Nataly Tcherepashenets, Place and Displace in The Narrative World of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar

Place and Displacement
in the Narrative Worlds

of Jorge Luis Borges
and Julio Cortázar
Currents in Comparative Romance
Languages and Literatures
Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G. Paulson

General Editors
Vol. 151
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
Nataly Tcherepashenets
Place and Displacement

in the Narrative Worlds
of Jorge Luis Borges
and Julio Cortázar
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tcherepashenets, Nataly.
Place and displacement in the narrative worlds of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar /
Nataly Tcherepashenets.
p. cm. — (Currents in comparative Romance languages and literatures; v. 151)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899– —Criticism and interpretation.2. Cortázar, Julio—Criticism
and interpretation. 3. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899– —Settings. 4. Cortázar, Julio—Settings.
5. Displacement (Psychology) in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PQ7797.B635Z933 868’.6209—dc22 2005024268
ISBN 978-0-8204-6395-7
ISSN 0893-5963
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce the following:

“Coleridge’s Dream” from Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley (Penguin, 1998)
Copyright © Maria Kodama, 1998. Translation and notes © Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998.
“Coleridge’s Dream,” translated by Eliot Weinberger, from SELECTED NON-FICTIONS by Jorge Luis Borges, ed-
ited by Eliot Weinberger, copyright © 1999
by Maria Kodama; translation copyright © 1999 by Penguin Putnam Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
“The Aleph,” “The Disk,” “The Book of Sand,” “A Weary Man’s Utopia,” from COLLECTED FICTIONS by Jorge
Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, copyright © 1998 by Maria Kodama; translation copyright © 1998 by
Penguin Putnam Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
From The Great Wall of China in Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, published by Vintage. Re-
printed by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
From THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, copyright 1936, 1937
by Heinr, Mercy Sohn, Prague. Copyright © 1946 and renewed 1974 by Schocken Books. Used by permission of
Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
From “Distances,” from End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn. Re-
printed by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
From END OF THE GAME AND OTHER STORIES by Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn, copyright ©
1963, 1967 by Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
From Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, translated by Gregory Rabassa, published by Harvill. Reprinted by permission
of The Random House Group Ltd.
From HOPSCOTCH by Julio Cortázar, translated by Gregory Rabassa, copyright © 1966 by Randhom House,
Inc. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2008 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com
All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Printed in Germany
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In memory of my grandparents and

my grandaunt Eva Ziselson
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Chapter 1. Place in Borges’s Stories and the Irony of Revelation 1

Familiar Places, Hidden Challenges: Revelation Present
and Dissipated in “El Aleph” 2
Dreaming in Circles, Facing the Ruins: the Mystery
and Limitations of the Human Self in
“Las ruinas circulares” 11
The Illusion of Power: the Magic Disc, Human
Vulnerability, and the Divine Presence in “El disco” 20
The Infinite Book: Fear and Longing 24
Chapter 2. Place as Displacement in Cortázar’s Hopscotch 31

Towards the Challenge and the Refuge: Oliveira’s
Paris and the Capital Cities in Nineteenth
Century Novels 34
Borges’s Voice in Cortázar’s Buenos Aires 42
Talita’s Dream: Between Borgesean and
Carnivalesque Worlds 47
The Carnivalesque City and the Anxiety of Alienation 49
Oliveira’s Homelessness: Displacement
as “No Placement” 56
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viii place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
Chapter 3. Fictional and ‘Real’ Places: Convergences

and Divergences 61
The ‘Exotic’ or/and ‘the Familiar’: “Someone’s Land”
and the Traditions of Literary Utopia 64
Challenging Conventions and Breaking Illusions:
the City and the Language in 62: Modelo para armar 73
Revisiting the Minotaur: Heterotopia as Place
and Mode of Representation in Borges’s
“La casa de Asterion” 80
Boarding the Ship: the Unresolved Mystery of
Cortázar’s “Malcolm” 83
Chapter 4. Displacement, Dreams and Archive in Borges’s Essays 89

Dreaming with Freud: Displacement, Art and Magic
in “El sueño de Coleridge” 91
The Repression of Archive and the Archivization
of Repression in “La muralla y los libros” 95
Shaping the Word: Displacement and Dialogical
Discourse in Borges’s “La muralla y los libros”
and Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China” 100
Chapter 5. Displacement and the Divided Self in Cortázar’s Stories 107

Crossing the Bridge: Psychological Division
and the Writing of Discontent 109
Beyond the Door: Rediscovering the Multiple Self 114
Divided Lives, Overlapping Spaces,
and the Impossibility of Self-Deception 119
Conclusion 129
Translations 135
“The Sealed Door” 135
“Letters from Mother” 141
Prologue to “Letters from Mother” by Jorge Luis Borges 156
Notes 159
Bibliography 183
Index 199
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to give special thanks to Efraín Kristal for a constructive and inspiring
dialogue at all stages of my work on this manuscript. I would also like to express
my gratitude to several individuals for their support during this project and for
their valuable advice: Suzanne Jill Levine, Donald Yates, Michelle MsKay
Aynesworth, Brian Morris, late John Kronik, Malva Filler, Ivan Almeida,
Cristina Parodi, Kim Hewitt, Linzi Kemp, and Julie Shaw.
During my work on this book, I was given several opportunities to present
and discuss my work at professional conferences that helped me to put the pre-
sent version in its final shape. I am most grateful to the dean, Dr. Meg Benke
and to the Office of Academic Affairs of the Empire State College, State
University of New York, for their generous support of my initiatives. I would
also like to thank George Guba and Tony Costa for their technical assistance
in preparation of this manuscript.
A debt of gratitude is also owed to my family for helping me organize a
working routine, and for encouragement. I am grateful to my father, Yuri
Tcherepashenets, for giving me the idea for the book cover, and to Linda
Shaw for its graceful realization.
Stuart Wald is responsible for many improvements in this book. I greatly
appreciate his intelligent help and understanding. I also would like to offer my
gratitude to a wonderful staff at Peter Lang Press, especially to Dr. Heidi Burns,
Brittany Schwartz and Richard Atkins for their patient assistance, and to
Michael Paulson for his insightful comments.
My thanks to Penguin Group, New Directions, Random House, and
Carmen Balcells Agencia Literaria for giving me permission to quote from their
English-language versions of Borges’s Labyrinths, Collected Fictions, Selected
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x place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
Non-Fictions; Cortázar’s Hopscotch, End of the Game and Other Stories; and
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Different portions of the mate-
rial of this book were first published in Variaciones, Semiotica, and the Romanic
Review. I thank the publishers of these journals for permission to reprint mate-
rial here.
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INTRODUCTION
Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar are among the writers who have brought
an international fame to the Latin American literature. Borges himself played
a crucial role in the recognition of Cortázar, for as an editor of Los anales de
Buenos Aires, he published Cortázar’s first story “Casa tomada,” [“A House
Taken Over”] in 1946. Borges proudly recalled this episode on numerous occa-
sions and referred to Cortázar’s expressions of appreciation manifested during
their meetings in Paris and Buenos Aires: “Él, cada vez que venía a Buenos Aires
pasaba a saludarme” (105) [“Each time when in Buenos Aires, he came to meet
me”].1 Furthermore, in an interview for Status magazine, Borges emphasized that
an irreconciliability regarding their political views did not prevent him from
having respect towards Cortázar as a writer: “Más tarde, en París, él recordó el
episodio y me confesó que siempre me había estado muy agradecido. Después
se hizo comunista, y como soy enemigo del comunismo esas circunstancias nos
enemistaron. Pero a mí las opiniones políticas de Cortázar no me preocupan
mucho, y si él viniera a conversar conmigo, me encantaría poder hacerlo.” (qtd.
in Alazraki 52–53) [“Later in Paris, he reminded me this episode and confessed
that he was always very grateful to me. Afterwards he became a communist, and
I am the enemy of communism; these circumstances put a barrier between us.
But I am not very much interested in Cortázar’s political opinions, and if he
would come to talk to me, I would be delighted”].
For his part Cortázar acknowledged his literary debt to Borges. In a
conversation with Omar Prego, Cortázar referred to Borges and Roberto Arlt
as the most influential Argentinean authors in his literary career: “en que
clase de estupidez caería yo si negara la doble influencia, muy específica cada
una, de Borges y de Roberto Arlt. A los que he citado siempre” (62–63)
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xii place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
[“I couldn’t tell in which class of stupidity I would fall if I would deny a
double influence, each of which is very specific, of Borges and Roberto Arlt.
I have quoted them always.”]. In an interview with Evelyn Picon Garfield, he
also expressed sincere admiration for the laconic and dense language which
Borges’s texts manifest: “Mis lecturas de los cuentos y de los ensayos de Borges;
en la epoca en que publicó El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan, me mostraron
un lenguaje del que yo no tenía idea” (83) [“My readings of Borges’s stories and
essays; in the epoch when he published The garden of the forking paths, showed
me language which I had never dreamed about before”]. Moreover, in spite of
the radically different political positions, he mentions “una influencia moral”
[“a moral influence”] of Borges: “Lo que creo que Borges me enseñó a mí y a toda
nuestra generación fue la severidad, ser implacable con uno mismo, no publicar
nada que no estuviera muy bien cumplido literariamente” (12) [“What I think
Borges taught me and our whole generation was a severity, to be merciless with
oneself, not to publish anything that would not be highly accomplished from
a literary point of view”].
Borges’s and Cortázar’s works have attracted attention and influenced both
European and American literary critics and philosophers.2 Such leading schol-
ars as Jaime Alazraki and Saúl Yurkievich have perceptively compared the
Argentine writers’s texts with each other.3 In his influential article “Tres for-
mas de ensayo contemporáneo: Borges, Paz, Cortázar” [“Three form of con-
temporary essay: Borges, Paz, Cortázar”], Alazraki discussed the impact of these
authors on the formation of the essay genre in Latin America. He observes that
both writers renovated the genre by transgressing its limits in their hybrid
constructions. The rigorous structure of Borges’s essays hardly differs from that
of his stories; the dialogical qualities of Cortázar’s essays make them almost indis-
tinguishable from the novelistic discourse. Alazraki has also offered a pioneer-
ing study of the influence of kabbalistic conception of the world as a system of
symbols of writing on Borges’s oeuvre; and he developed the notion of “neo-
fantastic” in relation to Cortázar’s stories, where the major puzzle is a human
being.
Yurkievich is responsible for an illuminating insight into the differences
between Borges’s and Cortázar’s approach to the genre of the fantastic. In his
“Borges/Cortázar: mundos y modos de la ficción fantástica” (1994) [“Borges/
Cortázar: Worlds and Modes of Fantastic Fiction”], the critic perceptively
observes that the fantastic in Borges’s stories is an expression of awareness
of literature as a tradition, a world of fantasy and dream created throughout
past centuries. In contrast, in Cortázar’s literary universe, he discerns the
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introduction xiii
psychological fantastic, based on the intention to reduce the distance between

