Collected Fictions (78 page)

These notes are intended only to supply information that a Latin American (and especially Argentine or Uruguayan) reader would have and that would color or determine his or her reading of the stories.

Generally, therefore, the notes cover only Argentine history and culture; I have presumed the reader to possess more or less the range of general or world history or culture that JLB makes constant reference to, or to have access to such reference books and other sources as would supply any need there. There is no intention here to produce an "annotated Borges," but rather only to illuminate certain passages that might remain obscure, or even be misunderstood, without that information.

For these notes, I am deeply indebted to
A Dictionary of Borges
by Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Hughes (London: Duckworth, 1990). Other dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, biographies, and works of criticism have been consulted, but none has been as thorough and immediately useful as the
Dictionary of Borges.
In many places, and especially where I quote Fishburn and Hughes directly, I cite their contribution, but I have often paraphrased them without direct attribution; I would not want anyone to think, however, that I am unaware or unappreciative of the use I have made of them. Any errors are my own responsibility, of course, and should not be taken to reflect on them or their work in any way.

Another book that has been invaluable is Emir Rodriguez Monegal's
Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary
Biography
(New York: Paragon Press, [paper] 1988), now out of print. In the notes, I have cited this work as "Rodriguez Monegal, p. x."

The names of Arab and Persian figures that appear in the stories are taken, in the case of historical persons, from the English transliterations of Philip K. Hitti in his work
History of the Arabs from the
Earliest Times to the Present
(New York: Macmillan, 1951). (JLB himself cites Hitti as an authority in this field.) In the case of fictional characters, the translator has used the system of transliteration implicit in Hitti's historical names in comparison with the same names in Spanish transliteration.—
Translator.

For the peculiarities of the text of the fictions in this volume, the reader is referred to A Note on the Translation.

* Evaristo Carriego:
Carriego (1883-1912) was in fact a popular poet and playwright, and the "particular biography" was the one Borges himself wrote of him (published 1930). Carriego was only a mediocre poet, perhaps, and he left but a single volume
(Misas herejes,
"Heretical Masses") upon his early death by tuberculosis, but his ties to "old Buenos Aires," and especially to the lower-class (and mostly Italian) suburb of Palermo, made him an important figure for Borges. While it is probably exaggerated to say that much of JLB's fascination with the
compadre
(see the note to the title of "Man on Pink Corner" below) and the knife fights and tangos that are associated with that "type" can be traced to Carriego, there is no doubt that as an example of the literary possibilities to which such subject matter can be put, Carriego was very important to JLB and JLB's imagination. Carriego was also the first
professional
writer Borges had ever run across, a man who made his living at writing, and not some "mere" amateur; he held out therefore the possibilities of a true literary "career" to match Borges's clear literary "calling."

* Baltasar Gradan:
Gracián (1601-1658) was a Jesuit priest and a writer (and sometime aesthetician) of the baroque. His name is associated with a treatise called
Agudeza yarte de ingenio
("Keenness of Mind and the Art of Wit"), and with the Spanish baroque poets Francisco Quevedo and Luis de Góngora.

* Pedro Figari: figari
(1861-1938) was a Uruguayan painter "who used fauvist techniques [Rodriguez Monegal, p. 194]," (this perhaps explains his success in Paris, where he lived from 1925 to 1933) and who spent an important part of his life in Buenos Aires (1921-1925). Borges knew the painter rather well and wrote an introdution to a book on him; Figari was also feted by the literary group associated with the review
Martín Fierro,
of which Borges was an important member. His work "was inspired by the life of Negroes and gauchos"
(Oeuvres complètes,
vol. I, ed. Jean Pierre Bernés [Paris: Gallimard, p.1489].

* Vicente Rossi:
Rossi (1871-1945) was the author of a volume titled
Cosas de negros
("Negro Matters" [1926]), to which this mention surely points, but he also produced the first reference book on the birth and development of Argentine theater and an important book on the gaucho. He was, then, something of a folklorist and literary historian. In
Evaristo Carriego,
Borges calls Rossi "our best writer of combat prose."

* Antonio ("Falucho") Ruiz:
"Falucho"(d.1824) was a black Argentine soldier who fought in the wars of independence. His statue once stood near that of General San Martin near the center of Buenos Aires.

* The stout bayonet charge of the regiment of "Blacks and Tans"... against that famous hill near Montevideo:
On the last day of 1812 a troop of soldiers made up of Negroes and mulattoes (the reference to the English military group organized to fight the Irish independence uprising is the translator's, but it is almost inevitable, and the irony of the situation would not be lost on Borges; see the story "Theme of the Hero and Traitor" in
Fictions),
under the leadership of the Argentine general Miguel Estanislao Soler, defeated the Spanish troops at the Cerrito, a prominent hill overlooking Montevideo.

