Nicolas Shumway & T. S. - Literary Theory in Borges

The Hedonic Reader: Literary Theory in Jorge Luis Borges
Author(s): Nicolas Shumway and Thomas Sant

Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 9, No. 17 (Fall - Winter, 1980), pp. 37-55
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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The Hedonic Reader:
Literary Theory in Jorge Luis Borges
By NICOLAS SHUMWAY and THOMAS SANT
Neither you nor L, George Frederick William Hegel,

know how to define poetry... although I am skillful
at discovering it in any place: in conversations,
tango lyrics, books on metaphysics, sayings and even
in some verses.l
Borges the labryinth maker, Borges the crafty metaphysician, Borges the
of Buenos Aires - each has a in a
poet significant place rapidly burgeoning
bibliography. But Borges the critic is thinly represented. His criticism has
generally received scant attention, but in particular the theoretical foundations
underlying Borges' specific critical writings have remained largely un
examined. It has been widely assumed that Borges lacks a unified view of
literature, that in criticism he is something of a dilettante. As a result, the
remarkable coherence of his thought has gone unrecognized.
We can suggest several reasons why Borges' criticism has not received
greater attention. First, his critical essays have seldom been considered on
their own merits, but rather have been most often examined only in relation to
his other works. In fact, many share C?sar Fern?ndez Moreno's opinion that
Borges' essays are "the weakest part of his work."2 A second reason is the
limited accesibility of Borges' first three books of essays, Inquisiciones
[Inquisitions] (19525), El tama?o de mi esperanza [The Size ofMy Hope]
(1926) and El idioma de los argentinos [The Language of Argentinians]
(1928). Borges has repudiated all three, calling them "degusting defor
mations" an i refusing to allow republication. "The real reason I had in
presenting the complete works edition," he said recently, "was to suppress
those books whose names I prefer not to remember, tomake a recantation, and
"3
now I always exclude them. Indeed, he claims to have bought up and burned
copies of the first two volumes,4 and has allowed only a few essays from the
third volume to be republished. A third reason Borges' criticism has been
ignored is his own attitude towards literary theory. He is fond of saying he has
no theory of literature, only a set of "likes and dislikes."5 His remark to

38 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW
"
Charbonnier is typical: It's useless to talk about aesthetic theory. One must
decide if it has produced anything."6
But perhaps the chief reason Borges as a critic has not been studied
adequately is that in form, focus and method his criticism is like no one else's
in this century. His essays are almost epigrammatic in their brevity, his critical
discussions often seem eclectic, he is neither methodical nor scholarly in the
traditional senses of those words, his evaluative criteria seen wonderfully
arbitrary and his assessments, though delightful, are often undeniably
peculiar; he dislikes the Iliad, for example, because Achilles is such an
unappealing person.7 He consciously rejects the role of critic insofar as it
requires him to arbitrate questions of taste. Refusing to accept the duty and
responsibility that scholarly criticism is generally presumed to entail, he has
written, "I do not wish to dictate norms, but to record observations."8 One
might conclude that as a critic Borges strongly resembles one of his own
symbols: Ezekiel's four-faced angel, "who looks simultaneously to the Orient
and the Occident, to the North and the South."9 Borges seems to point
everywhere, like a man moving in too many directions at once and getting
nowhere. And one might be tempted to decide arbitrarily that one of those
directions of movement is more important than any other, that it "explains"
Borges the critic.10
To understand the premises undergirding Borges' criticism, we must
remember that neither he nor Ezekiel's angel is looking outward, that neither is
actually moving in any direction or toward any goal. A symbol of the aleph, the
angel is stationary, "one of the points in space which contains all points."
(OC, 623) He draws the universe in. Similarly, Borges does not "study"
literature; he draws it in, allowing the heterogeneous and the unorthodox to
mix and mingle, a medley of conversations, tango lyrics, biographies,
philosophies and verses fusing into a uniform experience of poetry. While
most contemporary criticism is prismatic, dividing the pure and unified work
into its spectrum of components, Borges' is just the opposite, functioning like a
convex lens to catch the variegated and unrelated hues about him and fuse
them into a single stream of white light: poetry.
In the following discussion of Borges' criticism, we have made certain
methodological choices some might find unusual. Although Borges claims that
the early books "were written by someone else"(AE, 161), the fact that to a
large degree Borges' essays form a coherent and unified whole. His later
opinions are not identical to his earlier ones, of course ? his reversal on the
issue of committed literature or his changing attitude towards metaphor and
are cases in -- but there is a clear and continuous line of
rhyme point
development running through the whole. And that development has mostly
been a matter of refinement, distance and style, with few radical changes in
substance. We have therefore chosen to draw from all of Borges' works,
without limiting ourselves to those he includes in the Obras completas. In

Literary Theory in Jorge Luis Borges 39
addition, we recognize that in the critical world Borges is amaverick; the term
"eclectic" in its strictest sense cannot be applied to him, for rather than
merging ideas from several critical schools into a particular theory, he has
devised a personal set of assumptions often free of, if not in spite of, outside
influences. If we were to categorize Borges' ideas by using existing critical
terminology, we would unavoidably imply an association with specific
theories and thus deform his ideas. Consequently, we have attempted to avoid
any critical jargon which might identify Borges with a particular school. And
finally we have chosen to take Borges seriously. Unfortunately, Borges' often
deserved reputation as a mischievous games player who enjoys confusing and
deluding his audience has allowed some critics to pick and choose their
materials at will, rejecting as "mischievous" whatever fails to support their
position. Although such thinking is understandable in view of Borges'
apparent inconsistencies and frequent paradoxes, his "games" and "contra
dictions" often result from a peculiar sincerity ? a sincerity untrammeled by
any need to appear consistent or systematic. We must not rule out the
possibility that Borges is frequently quite honest?"so honest that your first
reaction is to doubt him." (BI, xi)
To the extent that Borges has a method, no description of it ismore apt

