. Kind of wish our postmodern predecessor hadn't of brought up the topic, but as long as it's in there I felt the need to correct what I saw as distortions, and to put some context around why any questions about nationality even come up. (Rather than trying to put a postmodern context around Borges, someone should put some Borgesian context around postmodernism someday; cf JLB's "The Nothingness of Personality"; and a cutting remark in one of the Dantesque essays to the effect that contextual diversity is not a new idea; that the ancients too believed there are multiple, equally valid interpretations of texts.) -munge

That was a title this section received when it was first segrgated from the amorphous postmodern thingus we all started with. (It's two separate sections now.) Bottom line for me is that the section(s) did not and still don't reflect the thinking Borges clearly expressed about this matter in "Our Poor Individualism" and elsewhere. Goes back and forth between POVs that he was worldly vs. a product of his time and place, never really goes much of anywhere, then peters out. No criticism intended, my fault as much as anyone's. What should it be, people? Borges contended with the question of what it means to be Argentine. He advised that Argentina's literary identity must be to look to the entire world from the vantage point of an unfinished Argentina--not limit the scope of attention to Hispanic matters, let alone to the Southern Cone, and certainly not to "local color". The page doesn't doesn't reflect that view, nor critique it. Consider also that the "accusation" that he was a Jew probably conveyed in code to racists the smear that he was not a true Argentine. Whereas the original page seemed to me to paint Borges as hopelessly Eurocentric. Because I don't really understand all the prejudices involved, I'm not sure how to rise above them; If I fix it, it risks being insensitive to inter-American rivalries that sometimes portray Argentina itself, favorably or unfavorably, as distinctly Europhile. Borges did strive to rise above ethnicity and there is much to say for his efforts--but at the same time the scope of his attention was filtered--it is true that he didn't spend much research effort on indigenous cultures; and The Book of Imaginary Beings betrays that the fantastic creatures of Chinese lore escaped his pen; and he may have expressed occasional Francophobia. I'm not trying to be petty--he probably knew more literatures and cultures than anybody you or I know; and who knows what languages he would have learned had he escaped blindness--but is there a way to split the difference between the characatures of Borges as (imperfectly) worldly versus Borges the (hoplessly, myopically) Argentine? Be that as it may these two roles--Argentine, and World Citizen--cannot be separated and neither can two subsections convey anything but our ignorance. I hereby threaten to fix it unless someone who's actually qualified steps up to the plate. -munge, 10 March 2004

Well, you may not be ideally qualified, but I don't think any of us are. Judging by the preceding paragraph, you are clearly clueful & have some idea where to take tht part of the article. When I did my major rewrite, I wasn't really focused on this "grand statement" sort of stuff, just ground-clearing and basic facts, but I wholly agree that these grand statements belong here, especially if decently sourced with examples. -- Jmabel 16:45, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, I expect to replace the existing "Borges as Argentine" and "Borges as World Citizen" with the piece below by the end of July. Comments appreciated. I reread "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" a few times recently and frankly, I'm sorry anybody brought the whole thing up. If you read his essay carefully, you'll see that even to ask the question about his nationality is to reveal one's own petty nationalisms. Was he too European and insufficiently worldly (as the original writer of the wiki article seemed to have it)? Is he too worldly and insufficiently Argentine (as Borges' nationalist critics would have it)? Are Argentines too European (as I've heard some racists express)? Who cares! In the end, I find the entire question is almost indisinguishable from soccer hooliganism. I did my best to summarize the rootedness in Argentina, the sources of diversity, and the shortcomings--for those who are keeping score. In the process, I hope I managed to stumble across anything interesting or at least useful. -munge, 7 July 2004

"compadrito" vs. "matrero"

Past discussion is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current question: "compadrito" vs. "matrero". The issue was the connotations of these two terms in early 20th century Argentina. If you want to revive the discussion, please do so here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Did Borges have Jewish ancestry?