the created world and the one familiar to the reader.
In recent years, numerous studies akin to postmodernist and deconstruc-
tionist approaches have been published on Cortázar’s and Borges’s narratives.
Three collections of essays, which offer innovative readings of works from
this perspective, stand out: (1) Borges: Desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secre-
tos, edited by Rafael Olea Franco, (2) Jorge Luis Borges: Intervenciones sobre
pensamiento y la literatura, edited by William Rowe et al, and (3) Julio Cortázar
New Readings, edited by Carlos Alonso. The first two are books, published in com-
memoration of Borges’s 100th birthday, and include articles by such diverse
scholars as Iván Almeida, Julio Otrega, Daniel Balderston, Roberto González
Echeverría, and writers Carlos Fuentes and Juan José Saer. Placing Borges’s works
at the crossroads of the national and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the con-
ventional, their essays can be seen as a myriad of responses to Josefina Ludmer’s
rhetorical question “Cómo salir de Borges?” [“¿How to depart from Borges?”]. They
implicitly suggest that her own answer “salir de Borges con Borges” [“to depart
from Borges with Borges”] (289) is the most precise one.
The writings collected in Julio Cortázar New Readings, as Alonso explains,
aim to answer a similar question stated in a reverse fashion: “How indeed can
one read Cortázar today?” (Alonso 3). Articles by such authors as Neil Larsen,
René Prieto, Jean Franco, Lucille Kerr, Gustavo Pellón, and Doris Sommer
emerge in response to the canonical image of the Argentine writer and his works
established by earlier criticism and focused on his biographical facts and polit-
ical views. Whereas duality was traditionally considered to be the structuring
force behind Cortázar’s fictional universe, this book demonstrates that Cortázar’s
works can be interpreted as challenges to such dichotomies as self and other, and
here and there and thus precede Jacques Derrida’s questioning of structuralism.
Inspired by these studies, my book will show that in different, yet ultimately
related ways, the fictional worlds created by Borges and Cortázar question
a strict opposition between place and displacement. From ancient times, place
has a primarily psychological function of distinguishing ‘self-’ and the ‘not-self,’
between the subject and the surrounding world, a distinction that entails a fun-
damentally binary mental organization of space.4 By focusing on the “geography”
of these writers’ texts, on the ways they utilize physical locations to develop their
thematic arguments, my work will underscore that place is no longer associated
with order, regulation, epistemological certainty, particularization and security.5
Rather it merges with displacement as a result of dislocation, either a physical,
imaginary or metaphysical removal of apparently fixed relationships.6
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xiv place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
The metaphors of place and displacement couch Borges’s and Cortazar’s

metapoetical ideas. In Borges’s essay, “El primer Wells,” [“The First Wells”] for
instance, the image of the artistic work is associated with the map and the mir-
ror, where place and displacement converge: “La obra que perdura es siempre capaz
de una infinita y plástica ambiguedad; es todo para todos, como el Apostol, es
un espejo que declara los rasgos del lector y también un mapa del mundo”
(Obras 2:76) [“Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic
ambiguity; it is all things for all men, like the Apostle; it is a mirror that
reflects the reader’s own traits and it is also a map of the world” (Borges: A
Reader 172)]. A literary work acts as a map and a mirror, in that it delineates
a fictional world which reflects, displaces, and deviates from the one familiar
to the reader. In his programmatic theoretical work, “Teoría del tunel,’’ where
the tunnel is a subterranean passage, a place associated with transcendence,
transit, and displacement, which “destruye para construir” (66) [“destroyes in
order to construct”], Cortázar refers to the book as an architectonic structure,
“el tunel verbal” [“a verbal tunnel”]: “el libro . . . successor de la arquitectura;
columnas mentales, arquitrabes del sentimiento, fustes del espíritu; libro para
durar” (46) [“a literary successor of the architecture . . .; mental columns,
architraves of sentiment, timber of the spirit; a book to last”] . He further
draws a parallel between literature, philosophy and mysticism, characterizing
them as “tres nombres para una no disímil ansiedad óntica,” [“three names for
one not dissimilar ontological anxiety”] and suggests that they have a similar
structure of “el túnel” (66).
By situating the notions of place and displacement at the intersection of
literary, anthropological and philosophical discourses, I have set up a framework
to compare the fictional worlds of Borges and Cortázar. From this perspective,
drawing on the insights of Derrida, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin and other
major theorists, I will argue that Borges’s approach to “place” suggests imagined
settings for mystical experiences and impossible objects. It is a trope that stands
for the human aspiration to bridge the gap between the finite and the infinite.
Displacement is a creative act that involves de-centering and transformation
of previously established relationships. In Cortázar’s works, on the contrary,
place is a locality for dwelling and thinking, and displacement is an existen-
tial experience that carries ethical connotations. While mapping out the
dynamic of place and displacement in some of these two authors’ most famous
texts, I will also locate the ‘place’ of Borges’s writings within Cortázar’s fictional
universe, and will explore the implications of my study for the dialogue between
literature and philosophy.
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introduction xv
In his recent book Invisible Work. Borges and Translation, Efraín Kristal
observes that there is a popular view in criticism that considers Borges’s
philosophical insights among the major achievements of his literary work.
He perceptively suggests that Borges is a “fabulist” (141) whose philosophical
concerns serve literary purposes. One may also add that, rather than offering
a particular stand or position, Borges’s texts transfer to his readers their author’s
own interest in philosophy, and his curiosity about finding parallels, continu-
ities and juxtapositions between ideas from various trends of knowledge.7
My reading of Borges’s and Cortázar’s writings are informed by assumption
of the mutually enriching relationship between literature and philosophy.
While mapping out the dynamics of place and displacement, I will bring dis-
tinct literary and philosophical world versions into a dialogue.8 This heuristic
device will shed light on the construction of the different, yet ultimately related,
narrative worlds of Borges and Cortázar, and would make one weight and
[re]consider apparently familiar philosophical concepts.
Putting into practice the network relationship between literature and phi-
losophy, the first chapter brings kabbalistic, phenomenological and decon-
structionist approaches to bear on an exploration of Borges’s ironic elaboration
of the concept of place as revelation; it gives special attention to the follow-
ing stories: “El Aleph” (Aleph), “Las ruinas circulares” [“The Circular Ruins”]
(Ficciones), “Libro de arena” [“The Book of Sand”] and “El disco” [“The Disk”]
(Libro de arena).9 Engaging existentialist, metafictional and metaphysical per-
spectives, as well as the carnivalesque, Chapter 2 delineates place as displace-
ment in Cortázar’s Rayuela [Hopscotch], and unravels a presence of Borges’s
metaphysical-artistic city in a gestation of the novel. Chapter 3 explores the
controversial relationships between ‘fictional’ and ‘real’ places as it examines
the concepts of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia both reflected and challenged
by Borges’s stories “Utopía del hombre que está cansado” [“A Weary Man’s
Utopia”] and “La casa de Asterión” [“The House of Asterion”] and Cortázar’s
novels 62: Modelo para armar [62: A Model Kit] and Los Premios [The Winners].
Whereas the first three chapters focus on the notion of place as consistently
linked with displacement, the last two give special attention to displacement
as it shapes thematic developments and aesthetics in these authors’ works.
Chapter 4 studies displacement, from a psychoanalytic point of view, as it
informs both deconstructionist and postmodern approaches that overlap with
Borges’s anthropological views in essays such as “La muralla y los libros” [“The
Wall and the Books”] and “El sueño de Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s Dream”].
Bringing to bear phenomenological, postmodern anthropological, and feminist
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xvi place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
perspectives as they subvert the subject/object dichotomy, Chapter 5 explores

a parallelism between displacement and the divided self in Cortázar’s stories
“Lejana” [“Distances”], “Cartas de mamá,” [“Letters from Mother”] and “La
puerta condenada” [“The Sealed Door”].
In his seminal book The Voice of the Masters, Roberto González Echevarría
has perceptively noticed that literature, rather then philosophy and politics has
shaped Latin American thought. Borges and Cortázar’s texts exemplify this
statement par excellence. A voyage through the narrative worlds created by these
authors therefore would be of interest for readers of any background, who find
pleasure and a rewarding challenge in these writers most famous works, as well
as for those who are willing to become engaged in a dynamic exploration of new
routes in communication between different literary traditions, philosophical,
and anthropological discourses.
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·1·
PLACE IN BORGES ’ S STORIES
AND THE IRONY OF REVELATION
People are delighted with irrationalism . . . ; but for the

most part they still talk and write all too “rationally.”
Martin Heidegger
At different stages in his career, Borges was interested in the Kabbalah, which
he called “una suerte de metáfora de pensamiento” (Obras 3:274) [“a
lucky metaphor of thought”].1 In his lecture “La cabala” [“The Kabbalah”], for
instance, he referenced his readings of the Zohar, a major literary work produced
by Jewish mystics, and Gershom Scholem’s On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism.
In contrast to other religious thinkers, kabbalists intend to decipher and inter-
pret the world as a reflection of divine mysteries. This interweaving of two
realms, the divine and the mundane, Scholem observes, is unique for Jewish
mysticism. They converge in a biblical notion of place as a locus where God
might be worshipped and apparently encountered, and in that of an object-place
as revelation, a mystical experience by itself, a theological synonym for God.2
I would like to bring kabbalistic, phenomenological and deconstructionist
approaches to bear on Borges’ ironic elaboration of a biblical notion of “place”
in “El Aleph” [“The Aleph”], “Las ruinas circulares” [“The Circular Ruins”],
“El libro de arena” [“The Book of Sand”], and “El disco” [“The Disk”]. I con-
tend that, in these texts, ‘place’ has a triple function. First, it is a locus where
revelation happens, or is supposed to happen. Second, it is a pseudo-realistic
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2 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar
setting which incorporates a false modality of the divine, a modality which is

lacking in some divine attributes, such as existence in all time frames. Finally,
it is an intrinsically ambiguous impossible object-place (or dream-world) which
hovers between existence and non-existence. An imaginary encounter with this
object provokes a mystical experience in characters, and makes them face
ontological, epistemological and artistic challenges. In “El Aleph,” the presence
of the impossible object-place within the familiar setting both evokes divine
presence and can be interpreted as a comic parallel to the underlying biblical
story. In “Las ruinas circulares,” the exotic location initiates a mystical expe-
rience which exhibits the human self as a mysterious being. In both “El disco”
and “El libro de arena,” the impossible object-place illustrates the conflict
between the ideas of infinity and the mundane boundaries which humans fail
to dominate. Whereas “El disco” shows human aspirations and the impossibil-
ity of obtaining control over the universe embodied in the magic object-disk,
“El libro de arena” exemplifies the ambiguity of the human wish to both give
form to the infinite and to resist the idea of limits by simultaneously convey-
ing the characters’ desire for possession of the endless book and the fear of that
possession.
Familiar Places, Hidden Challenges: Revelation