than his own. "I am a hedonic reader," he writes. "I have never allowed my
sense of duty to interfere with a liking so personal as the acquisition of books,
"
nor did I ever trymy fortune twice with a disagreeable author. (OC, 223) The
key word is, of course, "hedonic," for it simultaneously indicates both his
primary grounds for evaluating literature and "
his motivation for experiencing
it? pleasure. But the simple, homely word reader" is no less important, for it
subtly distinguishes between one who is actively engaged with literature for its
own sake and one committed to the business of studying it.To Borges aesthetic
pleasure is a consequence of activity by the reader ? the perceiving or
" ?
discovering" of poetry and is stimulated by a work much as tactile pleasure
might be stimulated by a fine wine or perfume, or intellectual pleasure by a new
idea. Pleasure arises out of the interaction of the reader and the work.11
It is important to observe that in seeking pleasure Borges is not asking for
any particular kind of pleasure, that he is not asking literature to communicate
or to stimulate any particular emotion or group of emotions. He does not seek
catharsis, for example, nor transport nor religious infection. In fact, we must
dismiss as fruitless all attempts to provide a genealogy of Borges' thought that
refer it to traditional forms of affective theory. Nor is his hedonic criticism a
throwback to the old-fashioned impressionism routed by the New Critics. The
impressionism of a France or a Saintsbury was based on an unexamined
assumption of the ability of superior sensitivity and taste to determine values
and make corrcet aesthetic discriminations. There can, however, be no such
aristocracy of judgment for Borges, for lurking behind his seemingly ingenuous

theory of pleasure are two anarchical principles: a relativistic notion of taste,

and, what is even more radical, a relativistic theory of meaning. First, he
maintains that pleasure is necessarily sui generis, that each pleasurable
response is as worthy of respect as any other, and that aesthetic value, vhich is
based on pleasure, is therefore always relative. This conclusion is epis
temological, not political, but it leads Borges to assert that literature teachers
have no right to impose personal likes or dislikes on their students by insisting
that students read books they do not enjoy. (BI, 137-38) Like the teacher, the
critic who attempts to legislate taste simply fails to allow for differences in the
sources and kinds of pleasure a reader may experience while reading. Second,
Borges maintains that meaning itself is relative to the individual reader: "All
"
reading implies a collaboration and almost a complicity. (OC, 953) A book
"
iswhat the individual reader can make of it. It is more than verbal structure,
or a series of verbal structures; it is a dialogue with the reader which imposes a
peculiar intonation on his voice while leaving durable and changing images in
his memory." (OC, 747) The process of reading is specifically termed here a
entity created through mutual involvement. The reader
"dialogue"--an
cannot be The book may impose a certain tone on the reader's voice,
passive.
but each voice remains his or her own.
reader's
Since Borges is easily one of the best-read writers of our time, the
attribution of influence in his thought is a tricky business. Nonetheless, three
currents in his critical formation deserve special attention: Berkeley an
idealism, Ultraism, and Fritz Mauthner's Pyrrhonic critique of language.
In "La encrucijada de Berkeley" ["Berkeley at the Crossroads"] Borges
comments that Berkeley is "the very source of my own thought." (I, 109) To
be sure, Berkeley and Berkeley's ideas appear throughout his writings, and
Borges' attitude toward literature is partly based on his acceptance of certain
epistemological paradoxes fundamental to Berkeley's idealism.
The depth of Borges' commitment to Berkeley's ideas is perhaps
accounted for by its origin, for he was first introduced to them by his father. An
avid reader and literary enthusiast, the older Borges exposed his son early to
the paradoxes of Zeno and the rudiments of Berkeley an idealism; he also
"
taught him about English literature and about words that are not only ameans
of communication but also magic symbols." (AE, 138) But as might be
expected, Borges was unable to embrace all of Berkeley's metaphysics;
though he accepted the doctrine of esse est percipe, he rejected the good
Bishop's theistic conclusion. The following statement summarizes Borges'
position well:
Perceptibility is the being of things. Things exist only as they are

perceived. Upon that brilliant premise rests the illustrious fabrication
of Berkeley's system, on that short formula he exorcises the fraud of
dualism and discovers for us that reality is not a distant, diffident and
hard-to-decipher riddle, but an intimate closeness, easy and open on

all sides. (I, 110)

From these premises, that perceptibility is the being of things and that reality
exists only within the perceiver, Borges concludes that nothing apart from the
"
human imagination can be considered a source or ground" of art. Art does not
mirror reality in the sense of reflecting something externally present because
reality is a function of the mind and is inextricably linked
"
to imagination. But
"
the fact that reality's ontological foundation rests on perceptibility, the very
fact that makes it "intimate," "easy" and "open" also militates against any
mimetic theory of the truth of art. Mimetic theories are essentially corre
spondence theories, but from a Berkeley an point of view correspondence is
quite irrelevant.
Borges' well-documented association with Ultraism ? or, rather, Borges'
? is a second
particular reactions to Ultraism major source of influence on his
criticism. Itwould be an exaggeration to call Ultraism a school; in reality, the
Ultraists were little more than disparate group of idealistic young men who,
a
like many other idealistic young men, passionately decided to dedicate their
lives to art, truth and beauty, to revolutionize language and poetry, and to
think and write unfettered by the cumbersome rhetoric of previous gene
rations. By stressing what Cansinos-Assens called "perennial literary youth,"
the Ultraists made virtues of particularity and newness, and thereby increased
the importance of the individual reader's response.
Although Borges repudiated Ultraism very early in his career (Inqui
siciones contains articles both supporting and condemning the movement),
several key ideas in his mature critical attitude apparently stem from this
period. In one of Borges' chief contributions to Ultraist thinking, a manifesto
published inNosotros, he enunciated several principles that continued to
inform his work long after he had lost interest in the movement. The lyric, he
argued, should be reduced to its primordial element, the metaphor, thus
leaving the reader's associations free and undetermined, and allowing him to
"
particpate in the creation of the poem. Borges also called for the synthesis of
two or more images into one, thus expanding the faculty of suggestion. Ultraist
poems consist... of a series of metaphors, each of which has its own
"12
suggestivity and comprehends an unedited version of a fragment of life. The
phrase visi?n in?dita suggests dreams, which are unedited by either external
consciousness or internal censors, which are related in some elusive,
analogical way to life and which are uniquely personal.
Borges has since softened his emphasis on metaphor, but he still maintains
that the reader's role in the aesthetic experience is just as important as the
author's. In fact, he seems to suggest that of the three essential components,
writer, reader and text, it is the text that is of least importance. In creative
reading- intelligent, purposeful reading- the mental set of the reader con
trols the apprehension of the material. Thus, the work is not self-determining,
Borges argues, but is rather contingent, its contingency being a primary source