Past discussion is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current question: did Borges have Jewish ancestry?. The conclusion: he did not. If you want to revive the discussion, please do so here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Current questions and remarks relating to list of works

Past discussion of this topic is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current questions relating to list of works. Further discussion belongs here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Excerpted from my own previous remarks:

• If anyone knows a good source for an English-language Borges bibliography, please let me know (or start inserting the information yourself: if you do that, I'd appreciate a note here).
• If anyone can give further brief annotation (ISBN numbers, English-language translation info) to what's already there, please go ahead.
• The list of works (related to the Premio Cervantes) at http://usuarios.lycos.es/precervantes/bibliografia/borges.html definitely has some errors. For example, there is a novel by his father on the list, some misspelled titles, dates (supposedly of works) that actually apply only to like an artist's illustrated limited edition of 30 copies of a poem already published elsewhere, etc. (& I do mean etc.). Clearly the list was not assembled by someone who know Borges's work well. However, there are a few intriguing entries that I'm wondering if relates to acutal books I've just never encountered:
  • Macedonio Fernández (1961)
    • Fernandez was something of a mentor to Borges, and I know Borges wrote a short eulogy at the time of his death, but I'm unaware of a book by Borges on Fernández. Does anyone know anything solid?
  • Borges: sus mejores páginas (1970)
    • Is there such a book? If so, is it anything more than some minor anthology?
  • Borges para niños (1988)
    • The only other references to this on the web seem to derive from this list. Is there such a book?

Where do we want to take this article?

This has been weeded down to open issues. The full version as of 15 March 2004 can be found at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Where do we want to take this article?". -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Borges' life story fills a longish autobiographical essay available in the Dutton edition of The Aleph. His critique of the craft of biography is specified in his essay "On William Beckford's Vathek" (essays cited here are in Selected Non Fictions and/or Other Inquisitions)

Before the big fix, this page had a shallow treatment of race, nationality, and postmodernism, now deleted or moved. If anyone wants to revisit those subjects, notably "Two Books" traces a common thread of racism running through Nazi, Allied, and Communist movements; See also "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" , "Our Poor Individuality", "I a Jew", remarks on Carlyle, his WWII-themed fiction...the sheer number of different cultures he admired and studied. However, I don't claim JLB is pristine on issues of race and nationality.

If someone who really knows the postmodern canon cares to, one could give us an account of Borges' relationship, if any, with 20th century European criticism, Again, the earlier entry omitted to account for JLB's remarks about biography in his essay on "Vathek", "On the Nothingness of Personality", "Narrative Art and Magic", lectures on Buddhism, remarks about translation, his translations into Spanish...these would seem to refute any easy answers about his relationship with all things postmodern and also might help in understanding his actual influence on later writers.

(I wrote comments similar to the above a few months ago and I've edited them to reflect the state of the page & discussion as of now. Thanks esp. to JMabel and Viajero for the improvements, and for even keeping one or two sentences I had written. -munge, 24 Dec 2003)

Excerpting some of my own earlier remarks that still seem relevant:

• Yes, there is much to be said on race, probably even more on his career & on Argentine politics. Discussion of race should certainly include reference to his wonderful, 1-page Yo, judío 1934.
• Are there any criteria at all for what stories are listed? I find it odd, for example, to include every single story from the "Universal History of Infamy" but none of the "forgeries", and how could we be leaving out "Garden of Forking Paths": among other things, it's rather widely taught in US high school Spanish classes, so it's many Americans' first introduction to Borges, and a damn good one at that. And what about films based on or about Borges?

-- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Viajero considers the following resolved, so I'm leaving it in as I edit down this talk page:

Jmabel: Good work so far! IMO, the article still urgently needs a simple, straightforward summary of biographical details. To give you a gentle nudge in this direction (!), I collected some random bits from the article in a new section at the top called Life, which is still woefully incomplete. If I have time later, I will lend you a hand with this part. Carry on! -- Viajero 13:01, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

20 Feb 04, edits

A lengthy exchange between Jmabel and Sir Paul can be found at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#20 Feb 04, edits. It includes quite a bit of discussion of the degree to which Borges's father was a writer; we compromised on the wording now in the article. The latter portion of that discussion and the one unresolved issue from our colloquy follows. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Update on Borges's father: perusing a bookstore here in Buenos Aires I came across a title that I had never seen before. It was called Los dos Borges (The Two Borges) and written by a Volodia Teitelboim. Opening the book at random, I noticed a line in which Borges was quoted saying that his father

trató de ser escritor y fracasó en el empeño. Compuso algunos sonetos muy buenos.

tried to become a writer and failed in the attempt. He composed some very good sonnets.