Present and Dissipated in “El Aleph”
In his phenomenological study, Gaston Bachelard suggests that places stimu-
late imagination, and have stable symbolic functions in the life of an individ-
ual. In accord with this perspective, Carlos Daneri, the protagonist of “El
Aleph,” firmly believes that he encounters ‘his’ Aleph, a source of his poetic
inspiration, in the cellar of his childhood home. The character’s account of his
vision, later shared and described by the narrator “Borges,” allows one to inter-
pret it as a mystical experience. The narrator also explicitly draws a parallel
between the experience the impossible object in Daneri’s cellar provokes, and
the kabbalistic view of the Aleph which is “la ilimitada y pura divinidad” (Obras
1:627; italics added) [“. . . the pure and unlimited godhead” (285)].3 In his
metafictional comment, he observes that in light of the meaning of the “aleph”
in the Hebrew alphabet, the choice of the name “Aleph” for the mysterious
object in Daneri’s cellar is not a mere coincidence: “Su aplicación al disco de
mi historia no parece casual” (Obras 1:627) [“Its application to the disk of my tale
would not appear to be accidental.” (285)]. Both Daneri’s and the narrator’s
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 3
place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 3
accounts of their visions are recognized and ironized by the text, which, as
I will discuss below, evokes kabbalistic and deconstructionist depictions of
revelation, as vacillating between “presence” and “absence.” These notions are
found both in kabbalistic interpretations of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
and Derrida’s metaphorical interpretation and use of the ambivalent Pharmakon.
“El Aleph,” “uno de los puntos del espacio que contiene todos los puntos”
(Obras 1:623) [“. . . one of the points in space that contains all points” (280)],
has been discovered by Carlos Daneri in the cellar of his childhood home.
According to Bachelard, the cellar is “the dark entity of the house, the one that
partakes of subterranean forces” (Bachelard 18). He emphasizes that in the
house one has been born, “dream is more powerful than thought” (Bachelard
16). Being located in the house which possesses “one of the greatest powers of
integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams” (Bachelard 6), a cellar is
a place which awakes the “unconscious” mind and stimulates the work of
human imagination. It is a chronotope associated with the mysterious.4 As
Bachelard observes, “when we dream [in a cellar], we are in harmony with the
irrationality of the depths” (18), and he continues that “the cellar dream
irrefutably increases reality” (20).
In line with Bachelard’s phenomenological approach, Daneri characterizes
the Aleph as “inajenable” [“inalientable”] as an imaginary complement to exis-
tent reality, and refers to it using the possessive pronouns “mi” (Obras 1:623)
[“my” (281)] or “mío” (Obras 1:623) [“mine” (281)]. Daneri himself admits that
an individual’s ability to imagine, which he believes he possesses, brings the
Aleph into presence. As Naomi Lindstrom points out, “the Aleph suggests that
the magic sphere is brought into being by force of desire and enjoys no existence
unless sought” (56).
Daneri’s perception of the cellar of his home as a place that evokes mem-
ories of his childhood also corresponds to its symbolic functioning, as defined
by Bachelard. Recalling his memories, Daneri tells the narrator “Borges” about
his mysterious discovery of the magic Aleph—the world in its totality, which
dates back to his childhood: “yo lo descubrí en la niñez, antes de la edad esco-
lar. La escalera del sótano es empinada, mis tíos me tenían prohibido el descen-
so, pero alguien dijo que había un mundo en el sótano. Se refería, lo supe después,
a un baúl, pero yo entendí que había un mundo. Bajé secretamente, rodé por la
escalera vedada, caí. Al abrir los ojos, vi el Aleph” (Obras 1:623; italics added)
[“I discovered it in my childhood, before I ever attended school. The cellar stair-
way is steep, and my aunt and uncle had forbidden me to go down it, but
somebody said you could go around the world with that thing down there in
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the basement. The person, whoever it was, was referring, I later learned, to a
steamer trunk, but I thought there was some magical contraption down there.
I tried to sneak down the stairs, fell head over heels, and when I opened my eyes,
I saw the Aleph.” (280–281)].
According to Daneri, the only place where his Aleph can be encountered
is in his childhood home. Therefore, the intention of the businessmen to
destroy that home means, for him, the destruction of his private universe.
This causes his anger and despair: “—La casa de mis padres, mi casa, la vieja
casa inveterada de la calle Garay!—repitió, quiza olvidando su pesar en la
melodía” (Obras 1:622) [“The home of my parents—the home where I was
born—the old and deeply rooted house on Calle Garay!” (280)]. Also, in their
conversation, Daneri confesses to the narrator “con esa voz llana, impersonal,
a que solemos recurrir para confiar algo muy íntimo” (Obras 1:622) [“in that flat,
impersonal voice we drop into when we wish to confide something very private”
(280)], that he needs the house because the Aleph is necessary for him to com-
plete the poem that he is writing.5 The narrator refers to his words: “dijo que
para terminar el poema le era indispensable la casa, pues en un ángulo del sótano
había un Aleph” (Obras 1:622–623) [“. . . he said he had to have the house so
he could finish the poem—because in one corner of the cellar there was an
Aleph.” (280)]. In this way, Daneri’s account of the discovery of his Aleph as
possible only in the cellar of his childhood home exemplifies the psychological
aspect of place as discussed by Bachelard.
Irony, however, as a ludic and demystifying discursive strategy, challenges
the stable symbolic connection between the place and the individual described
by Bachelard and maintained in Daneri’s account of his “mystical” experi-
ence. Both Daneri’s “creative process,” as well as its result, the poem “La
Tierra” [“The Earth”] inspired (Daneri insists) by the vision in the cellar are the
objects of satire. The function of the cellar as a stimulator of human imagina-
tion, according to Bachelard’s phenomenology, is parodized in the text: Daneri
is mistaken in his belief that his Aleph will make him a good poet.
Indeed, emphasizing the descriptive characteristics of the poem, the nar-
rator is skeptical about Daneri’s work. He characterizes Daneri’s writing as a
result of a collaboration of “la aplicación, la resignación y el azar” (Obras
1:619) [“Application, resignation, and chance . . .” (277)]. In contrast to
Daneri’s own belief, Borges’s readers realize that the poem does not reveal the
character’s imagination or incorporate his fantasy, but rather only contains obser-
vations framed within the conventions of Spanish prosody, which the author
recites to the narrator with “sonora satisfacción” [“. . . ringing self-satisfaction”]:
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 5
He visto, como el griego, las urbes de los hombres,

los trabajos, los días de varia luz, el hambre;
no corrijo los hechos, no falseo los nombres,
pero el voyage que narro, es . . . autour de ma chambre.
(Obras 1:619)6
I have seen, as did the Greek, man’s cities and his fame,
The works, the days of various light, the hunger;
I prettify no fact, I falsify no name,
For the voyage I narrate is . . . autour de ma chamber. (18)
As the author himself points out, the poem is an eclectic combination based
on his own readings, which include the creations of Homer, Hesiod and
Goldoni. The trip which it describes, therefore, takes place within Daneri’s own
room, where he has been engaged in reading texts by these authors. In his own
eyes, literary allusions, in which the strophe abounds, make the poem particu-
larly sophisticated. As the author proudly observes, “Estrofa a todas luces intere-
sante” (Obras 1:619) [“A stanza interesting from any point of view . . .” (276)].
The conflict of beliefs evokes irony. As Wayne C. Booth observes, “we are
alerted whenever we notice an unmistakable conflict between the beliefs
expressed and the beliefs we hold and suspect the author of holding” (15).
Indeed, Daneri is a character who belongs to an ironic mode, a talentless yet
ambitious poet whose poor poetry is mocked by the text. According to Northrop
Frye, a character belongs to the ironic mode “[i]f inferior in power or intelligence
to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of bondage,
frustration, or absurdity” (34). Daneri’s frustration, caused, as he explains, by
the impossibility of finishing his poetic description of the universe in its totality
because his house and his Aleph will be destroyed, provokes laughter.
Moreover, defying both the owner’s and the narrator’s expectation, as the lat-
ter mentions in “posdata,” after the destruction of the house, Daneri becomes par-
ticularly successful in his work. As the narrator comments, “A los seis meses de la
demolición del inmueble de la calle Garay, la Editorial Procusto no se dejó arredar
por la longitud del considerable poema y lanzó al mercado una selección de ‘tro-
zos argentinos.’ Huelga repetir lo ocurrido Carlos Argentino Daneri recibió el
Segundo Premio Nacional de literatura” (Obras 1:626) [“Six months after the
demolition of the building on Garay Street, Procrustes Publishers, undaunted by
the length of Carlos Argentino Dineri’s substantial poem, published the first in its
series ‘Argentine pieces.’ It goes without saying what happened: Carlos Argentino
Daneri won second place in the National Prize for Literature.” (284)]. And he
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 6
continues, “los diarios dicen que pronto nos dará otro volumen. Su afortunada
pluma (no entorpecida ya por el Aleph) se ha consagrado a versificar los epítomes
del doctor Acevedo Díaz” (Obras 1:627) [“. . . the newspapers say he’ll soon be giv-
ing us another volume. His happy pen (belabored no longer by the Aleph) has been
consecrated to setting the compendia of Dr. Acevedo Díaz to verse.” (285)”].
Further, although the narrator interprets Daneri’s and his own experiences in
the cellar as mystical, their communication with the divine remains doubtful for
the readers of Borges’s story. On the one hand, the narrator’s intent to reduce the
distance between himself and the divine the “aleph,” “la ilimitada y pura divinidad”
(Obras 1:627) [“the pure and unlimited godhead” (285)] by claiming to experience
it in the house on the street Garay, evokes a burlesque ethos. On the other hand,
the characters’ encounters with the divine can be interpreted as acts of will and
subjective truth. As Scholem notes, “[e]ach man has his own unique access to
Revelation. Authority no longer resides in a single unmistakable ‘meaning’ of the
divine communication, but in its infinite capacity for taking on new forms” (13).
Support for both of these assumptions can be found in the epigraphs to the story.
One of them is from Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan: “But they will teach us that
Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time, a Nuncstans (as the Schools call
it); which neither they, nor any else understand, no more than they would a Hic
stans for an Infinite greatness of Place” (Leviathan, IV, 46).7 In this quote, “an
Infinite greatness of Place” stands for “the Incomprehensible Nature of God”
(693), which remains distant and enigmatic. Moreover, Hobbes suggests that
“inhabiting” the divine diminishes it. In Part IV of his work, for instance, enti-
tled “Of the Kingdome of Darknesse,” the English author observes that: “To wor-
ship God, in some peculiar Place . . . implies a new Relation by Appropriation to
God . . . . But to worship God, as inanimating, or inhabiting, such Image, or place;
that is to say, an infinite substance in a finite place is Idolatry: for such finite Gods, are
but Idols of the brain, nothing real” (692; italics added). Likewise, the narrator refers
to the discovery in the cellar, which he and Daneri share, as “un falso Aleph”
(Obras 1:627) [“a false Aleph” (285)], for the divine cannot be reduced to a finite
object “el diametro sería de dos o tres centímetros” (Obras 1:625) [“two or three
centimeters in diameter” (283)], which human beings can possess and inhabit.
Another reason for the narrator’s characterization of Daneri’s Aleph as false
can be found in a source familiar to Borges, Baruch Spinoza’s concept of the
Divine, probably influenced by Hobbes’ idea of the parallelism between the
notions of God and Place, both of which are infinite and not totally accessible
by people. According to Spinoza, a person can understand the realms of extension
and thought, but other infinite divine attributes remain unknown to humans.
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 7
In his seminal lecture “Baruj Spinoza,” Borges creatively re-elaborates Spinoza’s

