Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - The Giovanni Translations (66 page)
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Authors: Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by N.T. di Giovanni)
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An Experimental Account of What Was Known, Seen, and Met by Mrs. Jane Lead in London in 1694
Among the many writings of the blind English mystic Jane Lead (or Leade) is to be found
The Wonders of God’s Creation manifested in the variety of Eight Worlds
, as they were known experimentally unto the Author (London, 1695). About this time, as Mrs Lead’s fame spread throughout Holland and Germany, her work was done into Dutch by an eager young scholar, H. van Ameyden van Duym. But later on when, due to the jealousies of her disciples, the authenticity of certain manuscripts was disputed, it became necessary for the van Duym versions to be retranslated into English. On page 340 (10 B) of the
Eight Worlds
, we read:
Salamanders have their appointed Dwelling in Fire; Sylphs in the Air; Nymphs in the flowing Waters; and Gnomes in Earthen-burrows, but the creature whose substance is Bliss is everywhere at home. All sounds, even to the roaring of Lions, the screeching of the nightly Owls, the laments and groans of those entrapped in Hell, are as sweet Musick to her. All odours, even to the foulest stench of Corruption, are to her as the delight of roses and Lilies. All savours, even to the banquet-table of the Harpys of heathen lore, are as Sweet loaves and spiced Ale. Wandering at noon through the Waste-Places of the world, it seems to her she is refreshed by Canopies of flocking Angels. The earnest seeker will look for her in All places, however dim and sordid, of this world or in the seven others. Thrust a keen Sword-blade through her and it will seem as a fountain of Divine and Pure pleasure. These eyes, by Translation, have been given to see her ways; and an equal gift as revealed by Wisdom is sometimes granted the Child.
The Fairies
They meddle magically in human affairs, and their name is linked to the Latin word
latum
(fate, destiny). It is said that the Fairies are the most numerous, the most beautiful, and the most memorable of the minor supernatural beings. They are not restricted to a particular place or particular period. Ancient Greeks, Eskimos, and Red Indians all tell stories of heroes who have won the love of these creatures of the imagination. Such fortunes hold their perils; a Fairy, once its whim is satisfied, may deal death to its lovers.
In Ireland and Scotland ‘the people of Faery’ are assigned underground dwelling places, where they confine children and men whom they have kidnapped. Believing that the flint arrowheads they dig up in the fields once belonged to Fairies. Irish farmers endow these objects with unfailing medical powers. Yeats’s early tales abound in accounts of village people among the Fairies. In one a countrywoman tells him that she did not believe either in Hell or in ghosts. Hell was an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and the ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go ‘trapsin’ about the earth’ at their own free will; ‘but there are faeries and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels’.
Fairies are fond of song and music and the colour green.
Yeats notes that ‘The [little] people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.’ At the end of the seventeenth century a Scots churchman, the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, wrote a work entitled The Secret Commonwealth; or an Essay on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and for the most part) Invisible People heretofore going under the name of Faunes and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the second sight. In 1815, Sir Walter Scott had the book reprinted. Of Mr Kirk it is told that the Fairies snatched him away because he had revealed their mysteries. On the seas off Italy, especially in the Strait of Messina, the
fata morgana
contrives mirages to confuse sailors and lure them aground.
Fastitocalon
The Middle Ages attributed to the Holy Ghost the composition of two books. The first was, as is well known, the Bible; the second, the whole world, whose creatures had locked up in them moral teachings. In order to explain these teachings, Physiologi, or Bestiaries, were compiled in which accounts of birds and beasts and fishes were laid over with allegorical applications. Out of an Anglo-Saxon bestiary, we take the following text, translated by R. K. Gordon:
Now by my wit I will also speak in a poem, a song, about a kind of fish, about the mighty whale. He to our sorrow is often found dangerous and fierce to all seafaring men. The name Fastitocalon is given him, the floater on ocean streams. His form is like a roughstone, as if the greatest of seaweeds, girt by sand-banks, were heaving by the water’s shore, so that seafarers suppose they behold some island with their eyes; and then they fasten the highprowed ships with cables to the false land, tie the sea steeds at the water’s edge, and then undaunted go up into that island. The ships remain fast by the shore, encompassed by water. Then, wearied out, the sailors encamp, look not for danger. On the island they kindle fire, build a great blaze; the men, worn out, are in gladness, longing for rest. When he, skilled in treachery, feels that the voyagers are set firmly upon him, are encamped, rejoicing in the clear weather, then suddenly the ocean creature sinks down with his prey into the salt wave, seeks the depths, and then delivers the ships and the men to drown in the hall of death.