So he was a writer in a sense, but not in another ("failed in the attempt"). We can include the quote in the article, if you agree. Sir Paul 01:54, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Sure. -- Jmabel 13:46, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd still be interested in hearing from anyone who actually knows the elder Borges's works. In particular, I remember reading somewhere that he wrote (and published) some poetry, but I have no idea whether it was any good or whether it was anything more than vanity publication. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Excerpted, see Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#20 Feb 04, edits for full context:

• You dropped, "Borges's essay "Veinticinco Agosto 1983" announced his intention to commit suicide on August 25, 1983; in the last years of his life, he claimed that it was only through cowardice that he had failed to do so." How can you consider this biographically irrelevant?

It was a somewhat gross assertion: Borges didn't "announce his intention to commit suicide"; he wrote a ficional piece where the narrator did so. That the narrator may have some similarities with Borges does not warrant such a misleading wording. Sir Paul 01:41, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

I know I've read him saying in a published interview that he really had intended to kill himself on that date and that it was only through cowardice that he had failed to do so. But obviously, my recollection is not adequate sourcing on a disputed matter. I'll try to track this one down. -- Jmabel 06:09, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Your recollection may be accurate --or you may be remembering the comments about his piece "Remorse", where he says that he "wasn't brave [enough]". Either case, it is still misleading to say that he "announced his intention..." in that story, as if he somehow made a commitment to kill himself before some kind of public audience. (Note that I have nothing against suicide, and I wouldn't want to hide the fact that Borges wanted to kill himself if it was properly documented. My objection is based on purely factual grounds.)Sir Paul 17:25, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

As I said, I'll try to find my documentation on exactly what he said. -- Jmabel 03:01, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Jmabel remarks on state of article 22 Feb 2004

While we're on all of this, as noted in the previous section of this talk page, there is a lot of work to be done in this article other than quibbling over small edits. To reiterate for anyone who'd like to move the article forward (most of this can be found in more detail above or at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive):

• If someone can sort out exactly what would have been the connotations of "compadrito" and "matrero" in turn-of-the-century B.A., as against how Borges used them (see discussion above), that would be useful.
• Can anyone work out if these books (mentioned in the obviously poorly researched list on http://usuarios.lycos.es/precervantes/bibliografia/borges.html) really exist (see notes above)? If so, they merit mention in the article:
  • Macedonio Fernández (1961)
    • apparently, an anthology he edited [1] (http://www.miborges.com.ar/)
  • Borges: sus mejores páginas (1970)
  • Borges para niños (1988)
• Life - probably could use more on his sister Norah, especially because they colloborated on volumes (she illustrated).
• Work - could do with extended sections on various aspects of his work, but it's at least a solid overview.
• Borges as world citizen - Little more than a stub.
• Works: Quotations - So far there is only one, but it is sure representative!
• Works: Could use more ISBNs, and I suspect that many of these books have English language translations that merit mention and indication of English-language publication date. I suspect that there are also more posthumously published works worth mentioning.
• Works: Short Stories: This is an almost-random hodgepodge and should be revisited.
• Works: Quasi-Fiction: An arbitrary and ill-defined category. I think the topic of Borges's blending of fictional and non-fictional forms deserves an extended discussion rather than a list of four works.
• We could use sections on:
  • Borges's views on epistemology, philosophical idealism, and personal identity
  • Borges's views on infinity
  • Borges's views on translation
  • Borges's views on biography
  • Borges's views on race and ethnicity
  • Genre writing (detective fiction, fantasy, science fiction)
  • Influence of Borges on other writers and thinkers
  • Should add a filmography, too.

