Disparate Libraries, Erratic Scribes: Borges and Literary History

Abstract

Borges is notoriously suspicious of any system presenting as authoritative and commanding a single reading, and he is particularly suspicious of histories. Think of singular, gently mocking way which he uses term his titles: of Angels, A of Eternity, A Universal of Infamy, of Tango, of Echoes of a Name, History of Night. The titles are excessive, purposefully inappropriate for texts that are fragmentary, casually incomplete, riddled with hiatus and hardly delivering well-rounded summary or document their title announces. Nowhere this list of histories by Borges do we find a history of literature or, for that matter, of any one literature. The closest Borges gets writing literary history are books written in collaboration with his women friends and he never calls them histories: Ancient Germanic literatures and An Introduction English Literature (the latter a meager 47 pages long and devoted, mainly, Borges's favorite authors) are books whose purpose is not so much offer a historic panorama as to interest reader and stimulate his curiosity ... (Introduction 1). Borges's dislike for histories is compounded, case of national literary histories, by their identitarian pretensions and their teleological bent, by fact that they didactically propose national representativity and national belonging, two notions that Borges tirelessly questions (except when it suits him uphold them). A firm disbeliever national assignations when it comes literature, Borges disparages Ricardo Rojas's Historia de la literatura argentina as being, he was fond of saying, mas extensa que la literature argentina, longer than Argentine literature itself (Obras completas 279). (1) When asked about works that are representative of Argentine literature he will, more often than not, name The Purple Land, by William Henry Hudson, a book written English by an Anglo-American writer. Borges believes that principal goal of all literary texts--including literary histories--is open themselves impertinent re-readings and deviant interpretations, create permanent dissatisfaction, be not a reservoir of facts, but a stimulus for further literature. If it is be seen as patrimony (as Rojas's Historia de la Literatura Argentina is usually read), it is patrimony that must be rethought, challenged, recreated through fanciful recourse family romance--even replaced. The need question conventional views of literary history relation national representativity is a constant not only Borges's writing but his pedagogical practice. If I may resort anecdote, Borges, who taught English literature at University of Buenos Aires 50's and 60's, once sent a reader's letter daily La Nacion criticizing way literature was taught and exams administered at university of Buenos Aires and, general, throughout country. He was formally reprimanded for voicing a negative opinion by Dean and his Advisory Council who, true form, considered Borges's criticism not only targeted university of Buenos Aires but Argentina itself, el senor Borges senala no so1o a las autoridades de la Casa, sino al pais, Mr. Borges points not only authorities of this Institution but country itself (Borges y la Universidad 143). In an early review of Valery's Introduction a la Poetique, first published 1938 in, somewhat surprisingly, glossy Argentine weekly, El Hogar, Borges praises Valery for setting forth what would become an important part of his own literary practice. He writes: Valery, like Croce, thinks that we do not yet have a of Literature and that vast and venerable volumes that usurp that name are really a of Literary Authors. He writes: the of Literature should not be history of its authors and incidents their careers or careers of their works but of Spirit as producer and consumer of literature. …