of its vitality. "Literature," he writes is not exhaustible for the simple

reason that a single book is not exhaustible. A book is not an isolated entity: it
is a relationship, it is an axle tree of innumerable realtionships." (OC, 747)
Years later in the prologue toEl elogio de la sombra [InPraise ofDarkness] he
wrote, "A volume, in and of itself, is not an aesthetic experience; it is a
physical object like any other. The aesthetic experience can only occur when
someone writes it or reads it." (OC, 976)13
Initially this seems to be a harmless, common-sense assertion, yet we
see that itplaces Borges in square opposition to theNew Critical stance, which
maintains that aesthetic value is the consequence of some type of verbal
structure or linguistic relationship, that the poem is not a physical object like
any other, but is rather a unique kind of object. Borges cannot accept such an
emphasis on verbal structures because of the skeptical attitude toward
language he has inherited from Mauthner, a third major source of influence on
his criticism.14
Evidence of Borges' interest inMauthner appears in both the early and
late volumes. In Discusi?n, for example, Borges wrote that in perusing his
library he noticed "with awe" that one of the works he has "reread most and
overwhelmed with marginalia" was Mauthner's W?rterbuch der Philosophie
[Dictionary of Philosophy]. (OC, 276) Ronals J. Christ cites this remark as
an example of Borges' unusual enthusiasm for encyclopedias, but Mauthner's
W?rterbuch, in spite of its title, is not a simple dictionary of philosophy. It is
written in the first person from the position of his general critique of language
and represents an extension of his earlier Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache
[Contributions to a Critique of Language] discussing various general
problems of philosophy in brief essay form. Twenty years later, Borges is still
reading the W?rterbuch, citing it in Otras inquisiciones [Other Inquisitions]
as one of the sources of his information about John Wilkins. (OC, 706) More
significantly, his attitude toward the ideal languages ofWilkins, Letellier and
Ochando is identical with Mauthner's attitude: amusement and admiration,
but ultimate resignation to the impossibility of a language representing the
universe in any but an arbitrary manner. Borges dismisses such language with
an humorous list of various chaotic, arbitrary classifications ? Wilkins'
forty
categories, the Chinese Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's
fourteen classes of animals, the Brussels Bibliographical Institute's 1,000
- classifications which support his basic point
subdivisions of the universe
"
that there is no classification in the universe that is not arbitrary and conjec
tural." (OC, 708) Borges agress completely with Mauthner's contention that
an ideal language is impossible "because a logically ordered world catalogue,
on which the ideal language would have to be founded, is still not available, and
because it is impossible to construct such a catalogue, since the Creator was no
clerk."15
Mauthner's general critique emphasized that language describes the
world our senses reveal to us, not necessarily the "real" world. Moreover,

because of the range of sense impressions among different perceivers (a

Berkeley an observation), each person has an essentially unique language
which is only roughly congruent to the language spoken by others. Mauthner
maintains that "correct" speech is an abstraction: "We recognize no correct
language, no fixed and tyrannical general use of language, only countless

usages of language, of which there are as many as people in a populace. These
individual uses of language are never identical."16 Similarly, the truth of any
speech act is also relative to each perceiver because languages are incapable of
articulating any truths, if by truths we mean correspondence to reality. What
we normally mean by saying a statement is true, according to Mauthner, is
not that it corresponds to reality, but rather that it is coherent with our general
speech system. This means that hermeneutics can never be a precise science.
Interpretations are always personal. We might explain Mauthner's point a bit
further by paraphrasing Borges: a speech act, in and of itself, has no meaning
or value; speech occurs only when someone hears it. Or as Mauthner himself
"
says, Without the readiness of a fellow-human audience [individual speech]
"n
would be a drum-beat in a vacuum. We can see that accepting such a view
of language would force Borges to conclude that the meaning of a work of art is
relative to the individual perceiver, that the printed page, the volume, is in a
curious sense the least important part of the aesthetic experience. And we have
observed that these are the conclusions Borges reached.
Mauthner's views have also colored Borges' attitude toward the critic's
second major activity: valuation. We have already noted Borges' desire "to
record observations" and not "dictate norms." InMauthner's analysis there
is nothing else the critic can do: all judgments are relative. He paraphrases
Hobbes, saying that only tautological propositions are true. "We know of no
judgment other than linguistic ones; thus, true ana false are attributes of
speech, of words, of sentences."18 Mauthner sees language as an excellent
tool for expressing poetry and religion because, he maintains, in those areas
correspondence to reality is not at issue. But, he adds, no other use of language
is dependable.
Again Borges' position is similar. Borges sees philosophy, theology and
science as art forms, no more closely related to ultimate truth than is fantastic
literature. He does not discount them, but he does not think they deserve any
more respect than a poem or a story. They are important primarily for their
aesthetic worth, for "the marvelous and singular qualities they enclose,"
(OC, 775) and are best understood as branches of fantastic art. InDiscusi?n
[Discussion], referring to the deficiencies in his anthology of fantastic
literature, he writes:
I lament the guilty omission of the unsuspected and greatest masters of

the genre: Parmenides, Plato, Johannes Scotus Erigena, Albertus
Magnus, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Francis Bardley. In reality, what
are the marvels ofWells or of Edgar Allan Poe . . . compared with the

invention of God, with the laborious theory of a being who is

somehow three and who lives in solitude outside of time?(OC, 280
81)19
Borges does not regard this fantastic quality as a defect in philosophy. As he