-- Jmabel 03:01, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Tlön

Those working on this article may also want to look at Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, into which I've put a lot of effort (maybe more than into the Borges article itself). It is a featured article candidate; I'd love to see the Borges article get there, too, but it has a much longer way to go. -- Jmabel 18:18, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

compadrito is not a matrero

Acording to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, Matrero is a fugitive that seeks the countryside to evade Justice.
As correctly noted, Martin Fierro was un gaucho matrero.

On the other hand:
Compadrito is a popular, boastful, quarrelling kind of guy, affected on his manners and attire. The word has a more urban (or at least suburban) bias.

So I think that JorgeLuis 03:12, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC) is right and that the issue is settled.

Regards, ejrrjs

---

Borges's influence

The following (not well formatted, and with some typos I've fixed) was anonymously added to the article & almost immediately deleted by Snowspinner. He's probably right that this is a bit of a laundry list (and a bit arbitrary: in fantasy and science fiction, I'd put Stanislaw Lem high on such a list) and that a shorter list with more clarity as to the nature of the influence would be more useful. Still, this may be worth mining for the articles on these various writers, so it should be preserved here on talk, not just in one version of the history. -- Jmabel 21:20, Aug 1, 2004 (UTC)

Hmph. Snowspinner's problem with it is that it's "overwhelming" and insufficiently descriptive. Actually, the list seems fairly sound and can be easily documented. My problem with the list is, it's cribbed, apparently word for word, without credit from http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_influence.html. That page also links to remarks about Borges' influence on Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Joyce Carol Oates...In the sci-fi category, there's Lem, Harlan Ellison, and Poul Anderson. Personally, I'd speculate that Samuel R. Delany, Ursula LeGuin, and maybe Philip K. Dick were influenced by Borges. If there was a non-fiction category, it would have to mention Michael Foucault. (BTW, Gibson's Canadian, not US, well, for the last 35 years or so, anyway. And we don't say "American" when we mean US, esp. when the topic is a South American writer. Sheesh.)

I've edited a couple of these (Danielewski and Eco), omitting certain diacriticals, which I don't know how to do. -munge

My objection was twofold. First, a lengthy list in the middle of an article disrupts the flow of the article. Second, it is over-complete. A general article on Borges doesn't really need this much detail on his influence - especially since the bulk of this list has little to do directly with Borges, in that most of the entries don't mention Borges at all. As I said in the edit summary, what would be helpful would be two, maybe three examples of writers Borges has influenced, and a few sentences on each of them describing that influence. That sould have the advantage of providing nformation that is directly relevent to Borges, of not breaking the flow of the article, and of being more informative on the whole than a simple list that's basically just defining who people are.

As for the copyvio aspect of it, that basically means the list is useless to us, and we ought not modify it and try to repost it or clean it up, as then it's still a derivative work of a copyvio. If there's to be an influence section, someone needs to compose it from scratch. Snowspinner 14:16, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that, as placed, it was disruptive and, as is, a copyright risk. On the basis of Borges' ideas about biography, I disagree on "over-complete". Not random enough is my bigger complaint. I trust that by the time it's fixed, it will be less derivative than the writers that it describes, and closer to the reference section. Note that writers he influenced has been a "to do" item elsewhere on this Talk page. I'm sorry if I was cross. I was aggravated about something else. I sense that you want it to be a much better article someday, and I share that hope. munge 3 Aug 2004

Writers influenced by Borges include, but are not limited to:

Barth, John American postmodern novelist who incorporates Borgesian themes into his fiction.

Danielewski, Mark Z. US author of House of Leaves, which concerns a house having more interior space than would appear possible; contains a book-within-a-book written by the blind scholar of literature and ancient languages, Zampano—clearly a reference to Borges (who is mentioned in footnote #167).

Eco, Umberto Italian thinker and author of The Name of the Rose, whose character Jorge of Burgos, a blind monk whose native language is Spanish, runs a labyrinthine library that's the setting for the search for one of Aristotle's lost works, about the practice of comedy. These themes contain clear references to Borges' "Library of Babel" and "Averroes' Search".