He, the proud voyager, has another habit, yet more wondrous. When on the ocean hunger harries him . . . then the warden of the ocean opens his mouth, his lips wide. A pleasant smell comes from within, so that other kinds of fish are betrayed thereby; they swim swiftly to where the sweet smell issues forth. They enter there in a thoughtless throng, till the wide jaw is filled. Then suddenly the fierce jaws snap together, enclosing the plunder. Thus is it for every man who . . . lets himself be snared by a sweet smell, a false desire, so that he is guilty of sins against the King of glory.
This same story is told in the
Arabian Nights
, in St Brendan’s
Legend
, and in Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, which shows us the whale ‘slumbering on the Norway foam’. Professor Gordon tells us that ‘In earlier versions the creature was a turtle and was named Aspidochelone. In course of time the name became corrupted, and the whale replaced the turtle.’
Fauna of Chile
Our chief authority on animals incubated by the Chilean imagination is Julio Vicuña Cifuentes, whose Myths and Superstitions collects a number of legends drawn from oral tradition. All of the following extracts but one are taken from this work. The Calchona is recorded in Zorobabel Rodríguez’
Dictionary of Chileanisms
, published in Santiago de Chile in 1875.
The Alicanto is a nocturnal bird that seeks its food in veins of gold and silver. The variety that feeds on gold may be identified by the golden light that gleams from its wings when it runs with them open (for it cannot fly); the silver-feeding Alicanto is known, as one might expect, by a silvery light.
The fact that the bird is flightless is not due to its wings, which are perfectly normal, but to the heavy metallic meals that weigh down its crop. When hungry it runs swiftly; when gorged it is hardly able to crawl.
Prospectors or mining engineers believe their fortune is made if they are lucky enough to have an Alicanto for a guide, since the bird may lead them to the discovery of hidden ore. Nevertheless, the prospector should be very careful, for, if the bird suspects it is being followed, it dims its light and slips away in the dark. It may also suddenly change its path and draw its pursuer towards a chasm.
The Calchona is a kind of Newfoundland dog woollier than an unshorn ram and more bearded than a billy goat. White in colour, it chooses dark nights to appear before mountain travelers, snatching their lunch baskets from them and muttering sullen threats; it also scares horses, hunts down outlaws, and works all sorts of evil.
The Chonchón has the shape of a human head; its ears, which are extremely large, serve as wings for its flight on moonless nights. Chonchónes are supposed to be endowed with all the powers of wizards. They are dangerous when molested, and many fables are told about them. There are several ways to bring these flying creatures down when they pass overhead intoning their ominous
tué
,
tué
,
tué
, the only sign that betrays their presence, since they are invisible to anyone not a wizard. The following are judiciously advised: to recite or sing a prayer known only to a few who stubbornly refuse to divulge it; to chant a certain twelve words twice over; to mark a Solomon’s seal on the ground; and lastly, to spread open a waistcoat and lay it out in a specified way. The Chonchón falls, flapping its wings furiously, and cannot lift itself again no matter how hard it tries until another Chonchón comes to its aid. Generally, the incident does not conclude here, for sooner or later the Chonchón wreaks its vengeance on whomever has mocked at it.
Creditable witnesses have told the following story. In a house in Limache where visitors had gathered one night, the disorderly cries of a Chonchón were suddenly heard outside. Someone made the sign of Solomon’s seal, and a heavy object fell into the backyard; it was a large bird the size of a turkey and had a head with red wattles. They cut the head off, gave it to a dog, and threw the body up on the roof. At once they heard a deafening uproar of Chonchónes, at the same time noting that the dog’s belly had swollen as though the animal had gulped down the head of a person. The next morning they searched in vain for the Chonchón body; it had disappeared from the roof. Somewhat later the town gravedigger reported that on that same day several unknown persons had come to bury a body which, when they had gone away, he found to be headless.
The Hide is an octopus that lives in the sea and has the dimensions and appearance of a cowhide stretched out flat. Its edges are furnished with numberless eyes, and, in that part which seems to be its head, it has four more eyes of a larger size. Whenever persons or animals enter the water, the Hide rises to the surface and engulfs them with an irresistible force, devouring them in a matter of moments. The Huallepén is an amphibious animal that is fierce, powerful, and shy; under three feet tall, it has a calf’s head and a sheep’s body. On the spur of the moment it mounts sheep and cows, fathering in them offspring of the same species as the mother but which can be spotted by their twisted hooves and sometimes by their twisted muzzles. A pregnant woman who sees a Huallepén, or hears its bellow, or who dreams of it three nights in a row, gives birth to a deformed child. The same happens if she sees an animal begotten by the Huallepén.
The Strong Toad is an imaginary animal different from other toads in that its back is covered with a shell like that of a turtle. This Toad glows in the dark like a firefly and is so tough that the only way to kill it is to reduce it to ashes. It owes its name to the great power of its stare, which it uses to attract or repel whatever is in its range.