Bemerkungen zum ‚argentinischen‘ Borges

Abstract

Abstract This essay focusses on two short stories pertaining to that part of the Borgesian œuvre, which has attracted less scholarly attention than his world-famous fantastic stories (La biblioteca de Babel, El inmortal, El Aleph). The ‘Argentinian’ stories – such as El muerto, or Tema del traidor y del héroe – impress readers with their laconic diction and cynicism. Ultimately, however, they may seem to be limited to a sort of nineteenth-century mimeticism. Considering these texts in detail, it turns out that the elements conveyed by the narrator insinuate different versions of the respective story—all of which are compatible with the ‘real’ events they refer to. Consequently, the author’s mimetic tales share a conceptual framework with his fantastic yarns – precisely one that is committed to the basic assumptions of skepticism. In what follows, the essay relates Borges’ twentieth-century version of this noetic edifice to its Ancient foundations, as well as to the first ‘wave’ of Skepticism in European Modernity (Descartes; Calderón). The last section addresses the aesthetic dimension of the Borgesian short stories: how does philosophy (and epistemology especially) relate to literary fiction – that is, to a textual genre, whose primary function appears to be entertainment, based on fantasizing? Resuming the discussion of Borges’ philosophical position, the essay concludes by quoting some remarks by David Hume, which seem to give expression to an attitude towards skepticism that is shared by the Argentinian author.