Fuentes, Carlos This Mexican writer -- author of the masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz -- paid tribute to Borges in "Borges in Action."

García Márquez, Gabriel Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Gibson, William Canadian science fiction writer and one of the key founders of the "cyberpunk" genre, author of Neuromancer.

Kis, Danilo A Serbian-Hungarian novelist, poet, and essayist, the late Kis was the author of complex works than mined many Borgesian themes.

Morrison, Grant British comic book author, his postmodern style graced the pages of Animal Man and Doom Patrol and may currently seen in DC's The Invisibles.

Pynchon, Thomas American writer, one of the principle figures in postmodern fiction and author of Gravity's Rainbow.

Sabato, Ernesto An Argentine novelist, Sabato has been called the "Anti-Borges."

Shepard, Lucius American science fiction and fantasy writer influenced by latin American magical realism.

Strand, Mark A Canadian poet and critic whose poetry has been influenced by Borges' fiction.

Useche, Andrés Colombian filmmaker and graphic artist, Useche's films merge dream and reality in a labyrinth of identity.

VanderMeer, Jeff American writer of fantasy and science fiction with an often ironic, postmodern bent; author of the "Ambergris" stories.

Veitch, Rick American comic book writer, worked on Swamp Thing during its most psychedelic period.

Wolfe, Gene American science fiction and fantasy writer, author of the "Book of the New Sun" series.

<end recovered text>

Borges not the first at fake reviews

At least one person pionered the use of imaginary reviews before Borges. Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus was a book length review of a pretend German transcendentalist philisophical work and biography of its author. It was considered for a while a real book by some. It was I think Carlyle's first well known book. It is considered one of his best and most lasting today. It dealt with a supposed philosophy of clothes. Thomas Carlyle although neglected recently has been considered to be one of the greatest writers in english so he can't really be ignored. He played a large role in spreading the works of the German trancendentalist and romantics early in English. Both by this work and his still read translations of Goethe. Some of his other works are a "History of The French revolution" and "On Hero's and Hero Worship". I dont know if Borges had read him but I imagine he would have at least been familiar with him and this work. Carlyle was or is considered both a great literary man and a great historian so he would have been right up Borges alley. It's book length of course not an essay. Still should maybe be noted.--Case 09:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't familiar with this piece by Carlyle, but I'm sure Borges would have been. Borges wrote often about Carlyle and I would imagine he probably had read his works in their entirety (which I haven't). I'll edit the article accordingly. -- Jmabel 18:31, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

I found a quote that addresses this influence in Borges' This Craft of Verse. pg 104. (2000). Borges is speaking of those authors that most influenced him and the formulation of his poet's creed.

"At the same time [1916, in Geneva], I also discovered a very different writer. I also discovered -- and was overwhelmed by -- Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart. Carlyle sent me to the study of German. I remember I bought Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo and a German-English dictionary. After a while I found I could dispense with the dictionary and go on reading..." -- Euthydemos 19:43, Sep 9, 2004

Great, I'll use that. -- Jmabel 23:50, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

• This comes from the introduction to The Garden of Forking Paths. The traslation is from Andrew Hurley published by Viking Penguin so I don't know about the legal issues with quoting it in the article. Maybe theirs a public domain version or someone could use their own translation. I don't know how you would want to chop it up for the article either. Its the second of the two paragraphs.

"It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books-setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle's procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler's in The Fair Haven-though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books."