told Richard B?rgin, he derives great enjoyment from philosophical disqui
sitions, the same kind of enjoyment he gets from detective novels and science
" "
fiction, enjoyment of the imagination. The arguments are all meaningless as
"
proofs of anything, of course, and cannot be taken too seriously. I should say
that I believe in God in spite of theology." (BI, 153)
Borges also regards the abstract elements of science as unprovable,
though aesthetically pleasing, constructions. And he views science not as an
expanding " body of knowledge, but rather as an ever-enlarging sphere of
mystery: Science is a finite sphere which grows in infinite space; with each
new expansion it touches a greater area of the unknown, but the unknown is
inexhaustible." (OC, 261) Unhappy with those who think they understand
life, who have neither a sense of the underlying irrationality of their
explanation nor an awareness of the artificial nature of language, who sacrifice
the aesthetic appeal of science for a false notion of predictive reliability, Borges
once attacked atomic theory as a defense of indefensible assumptions. (1,112)
Similarly, he condemns the lack of "poetic sensitivity" in people who find
beauty only in a " truth of correspondence. With reference to Quevedo, for
instance, he says, In the history of philosophy, there are doctrines, probably
false, which exercise a dark enchantment on man's . . .
imagination Quevedo,
who only studied the truth, is invulnerable to this enchantment." (OC, 661)
In order to overcome the essential "unreality" of literary experience and
render ourselves vulnerable to its dark enchantments, we must approach the
work in an attitude of faith: we must trust the creator. This is not merely
Coleridge's "willing suspension" again. As Borges indicates, we are not just
passively accepting what is given, but are actively investing an intelligent
acquiescence into the experience. We are not simply spectators, but parti
cipants.
Recently, some critics have claimed that the essential personality of an

author is present in all his works and is directly apprehensible by the reader.20
Borges takes a different view. In discussing his reaction toWhitman he writes:
Whitman derives . . . a personal relationship with each future reader.

He confuses himself with him, converses with him, with Whitman . . .
In this way he creates himself in the eternal Whitman, in that friend
who is an old American poet of 1800-and-something, and also his
legend, and also each one of us, and also happiness. (OC, 253)
In other words, Whitman's enduring qualities are not a consequence of his
vivid communication of personality, but rather of the inextricable merger of his

personality with the reader's. His work is "an axle tree of innumerable
relationships," like the work of any great author. And apart from the
relationships thus created, the work does not exist as an aesthetic object. The
relationships that obtain between the author and work and between the work
and the reader determine the nature of the aesthetic experience. Borges is not
" " "
committing the affective fallacy, by perpetrating a confusion between the
poem and its results."21 His analysis suggests, rather, that it is impossible to
separate the poem and its results.
Clearly, the heart of the problem in aesthetic communication is that in
order to say anything verifiably true about literature, we must separate the
object which is the content of our communication from the subject who does
the communicating. In other words, we must separate the analyzing instru
ment-the critic's mind ?from what is being analyzed. But this, Borges
would argue, is ultimately impossible. On the one hand, we have a physical
?
object of certain analyzable properties any particular poem or story which
has properties of meter, assonance, imagery, characterization, and so forth,
properties which are roughly cross-verifiable and which we can deal with
empirically. But on the other hand, we have a fluctuating psychological
condition of almost unanalyzable complexity, a condition too complicated and
fluid to make practical the complete definition of it necessary for a deter
ministic and objective account of the meaning of the aesthetic object for the
reader. In fact, Borges goes further and doubts whether we can assert that such
a thing as a unified personality even exists. Because we have no reason to
believe in the independent existence of things we do not or cannot perceive, he
questions the existence of personality, which depends on the circular
arrangement of perceiver perceiving self. In an argument somewhat indebted
to Hume, Borges points out that since both the perceiver and the perceived
depend on each other for existence, neither can be independent of the other,
and therefore neither is a reliable witness to defend the existence of the other.
(I, 84-95) Borges is arguing from the Berkeley an tradition here, but he could
have reached the same conclusions by following Mauthner's lead. Mauthner
has, in fact, argued that psychology is impossible because our language is
"
based entirely on the sensory observation of the outer" events. But there is no
sense that observes the processes of thinking and feeling, and as a result, our
is always metaphorical and inadequate when used to describe
"language
inner" events. Borges has quoted Chesterton approvingly more than once on
"
the inadequacy of any language, an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals,"
representing the "numberless and bewildering" shades of the soul." (OC,
672: OC,709)
When these two fundamental elements, object and perceiving mind, come
together and interpenetrate, they transform each other. Neither is quite the
same as it was before encountering the other. We can still make broad
generalizations about the object, analyzing its style, the tradition which it

represents or from which it is divergent, the process by which itwas created, its
publication history, and so on. But in so doing we are dealing with the art object
in terms of its external features only. When we attempt to interpret meaning or
determine value, especially in highly complex and evocative works, the
separation between object and mind
perceiving " becomes increasingly difficult
tomaintain and eventually collapses. The being" of art objects is definitely in
their being perceived. It is in this sense that Borges' remark about the
collaboration and complicity involved in reading is to be understood. Borges
" "
offers a concrete example in Kafka and his precursors where he argues that
Kafka "created" his literary genealogy. That is, once we have read Kafka ?
once the objects he placed before us have come in contact with our perceiving
minds - we are forced to look at the writers preceding him in a different way.
(OC, 710-712)
Just as several intransigent facts ? the particularity of language to its user,
the uniqueness of perception ? create a difference between two readers of the
same work, so there is a difference between different generations of readers.
" "
Each generation reads the great books in a different way, says Borges. As a
"
result, a book that wants to survive is a book one should be able to read in a
"
variety of fashions. (OC ,133) This is a new way to look at the old question of
horizontal versus vertical popularity, the old debate between the voxpopuli
" "
and the test of time. Dr. Johnson and his contemporaries were quite right in
disparaging metaphysical poetry; Eliot and his were equally right in elevating
the metaphysicals to a previously unknown height. What underlies the whole
issue, of course, is that because of the particularity of perception that
distinguishes among individuals and among generations, those works are
"greatest" that appeal most widely, that are most "ambiguous" in their
meaning. "The work that survives," Borges tells us, "is always capable of an
infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is everything for everyone, like the Apostle; it
is a mirror that proclaims the features of the reader and it is also a map of the
world." (OC, 698) We should note that Borges' use of ambiguity is quite
different from Empson's.21 Empson is talking about syntactical structure; the
application is broader for Borges. And we should note that in positing his
theory of the aesthetic importance of ambiguity, Borges remains consistent
with his fundamental principles, with the modified Berkeley an epistemology
from which his thinking springs. As he observes, "this final uncertainty is one
of the features of the most perfect creatures of art, because it is also a feature of
reality."22 Borges has taken the ancient theory of mimesis and placed it
squarely in the middle of the Fun House, where all the mirrors throw back
distortions, and one's own image depends on his perspective.
Impressionistic criticism tempers its underlying hedonism with an appeal