* Lazarus Morell:
This particular rogue's true name seems to have been John A. Murrell (Bernard De Voto,
Mark
Twain's America
[Boston: Little, Brown, 1932], pp. 16-17 et seq.) or Murell (Mark Twain,
Life on the Mississippi,
intra. James M. Cox [New York: Penguin, 1984 (orig. pubi, in United States by James R. Osgood in 1883)].) Interestingly, Twain never gives the rogue's first name; it is possible, then, that JLB, needing a name, took "Lazarus" to fit the ironic notion that Morell gave a second life to the slaves he freed.

* "I walked four days.. .my course for Natchez":
Here Borges is quoting/translating fairly directly from Twain's
Life
on the Mississippi,
pp. 214-215 (Penguined.cited in the note just above). Throughout this story, JLB inserts a phrase here, a sentence there from Twain, but then, when he says he is quoting, as in the case of the preaching and horse thieving, he is in reality inventing the quotation and imagining a scene that Twain only suggests.

* Aixa's rebuke to Boabdil:
Boabdil isAbu Abdallah, the last Moorish king of Granada (r. 1482-1492); Aixa was his mother. The reproof that supposedly was given Boabdil by Aixa upon the Moors' defeat and expulsion from what had been Islamic Spain is substantially as Borges reports it here, and the words here given Anne Bonney are substantially those given in Gösse's
History of Piracy,
p. 203. (See the "Index of Sources" p. 64.) p.
21: Rules for pirates:
These may actually be found, as quoted, but in a different order, in Gösse's
History of Piracy,
p.272. (See "Index of Sources," p. 64, for bibliographical information.)
* Quotation on peace in the waters of China:
Gosse, p.278. Note also that the widow's new name, while indeed given in Gosse, is attributed to another personage who learned a lesson from the emperor. This is but one of countless examples of the way JLB changes things, even dates, to fit his purposes, purposes that one must confess sometimes are enigmatic. Why change the date of Tom Castro's being found guilty from February 26 to February 27? Monk Eastman's death from December 26 to December 25? The spelling of Morell/Murrell/Murell's name? Here the theory of translation must needs be a theory of artistic creativity.

* Resigned:
Borges uses this curious word, which I have not wanted to "interpret," apparently to indicate the fatedness, or ritual aspect, of this duel. It is as though the word indicated "resigned to fate." This aspect of violence, of duels, can be seen throughout Borges; I would especially refer the reader to the story titled "The Encounter," in the volume
Brodie's Report,
p. 364.

* Junin:
Site of a famous battle in the wars of independence. The Battle of Junin took place in the then department of Peru; on August 6,1824, a cavalry engagement was fought between Simón Bolivar's nationalist forces and the royalist forces under José de Canterac. The tide was turning against the independence forces until the royalist rear was attacked by a force of Peruvian hussars under the command of Isidoro Suárez—one of JLB's forebears and a man who in varying degrees and under varying permutations lends his name to JLB's fictions. The royalists were routed.

* The Death of Monk Eastman:
This story is taken, as JLB indicates, from Asbury's
The Gangs of New York,
generally pp. 274-298, but also, for the quotation about "nicks in his stick," p. xviii. Where JLB has clearly borrowed directly from Asbury and it has been possible to use Asbury's words, the translator has done so; in other cases, the translator has just borrowed the appropriate terminology, such as the "Mikado tuck-ups" and the "stuss" games.

* Always coiled and ready to strike:
One of the sources that JLB gives for this story is Frederick Watson's
A
Century of Gunmen,
though the truth is, there is not much there that JLB seems actually to have used. With, that is, the possible exception of this phrase,
siempre aculebrado
in the Spanish, which the translator has rendered conjecturally in this way.
"Aculebrado,"
from the Spanish
culebra,
"snake," calls to mind in the native Spanish speaker the notion of "coiled, like a snake" and also of "snakelike, slithering." On page 77 of his book, Watson quotes an old western novel, which says this: "It's not the custom to war without fresh offence, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot an unarmed man, and you must not shoot an unwarned man.... The rattlesnake's code, to warn before he strikes, no better, [i.e., there's no better extant code for a man of the West] : a queer, lop-sided, topsy-turvy, jumbled and senseless code—but a code for all that." Thus it seems that JLB may have wanted to paint Billy the Kid as an even worse "varmint" than the rattlesnake, since the rattlesnake at least gives fair warning, unlike Billy, who, as we see in a moment, shoots the Mexican Villagrán before Villagran knows what's happening. Perhaps, in fact, that was what made Billy the Kid so dangerous—so dangerous that his
friend
Pat Garrison shot him in cold blood. But whatever JLB's motivation for this word, it is a very mysterious one to use here, however related to all the other animal imagery used throughout this volume.