I've googled Fair Haven. It is by Samuel Butler. He was an interesting and neglected writer. He was one of the early secular critics of darwinism and an ideosyncratic christian apologist and anti-materialist. He wrote "The Way of All Flesh" I think it is one of Modern Librarys top books of the century. Theirs a decent article in Wiki that refreshed me on him. Project Gutenberg has an edition of the book with a nice little introduction from someone that sums it up. It was subtitled: "A work in defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry upon Earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain Orthodox Defenders, by the late John Pickard Owen, with a Memoir of the Author by William Bickersteth Owen". Jaques Barzun has a bio of him in From Dawn to Decadence which introduced me before. He apparently influenced Shaw's and others critique of Dawrinism as having "banished mind from the universe". He has become more respected as time has gone on, moving out of obscurity during life. Carlyle's book obviously was much earlier. I think Butler came up with the idea independently though. Sartor Resartus is probaly more important as a book but who knows what Borges thought so it should maybe be mentioned. This is a great quote anyway that clears it up. Would be great to have at least some of it mentioned in the article.--Case 02:44, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Great, I'll work this in. A passage of that length is well within fair use, if appropriately attributed. -- Jmabel 05:57, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

• Also, Borges was pretty big on Butler. I've tried to keep this as short as I can in this already long article while doing it justice. Perhaps you'd like to enhande the article on Butler? BTW as for having "banished mind from the universe", have you read Gregory Bateson? Well acquainted with both Darwin and Butler, he argued that from what we now know about mind, Darwinian evolution is closely analogous to a mental process. He wrote a lot of articles and books related to this; the most accessible is a popularizing book at the end of his life, Mind and Nature. A more serious collection of Bateson's work is Steps to an Ecology of Mind. -- Jmabel 06:41, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

• Maybe this isnt the place to mention this and sorry for taking up space if it is. But would'nt it be the coolest thing ever if someone started an open-source encyclopedia of Tlon. Why hasn't anyone thought of this. A wikipedia of Tlon. The coolest thing ever. Lets destroy the world. Tlon shall take you all.--Case 18:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about Bateson sounds interesting. I think this was the distinction Butler was making. He was pro-evolution but ant-darwinist. Evolution is a very old idea predating Darwin. As Butlers article says he was anoyed that Darwin ignored the contributions his grandfather had already made. Goethe was a major proponent of evolution a century before Darwin. His study of plant adaptions was a major step in evolutionary thought. Biological evolution is an idea as old as the greeks. This played a major role actualy in the theory of spontaneos generation. It was hypothosized that life emerged spontaneosly from the mud of the sea and evolved from there on. Evolution as a cosmological and metiphysical idea was a romanticist notion. Darwin derived his theory in the background of an already evolutionist mindset in the culture. Charles Peirce was also one of the early secular critics of Darwinism. He had a completely evolutionary cosmology but dissagreed with the emphasize on the mechanism of survival of the fittest. He came up with as an alternative Agapeism which emphisized the role of nurturing love. It was the materialism that anoyed Peirce and Butler. They saw a more mind focused universe. The culmination of evolution was inteligence and increasing inteligence, while darwin in their view was too focused on random material and a blind law of averages. The mind was their ruling factor while they saw Darwin as a materialist and cartesian with out concern for the factor of inteligence. At least thats a very rough outline of the differences. I haven't read either very much. Mostly a second hand description. Sorry again if im being irrelevant to the discussion of the article. By the way Tlon will have you all.--Case 19:44, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Confirmed Borges Hoaxes

What hoaxes can we confirm? I have a mind to get rid of that "Quasi-fiction" category, merge it into the fiction, and put parenthetical remarks such as

• "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" (hoax review of nonexistent book)

This is distinct from works like "Pierre Menard..." and "Tlon...", which to me are obviously not reviews of real books. In contrast, I think that in the Autobiographical Essay, Borges reveals that a friend of his actually tried to order the book The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim from London, and that he did nothing at first to correct the impression that the book was nonexistent.

Is the stuff at the back of Universal History of Infamy also counterfeit?

• Did Borges falsely attribute "A Theologian in Death" and "Mahomed's Double" to Emmanuel Swedenborg?
• Did Borges falsely attribute "The Chamber of Statues" and "The Story of Two Dreamers" to 1001 Nights?
• Did Borges falsely attribute "The Wizard Who Was Made to Wait" to Infante don Juan Manuel et al?
• Did Borges falsely attribute "The Mirror of Ink" to Richard Francis Burton et al?

