How Borges Wrote by Daniel Balderston

Abstract

MLR, .,   Petrarch is, for the Goritian, above all the author of the Triumphi, and primarily a philosopher, whose fundamental preoccupation is to locate the ubi consistam: the stable place where authentic ‘persuasion’ can be achieved. e difference between Petrarch and Michelstaedter (according to Caliaro) is that, for the former, stability can be projected only in the dimension of religious transcendence, whereas for the latter it is only in the complete possession of the present that absolute value can be found. e fih and final chapter of the work is devoted to a thematic comparison between Michelstaedter and the Triestine writer Scipio Slataper (–). It is not known whether the two knew each other, although both attended, in partially coinciding years, the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence, and the latter reviewed the first volume of Michelstaedter’s writings when it was published in . One point of contact between the two is, once more, the interpretation of Christianism and, in particular, of the figure of Jesus and his teaching, seen as attributing value to a life deemed good precisely because it embraces the present, transcending itself not towards a distant future, but in the absolute immanence of giving to the other. Both reject the enslavement of man to society; but, if Michelstaedter comes to a complete rejection of society, Slataper instead maintains his commitment to practical activity and engagement for the common good. In Slataper’s words: ‘Quello che è stato disastro per Papini, Michelstaedter — felicità per noi. [. . .] Ci siamo accorti che nel lavoro, nell’esprimerci nel sodo, c’era una felicità.’ Michelstaedter had killed himself on  October . He was barely twentythree years old. U  O G S How Borges Wrote. By D B. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. . ix+ pp. $.. ISBN ––––. Jorge Luis Borges is one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To know how he wrote would be fascinating. is book by Daniel Balderston does not disappoint. It is about the method of writing, the manuscripts and other written evidence, not the motivation. e one-word chapter titles set the framework for this volume of Genetic Criticism based on the study of more than  Borges manuscripts: Reading, Jottings, Notebooks, Possibilities, Copies, Typescripts, Revisions, Fragments. ere are no genes or chromosomes present, but rather an attempt to analyse the metaphorical DNA of Borges’s creations, to explain his compositional practices and the genesis of his masterpieces. Techniques include analysis of Borges’s handwriting and of markings he made on his own manuscripts, as well as marginalia he le on his reading material. Borges donated hundreds of books, written by many different authors, to the Argentine National Library, of which he was a former director. He had le notes in the margins and on the backs of many of these, oen with precise references to other  Reviews volumes including page numbers. For instance, in his edition of e Essays of Oscar Wilde he writes ‘Carlyle once . . . ’, referring to a particular page from Wilde’s essay on Coleridge (p. ). is is a source for Borges’s own essay on William Beckford’s Vathek, where he recounts a joke attributed to Carlyle about the nature of biography. Balderston stresses the importance of the work of the two librarians Laura Rosato and Germán Álvarez, who previously deciphered bibliographical references that Borges le in his reading material. Balderston examines many important Borges manuscripts and notebooks, particularly from the years –, consulting both originals and facsimiles or photocopies . ese include some of his most canonical works. I made ample use of my magnifying glass while examining the facsimiles, but Balderston provides either linear or diplomatic transcriptions of many excerpts. His book is dense, sometimes stylistically complex, but it is full of fresh insights into the relationship between Borges’s reading material and the multiple versions of the texts he created. He sees Borges’s use of notes in the margins of manuscripts and on the covers of reading material as part of a mnemonic exercise, a sort of ‘art of memory’ (p. ). Balderston mines the vast amount of visible information—handwriting, symbols, and other markings le by Borges—for evidence. e invisible, the motivation, the secrets, are not his main focus. ‘Sentirse en...