* Rônins:
In A. B. Mitford's
Tales of Old Japan,
which is the source of much of this story, Mitford inevitably uses this word for the "loyal retainers" of the dead noble-man. The word "Rônin" means literally a "wave-man," one who is tossed about hither and thither, as a wave of the sea. It is used "to designate persons of gentle blood, entitled to bear arms, who, having become separated from their feudal lords [or in this case, of course, vice versa], wander about the country in the capacity of knights-errant. Some went into trade, and became simple wardsmen" (Mitford). While Borges himself does not use this word, the word is inevitably used in English reports of the phenomenon, and so the translator has thought it appropriate to translate what the Spanish has as "retainers," "captains," etc., by the technical word. It is possible, of course, that JLB is doing with the Chinese system of loyalties what he did to the world's architecture: remaking it in the likeness of Argentina's. One notes that virtually all the houses that JLB uses in his fictions have long, narrow entrances and interior patios, the very floor plan of the Buenos Aires house of the end of the nineteenth century. Likewise, one senses that JLB may have used the word "captains" in the story to indicate the sort of relationship between the lord and his retainers that was common in the Argentina of caudillos and
their
captains. Thus the translator recognizes that if JLB was trying, consciously or not, to produce this effect, it may be somewhat risky to go all the way to the source, to"Rônin,"for the "translation." The reader is notified. Likewise, "Chushingura" is the name by which the dramas, poems, and films are inevitably known in English, so the translator has incorporated that inevitable cultural reference. From its absence in the Spanish text, one supposes that in Spanish the word"Chushingura" was not used.

*
The source for this story:
Much of this story is indeed taken from Mitford's
Tales of Old Japan,
pp. 3-19. The translator has taken the spelling of the characters' names and several quotations, such as the "Satsumi man's," from there.

* Title:
The title of this story in Spanish is"Hombre de la esquina rosada"; it presents many intriguing possibilities, and therefore many problems, to the translator, not so much for the words as for the cultural assumptions underlying them. This story is in a way a portrait of the
compadrito
(the tough guy of the slums) or the
cuchillero
(knife fighter) and his life; as such, many items of that "local color" that Borges deplored in, for example, stories of the "exotic" Orient are found, though casually and unemphatically presented. The first thing that must be dealt with is perhaps that "pink corner."
Esquina
("corner") is both the actual street corner (as other translations of this story have given it, without the colorful adjective) and the neighborhood general-store-and-bar, generally located on corners, which was the hangout for the lowlife of the barrio. The reader can see this establishment clearly in "Unworthy" (in the volume tided
Brodie's Report)
and more fleetingly in many other stories. What of the adjective "pink"
(rosada)
then? The Buenos Aires of JLB's memory and imagination still had high, thick stucco or plastered brick walls lining the streets, such as the reader may see in the colonial cities of the Caribbean and Central and South America even today: Havana, San Juan, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, etc. Those walls in Buenos Aires were painted generally bright pastel colors; Borges refers to "sky blue" walls more even than to pink ones. Thus Borges was able to evoke in two words
(esquina rosada)
an old neighborhood of Buenos Aires, populated by toughs and knife fighters, and characterized by bars and bordellos in which that "scandalous" dance the tango was danced. (In its beginnings, the tango was so scandalous that no respectable woman would dance it, and one would see two men—
compadritos
—dancing together on street corners; nor would the tenement houses, which had moved into the large old houses vacated by the higher classes, allow such goings-on, even though these
conventillos,
as they were called, might be none too "respectable"—certainly none too "genteel"—themselves.) In evoking that old Buenos Aires, Borges also evoked "the man"—here, the Yardmaster, Rosendo Juárez, and the nameless narrator of the story, all of whom participate in the coldly violent
ethos
of the
orillero,
the (to us, today) exaggeratedly macho slum dweller (especially along the banks of the Maldonado [see note below]) who defended his honor against even the most imagined slight. However, certain aspects of this "man" will probably strike the non-Argentine reader as curious—for example, those "boots with high-stacked heels" (in the original Spanish, "women's shoes") and that "red carnation" in the first paragraph of the story "Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities," the same sort of carnation that appears in this story. There is also the shawl worn by the gaucholike Yardmaster. These elements, however, were authentic "touches"; the
compadrito
affected these appearances. Previous translations have apparently tried to give all this "information" by calling the story "Street-corner Man," emphasizing the "tough guy hanging out on the corner" aspect of the story, and one can be sympathetic to that solution. Another intriguing possibility, however, is suggested by Bernésin the first volume of the Gallimard edition of JLB's
Oeuvres complètes.
I translate the relevant paragraph: "The title of the original publication, which omits the definite article, reminds the reader of the title of a painting given in the catalog of an art exhibit. It stresses the graphic aspect of the scene, whichBorges, in the preface to the 1935 edition, called the 'pictorial intention' of his work. One should think of some title of a piece by Pedro Figari-----[p. 1497] " This "impressionist" tide, then, should perhaps be retained; what one loses in "information" one gains in suggestion.