I have also encountered the idea that Borgest falsely attributed "On exactitude in Science" to Suarez Miranda, and that the idea was actually cribbed from Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno.

What about "An Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain"? At the time it was published, was it clear there was no such author? Likewise, "Three Versions of Judas"—when published, was it presented as fiction, or was it in a context that could lead readers to believe in an author named Nils Runeberg?

Those are the ones I can think of right off. Other known hoaxes or possible hoaxes that you may know of?

It's hard to prove that something doesn't exist. So I'm proposing, in the list of works, to put a parenthetical like

• "On Exactitude in Science" (apparent hoax that Borges falsely attributes to nonexistent author Suarez Miranda)

-munge 17 Sept 2004

Yes, everything at the back of Universal History of Infamy is counterfeit. For original publication info, browse the Aarhus bibliography (http://www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/). I'm pretty sure most (maybe all) of these come from a column he did for a while with short reviews, translations of passages he came upon in his reading, I think even some literary gossip...

As for "On exactitude in Science", I already did an article. Pseudonymous original publication in Los Anales de Buenos Aires -- a literary magazine that I believe (but I'm not sure of this) he was editing at the time -- combined with the fact that he collaborated with Bioy Casares, who shared his sense of humor, suggests it was originally passed off as real.

Offhand, I don't know the history of "An Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain" or "Three Versions of Judas"; again, the Aarhus bibliography is the first place to start. -- Jmabel 05:37, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

Tough site to navigate. Aarhus (http://www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/louis/1941.htm) seems to say, "...Quain" appeared originally in Sur #79, April 1941, pp44-48, but also appeared that year in 1st ed. of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (Garden of Forking Paths), month not specified. Page seems to show that JLB did lots of nonfiction in Sur that year, including in #78 and #80, so if it wasn't marked clearly, it could have confused people into thinking "...Quain" was also nonfiction. Got back issues?

Another Aarhus pageseems (http://www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/louis/1944.htm) to indicate "...Judas" originally appreared in Sur #118 August 1944 pp7-12, and seems to indicate it was not included in Ficciones until the 1956 edition, when the Artificios section was added. (However, the 1956 date for Artificios contradicts the table of contents of the Penguin Collected Fictions, which says it was 1944.) Anyway, JLB wrote various fictions and non-fictions for Sur in 1944, so again, if not marked clearly...

"Museum" (apparently in 1946 (http://www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/louis/1946.htm), according to my edition of Dreamtigers includes "On Rigor in Science" as well as the following poems and fragments. Were they intended to deceive? How to label them in a bibliography?

• "Quatrain", supposedly "From Divan of Almoqtadir El Magrebi (12th century)"
• "Limits", supposedly by "Julio Platero Haedo: Inscriptiones (Montevideo, 1923)"
• "The Poet Declares His Renown", supposedly "From the Divan of Abulcasim El Hadrami (12th century)"
• "The Magnanimous Enemy", supposedly "From H. Gering: Angang zur Heimskringla (1893)" and ostensibly a quotation from "Muirchertach, King in Dublin" (1102) who seems to have really existed
• "The Regret of Heraclitus", supposedly from "Gaspar Camerarius, in Delciae poetarum Borussinae, VII, 16" (which is almost certainly not about Heraclitus, unless the latter had a crush on someone named Mathilde Urbach, which seems highly unlikely)

user:munge 06:21 UTC 15 December 2004

Recent edits

1) Please stop re-inserting "foremost "South American" writer". It is condescending and typical of an Anglo-American POV. 2) Borges is widely considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American lit; it is silly to ask for a quotation/etc to back this up as any quick survey of essays by well-known Latin American writers will tell you, but offhand I can only remember that Carlos Fuentes is said to have remarked that "without Borges, the modern Latin American novel simply would not exist." 3) The whole article needs to be reviewed for grammar and concision, I haven't found the time + I moved the redundant "quasi-fiction" section to Short Stories, but it needs to be chronologically arranged. -- Simonides 21:30, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Have you got a citation on the Fuentes quotation? It would be perfect.