concept of the divine as extension and thought, and observes that, for Spinoza,
God is as infinite as the universe, “an infinite circumference” which has “an infi-
nite number of radii, but only two are known to us: space and time” (282).
Daneri’s Aleph, however, which contains “el inconcebible universo” (Obras
1:626) [“. . . the inconceivable universe” (284)], does not possess a temporal
dimension. This also makes Daneri’s impossible object a false embodiment of
the divine, which in its “true” forms exists in all time frames.
The characters’ mystical experience, nevertheless, might be explained as
an act of personal will. This option is suggested by the epigraph from Hamlet:
“O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a King of infinite
space” (Hamlet, II, 2).8 Indeed, evoking the prince’s desperate aspirations “to
possess the infinite” while recognizing his restricted condition, this quote
alludes to the human perception of the world as a matter of will. This vision
is in accord with Arthur Schopenhauer’s ideas shared by the Borges—author.9
In a way similar to Hamlet, who does not refer to the mimetic Denmark but
rather to its metaphysical presence which is both a reflection and creation of
his own mind, Daneri creates his own access to the remote world, where the
divine and the mundane interweave, and which he cannot help falsifying in his
reports. In this way, both implicitly referring to and challenging assumptions
akin to those of Bachelard about the stable symbolic functions of places,
Borges’s text ironically elaborates a biblical notion of a place where the possi-
bility of encountering the divine remains open.
The ludic affinity between the representation of the Aleph in Borges’s story
and its biblical precursor, as well as the use of a narrative strategy which inter-
relates opposites, also suggest that Daneri’s impossible object oscillates between
presence and absence. As Scholem points out, the Hebrew letter Aleph is “preg-
nant with infinite meaning,” yet it does not carry any specific meaning; it is “a
spiritual root of all other letters and . . . hence all other elements of human dis-
course” (Scholem 30). To hear the Aleph, however, is to hear next to nothing:
it is a preparation for all audible language but itself conveys no sound.
According to Rabbi Mendel Torum, Scholem observes, the actual revelation
to Israel consisted only of the aleph. This statement, Scholem asserts, transforms
the revelation on Mount Sinai into a mystical revelation, “it had to be trans-
lated into human language and that is what Moses did” (30). He further
suggests: “But the truly divine element in this revelation, the immense aleph,
was not in itself sufficient to express the divine message, and in itself it was more
than the community could bear” (31).
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 8
The ‘revelation’ in the house on Garay Street can be seen as a comic

parallel with that on Mount Sinai. The basement in Daneri’s house becomes
a location where revelation apparently occurs due to the presence of the
“impossible object,” a place which embodies the spirit of the divine/mystical
experience, the burning bush which is never consumed, and the Aleph which
contains the infinite within it.10 The comic effect is produced “by transposing
the natural expression of an idea into another key” (Bergson 140). Referring
to the whole event of the discovery of the Aleph as an oxymoron, Ana María
Barranechea points out that the use of irony as a discursive strategy in the story
makes “the concentrated vision of the planet . . . absurdly comical” (84).
The interrelatedness of opposites in Scholem’s definition of the letter
aleph with its mystical connotations, as well as in the characters’ experience
in Borges’s story, can be illuminated by a deconstructionist use of the term
“pharmakon.” 11 Derrida first refers to the word, “pharmakon,” which in Greek
means both “remedy” and “poison,” in his essay “Plato’s Pharmacy,” included
in Dissemination. The French philosopher finds this ambiguous word, the mean-
ings of which display a contradiction, particularly interesting and useful to show
that the inherent failure in Western metaphysics is in the either/or nature of
its dialectics, such as truth and falsity, presence and absence, etc. In Borges’s
story, the intrinsic ambiguity of the Aleph, both present and absent, “el infinito
Aleph” (Obras 1:624) [“the infinite Aleph” (282) ] (‘remedy’) and “un falso
Aleph” (Obras 1:627) [“a false Aleph” (285)] (‘poison’), may be seen as a
parallel to Derrida’s interpretation of the “pharmakon.”
Further, for Derrida, the word pharmakon is “extremely apt for the task of
tying all the threads . . . together” (96). He asserts that “one could follow the
word pharmakon as a guiding thread within the whole Platonic problematic of
the mixture” (128). The role of the pharmakon as “fil conducteur” in Derrida’s
philosophical essay is analogous to its function in Borges’s story, which both cel-
ebrates and undermines the existence of a true Aleph, and in this way echoes
Derrida’s observation that books “of a philosophical nature invariably include
both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine” (qtd.
in Gonzalez-Echevarría 231).
Evoking Scholem’s description of mystical revelation which hardly can be
communicated by human beings, and the interrelatedness of opposites explicit
in Derrida’s metaphorical interpretation of the ambivalent pharmakon (the
analog of which is the biblical Aleph/ “falso” aleph in Daneri’s cellar), both Daneri
and the narrator can hardly describe the Aleph. Indeed, while skeptical about
Daneri’s “ineptas” (Obras 1:618) [“witless” (276)] ideas and his pseudo-artistic
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 9
creation, the narrator nevertheless accepts for the moment the existence of the
Aleph when, after following Daneri’s advice, he descends to the cellar and later
attempts to describe his experience.12 The narrator’s account of his attempt to
capture the totality of the universe incorporated in “el microcosmo de alquimis-
tas y cabalistas” (Obras 1:624) [“The microcosm of the alchemists and
Kabbalists,” (282)] reveals both presence and absence: the tiny Aleph incor-
porates in itself “el espacio cósmico . . . sin disminución del tamaño” (Obras
1:625; italics added) [“. . . universal space was contained inside it, with no
diminution in size” (283)] and brings it all into a center of simultaneity.13 The
pharmakon-like ambivalent experience explains the narrator’s incapability to
communicate his vision, as he confesses: “¿cómo trasmitir a los otros el infini-
to Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca?” (Obras 1:624) [“How, can
one transmit to others the infinite Aleph, which my timorous memory can
scarcely contain?” (282)]. The narrator “Borges” refers to his experience as the
“instante gigantesco” [“unbounded moment” (282)] full of contradictions,
when limited becomes unrestricted and simultaneously multifocused: “Cada
cosa (la luna del espejo, digamos) era infinitas cosas, porque yo claramente la
veía desde todos los puntos del universo” (Obras 1:625). [“Each thing (the glass
surface of a mirror, let us say) was infinite things, because I could clearly see it
from every point in the cosmos.” (283)]. The correspondence between the
names of the author and the narrator, recurrent in Borges’s fiction, provokes a
double effect. On the one hand, it evokes a burlesque ethos. As Bakhtin also
mentions, “[p]lay with a posited author is also characteristic of the comic
novel . . . a heritage from Don Quixote” (312). On the other hand, it empha-
sizes the author’s personal preoccupations, described by Barranechea as the
“unutterable” (80) nature of non-shared experiences and the boundlessness
of the universe, of the infinite.
The story ends with the narrator questioning whether the Aleph in the
cellar and that in a Sacred Book are one and the same, whether there is a “true”
Aleph, and the entire substance of his vision: “¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo
de una piedra? ¿Lo he visto cuando vi todas las cosas y lo he olvidado?” (Obras
1:627; italics added) [“Does that Aleph exist, within the heart of a stone? Did
I see it there in the cellar when I saw all things, and then forget it?” (286)]. The
rhetorical nature of this interrogative leaves the reader with a variety of inter-
pretations as to where the concepts of the Aleph, “el En sof” (Obras 1:627) [“the
En Soph” (29)], and the Pharmakon, “the movement, the locus, and the play:
(the production of) difference” (Derrida 27), converge. Like “el aleph” in both
Jewish mysticism and in Borges’s story, “[t]he pharmakon,” Derrida writes,
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 10
“keeps itself forever in reserve . . .. We will watch it infinitely promise itself and
endlessly vanish through concealed doorways that shine like mirrors and open
onto a labyrinth. It is a store of deep background that we are calling pharmacy”
(127–128).
The ludic use of the phenomenological symbolism of the house and the
cellar in staging the characters’ encounter with the Aleph can be considered
a parodic reference to the mystical revelation as described by kabbalists, as well
as its insightful interpretation by Borges inspired by Jewish mystical thought.
Both Borges’s ironic elaboration of the biblical notion of place as a locale
where revelation occurs, and of the notion of object-place as an embodiment
of the divine, manifest the lack of a single ‘unmistakable’ meaning of revela-
tion and show place to be a stage for a potential mystical experience which
is “fundamentally amorphous” (Scholem 8) and closed to precise definition
and univocal interpretation. This approach to the notion of place can be con-
sidered another example of the influence of kabbalistic thought on Borges’s
writings.
In accord also with the phenomenological theory developed by Bachelard,
Borges’s object-place, the Aleph, is both brought to existence by, and acts as
a reflector of, human imagination.14 The coexistence of ‘familiar’/‘realistic’
places and a “magic” place/object in “El Aleph” illustrates Bachelard’s obser-
vation that a ‘house’ is a “cradle” (7) which cherishes human daydreams, and
also manifests a symbolic functioning of place as defined by Jewish mystics.
Indeed, in his study of the symbols of the Kabbalah, Scholem points out the
importance of the psychological aspect of traditional symbols as “means of
expressing an experience that is in itself expressionless” (22), an observation
literalized in Borges’s text.
The phenomenological approach to place as a symbol, however, is both
recognized and ironized in the story. The irony undermines the stable symbol-
ic connections between the place and the individual described by Bachelard,
and displays the intellectual affinity between Borges’s texts and the decon-
structionist celebration of the play of differences that denies any idea of stability.
The simultaneous perception of the universe in its totality, inspired by an
impossible object which hovers between presence and absence, is closed to any
logical proofs or objective explanation. Revelation is present, and at the same
time dissipated, by the ludic movement of the pharmakon, which suggests
that an endless search is the only way to find it, to access the divine: “God is
in the making. Dios está haciéndose” (Shaw qtd. in Borges Obras 3:273).
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 11
Dreaming in Circles, Facing the Ruins:

the Mystery and Limitations of the Human
Self in “Las ruinas circulares”
Whereas in “El Aleph,” a possibility of encountering the divine within familiar
setting is both ironized and left open, in “Las ruinas circulares” [“The Circular
Ruins”] the exotic location both evokes the presence of the divine and turns
out to be a manifestation of a mystery about the human self.15 In this text, the
action takes place in a ruined temple, a stage for a potential mystical experience
which reveals the apparent leveling of the human and the divine to be an act of
self-deception, and manifests the human self as a false embodiment of the divine.
The title of the story establishes two dimensions of circularity/roundness which
evokes “being” (Bachelard 239) and “ruinas” [“ruins”] associated with incom-
pleteness, destruction, and nostalgia. These dimensions are reconciled in the
story when circularity undermines the dream/existence dichotomy, unites the
notions of eternal return and infinity, and subverts the creator/creation hier-
archy. The “ruinas” point to the coexistence of presence and absence and the
importance of the divine in the act of creation.
The circular place, both as a physical locality and as “an object of thought”
(Leibniz 132) associated with the presence of the divine, makes dream and ‘real-
ity’ converge in Borges’s text. The circular ruins of the temple, “[e]se redondel”
[“[t]his circle” (45)], are chosen by the magician for his metaphysical project:
“Quería soñar un hombre . . . e imponerlo a la realidad” (Obras 1:451) [“He
wanted to dream a man . . . and insert him into reality” (46)].16 Likewise, “un
anfiteatro circular” (Obras 1:452; italics added) [“a circular amphitheater” (46)]
is the place of action staged in one of his dreams. The narrator emphasizes the
striking similarity between the temple, “el punto de comunicación entre lo
humano y lo sobrenatural” (Arango 32) [“the point of contact between the
human and the magic”], and the amphitheater, associated both with education
and performance, which establishes the mirror relationship between dream and
empirical reality of the fictional world of the story: “El forastero se soñaba en
el centro de un anfiteatro circular que era de algún modo el templo incendia-
do” (Obras 1:452) [“The stranger dreamt that he was in the center of a circular
amphitheater which in some way was the burned temple” (46)].
Moreover, in the circular amphitheater of the magician’s dream, the pupils
exhibit similarities with the teacher in their common connection with the past.
In his description of the magician, the narrator points out that he came from
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 12
a place separated by time and distance from the world where the actions of the
story take place: “el hombre taciturno venía del Sur y . . . su patria era una de
las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba, en el flanco violento de la montaña,
donde el idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la
lepra” (Obras 1:451) [“the silent man came from the South . . . his home was
one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the
Zend tongue in not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent”
(45)]. Similarly, “las caras de [los alumnos] pendían a muchos siglos de distan-
cia y a una altura estelar, pero eran del todo precisas” (Obras 1:452). [“the faces
of the [students] hung many centuries away and at a cosmic height, but were
entirely clear and precise” (46)]. In this way, distance in time and space is anni-
hilated both in the place of narration and in that of dream: the contrast between
past and present and far and near is undermined in the temple/amphitheater.
The linguistic peculiarities of the text also emphasize the reflective rela-
tionship between the ‘reality’ and the dream. For instance, parallel syntactic
constructions describe the actions of the magician both during the time he is
awake and while he is dreaming: “Quiso explorar la selva, extenuarse; apenas
alcanzó entre la cicuta unas rachas de sueño débil, veteadas fugazmente de
visiones de tipo rudimental: inservibles. Quiso congregar el colegio y apenas
hubo articulado unas breves palabras de exhortación, éste se deformó, se borró”
(Obras 1:452; italics added) [“He tried to explore the jungle, to exhaust him-
self; amidst the hemlocks, he was scarcely able to manage a few snatches of fee-
ble sleep, fleetingly mottled with some rudimentary visions which were useless.
He tried to convoke the college and had scarcely uttered a few brief words of
exhortation, when it became deformed and was extinguished” (47)]. The effect
of the alliteration might in addition contribute to the confusion between the
magician and his dream that manifests essential “phantasmagoria” (Barranechea
122) of being: “En el sueño del hombre que soñaba, el soñado se despertó” (Obras
1:453) [“In the dreamer’s dream, the dreamed one awoke” (48)]. Thus, “Las
ruinas circulares” [“The Circular Ruins”] exemplifies the interrelation between
the “dream”/ “existence” realms in Borges’s fiction, where “[d]reams are another
way of suggesting the undefined boundaries between the ‘real’ and the fictitious
worlds. Within the economy of his tales they hold roles which are premonitory,
labyrinthine, cyclically repetitive, and allusive to infinity. At times, they are
clearer than life itself and existence tends to become somnolent for that
reason” (Barranechea 126).
The process of creation also undermines the inside/outside opposition, for
it makes “[E]l espacio entero de su alma [del mago]” (Obras 1:451; italics added)
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 13
[“the entire space (better then content) of his soul” (46)] and “el templo inhab-
itado y despedazado, porque era un mínimo de mundo visible” (Obras 1:451)
[“The uninhabited and broken temple suited him, for it was a minimum of vis-
ible world” (46)] to become one. Being completely absorbed by his task, the
dreamer ignores his other life experiences because the round temple is a suffi-
cient world for him. Commenting on roundness, Bachelard observes that this
is a form that “guides and encloses . . . dreams” (Bachelard 239). As the nar-
rator points out, “si alguien le hubiera preguntado su propio nombre o cualquier
rasgo de su vida anterior, no habría acertado a responder” (Obras 1:451) [“if
someone had asked him his own name or any trait of his previous life, he would
not have been able to answer” (46)]. The dream acquires a spatial dimension,
for it is equivalent to the desert in the narrator’s description of the insomnia
which the magician tries to overcome: “El hombre, un día emergió del sueño como
de un desierto viscoso, miró la vana luz de la tarde que al pronto confundió con
la aurora y comprendió que no había soñado. Toda esa noche y todo el día, la
intolerable lucidez del insomnio se abatió contra él. . . . En la casi perpetua vig-
ilia, lágrimas de ira le quemaban los viejos ojos” (Obras 1:452; italics added)
[“The man emerged from sleep one day as if from a viscous desert, looked at
the vein light of afternoon, which at first he confused with that of dawn, and
understood that he had not really dreamt. All that night and all day, the intol-
erable lucidity of insomnia weighed upon him. . . . In his almost perpetual
sleeplessness, his old eyes burned with tears of anger” (47)].17
The temple chosen by the magician for his project, considered by the
narrator as “sobrenatural” but not “imposible,” is not, however, unique. Already
at the beginning of the story, the narrator mentions “el otro templo despedaza-
do de dioses incendiados y muertos” (Obras 1:451), which alludes to the idea
of the eternal return suggested by Nietzsche. In “La doctrina de los ciclos” [“The
Doctrine of Cycles”], Borges insists on the logical fallacies of Nietzsche’s
approach: “¿Basta la mera sucesión, no verificada por nadie? A falta de un arcán-
gel especial que lleve la cuenta, ¿qué significa el hecho de que atravesamos el
ciclo trece mil quinientos catorce, y no el primero de la serie o el número tre-
scientos veintidós con el exponente dos mil? Nada, para la práctica—lo cual
no daña al pensador. Nada, para la inteligencia—lo cual ya es grave” (Obras
1:391). [“Is mere succession enough, unverified by anyone? Without a special
archangel to keep count, what does, what does it mean that we are passing
through the 13,514th cycle, and not the first of the series or number 3222?
Nothing, as far as practice goes—which does not harm to the thinker. Nothing,
as far as intelligence—which is serious” (71)].18 He attacks Nietzsche’s idea that
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 14
“el universo tiene que repetirse” (Nietzche qtd. in Borges Obras 1:385) [“the
universe must repeat itself” (65)] with Cantor’s theory of series, which asserts “la
perfecta infinitud del número de puntos del universo” (Obras 1:386) [“[t]he per-
fect infinity of the number of points in the universe” (66)]. However, Borges’s
conclusion is that “[l]a prueba es tan irreprochable como baladí” (Obras 1:386)
[“[t]he proof is as irreproachable as it is worthless” (67)], and he recognizes that
“[a]lguna vez nos deja pensativos la sensación ‘de haber vivido ya ese momen-
to’ ” (Obras 1:390) [“[a]t times the sensation of having already lived a certain
moment leaves us wondering” (70)].
In “El tiempo circular” [“Circular Time”], while outlining three ways of
interpreting the idea of the eternal return originally suggested by Plato,
Nietzsche and Marcus Aurelius, Borges agrees with the last one, with “la
concepción de ciclos similares no idénticos” [“the concept of similar but not
identical cycles”] as “el único imaginario” (Obras 2:394) [“the only one that is
conceivable” (226)].19 Analyzing Aurelius’s approach to the eternal return, he
makes observations that define this doctrine as well as appear to be determi-
nant for Borges’s own aesthetics. These observations are “negar la realidad del
pasado y del porvenir” [“a negation of the reality of the past and the future”
(227)], to view history as a block, and to “negar cualquier novedad” (Obras
2:395) [“negat[e] all novelty” (227)]. “Las ruinas circulares” exemplifies Borges’s
ideas about eternal return through the reference to the cyclical development
of human history, analogous to the destinies of individuals.
The presence of repetitive architectural structures is emphasized by the
syntactic parallelism which introduces the idea of circularity in time and space:
“Sabía que ese templo era el lugar que requería su invencible propósito; sabía
que los árboles incesantes no habían logrado estrangular, río abajo, las ruinas
de otro templo propicio, también de dioses incendiados y muertos” (Obras
1:451) [“He knew that this temple was the place required by his invincible pur-
pose; he knew that, downstream, the incessant trees had not managed to choke
the ruins of another propitious temple, whose gods were also burned and dead”
(45)]. The repetition of places (temples) is inevitably connected with the
concept of circular time, because for Borges “[e]l espacio es un incidente en el
tiempo” (Obras 1:200) [“space is an incident in time”]. This idealist vision is
also prominent in Plato’s Timaeus, whose argument Borges summarizes in
“El tiempo circular” [“Circular Time”]: “si los períodos planetarios son cíclicos,
también la historia universal lo será” (Obras 1:393) [“if the planetary periods
are cyclical, so must be the history of the universe” (225)]. In his comment
about “Las ruinas circulares” which appears in Aleph and Other Stories, Borges
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 15
asserts that “[t]he title [of the story] itself suggests the Pythagorean and Eastern
idea of cyclical time” (267).
The ideas of eternal return and infinity coexist in “Las ruinas circulares.”
On the one hand, the magician experiences a sense of repetition in the process
of creation for “[a] veces, lo inquetaba una impresión de que ya todo eso había
acontecido . . .” (Obras 1:454) [“[a]t times, he was troubled by the impression
that all this had happened before” (49)]. Moreover, the repeated symbols of fire
and architectural structures (temples) are explicitly mentioned in the text.
Interrupting the magician’s meditations, fire approaches the temple, as had hap-
pened many years before: “Primero . . . una remota nube en un cerro, liviana
como un pájaro; luego . . . el cielo que tenía el color rosado de la encía de los
leopardos; luego las humaredas que herrumbraron el metal de las noches;
después la fuga pánica de las bestias. Porque se repetió lo acontecido hace
muchos siglos” (Obras 1:454) [“First . . . a faraway cloud on a hill, light and rapid
as a bird; then . . . the sky which had the rose color of the leopard’s mouse; then
the smoke which corroded the metallic nights; finally, the panicky flight of the
animals. For what was happening had happened many centuries ago” (50)]. The
association of fire with the cyclical development of history dates back to
ancient mythologies to which Borges refers in his “La doctrina de los ciclos”
[“The Doctrine of Cycles”]: “En la cosmogonía de los estoicos, Zeus se alimenta
del mundo: el universo es consumido cíclicamente por el fuego que lo engen-
dró, y resurge de la aniquilación para repetir una idéntica historia” (Obras
1:387) [“In the Stoic cosmogony, “Zeus feeds upon the world”: the universe is
consumed cyclically by the same fire which engendered it and rises up again
