On Naming in Borges's "La Muerte y la Brujula"

Abstract

OF ALL the many stories in which Borges posits his primary theme of the inevitable reenactment of the intellect's greatest triumph-its own annihilation-La muerte y la bruijula (Death and the Compass) may be his best known and most closely studied tale, and rightly so. The very title of his story conjoins futility and inventiveness, utter ruin and splendid artifice, in mocking juxtaposition. In many ways it is Borges's summa, and in it are to be found virtually all those other supporting themes, images, and techniques which shape the whole of his writing. Among these are most notably time's endless repetition and its logical consequence for both characters and events, each of which is shown to pre-exist and per-exist until their identity is layered beyond individual recognition, failing ultimately to achieve or sustain that desperate particularity which might proclaim some one or some thing unique in all the world. But no occurrence and no personage in Borges's works, and certainly not in La muerte y la bri'jula, ever successfully defies the strobe effect that reduces them all at last to tremulous echoes.