I agree on the removal of "quasi-fiction" as a separate category. I believe the list of individual pieces is completely arbitrary, just seems to be whatever anyone chose to dump there. I did about five days of careful research to try to do a comprehensive listing of book-length publications; no one has done anything comparable at the level of individual stories and essays. I have little idea what would make a valid principle of inclusion. I wish we could just link to a first-rate bibliography elsewhere, but there isn't much on line that's particularly good. The Aarhus bibliography is the best, but it is concerned only with original-language publication, it pretty much ignores posthumous publication, and it definitely has a few holes (as I found out in putting together the list of book-length publications). -- Jmabel | Talk 23:26, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Any reason for saying "fictional" short story in introduction is there another kind? (anon)

Nope, I'll strike it. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:45, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

"foremost writers"

I personally don't have a problem with "considered to be one of the foremost writers of the 20th century" -- he's one of my favorite writers, and I wrote almost half of this article, plus more about him elsewhere, so I am certainly not biased against him -- but I'd really rather see us find a reputable source that calls him something like that and quote it, rather than put such a POV statement in the narrative voice of the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:19, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Some excellent work has gone into this and other articles on Borges and if you were responsible for at least some of it, kudos to you. I do not think you or anyone who writes even in "formal" encyclopediae like the Britannica are necessarily "biased" against non-Anglo-American personalities, but the language itself betrays a strong POV that I've always found objectionable, as if, for ex., Orwell will always be a "major writer" whereas Proust will have to be content with being a "major French writer" - I hope you see what I mean. While all such statements are necessarily generalisations and POV of a sort, I don't think one can produce any real sources where reputation in the arts is concerned - they usually create the false impression that one has to rely on another well-known voice for recognition, and in such cases generalisations are probably the safest/ best option (i.e. imagine trying to attribute Plato's reputation to one or two quotes.) -- Simonides 08:20, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, if one of those quotes were another prominent philosopher talking about how 2500 years later the questions he asked still largely define the scope of philosophy... Similarly, the Fuentes quote, if we can find it, would carry that kind of weight. Again, I don't really have a problem with your wording, but in matters like this, I almost always prefer an apropos quotation to a blind assertion in the narrative voice of the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:31, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, in the case of Plato you have A. N. Whitehead's line, and such quotes do sound very potent, but that's precisely my complaint - they're rather empty generalisations, but instead of coming from the man on the street, they issue from a "figure of authority", when in fact there's no inherent difference, and in quoting them we reduce a very broad reputation/ complex body of work to a sound bite. I understand people like sound bites, but I think it's more consistent and fair (to the writer, to history, etc) to resist them unless there's a very appropriate passage within the article, or a section like "influence", where one can insert such a quote. -- Simonides 10:33, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My $0.02. I wager that Borges would have been the first to say—and not just from modesty—that these sorts of statements, "considered to be one of the foremost..." "...among the greatest..." etc are meaningless. To show proper respect for Borges would be to let his work stand without begging the questions "considered by whom?" and "foremost among whom?" To invoke this imaginary congress of critics, this fictional process for establishing priority, reveals insecurity of we who are editors, not the importance of the subject. No skeptic is convinced when an editor invokes superlatives in the passive voice, or implies that some nameless authority nominated an author for a nonexistent award. That makes it all the more important that we make progress on the section outlining how Borges influenced other authors and cultural figures. It amuses and pains me to note that the editors of Wikipedia's James Joyce and Shakespeare (and no doubt others) likewise undermine their beloved subjects. user:munge 03:28 UMT 6 December 2004

Borges did win the Prix Goncourt, a fact omitted by the article. No he did not. My mistake user:munge 07:36 UMT 8 Dec 2004

I'm glad I was lazy about following up on that! -- Jmabel | Talk 08:00, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Bibliography

The bibliography was recently and anonymously moved out "to reduce size of main article". This strikes me as completely wrongheaded. All it is likely to do is make the bibliography less well maintained and more subject to vandals (because it will be on fewer watchlists). Unless there is clear consensus against me within 48 hours, I intend to revert. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:19, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)