from annihilation to repeat an identical history” (68)]. According to Donald
Shaw, the repetition of the temples, which occur successively along the banks
of the river, also “symbolizes human history” (26).
On the other hand, the use of such phrases as “las infinitas aldeas” (Obras
1:451) [“the infinite villages” (45)], “los árboles incesantes” (Obras 1:451) [“the
incessant trees” (45)], “el vasto colegio” (Obras 1:452) [“the vast . . . college”
(47)], and “la enorme alucinación” (Obras 1:452) [“the enormous hallucination”
(47)] indicates the presence of the infinite, an issue Borges was passionate about
throughout his life. The magician’s thoughts and actions bridge the ideas of eter-
nal return and infinity. Meditating about the difficulties involved in creating
into a substantial existence someone who is first conceived in a dream, he real-
izes that “el empeño de modelar la materia incoherente y vertiginosa de que se
componen los sueños es el más arduo que puede acometer un varón, aunque
penetre todos los enigmas del orden superior y del inferior: mucho más arduo
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 16
que tejer una cuerda de arena o que amonedar el viento sin cara” (Obras 1:452)
[“the effort to mold the incoherent and vertiginous matter dreams are made of
was the most arduous task a man could undertake though he might penetrate
all the enigmas of the upper and lower orders: much more arduous than weav-
ing a rope of sand or coining the faceless wind” (47)].20 The magician’s successful
realization of his project, which turns out to be just a link in a chain of creations
(none of which is realized in exactly the same way), however, exemplifies the
possibility of giving form to the unlimitable and reconciles the ideas of repeti-
tion and infinity.
The temple, “el recinto circular” (Obras 1:451) [“the circular enclosure”
(45)], where the magician feels the presence of the sacred forces necessary for
creation, is also a place that reveals that the intent to level the distance
between the magician and God is an act of self-deception. In the ruins, the tem-
ple, the place where “dios no recibe honor de los hombres,” [“god no longer
received the homage of men” (45)] the magician is treated almost like a god
by the native people: “los hombres de la región habían espiado con respeto su
sueño y solicitaban su amparo o temían su magia” (Obras 1:451) [“men of the
region had respectfully spied upon his sleep and were solicitous of his favor or
feared his magic” (46)]. The magician is also introduced to the story as a part
of the legend, by means of the mythical discourse, full of suspense and appar-
ent contradiction that creates an aura of mystery over him: “Nadie lo vio desem-
barcar en la unánime noche, nadie vio la canoa de bambú . . . Lo cierto es que el
hombre gris besó el fango” (Obras 1:451; my italics) [“No one saw him disem-
barking the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe . . . .The truth is
that the obscure man kissed the mud.” (45)].
The magician, a man, seems to obtain divine knowledge, for he makes pact
with the God of Fire who breathes life into the magician’s creation; together they
bring the magician’s dream to “reality”: “Ese múltiple dios le reveló que su nom-
bre terrenal era Fuego, que en ese templo circular (y en otros iguales ) le habían
rendido sacrificios y culto y que mágicamente animaría al fantasma soñado, de
suerte que todas las criaturas, excepto el Fuego mismo y el soñador, lo pensaran
un hombre de carne y hueso” (Obras 1:453) [“This multiple god revealed to him
that its earthly name was Fire, that in the circular temple (and in others of its
kind) people had rendered it sacrifices and cult and that it would magically give
life to the sleeping phantom, in such a way that all creatures except Fire itself
and the dreamer would believe him to be a man of flesh and blood” (48)].
Further, the interaction between the magician and his pupil, identified
in the story as father and son, has both human and divine connotations. The
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 17
characters have intrinsic similarities. Physically, the boy resembles his ‘father’:
“Era un muchacho taciturno, cetrino, díscolo a veces, de rasgos afilados que
repetían los de su soñador” (Obras 1:452) [“He was a silent boy, sallow, some-
times obstinate, with sharp features which reproduced those of the dreamer”
(47)]. The boy is also a part of the legend, of a mythical elliptical discourse
which refers to an indefinite but long time: “Al cabo de un tiempo que ciertos nar-
radores de su historia prefieren computar en años y otros en lustros, lo despertaron
dos remeros a medianoche: no pudo ver sus caras, pero le hablaron de un hom-
bre mágico en un templo del Norte, capaz de hollar el fuego y de no quemarse”
(Obras 1:454) [“After a time, which some narrators of his story prefer to com-
pute in years and others in lustra, he was awakened one midnight by two boat-
men; he could not see their faces, but they told him of a magic man in a
temple of the North who could walk upon fire and not be burned” (49)]. The
similarity culminates in the revelation of the ontology that they share, namely
that they are both creations of someone else’s dream. The magician discovers
that he himself, like his own pupil, is just somebody’s dream: “Con alivio, con
humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también era una apariencia, que otro
estaba soñándolo” (Obras 1:455) [“With relief, with humiliation, with terror,
he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another” (50)].
By means of his own creation the magician reveals himself to be “[un] mero sim-
ulacro” (Obras 1:454) [“a mere image” (50)] that challenges the Christian
idea that “el Hijo es la reconciliación de Dios con el mundo” (Obras 1:210)
[“the Son is God’s reconciliation with the world” (85)]. His attempts to rec-
oncile the existence of his son with the ‘real’ world result in the magician’s
recognition of his own distance from it due to his own dream-like ontology.
The magician’s revelation undermines the uniqueness of his project. The
magician’s activity as a creator echoes Schopenhauer’s idea that the “world is
the objectification of the will” (IX). A similar idea is suggested by Lewis
Carroll, whose Through the Looking Glass Borges quotes in the epigraph: “And
if he left off dreaming about you . . . .” In his prologue to Carroll’s Obras
Completas, Borges refers to the “sueño recíproco” (Obras 4:102) [“a reciprocal
dream”] described in this book which undermines the hierarchy between the
creator and the creation. A similar principle functions in Borges’s own text:
though the dreamers do not dream each other, they are both dream-creations
in the narrative, creation.
The image of ruins introduces the motifs of destruction and nostalgia to the
text. On the literal level, the ruins of the temple symbolize both the absence and
presence of God. Indeed, in this mutilated place, the God of Fire is no longer
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 18
worshipped but still can be evoked. The magician’s dream, inspired by his
vision of the “ruinas” of the temple, and the monument that is both a tiger and
a horse (and dedicated to the God of Fire), brings that divinity into “presence”:
“[el mago] soñó con la estatua. La soño viva, trémula: no era un atroz bastardo
de tigre y potro, sino a la vez esas dos criaturas vehementes y también un toro,
una rosa, una tempestad. Ese múltiple dios le reveló que su nombre terrenal era
Fuego” (Obras 1:453) [“. . . he dreamt of the statue. He dreamt of it as a living,
tremulous thing: it was not an atrocious mongrel of tiger or horse, but both these
vehement creatures at once and also a bull, a rose, a tempest. This multiple god
revealed to him that its earthly name was Fire” (48)].21 The temple, devoted to
the God of Fire, is first ruined by fire and then is brought to ashes: “Las ruinas
del santuario del dios del Fuego fueron destruidas por el fuego. En un alba sin
pájaros el mago vio cernirse contra los muros el incendio concéntrico” (Obras
1:454–455) [“The ruins of the fire god’s sanctuary were destroyed by fire. In a
birdless dawn the magician saw the concentric blaze close round the wall” (50)].
The ruins also function as a metaphor for incompleteness in this text.22 The
physical incompleteness of the magician’s creation is emphasized throughout
the story. The boy has been created from the fragments: “Lo soñó activo,
caluroso, secreto, del grandor de un puño cerrado, color granate en la penum-
bra de un cuerpo humano aún sin cara ni sexo” (Obras 1:453) [“He dreamt it
as active, warm, secret, the size of a closed fist, of garnet color in the penum-
bra of a human body as yet without face or sex” (47–48)]. The similarity
between the magician’s creation and “un rojo Adán” from clay emphasizes the
dependence of the created boy on the magician. With this parallelism, the nar-
rator introduces the golem motif to the text: “En las cosmogonías gnósticas, los
demiurgos amasan un rojo Adán que no logra ponerse de pie; tan inhábil y rudo
y elemental como ese Adán de sueño que las noches del mago habían fabrica-
do” (Obras 1:453) [“In the Gnostic cosmogonies, the demiurgi knead and
mold a red Adam who cannot stand alone; as unskillful and crude and ele-
mentary as this Adam of dust was the Adam of dreams fabricated by the magi-
cian’s nights of effort” (48)].23 In addition to physical imperfections and
incompleteness, the created boy has essential cognitive gaps: he is lacking in
knowledge about his origin and his past “para que no supiera nunca que era un
fantasma, para que se creyera un hombre como los otros” (Obras 1:454) [“So
that he would never know he was a phantom, so that he would be thought a
man like others” (49)].
As the last paragraph of the story indicates, the magician himself displays
similar ontological and epistemological limitations. His desire to escape the fire
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 19
displays him as living in the fallacy of thinking that he would be burnt as would
any human being. As the fire approaches, however, he realizes that it cannot
harm or hurt him because his existence, as that of his creation, the golem-boy,
is (a part of) somebody’s dream: “En un alba sin pájaros el mago vio cenirse con-
tra los muros el incendio concéntrico. Por un instante, pensó refugiarse en las
aguas, pero luego comprendió que la muerte venía a coronar su vejez y a
absolverlo de sus trabajos. Caminó contra los jirones de fuego. Estos no
mordieron su carne, éstos lo acariciaron y lo inundaron sin calor y sin com-
bustión. Con alivio, con humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también
era una apariencia, que otro estaba soñándolo” (Obras 1:455) [“In a birdless
dawn the magician saw the concentric blaze close round the walls. For a
moment, he thought of taking refuge in the river, but then he knew the death
was coming to crown his old age and absolve him of his labors. He walked into
the shreds of flame. But they did not bite into his flesh, they caressed him and
engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with ter-
ror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another” (50)].
There are several allusions, however, on the fictional nature of the magi-
cian—of which he was not aware—that make irony a discursive strategy and
illustrate its demystifying function in this text. The story evokes a burlesque
ethos, particularly when, in the narrator’s meditations about father-son human
relationships, metafictional references are embedded: “A todo padre le intere-
san los hijos que ha procreado (que ha permitido) en una mera confusión o feli-
cidad; es natural que el mago temiera por el porvenir de aquel hijo, pensado
entraña por entraña y rasgo por rasgo, en mil y una noches secretas” (Obras
1:454; italics added) [“All fathers are interested in the children they have pro-
created (they have permitted to exist) in mere confusion or pleasure; it was nat-
ural that the magician should fear for the future of that son, created in thought,
limb by limb and feature by feature, in a thousand and one secret nights”
(50)]. The text mocks the magician’s worries that his son will discover that he
is a phantom, as opposed to ‘real’ people among whom the magician includes
himself: “Temió que su hijo . . . descubriera de algún modo su condición de mero
simulacro. No ser un hombre, ser la proyección del sueño de otro hombre ¡qué
humillación incomparable, qué vértigo!” (Obras 1:454) [“He feared his son
might . . . discover in some way that his condition was that of a mere image.
Not to be a man, to be the projection of another man’s dream, what a feeling
of humiliation, of vertigo!” (50)]. The magician’s erroneous consideration of
himself as a human being and God’s rival may provoke the reader’s
retrospective laughter, as the magician himself turns out to be a reflection,
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 20
“un fantasma,” [“a mere image”] and his knowledge about himself and human
beings is limited by his creator’s ability to dream. The magician inherits both
the ability to dream and the limitations of the human-dreamer; he turns out to
be a false embodiment of the divine. The circularity provides the reconcilia-
tion and the leveling of the apparent dichotomies of dream/reality, eternal
return/infinity and creator/creation.
The Illusion of Power: the Magic Disc,

