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426
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
BORGES
AND THE
DREAM
OF CHESS
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HISTORY
BORGES
OF CHESS
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430
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HISTORY
BORGES
OF CHESS
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HISTORY
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OF CHESS
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HISTORY
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OF CHESS
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HISTORY
BORGES
OF CHESS
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weretheSevenWondersof theWorld,amongthemthelabyrinth
of Crete.
. . . In
The labyrinth
a veryhighamphitheater.
was a greatamphitheater,
thisclosedstructure
-ominouslyclosed-therewerecracks.I believedwhen
I was a child (or I now believeI believed)thatif one had a magnifying
glass powerfulenough,one could look throughthe cracksand see the
Minotaurin the terriblecenterof the labyrinth.
as
is thatof the mirror.The two are not distinct,
My othernightmare
it onlytakestwofacingmirrorsto construct
a labyrinth
...
I alwaysdreamof labyrinths
or of mirrors.In the dreamof the mirror
anothervisionappears,anotherterrorof my nights,and thatis the idea
of themask.Maskshave alwaysscaredme. No doubtI feltin mychildhood
that someone who was wearinga mask was hidingsomethinghorrible.
I see myselfreflected
in a mirror,
These are mymostterriblenightmares:
but the reflection
is wearinga mask. I am afraidto pull the mask off,
afraidto see myreal face,whichI imagineto be hideous.There maybe
leprosyor evil or somethingmoreterriblethananythingI am capable of
imagining.(SN 32-33)
As the dream at Athens begins with the image of a book (the
Britannica)and immediatelymoves (via the reference to Crete) to
the image of the labyrinth,so this passage fromthe nightmareessay
begins with the image of the labyrinthand moves immediatelyto
the image of a book-a French book in which Borges saw a steel
engraving of the labyrinthwhen he was a child. Though Borges
does not say what kind of book it was, the mention of a "steel
engraving"recalls a remarkfromhis "AutobiographicalEssay" about
the books he enjoyed most as a child in his father'slibrary:"I have
forgottenmost of the faces of that time . . . and yet I vividly
rememberso manyof the steel engravingsin Chambers's
Encyclopaedia
and in the Britannica"(A 209).
In the engraving in the French book the labyrinthis shown as
"a closed structure,"a "very high amphitheater,"a descriptionthat
gives added meaning to the settingfor the chess game in the Athens
dream: "On an elevated stage in an amphitheaterfilled to capacity
with an attentiveaudience, I was playingchess withmy father,who
was also the False Artaxerxes."That Borges imagines the labyrinth
as an enclosed amphitheatersuggestsyetagain thatthe amphitheater
which serves as the site of the chess game with his father,a game
of kingsand queens played out on a labyrinthinenetworkof squares,
represents the maternal space of origin for whose possession they
are competing. And the fact that the labyrinthas symbol of the
matrix,as the scene of the contestwiththe father,is closelyassociated
in these passages with another womb symbol (the image of a book
as a "lost paradise") suggests that the real-lifearena into which the
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NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
BORGES
OF CHESS
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(JLB 33)
Monegal notes that in the tale "The Sect of the Phoenix" (1952)
Borges imagines a pagan cult bound together by a shared secret
that assures its members immortality,a secret hinted at in the tale
but never named-the act of copulation. In the story Borges says
thatSthough the secret"is transmittedfromgenerationto generation
. .
does not favor mothers teaching it to their sons." He
usage
continues, "Initiation into the mysteryis the task of individuals of
the lowest order. . . . The Secret is sacred, but it is also somewhat
ridiculous.The practiceof the mysteryis furtiveand even clandestine
and its adepts do not speak about it. There are no respectablewords
to describe it, but it is understood that all words refer to it, or
better,that theyinevitablyallude to it.... A kind of sacred horror
prevents some of the faithfulfrom practicingthe extremelysimple
ritual; the others despise them for it, but they despise themselves
even more." To manymembersof the sect,the secretseemed "paltry,
distressing,vulgar and (what is even stranger)incredible.They could
not reconcile themselvesto the factthat theirancestorshad lowered
themselves to such conduct."'4 When asked by the critic Ronald
Christ about the secret shared by the sect of the Phoenix, Borges
replied, "The act is what Whitman says 'the divine husband knows,
from the work of fatherhood.'-When I firstheard about this act,
when I was a boy, I was shocked, shocked to thinkthat my mother,
my father had performed it. It is an amazing discovery,no? But
then too it is an act of immortality,
a rite of immortality,
isn't it?"'5
If, as we have suggested, the masked figurein the mirrorevokes
for Borges the bull-headed monsterof the labyrinth("it only takes
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HISTORY
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OF CHESS
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HISTORY
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OF CHESS
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BORGES
OF CHESS
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3 Jorge Luis Borges, "T16n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," in Ficciones,p. 20; hereafter
cited in text as T.
4 Jorge Luis Borges, "An AutobiographicalEssay," in his The Alephand OtherStories
1933-1969 (New York, 1978), p. 207; hereaftercited in text as A.
5 Reuben Fine, quoted in Alexander Cockburn, Idle Passion: Chessand theDance of
Death (New York, 1974), p. 42; hereaftercited in text.
6 Jorge Luis Borges, Atlas,tr. Anthony Kerrigan (New York, 1985), p. 37.
7 Plutarch,"Theseus and Romulus," Lives,tr. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, Mass.,
1914), I, 197.
8 Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights(New York, 1984), p. 36; hereaftercited in text
as SN.
9 Jorge Luis Borges, "Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari,Dead in His Labyrinth,"in TheAleph
and OtherStories,p. 125.
10 EncyclopaediaBritannica,11th ed. (New York, 1910-11), III, 824.
11 Jorge Luis Borges, "Chess," in Borges:A Reader,A Selectionfromthe Writings
of
JorgeLuis Borges,ed. Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid (New York, 1981),
p. 281.
12 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Jorge Luis Borges: A LiteraryBiography(New York,
1978), p. 285; hereaftercited in text as JLB.
13 Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of ImaginaryBeings(New York, 1970), p. 158.
14 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Sect of the Phoenix," in Ficciones,pp. 165-66.
15 Ronald Christ, The NarrowAct: Borges'Art ofAllusion(New York, 1969), p. 190,
n. 19.
16 Jorge Luis Borges, OtherInquisitions1937-1952 (New York, 1965), p. 60.
17 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Circular Ruins," in Ficciones,p. 58; hereaftercited in
text.
18 Lewis Carroll, The AnnotatedAlice (Cleveland, 1963), p. 238; hereaftercited in
text.