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Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
Posted by Michael Sympson on 16/9/2001, 1:14:06
"Every author creates his own pedigree" says Borges, and it would not be entirely unfair to say that Borges had spent the better part of his life in establishing this pedigree. I think, I have read every single line Borges ever had put to print. Some time in my mid-twenties I got hooked when I read for the first time a tale entitled "The Zahir" and I didn't let go ever after. To my mind especially this story gives the whole Borges in a nutshell. What are those objects which dispense such mysterious power to possess our imagination from the moment we catch sight of them? Isn't it actually just one object that reincarnates through the centuries in all kinds of shapes? Or could it be just a figment of paranoia in a mentally troubled mind with no actual referent in the real world?
Nabokov in one of his (many) grumpier moments complained about Borges's art as being "all porch and no house behind." Nabokov has a point. But let's be honest. Instead of churning out a so-so novel and make the reader waste days and weeks over it, it is so much snappier and more interesting to write a mouth-watering review on "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim." Yes, I confess, I searched the central catalogue of the British Library for this book. No joy of course. Initially Borges' review had been a hoax, but it spurned a whole new kind of fiction. In a sense all of Borges's short stories are mere summaries of fictional events, and yet manage to say it all in fewer words. The trick is to leave a character's psychology utterly to the reader's intuition and be strictly matter of fact and without frills. Only recently it occurred to me how much Borges's craft actually owes to the old Norse storytellers, a fact Borges himself had never hidden.
The Norse sagas appear to be all surface. For instance, as an advance on his inheritance, a son steals a few implements from his father's cottage, moves away and starts an enterprise of his own, he succeeds beyond expectation, branches out, takes in an apprentice, promotes him as his steward, but disappoints the fellow, because he doesn't offer him full partnership. Tension develops, the steward decides to ... we get the idea. Borges initially looked to Kafka as his most important influence, after he had turned away from Carlyle, but then he discovered for himself the potential of the saga style and found ways to load the text with a world of allusions and suggestions underneath of a deceptively straightforward surface.
I guess Borges is the opposite extreme to Marcel Proust, and the difference between the two represents a fundamental polarity in the narrative universe. A polarity which had always been there, we can follow it back to the Norse sagas and their Japanese counterpart, Murasaki's "Prince Genji," or to Apuleius' ribald tale and the sometimes tantalizing glimpses on the rich and minute structure of omniscient realism suggested by the extant fragments of Petron's "Satyricon." It is not so much a difference in subtlety, but more of the narrator's temperament. You either seek completeness and offer life to be swallowed whole, or you prefer to be selective with your effects and to create a mirror cabinet of perspectives as the actual object of your narrative.
Both is a legitimate way of storytelling, the difference lays in the narrator's concept of truth, whether the accent is put on omniscient totality - the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and the artist's capacity to cope and let things permeate his temperament, or whether a more opaque, a more sceptical mentality is making choices and infuses the reader's imagination with alternative views and surprising spectres in a slimmer but more suggestive texture. Storytelling of Tolstoian grandeur appeals to the reader's whole spectrum of sensuality, whereas Borges casts little spotlights on carefully chosen events and sensual moments. It is a bit like lovemaking - some people are quite happy just to rub the partner's skin and take it all in, hair, smell and heavy breathing; others need to get their fantasy going, for them, sex is primarily an event in their imagination, even during the act.
In this sense, James Joyce could never make up his mind which way he wanted to go, but apparently you can't have it both ways. And since it affects the artist's entire personality this is more than a matter of capriciously deciding how to tell the next tale. It is one of the crossroads in the life of an artist, and no possibility to retract your steps. Borges of course had not much of a choice. Talent can compensate only that much for impaired eyesight and eventual blindness. Degas in his old age had still a choice and turned to sculpture - but what else is left to do for a writer?
Borges' handicap had as much to do with his artistic choices, as has his private discovery of the Icelandic Sagas. Every sensual moment is a precious memory in ways that could never occur to a Marcel Proust or Tolstoy. It raises the sensual glimpse to the height of a symbol. When we read Tolstoy we gorge our appetites, but Borges makes me dream.
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