to educated, informed or otherwise superior taste; Borges, as we have seen,
makes no such appeal because tastes necessarily differ. But Borges does not
advocate complete critical anarchy either. Instead, he combines a doctrine of

the particularity and primacy of individual perception and a skeptical attitude

toward language, all of which tend toward relativism in both value and
meaning, with a notion of archetypal patterns in art.
"Destiny is satisfied," Borges has said, "in repeating forms, and that
which happened one time happens many times." (OC, 157-58) Those
repeated forms thai give an apparent pattern to experience Borges calls
- in
archetypes, and he sees them everywhere everyday living as.well as in art.
This view represents a fundamental shift in attitude for a man who once
regarded archetypes as "museum pieces" which he now thinks of "as
living... in an everlasting life of their own, a timeless life." (BI, 27) At
moments he seems to suggest that they also have a will of their own, a will
which forces the artist to express them. In the Charbonnier interview, Borges
responded to critics who see his stories as mathematical games unrelated to life
by noting that "the games are not arbitrary. ... A necessity, if the word isn't
too strong, has driven me to write them." (CI, 21) In a similar vein, while
discussing Schopenhauer, he hints that the eternal forms are volitional - an
argument influenced no doubt by Schopenhauer's concept of Wille:
Schopenhauer has written that history is an interminable and per

plexing dream of all human generations; in dreams there are forms
which repeat themselves, perhaps there is nothing else but forms; one
of them is the process which proclaims this page. (OC, 739)
Borges' acceptance of archetypes was a later development of his criticism.

In Inquisiciones he had explicitly denied any connection between poetry and
" "
mysticism," and sneered at the discovery of" occult affinities" and hidden
similarities." Since this was also the period of his earliest and most orthodox
Berkeleyan idealism, it is not surprising to find him also writing that "in
reality, there are no such patterns and underground twists, and those who
believe in the soul of things are completely mistaken. Things exist only as our
consciousness observes them, and they have no autonomous residuum." (I,
156) But Borges soon became aware of real, yet unarticulated limits
circumscribing and shaping his own art. Two years later inEl tama?o de mi
esperanza [The Size of My Hope] he writes:
It is a painful but inescapable truth to know that the individual can

attain few adventures in the practice of art. Each period has its
particular gesture . . .All new experience is inaccessible and our
freest movements slide according to predetermined destinies like
chess pieces. (TE, 72-73)
Borges thus admitted for the first time that external forces operate in the
creation of a work of art. He seems to imply, however, that one can come to an
understanding of those forces, of the pre-existent patterns that emerge in the
work, and perform accordingly. He later amended even this position, not by
denying the patterns, but by granting them a kind of will of their own and

questioning anyone's ability to understand them fully.

What Borges accomplishes by combining the various features of his
skeptical relativism with a notion of archetypal patterns is to allow a work to be
simultaneously unique and universal. Such a paradox obviously requires
comment. Perhaps it can best be explained by positing a distinction between
the referential meaning of a work, the "reality" of the work, which is always a
transformation of an archetypal pattern that has appeared countless times
before, and its signification, the personal, value-laden form it assumes in the
eyes of the individual reader. Meaning is tied to the universal cognitive core of
the archetype underlying a particular work. Signification is the unique,
emotional fleshing-out which occurs during the dialogue between that work
and a particular reader. Thus, the apprehension of meaning will be similar, if
not identical, regardless of how different two readers of a work may be; the
experience of signification will be unique no matter how similar those readers
are.
Once again the percipient's role is crucial: faith precedes knowledge. By

believing in the possibility of order, the reader helps create from the materials
of art an analogue for ordered reality. This would appear to contradict amajor
point of several of the best analyses currently available on Borges. Ana Maria
Barrenechea, for example, makes much of the search for the definitive book in
" "
The Library of Babel, for the point where all points of the universe coincide
" "
in The Aleph, or for the labyrinthian laws that govern the function of" The
Lottery in Babylon." She claims that each story portrays a search of the
human yearning for a sense of order in the universe, and that the fact that these
keys are never found symbolizes the futility of the quest and the inadequacy of
"
all human institutions and man-made explanations, that for Borges living is a
chaotic and arbitrary mass in which the predominant characteristics are the
marks of disorder and chance ? the nightmare, irrationality and madness,
Man's solitude and helplessness."23 Using similar evidence, Carter
"
Wheelock also claims that for Borges art is not truth and does not seek truth.
It does not transcend anything, but undercuts everything."24 But two points
are fundamental. First, all of the key symbols, the book, the aleph, the laws, are
symbols of order. And second, their existence is never denied. Thus, behind
the surface theme of a universe in chaos and of humanity's inability to
comprehend it, is a supposition of the possibility of order and purpose, the
possibility of a telic universe. That this supposition can never be more than a
possibility should be a logical conclusion, given Borges' epistemological
assumptions. Although in his earlier studies on Borges, Jaime Alazraki
followed the nihilistic tilt of Barrenechea and Wheelock, in a more recent
article, he comes closer to our position by arguing that although, for Borges,
man's concept of reality is indeed "faulty architecture," there is in fact
another world which constantly "besieges him and forces him to feel the
enormity of its presence. And between these worlds, between two dreams (one

