Signs of Borges PDF
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Signs of Borges A Book in the Series Latin America in Translation/En Traducci6nl Em Tradufao Sponsored by the Duke-University of North Carolina Joint Program in Latin American Studies Post -Contemporary Interventions Series Editors: Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson Sylvia Molloy Signs of Borges Translated and Adapted by Oscar Montero in Collaboration with the Author Duke University Press Durham and London 1994 Translation of the books in the series Latin America in Translation/En Traducci6n/Em Tradufao, a collaboration between the Duke-University of North Carolina Joint Pro gram in Latin American Studies and the university presses of Duke and the University ofN orth Carolina, is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. © 1994 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Designed by Cherie Holma Westmoreland Typeset in Meridien with Trajanus display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data Molloy, Sylvia. [Letras de Borges. English) Signs of Borges / Sylvia Molloy ; translated and adapted by Oscar Montero in collaboration with the Author. p. cm. - (Post-contemporary interventions) (Latin America in trans lation/en traduccion/em tradU(;ao) Includes index. ISBN 0-8223-1406-1. -ISBN 0-8223-1420-7 (pbk) I. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899- -Criticism and interpreta tion. I. Montero, Oscar, 1947- . II. Title. III. Series. IV. Series: Latin America in translation/en traduccion/em traduc;ao. PQ7797.B635z78413 1994 868-dc20 93-11260 CIP For Maria Luisa Bastos who, years ago, told me to read Borges Contents Preface ix Introduction I 1 Shadow Plays 5 A Double Mistrust "A Detailed Web of Theories to Validate the Task" "The Coveter of Souls": A First Step Toward Fiction Greedy Sequels: Evaristo Carrieg o and the "Infamous Biographies" "A Surface of Images" Games with Masks Mask and Displacement The Mask Revealed 2 Textual Rubrications 26 The Signs in a Book Deflected Signs Deflected Deaths 3 Fragments and Greeds 40 The Dissolving of Character: Doubles Beyond the Double Lack of Symmetry: Contamination and the Illusion of Desire Disequilibrium: The Ineffective Character Fragments and Shadows 4 Postulating a Reality, Selecting a Reality 58 Reality and Residue Three Postulations of Reality The Charm of the Circumstantial Stevenson as Precursor The Emphatic Gesture The Waste of the Circumstantial Contents viii 5 Converting the Simulacrum 77 Organization and Emphasis: The Uncanny Distortion Desire and Fear of Names: Ineffective Simulacra To Name, to Falsify Diversion, Conversion, Metaphor 6 Pleasure and Perplexity 95 The Repertory: Selection, Disarticulation, Rescue The Pleasure of Interpolation Selective Erudition 7 The Buried Foundation 112 Heterogeneous Enumeration and Overcrowded Series Heterogeneous Enumeration: Signaling the Interstice Concatenation and Betrayal Beyond the Nightmare of Causality Our Invisible Skeleton: The Shape of a Face Abbreviations 131 Notes 133 Index 139 Preface Any attempt to reconstruct the steps that led me, more than fifteen years ago, to write this particular book on Borges and not another would be illusory. I would like to think that my reflections on reading Borges may have been of use to others then, as they were to me. Borges taught me to think about literature, even to write it. Las letras de Borges wanted to acknowledge that debt. I speak casl,lally of this book as ifit had not changed, even when I realize that, by now, it is no longer the same. The book I wrote in Spanish, as an explication and an homage, is now, in its English version, another book, unfamiliar, a little disquieting. I have con tributed to its translation willingly yet not without trepidation, reading it with other eyes, conversing with it at every turn. It is, to quote the title of one of Borges's books of poems, elotro, el mismo. It is a book in which I recognize myself fully; it is also a book that I might not have written today. New York, 1993
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