Human Vulnerability, and the Divine
Presence in “El disco”
The persistent human desire to transcend the limits of its control over the sur-
rounding world and to surpass the borders between the object and its infinite
environment is a theme of Borges’s later stories, such as “El disco” and “El libro
de arena.” In “El disco” [“The Disk”] the search for a magical object “el disco,”
a metaphorical embodiment of the infinite divine power over the universe,
becomes the protagonist’s obsession.24 The mimetic archaic setting and the
impossible object-place makes this story almost a Borgesean “fairy-tale”
(Lindstrom 104) which challenges any possibility of understanding and limit-
ing the universe by giving it a geometric form. The inherent human aspirations
for power and money embodied by the “inevitably ironic” narrator prove
human control over the universe to be an illusion.
The disk, “el círculo euclidiano, que admite solamente una cara” (Obras
3:73) [“the Euclidean circle, which has but one face” (485)], cannot be material-
ized, and therefore the narrator’s desire to possess it leads to its inevitable loss.
For Isern, the king of Secgens, who claims to have the disk, it symbolizes the
divine power of Odin, “the father of all gods” (Sturluson 48), who he asserts is
his relative: “Mi nombre es Isern y soy de la estirpe de Odín” (Obras 3:66) [“My
name is Isern and I am of the line of Odin” (478).25 The possession of this
unique disk defines Isern’s identity as a king: “—Es el disco de Odín. Tiene un
solo lado. En la tierra no hay otra cosa que tenga un solo lado. Mientras esté
en mi mano seré el rey” (Obras 3:67) [“ ‘It is a disk of Odin,’ the old man said
in a patient voice, as though he were speaking to a child. ‘It has but one side.
There is not another thing on earth that has but one side. So long as I hold it
in my hand I shall be king’” (478)]. This disk, an invisible image/object, is
brought into existence by the power of Isern’s imagination and mythical
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 21
consciousness. Typically for the latter, as described by Ernst Cassirer, the object
“is not a fixed form that imprints itself into consciousness but is a product of
formative operation” (Cassirer 29). Indeed, the narrator is unable to see the
disk: “Abrió la palma de la mano que era huesuda. No había nada en la mano.
Estaba vacía” (Obras 3:67) [“He opened his hand and showed me his bony palm.
There was nothing in it” (478)].
The existence of the disk appears to be a matter of belief and magic. As the
king explains, there is no other object of this shape in the universe. The nar-
rator’s attempts to trade the disk inevitably fail, as his conversation with the
king illustrates: “—En la choza tengo escondido un cofre de monedas. Son de
oro y brillan como la hacha. Si me das el disco de Odín, yo te doy el cofre. Dijo
tercamente:—No quiero” (Obras 3:67) [“ ‘In my hut I’ve got a chest full of
money hidden away. Gold coins, and they shine as my ax . . . If you give the disk
of Odin to me, I will give you the chest.’ ‘I will not,’ he said gruffly.” (478)]. The
disk lacks any material value and cannot be exchanged. For this greedy wood-
cutter, a representative of the generation and religion that have replaced those
of the king, the medal is associated only with materialistic advantages:
“Entonces yo sentí la codicia de poseer el disco. Si fuera mío, lo podría vender
por una barra de oro y sería un rey” (Obras 3:67) [“It was then I felt a gnawing
to own the disk myself. If it were mine, I could sell it for a bar of gold and then
I would be a king” (478)]. Though the narrator never obtains the disk (as the
universe cannot be limited to a geometrical form accessible to people), he never
abandons his aspiration to possess this symbol of the world in its totality. The
search for the disk becomes the main preoccupation of his life: “Al volver a mi
casa busqué el disco. No lo encontré. Hace años que sigo buscando” (Obras 3:67).
[“When I got back to my house I looked for the disk. But I couldn’t find it.
I have been looking for it for years” (479)].
The story takes place in the almost ‘realistic’ archaic setting where the nar-
rator lives, and his self-introduction emphasizes the contrast between himself
and the king Isern who possesses, or believes he possesses, the magic disk, an
impossible object. The references to the narrator’s ascetic house breathe with
antiquity, a remoteness in time and space, and introduce the ideas of unifor-
mity and circularity which the man’s life and the shape of the world have in
common: “La choza en que nací y en la que pronto habré de morir queda al borde
del bosque. Del bosque dicen que se alarga hasta el mar que rodea toda la tier-
ra y por el que andan casas de madera iguales a la mía” (Obras 3:66; italics added)
[“The hut I was born in, and where I’m soon to die, sits at the edge of the woods.
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 22
They say these woods go on and on, right to the ocean that surrounds the entire
world; they say that wooden houses like mine travel on that ocean” (477; italics
added)]. From the first paragraph, which gives the story the tone of legend and
incorporates metafictional elements, the narrator points to his cognitive and
physical limits: “Del bosque dicen que se alarga hasta el mar que rodea toda la
tierra y por el que andan casas de madera iguales a la mía. No sé; nunca lo he
visto. Tampoco he visto el otro lado del bosque.” (Obras 3:66; italics added)
[“They say these woods go on and on, right to the ocean that surrounds the
entire world; they say that wooden houses like mine travel on that ocean.
I wouldn’t know; I’ve never seen it. I’ve not seen the other side of the woods,
either.” (477, italics added)]. As with his cabin, located somewhere in medieval
Scandinavia, the woodcutter is one among many: “Soy leñador. El nombre no
importa” (Obras 3:66) [“I am a woodcutter. My name doesn’t matter” (477)].
The king, however, is unique. He is associated with the physical and spir-
itual strength of the person-prophet-god: “Abrí y entró un desconocido. Era un
hombre alto y viejo, envuelto en una manta raída. Le cruzaba la cara una cica-
triz. Los años parecían haberle dado más autoridad que flaqueza “ (Obras 3:66)
[“I opened the door and a stranger came in. He was a tall, elderly man all
wrapped up in a worn-out old blanket. A scar sliced across his face. The years
looked to have given him more authority than frailty” (477)]. The appearance
of Isern, as described by the narrator, echoes some elements of the scene of the
appearance of Odín before Olaf Tryggvason, the king of Norway, to which
Borges and Mariá Esther Vázques refer in Literaturas Germánicas medievales: “a la
corte de Olaf Tryggvason, que se había convertido a la nueva fe, llegó una noche
un hombre viejo, envuelto en una capa oscura y con el ala del sombrero sobre
los ojos” (109) [“One night an old man wrapped in a dark cloak and with the
brim of the hat on his eyes arrived to the court of Olaf Tryggvason, who has
been converted to the new religion”].
The narrator’s simplistic vision of the world, constructed around his
personal needs and weaknesses, is also contrasted with the glorious past of the
king, which reminds the reader of the bravery and passion of the Eddic
(medieval) heroes: “Muchas veces los llevé a [los Secgens] a la victoria en la dura
batalla, pero en la hora del destino perdí mi reino” (Obras 3:66) [“Many times
did I lead them [the Secgens] to victory in hard combat, but at the hour that
fate decreed, I lost my kingdom” (478)]. Isern, who possesses “the dramatic
strength” and “absolute courage” of the epic character (Ker 20), has lost every-
thing except the disk and his self-esteem. Echoing the folkloric motifs of the
wanderer seeking a night’s lodging and the classical image of the barefoot
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 23
poet/bard, the king has been able to go over the whole of Saxony by foot, as
he tells the narrator: “—No tengo hogar y duermo donde puedo. He recorrido
toda Sajonia” (Obras 3:66) [“ ‘I am without a home, and I sleep wherever I can.
I have wandered all across Saxony’ ” (477)].
The king is in exile because of his faith, which is different from the accepted
one: “Ando por los caminos del destierro pero aún soy el rey porque tengo el
disco” (Obras 3:67) [“ ‘I wander the paths of exile, but still I am king, for
I have the disk’” (478)]. Even in banishment, he continues to worship Odin.
The narrator, in contrast, is Christian. As he tells the king, “Yo no venero a
Odín . . . . Yo venero a Cristo” (Obras 3:22) [“ ‘I do not worship Odin. . . . I wor-
ship Christ’” (478)]. The symbolic meal of bread and fish (“pan y pescado”)
which the narrator offers to the king also has explicit Christian connotations,
as it echoes the biblical story of the loaves and the fishes: “And he [Jesus]
commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves,
and the two fishes . . . and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to
the multitude” (Matthew 20:16). In this way, the contrast between the wood-
cutter and the king, and the topos of the king’s exile, reflect the conflict
between Christianity and Paganism, a recurrent theme in medieval Germanic
literatures, as Borges et al. observe in Literaturas Germánicas Medievales (see, for
instance, p. 117).
In spite of the radical difference between the characters, both fail to obtain
the divine power of possession and control over the universe which is embod-
ied in the impossible object-place, the disk. This makes the story oscillate
between “inevitably ironic” (Frye 42) and moralistic fairy-tale. Already in the
first paragraph of the story, which, like the disk, has a circular structure, the nar-
rator euphemistically refers to his endless search for the disk: “y ahora es otra
cosa la que busco y seguiré buscando.” (Obras 3:66) [“and now it’s something
else I’m after, and always will be” (477)]. The fact that the disk is not explic-
itly mentioned in the first paragraph creates an aura of mystery around this unat-
tainable object. The king loses his medal with his life, which turns out to be
as vulnerable as that of any human being, and displays the disk to be a false
embodiment of the divine protector. As the narrator confesses, “Un hachazo
en la nuca bastó y sobró para que vacilara y cayera” (Obras 3:67) [“One ax blow
to the back of his head was all it took; he wavered and fell” (478)].26 Although
the narrator says that he saw “un brillo” [“the gleam” (478)] in the moment of
the King falling down, and that he marked the place where the disk fell, the
medal and the world of Odin which it embodies seem to disappear together
with Isern and his beliefs.27
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The Infinite Book: Fear and Longing