dreamed by God and the other by man), human history takes place."25
The reader's experience of the work of art is itself an analogue for his or
her experience of reality. Borges early adopted the position that literature is no
less real than life. Recalling his childhood, Borges declared, "If Iwere asked
"
to name the chief event inmy life, I should say my father's library. (AE, 140,
emphasis added) As he explained to Richard B?rgin:
I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or
falling in love .. .
Many people are apt to think of real life on the one
side, that means toothache, headache, travelling, and so on, and then
you have on the other side . . . imaginary life and fancy and that means
the art. But I don't think that distinction holds water. I think that
evrything is a part of life. (BI, 35)
Literary creations like Don Quixote and Hamlet are no less real to the reader
for not having had corporeal existence. Indeed, Borges argues that they are
perhaps more real than the countless millions who lived and died, who had a
meaning in the world, but who never had a "literary" existence, a significa
tion. Borges asks why Hamlet, for example, should be any less real than Lloyd
George.26 We meet Hamlet, hear Hamlet, create an image of Hamlet, are
affected by Hamlet. Surely something so influential cannot be completely
unreal. Moreover, Hamlet is so significant tomost readers or viewers that they
willingly assist in creating an ordered world for him, joining their desire with
the author's intentions:
Our belief in the novelist redeems all negligences and faults. Of what
importance are unbelievable and clumsy happenings if we are sure
that the author has created them, not to upset our good faith, but to
define his characters? Of what importance are the puerile scandals
and confused crimes of the supposed Court of Denmark ifwe believe
in Prince Hamlet? (OC, 675)
The experience of reality, Borges would argue, is no different. We ignore those
coincidences which appear meaningless, convinced that they have not been
thrust upon us to destroy our faith in an underlying pattern and order of the
world; and we do not ignore those coincidences which appear to confirm our
belief in an underlying pattern to life. (BI, 126)
Certain aspects of the work are, perhaps, external to the reader's
consciousness - the formal
elements built into itby the author. But that cannot
be established and is, finally, irrelevant because both meaning and signifi
cation are dependent on perception. The perception of meaning, for example,
involves the perception of cognitive patterns external to the individual - the
-
archetypes but apprehended, understood, transformed in a unique way.
Speaking to Charbonnier, Borges said, "The interpretations of a story are
always posterior to the story. . . .That is not my affair, it is your affair as a
reader, as a critic . . .The important thing is that the story continues to live in

the consciousness of others. If the interpretations are multiple, all the better. I
refuse none of them." (CI, 119-20) Remembering his belief that in order to
endure a work must have an infinite and plastic ambiguity, we can see why
Borges would, in fact, welcome multiple interpretations, and why he would not
see the particularizing of a universal foundation of meaning as a loss. As
"
Rodriguez Monegal has observed, for Borges the relativity of the literary text
corresponds to the relativity of the universe."27
Signification is also based on a universal foundation, even though each
signification is unique. That universal foundation is primeval human nature.
Borges "claims that the most arcane and private elements of each person's soul
are the public property" of every human being, and what the individual feels
most intensely are precisely those emotions which were "enwombed with the
spcies." (1,145) But they are filtered through the variable lens of perception,
and thus made particular to each case of perception. The only innovations
worth considering are introduced by the reader, not the poet. "Individual
experiments are . . .minimal, except when the innovator resigns himself to
carve out a museum piece, a game to be discussed by literary historians or
merely to create a scandal." (OC, 857) Borges has stated this more
prescriptively in an interview:
I don't think a poet says or should say new things. He should express
instead what all men at some time have felt or will feel in the course of
their lives .. .The rest ismere novelty and can only be of interest to
historians of literature, not to literature itself.28
As an analogue for reality, literature possesses both a cognitive impor

tance in itsmeaning, and an affective importance in its particular signification.
By combining both aspects, art can help define the human future. Borges notes
that no society has been without its artists, who bring into clarity a vision of
something" eternal that is beyond, perhaps even apart from us. Borges told
B?rgin, I am interested in literature, not only for its own sake, but also as one
of the destinies of man ... Imean in the fact of man dedicating himself to his
dreams, then trying to work them out. And doing his best tomake other people
share them." (BI, 143) The vital question at this point, however, is whether
literature as adestiny, as a vision of archetypal patterns, also possesses truth.
In view of Borges' reputation as a skeptic, and given his cardinal

? the
principles primary role of perception, the particularity of each indivi
dual's perceptions, the unique, limited and arbitrary nature of language, and
the independently volitional, formative function of the archetypes ? the
question of truth in literature may seem strange. We have already seen that no
mimetic theory of truth in art will do. Those theories that equate truth with the
accurate representation of reality are impossible because of Borges' first three
principles. Reality external to consciousness cannot be known, and reality as
known is an individual construction. Similarly, those theories in which the

relevation of an ideal reality is the measure of truth in art are also impossible
because of Borges' special notion of archetypes and the virtual inseparability
of meaning from signification. The problem arises from the fact that both
mimetic and idealistic theories of art rest on an implicit assumption of
correspondence between belief and fact. But because Borges' epistemology
makes it impossible to discover those facts as they exist independent of thought
or perception, the correspondence notion of truth is simply inapplicable to art
as he sees it.More compatible with Borges' thinking would be the notion of
truth chosen by the major rationalistic philosophers, including Spinoza, Hegel
and Bradley; that is, a coherence theory of iruth in art.
Such a theory is an intellectual cousin toMauthner s theory of truth in
language as coherence with the general speech system of me individual auditor.
More broadly stated, such a theory defines truth as the logical coherence of a
system of statements, and the truth of any particular statement is gauged by
whether it coheres with an already established system. For Borges the truth of
art as destiny lies in the coherence of the art object itself, and the further
coherence of the object's signification for the individual reader with that
reader's concept of the order of the universe. Like meaning and value, truth is
located in the reader's mind, arising from the ability of the perceiving intellect
tomake sense of what it perceives. In other words, what raises coincidences to
the level of pattern, what invests them with teleological possibilities is the
constructive power of the mind. Coincidences in life or literature for which the
mind cannot or does not construct explanatory patterns that are internally
coherent remain simply puzzling or irrelevant anomalies.
Critics have often referred to Borges' metaphysical speculations as
intellectual games. But it is clear that they are more than that. In view of his
numerous discussions of patterns, order, archetypes, cycles and the like, those
"
who insist that Borges really" sees the universe as hopeless chaos are simply
ignoring overwhelming evidence. To cite but one example, Borges' preoccu
pation in various essays on time has been with the concept of temporal cycles.
(OC, 385-96; 757-71) He rejects astrological cycles and the kind of order
astrology would impose on man, and likewise rejects Nietzshe's notion of a
finite range of patterns and experiences, the limitations of which give rise to
coincidences, cycles and the like. Instead, he advances a modified, softened
version of Nietzsche's position. The life patterns are not rigid. Similarity, not
identity, is eternal. Just as the themes of art are limited to infinite variations on
a few archetypal pattens and situations, all lives achieve a certain
similarity
without being absolute repetitions of each ether, a view of circular time Borges
"
calls the least frightening and melodramatic, but also the only one imaginable.
(OC, 394) Thus, Borges does not deny an order in temporality; he simply
offers an alternative view to the one commonly accepted. The famous
concluding paragraph of "A New Refutation of Time" is instructive,
particularly since it follows a discussion of universal chaos based on

