"Borges and I," A Narrative Sleight of Hand

Because of its autobiographical appearance, critics have paid little attention to the narrative of "Borges and I" which is so masterfully handled that its complex and transparent texture is almost invisible. A close analysis shows, however, that, in the confessional mode, the two individuals—I and Borges—are true characters involved in a narrative action that is taking place to allow the implementation of vengeance. By focusing on his victim's experience, the narrating I offers an attractive bait to his victimizer, Borges. Borges, the writer, driven by a compulsive pattern of stealing, unsuspectingly takes over the victim's grievances against him by virtue of his own writing. To unveil those basic elements of narrative at play in this short story, the participation of an active reader, as witness to the process and as recipient of the indicting text, is actually demanded. Thus, "Borges and I" may be considered a superb example of Jorge Luis Borges's art. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol22/iss2/8 "Borges and I," A Narrative Sleight of Hand Armando F. Zubizarreta Case Western Reserve University In memory of Raimundo Lida and Peter Marlay An autobiographical page? Due to its autobiographical appearance, "Borges and I," a brief work published in El Hacedor (1960), seems to present, under the pattern of a dual personality, what a writer actually feels, or imagines he may feel, in confronting his social persona.' Because this text, usually understood as a confession, offers some aesthetic insights and succinct information about thematic changes, quotations have frequently been taken from it to corroborate conclusions about the author and his work. Criticism, nonetheless, has paid little attention to its narrative quality. Can "Borges and I" be considered a narrative text, a short story whose writing shows the author's original technique?' In her analysis of Borges's Evaristo Carriego, Sylvia Molloy states that this biography is where "the future maker of fictions, undertakes the possibility of re-creating and inscribing a character" to add that "it is also a place where he [Borges] inaugurates the possibility of erasing the very character he has inscribed" (13-14). In her view, Borges had already anticipated the basic characteristic that he assigns to the short story in his conception and exercise of biography. Thus, observing that most of the characters of Borges's narrative are "narrative functions," Molloy goes on to conclude that "the dissolution of a forseeable character is the situation in his stories" (40-41). Once this primacy of situation over character has been accepted, it isn't surprising that he who would deny the personality's entity as such shows it at the beginning of "Borges and I" as split into two entities or contrary characters whose conflicting relation is described. 1 Zubizarreta: "Borges and I," A Narrative Sleight of Hand Published by New Prairie Press 372 STCL, Volume 22, No. 2 (Summer, 1998) Yet it is neither enough to describe characters-the writer I (the intellectual) and the vital I (the existential)-nor only to describe the conflictive relation in which they are involved to create the narrative fiction. At first glance, it seems impossible to deny that nothing happens while we are reading the text and that, although it abundantly provides information about events that usually happen-by using the present tense-and about some events that have happened in the past, no actual present action takes place in the text. It is true that Borges-an author who has accustomed us to seeing him in the ludic exercise of erasing the limits not only between imagination and experienced realities but also between opposing concepts-finally blurs the distinction between the characters, the writer Borges and the vital I, in the concluding sentence of the text. This one sentence that follows the text's body, an almost page-long paragraph, has an ambiguity that, in this case, seems perfectly suited to the presentation of a psychological phenomenon in which those characters are the poles of a divided personality. But the fact that the text belongs to Borges's infinite and reversible universe is not enough to justify viewing it as a narrative piece. Nor is it sufficient to argue that some of the author's other short stories present two opposite characters temporarily superimposed through narrative impersonation ("The Shape of the Sword"), or two ethically opposed qualifications competing to define a character in order to determine what he really is ("Theme of the Traitor and the Hero") or a negative characteristic that shifts from one opposite individual personality to another ("The Theologians").3 The dialectic of victim and victimizer In "Borges and I" the vital I declares that both he and the writer I share preferences: hourglasses, maps, seventeenth-century typography, the taste of coffee, and Stevenson's prose. At the same time it is made clear that the vital I is subject to exploitation by the writer I, who takes over his experiences of the surroundings to create literature: "Yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir, para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura" 'I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges can contrive his literature' (Lab 246).4 Nonetheless, it can be observed too that the vital I accepts this exploitation, conceiving it as an exchange, when he confesses "esa literatura me justifica" 'this literature justifies me' (Lab 246), that is to say, that he admits that this literature 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 22, Iss. 2 [1998], Art. 8 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol22/iss2/8 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1448