Third part of the review of the stories of the Argentine writer JJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo. To read the second part press here. Those that I present today are from his book Fictions (1944), specifically three short stories from the second part, Artifices, which I have found especially interesting for one reason or another.
The shape of the sword
The reasons that a man can have to abhor another or to love him are endless.
My reasonable friend was reasonably selling me.
High silent horsemen patrolled the routes; there was ash and smoke in the wind; in a corner I saw a corpse lying, less tenacious in my memory than a mannequin in which the soldiers interminably exercised their aim, in the middle of the square ...
We begin with The shape of the sword, a story in which an Irishman living in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, tells Borges himself, turned into a character, how the hideous scar that crosses his face. This insertion of the narrator in his work I would stand out on its own, but as is common in the Borgian world, I would prefer to emphasize that the author plays with the usual literary conventions. Once again, Borges makes us doubt about good, evil, who is a hero and who is a villain.
Traitor and hero theme
Think of the transmigration of souls, a doctrine that horrifies Celtic letters and that Caesar himself attributed to the British Druids; think that before being Fergus Kilpatrick, Fergus Kilpatrick was Julius Caesar. He is saved from those circular labyrinths by a curious verification, a verification that later plunges him into other more inextricable and heterogeneous labyrinths: certain words of a beggar who conversed with Fergus Kilpatrick on the day of his death, were foreshadowed by Shakespeare, in the tragedy of Macbeth. . That history had copied history was astonishing enough; that history copies literature is inconceivable ...
As the title of our second story augurs well, in the Traitor and hero theme Borges delves again into the issues already raised in his previous work. And once again, with Ireland background. But this time the approach is different: the Argentine writer makes us reflect on the terrifying symmetries, and strange coincidences that can be glimpsed in the rivers of History. Specifically, it raises us if literature, fiction and, ultimately, lies can inspire the truth, the tangible world we live in.
Death and the compass
Lönnrot believed himself to be a pure reasoner, an Auguste Dupin, but there was something of an adventurer in him and even a gambler. […]
"You don't have to look for three feet for the cat," said Treviranus, brandishing an imperious cigar. We all know that the Tetrarch of Galilee has the best sapphires in the world. Someone, to steal them, will have entered here by mistake. Yarmolinsky has risen; the thief had to kill him. What do you think?
"Possible, but not interesting," answered Lönnrot. You will reply that reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting. I will reply that reality can dispense with this obligation, but not hypotheses. In the one that you have improvised, chance intervenes copiously. Here is a dead rabbi; I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not the imaginary mishaps of an imaginary thief.
We end our review for today with Death and the compass, a tale that continues the tradition of the mystery and detective stories. This should not surprise us, for it is no secret that Borges, as an avid reader, knew and admired Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, your fictional detective, auguste dupin, is mentioned in the Borges story.
The story also exposes one of the Argentine obsessions: Jewish religion and mysticism, as a backdrop for the murders that the protagonist, lonnrot, you must solve. However, the interesting thing about the story is that play with the reader y subverts conventions and clichés naturally assumed in this kind of literature.