Berkeley an principles:
And yet, and yet... to deny temporal succession, to deny the self, to
deny the astronomical universe are apparent desperations and secret
consolations. Our destiny... is not frightening because of its un
reality; it is frightening because it is irreversible and made of steel.
Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is the river which
carries me, but I am the river; it is the tiger which dismembers me, but
I am the tiger; it is the fire which comsumes me, but I am the fire. The
world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. (OC, 771)
Obviously, Borges recognized fundamental paradoxes, particularly that time

simultaneously creates and destroys us, but as the last sentence clearly
indicates, he is not interested in retreating from the world, no matter how
difficult and confusing a world it may be. It is far more important to seek
destiny and attempt to understand it- that is, to see how it relates logically
and coherently to our concept of the rest of the world.
For Borges, the world as empirically perceived, as understood through
correspondence, is indeed chaotic, but the symbols, the myths, the coin
cidences, the vaguely perceived cycles of life and identity ? all of which he
sees as prerequisites for art - suggest an order beyond the chaos. The artist's
need to create is in fact a relentless search for order, or as Borges has said,
"the vocation of resolving the world."29
a fantastic story ... I am writing something that stands for

If I write
my feelings, or for my thoughts. So ... in a sense, a fantastic story is
as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story.
Because after all, circumstances come and and remain .. .
go, symbols
When we write about the fantastic, we're trying to get away from
time and to write about everlasting things . . We
. do our best to be in
eternity, though we may not quite succeed in our attempt.30
Borges argues that art must be considered real because itmay be our only view
of an elusive reality, an instance of the reflection being clearer than the original
image, of a fiction which reveals fact. The historical Macbeth, for example,
can never be as visible as Shakespeare's quasi-factual recreation of him, nor is
he ultimately as important; as Borges tells us, "the important thing is the
transformation an idea can work on us." (OC, 253)
As a conceptual system, literature serves a functional purpose, simul
taneously delighting us and helping us order our experience, but like other
forms of knowledge it cannot resolve all problems, cannot offer absolute
certainty. By offering specific answers and repressing the creative role of the
individual perceiver, science raises more questions than it resolves. When
assuming a correspondence theory of truth and ignoring the particularity of
meaning and value, both philosophy and theology generate innumerable

contradictory and irrefutable answers. But by giving "ambiguous" answers

and capitalizing on the uniqueness of perception and affect, art offers us a
significant and singular source of knowledge. In Borges' words:
All forms of art have their value in themselves and not in some
content. . . states of
"conjectural" Music, happiness, mythology,
faces carved by time, certain sunsets in certain places, all want to tell
us something, or they already told us something we shouldn't have
lost, or they are about to say something; this imminence of a
revelation that is not yet produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic experience.
(OC,635)
We have seen that Borges' criticism is both deep and complex. And we
have seen that Borges is not a neo-Crocean, not a New Critic, not a
structuralist. He is Borges. His methods and ideas are no doubt unorthodox,
but few have lived literature as intensely as he, for literature inBorges' mind is
a way of living and perhaps life itself. His hedonics seek nothing from literature
beyond literature itself, but given the views outlined above, his position in no
way restricts literature in the traditional sense of hedonsim. Borges has
expanded the meaning of pleasure, and in so doing he offers us an image of
himself: a man who despite myriad personal frustrations has lived the world of
letters like few in history - the hedonic reader who reminds us that his is also a
viable approach to art.
Yale University
NOTES
1 Jorge Luis Borges, El tama?o de mi esperanza (Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1926), p.
107. Hereafter cited in the text as TE. Because of our desire for stylistic consistency and
literal meaning, we depart from common practice by using our own translations throughout.
2 C?sar Fern?ndez Moreno, "Esquema de Borges" ["A Schema of Borges"), Ciudad, 2-3
(1955), 22.
3 Personal interview with Borges, Buenos Aires, 12 August 1975.
4 Borges, "An Autobiographical Essay," The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933-1969 (New
York: Bantam, 1971), p. 161. Hereafter cited in the text as AE.
5 Personal interview with Borges, Buenos Aires, 12 April 1975.
6 Georges Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Jorge Luis Borges with Jorge Luis
[Interviews
Borges| (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), p. 30. Hereafter cited in the text as CI.
7 Richard B?rgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1969), p. 95. Hereafter cited in the text as BI.
8 Borges, Inquisiciones (Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1925), p. 62. Hereafter cited in the
text as I.
9 Borges, "El Aleph," Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emec? Editores, 1974), p. 625.
Hereafter cited in the text as OC.
10 Such has been the error of several well-meaning critics. Thomas Hart, Jr., for example,

asserts that "the most imporatant influence on Borges' criticism is doubtless that of
Benedetto Croce," without realizing that much of the evidence he cites inevitably argues
against his own thesis. (See Thomas Hart, Jr., "The Literary Criticism of Jorge Luis
Borges," MLN, 78 (1963), 490.)

