Borges and Joyce Two paths to challenge reality Andrea Furlan V A March 2013

James Joyce Jorge Louis Borges Born: 1882, Dublin (Ireland) Died: 1941, Zurich (Switzerland) Jobs: writer, English teacher Language: English Main works: Dubliners, Ulysses, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Born: 1899, Buenos Aires (Argentina) Died: 1986, Genève (Switzerland) Jobs: essayist, writer, critic, translator Language: Spanish Main works: Ficciones, The Aleph

Borges’ Ficciones (1944) Collection of short stories The events and the characters are totally fictional The setting is generally ahistorical and without clear space references The main themes are the absurd, the human weakness and the multiplicity of perspectives

Borges and Joyce: a controversial relationship In his childhood, Borges was highly influenced by Joyce → he was the first to translate a part of Penelope in Spanish, and he also reviewed it However, he did not read the entire novel (it was too long), and he was later disappointed by Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake With Ficciones, Borges moved towards metaphysics and theology; nevertheless, much of his work was still influenced by Joyce I am the first Hispanic adventurer to dock at Joyce’s book J. L. Borges on Ulysses

An extract from Borges’ review of Penelope I confess I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes Ulysses is not a chaotic novel, but it has a well- organized structure → the key to understand the novel is no longer its plot (as in the 19° century), but rather its overall meaning → life and events cannot be grasped individually, we just receive general, confused impressions Borges moved beyond Joyce, touching the sphere of the absurd and the metaphysical → he completed the path that had started with V. Woolf and J. Joyce (e.g., he wrote reviews of non-existent books)

Some stories from Ficciones: The Approach to Al-Mutasim Review of a non-existing book It is built in an epic form (it reminds of a bildungsroman) → a voyage to gain the knowledge, represented by Al Mutasim → similarity with Ulysses Borges criticizes the author of the book, thus he criticizes himself → the narrator hides himself and confounds the reader

Some stories from Ficciones: The Library of Babel Metatestuality → Borges questions language, as Joyce did in The Dead → in The Dead, language was ineffectual because it could not convey emotions In Borges’ story, language ceases to have any meaning → it is shown to be just a combination of senseless signs Language challenges the mind → there is no connection between reality and language → it anticipates Derrida’s deconstruction method

Some stories from Ficciones: Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote Pierre Menard tries to rewrite Don Quixote in a 20° century style, but ends, involuntarily, making a perfect copy It challenges the meaning of the relationship between original and copy → similar topic of Joyce’s Ulysses Joyce re-elaborated Homer’s epic story to turn it into a modern novel, in order to celebrate the anti-hero Borges goes beyond → it is not possible to simply re- elaborate → even if Menard wrote the same words as Cervantes, he failed in reconstructing the “style” of the 17° century → every work is unique

Conclusions Borges expanded modernist research → he questioned writing to its very roots He somewhat anticipated post-modernism, showing the absence of any certain point of reference He is nevertheless in debt towards Joyce → Joyce paved the way to the destructuralization of the novel and he was the first to break the 19° century boundaries