Regarding Hart's unfortunate conclusion, Emir
"
Rodriguez Monegal observes that Borges' critical thought is complicated and allows for the
simultaneous presence of contrary elements. Those who read him literally (as Hart almost
always does) could demonstrate almost anything, inciuding that Borges derives from
Croce." (See Emir Rodriguez Monegal, "Borges como cr?tico literario" ["Borges as a
Literary Critic"], La palabra y elhombre, 31(1964), 413.) Elsewhere, finds David Foster
an implied structuralism in Borges' work, (See David William Foster, "Borges and
Structuralism: Towards an Implied Poetics," Modern Fiction Studies, 19 (1973), 341
351.) And in a remarkable procrustean effort, Katharine Phillips concludes that Borges is
essentially a New Critic. (See Katharine

Phillips, "Borges K. as Concommittant [sic]
Critic," Arizona Latin American 1 (Tempe: Center
Studies, for Latin American Studies,
Arizona State University, 1973), 18. In fact, Borges seriously questions basic premises of
"
the New Criticism, as witnessed by his delightful article La supersticiosa ?tica del lector"
["The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader"]. (OC, 202-205)

11 although far from identical, Borges' ideas on pleasure in reading can be profitably
compared with those of Roland Barthes, particularly with regards to reading as a total
experience which is ultimately impoverished when broken into its several components. See
Roland Barthes, Le plaisir de texte (Paris: Editions du Seuxi, 1973).
12 Borges, "Ultra?smo," Nosotros, 39 (1921), 468. The Spanish term visi?n in?dita is
somewhat ambiguous and might be rendered "unrecorded view" or even "unpublished
view." The phrase's context, however, with its stress on free, imaginative association,
dictates the translation offered above, "unedited vision."
13 Using largely different material, Emir Rodriguez Monegal reinforces many of our
observations concerning Borges' views on the role of the reader. See Emir Rodriguez
Monegal, "Borges: the reader as writer," TriQuarterly, 25 (1972), 102-143.

14 It should, perhaps, be unnecessary to draw this distinction, but "verbal structures" is
not a synonym for "style." In spite of his many essays and short notes on the problem of
style, and in spite of the beneficial influence Borges' writing has had on twentieth-century
Spanish prose, Borges does not a purely

adopt formalist attitude toward the question of
aesthetic value. Although some critics
would like to identify Borges with the Argentine
chapter of the New Criticism or the South American wing of Russian Formalism, the fact is
that Borges absorbed too much from Mauthner to ever feel comfortable with formalist
approaches to art. For a helpful survey of Mauthner's work, see Gershon Wiler,
Mauthner's Critique of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970).
15 Fritz Mauthner, W?rterbuch der philosophie, 2nd ed., Ill (Leipzig: Felix Meiner,
1924), p. 317.
16 Mauthner, Beitrage zu einer Kritic der Spracht, 3rd ed., II (Leipzig: Felix Meiner,
1923), p. 155.
17 Ibid., p. 79.
18 Mauthner, W?rterbuch, 111,410.
19 Borges made a similar about point
theology in an interview with Jean Milleret:
-- even -
"Theology as a philosophical system of my favorito authors belongs to fantastic
literature . . .The notion .of an all-powerful, omniscient is much more than
being surprising
all the caprices of science fiction ... A book like Ethics is much more fantastic in
Spinoza's
"
this sense than the works of Poe or Wells. Jean Milleret, Entretiens avec Jorge Luis Borges
(Paris: Editions Belfond, 1967), pp. 144-45.

20 This viewpoint is characteristic of the so-called Geneva school. J. Hillis Miller, The
Disappearance of God (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963) is a notable
example, particularly Miller's comments on DeQuincey.
21 W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, The Verbal Icon (Lexington: Univ. of
Kentucky Press, 1954), p. 21.
"
22 Borges and Margarita Guerrero, El Mart?n Fierro, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Columba, 1960), p. 62.
23 Ana Maria Barrenechea, Borges, The Labyrinth Maker, ed. and trans, by Robert Lima
(New York: New York Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 50-51.
24 Carter Wheelock, The Mythmaker (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 11.
1969), p.
25 Jaimie La prosa
Alazraki, narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges The Prose Fiction
[ of Jorge
Luis Borges], 2nd ed. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1974), p. 294.
26 Patricia Marx and John Simon, "Jorge Luis Borges: An Interview," 25
Commonweal,
October 1968, 108.
27 Rodriguez Monegal, "Borges como critico literario," 414.
28 Cesar Fernandez Moreno, of Labyrinths: An Interview with
"Weary Jorge Luis
Borges," Encounter, 32 (1969), p. 4.
29 Borges, El idioma de los argentinos the Argentinians]
[The Language of (Buenos
Aires: M. Gleizer, 1929), p. 7.
30 Marx and Simon, 108.


Nicolas Shumway & T. S. - Literary Theory in Borges

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Nicolas Shumway & T. S. - Literary Theory in Borges

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The Hedonic Reader: Literary Theory in Jorge Luis Borges

Author(s): Nicolas Shumway and Thomas Sant

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Neither you nor L, George Frederick William Hegel,

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To the extent that Borges has a method, no description of it ismore apt

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theory of pleasure are two anarchical principles: a relativistic notion of taste,

Perceptibility is the being of things. Things exist only as they are

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all sides. (I, 110)

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of its vitality. "Literature," he writes is not exhaustible for the simple

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because of the range of sense impressions among different perceivers (a

language, no fixed and tyrannical general use of language, only countless

I lament the guilty omission of the unsuspected and greatest masters of

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invention of God, with the laborious theory of a being who is

Borges does not regard this fantastic quality as a defect in philosophy. As he

Recently, some critics have claimed that the essential personality of an

Whitman derives . . . a personal relationship with each future reader.

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This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

Impressionistic criticism tempers its underlying hedonism with an appeal

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the particularity and primacy of individual perception and a skeptical attitude

Schopenhauer has written that history is an interminable and per

Borges' acceptance of archetypes was a later development of his criticism.

It is a painful but inescapable truth to know that the individual can

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questioning anyone's ability to understand them fully.

Once again the percipient's role is crucial: faith precedes knowledge. By

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

As an analogue for reality, literature possesses both a cognitive impor

In view of Borges' reputation as a skeptic, and given his cardinal

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

Obviously, Borges recognized fundamental paradoxes, particularly that time

a fantastic story ... I am writing something that stands for

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

contradictory and irrefutable answers. But by giving "ambiguous" answers

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:26 PM

Borges," MLN, 78 (1963), 490.)

essentially a New Critic. (See Katharine

["The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader"]. (OC, 202-205)

Monegal, "Borges: the reader as writer," TriQuarterly, 25 (1972), 102-143.

Spanish prose, Borges does not a purely

(Paris: Editions Belfond, 1967), pp. 144-45.

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