Whereas in “El disco” the king cherishes the disk, a symbolic representation of
Odin’s pagan world, as his unique treasure, and the woodcutter strives to pos-
sess the unattainable at all cost; in “El libro de arena” [“The Book of Sand”],
both the bible salesman and the narrator-protagonist (who displays striking sim-
ilarities with the author) are terrified by possession of the infinite/impossible
book, a metaphoric representation of the universe in its totality.28 The place as
an object/metaphor, which incorporates infinite objects, and, as a concrete geo-
graphical location, illustrates the tension between the concepts of infinity and
finitude, serves as a pseudo-realistic frame for the story, and allows the reader
to observe the connections between this text and previous ones such as “El
Aleph,” “Las ruinas circulares,” “Un resumen de las doctrinas de Einstein” [“A
summary of Einstein’s doctrines”] and “El disco.”
The title of the book, “El libro de arena,” manifests a conflict, indicated
already in the similarly impossible object of “the rope of sand,” a quote from
George Herbert’s poem “Yoke” which serves as an epigraph to Borges’s story.29
The tension emerges because though “ni el libro ni la arena tienen ni princi-
pio ni fin” (Obras 3:69) [“neither sand nor this book has a beginning or an end”
(481)], the text playfully emphasizes that the book has a shape typical for
books: “Era un volumen en octavo encuadernado en tela” (Obras 3:68) [“It was
a clothbound octavo volume” (481)].30 The narrator’s description of the mag-
ical book follows the enumeration of the mathematical axiom which opens the
story: “La línea consta de un número; infinito de puntos, el plano, de un
número infinito de líneas; el volumen, de un número infinito de planos; el
hipervolumen, de un número infinito de volúmenes . . .” (Obras 3:68) [“The
line consists of an infinite number of points; the plane, of an infinite number
of lines; the volume, of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume, of an
infinite number of volumes” (480)]. Similar reference to the laws of mathe-
matics appear in Borges’s earlier essay “Un resumen de las doctrinas de Einstein”
originally published in Hogar on October 14, 1938: “Una línea, por breve que
sea, contiene un número infinito de puntos; un cuadrado . . . contiene un
número infinito de líneas; un cubo . . . contiene un número infinito de cuadra-
dos; un hipecubo . . . contendrá . . . un número infinito de cubos.” (Obras 4:394)
[“A line as short as it is . . . contains an infinite number of lines; a cube . . . con-
tains an infinite number of squares; a hypercube . . . will contain an infinite
number of cubes”]. Thus, by utilizing one of his favorite devices, Borges
combines mathematical axioms (through an auto-quotation) with fantastic
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 25
elements associated with the infinite book to emphasize that the form of the
Book of Sand both evokes and deviates from a typical literary format.
Further, the narrator’s experience in examining the Book leaves him
astonished: its physical qualities do not conform to three dimensions or the
conventional characteristics associated with linearity. As the narrator’s play-
ful metacritique of the beginning of his story suggests: “No, decididamente no
es éste, more geométrico, el mejor modo de iniciar mi relato.” (Obras 3:68)
[“No—this, more geometrico, is decidedly not the best way to begin my tale”
(480)]. Any geometric description of the book titled “Holy Writ,” produced in
remote India, and brought by the mysterious salesman of bibles to the protag-
onist’s house, will remain insufficient.
The Book’s magic structure and nature echo those of the Torah. The
narrator explicitly mentions the similarity between these two works: “Las páginas,
que me parecieron gastadas y de pobre tipografía, estaban impresas a dos colum-
nas a la manera de una biblia.” (Obras 3:68–69) [“The pages, which seemed
worn and badly set were printed in double columns, like a Bible” (481)].
Indeed, the book literally subverts the notion of conventional page order, for
one can never return to the page one has read, as the narrator’s attempt to fol-
low its pages illustrates: “Me llamó la atención que la página par llevara el
número (digamos) 40.514 y la impar, la siguiente, 999. La volví; el dorso esta-
ba numerado con ocho cifras.” (Obras 3:69) [“I was stuck by an odd fact: the
even-numbered page would carry the number 40,514, let us say, while the
odd-numbered page that followed it would be 999. I turned the page; the next
page bore an eight-digit number.” (481)]. This characteristic of the Book of
Sand might lead readers to think about the Bible. Similarly, while comment-
ing on Job 28:13, Rabbi Eleazar declares that any reconstruction of the origi-
nal order of the Torah demands absolute/divine knowledge inaccessible to
people: “No man knoweth its order . . . . The various sections of the Torah were
not given in their correct order. For if they had been given in their correct order,
anyone who read them would be able to wake the dead and perform miracles. For
this reason the correct order and arrangement of the Torah were hidden and are
known only to the Holy One” (qtd. in Scholem 37). Moreover, the kabbalistic
identification of the Torah with the universe and the “living organism”
(Scholem 44) which possesses “manifold”/“infinite meanings” (Scholem 50)
can easily be extended on to the Book of Sand. The book grows before the nar-
rator’s eyes; the pages of the book, like sand itself, seem to be in constant
motion, making it impossible to count or order them. As the narrator describes,
“Apoyé la mano izquierda sobre la portada y abrí con el dedo pulgar casi pegado
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 26
al índice. Todo fue inútil: siempre se interponían varias hojas entre la portada
y la mano. Era como si brotaran del libro” (Obras 3:69; italics added) [“I took the
cover in my left hand and opened the book, my thumb and forefinger almost
touching. It was impossible: several pages always lay between the cover and my
hand. It was as though they grew from the very book” (481)].
The infinite number of pages implies infinite meanings, the fact that the
bible salesman desperately tries to rationalize: “El número de páginas de este
libro es exactamente infinito. Ninguna es la primera; ninguna, la última. No
sé por qué están numeradas de ese modo arbitrario. Acaso para dar a entender
que los términos de una serie infinita admiten cualquier número.” (Obras
3:69). [“ ‘The number of pages in this book is literally infinite. No page is the
first page; no page is the last. I don’t know why they’re numbered in this arbi-
trary way, but perhaps it’s to give one to understand that the terms of an infi-
nite series can be numbered any way whatever.’ ” (482)]. However, his attempt
to interpret the book’s infinite value in terms of logic does not persuade the nar-
rator, who prefers to think about this object in terms of its possible sacred nature:
“Sus consideraciones me irritaron. Le pregunté:—¿Usted es religioso sin duda?”
(Obras 3:69) [“His musings irritated me. ‘You,’ I said, ‘are a religious man, are
you not?’” (482)].
As with the Bible, it is unknown when exactly the Book of Sand was
written. Whereas the narrator supposes that the book dates back to the 19th
century, the salesman insists that it is impossible to know when it was printed:
“No sé. No lo he sabido nunca” (Obras 3:68) [“ ‘I don’t know . . . Never did
know’ ” (481)]. Echoing the salesman’s reference to the book as “[el] libro dia-
bólico” (Obras 3:69) [“[the] diabolic book” (482)], Gerry O’Sullivan considers
the Book of Sand to be “the Bible’s sinister Other” (116). In his idealized
vision, the Bible “remains the West’s exemplar of and for textual unity” (116);
the Book of Sand, on the contrary, is “un objeto de pesadilla, una cosa obsce-
na que infamaba y corrompía la realidad” (Obras 3:71) [“a nightmare thing, an
obscene thing, and that it defiled and corrupted reality.” (483)]. The Bible is
an inexhaustible story about the creation of the world and the early stages of
its diachronic development. The Book of Sand, however, is a metaphoric rep-
resentation of the universe in its syncronic totality which is impossible to cap-
ture and interpret completely, and which Borges himself considered to be “a
variant of ‘The Aleph’” (Borges qtd. in Cortínez 58). Indeed, the narrator asso-
ciates the scope of the book with that of the world, when he affirms that
the destruction of the former would lead to the apocalypse: “Pensé en el fuego,
pero temí que la combustión de un libro infinito fuera parejamente infinita y
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 27
sofocara de humo al planeta” (Obras 3:71) [“I considered fire, but I feared that the
burning of an infinite book might be similarly infinite, and suffocate the planet
in smoke.” (483)].
From ancient times, books, written scrolls, or sentences inscribed on strips
of paper have been used as amulets. The Book of Sand has primarily a similar
protective function. Its owner accepted the existence of the book as a given
magical object: “Su poseedor no sabía leer. Sospecho que en el Libro de los
Libros vio un amuleto. Era de la casta más baja; la gente no podía pisar su som-
bra, sin contaminación.” (Obras 3:69) [“ ‘The man who owned it didn’t know
how to read. I suspect he saw the Book of Books as an amulet. He was of the
lowest caste; people could not so much as step on his shadow without being
defiled’ ” (481)]. On the contrary, the salesman and the narrator try to defend
themselves from the absorbing “the Book of Sand” which will not be closed.
The possession of the “libro imposible” (Obras 3:70) [“the impossible book”
(483)] evokes the fear in both of them that their lives would be dissolved as
grains of sand when faced with the engrossing enigma of the world. Obtaining
this magic book, the narrator loses his peaceful existence and radically changes
his style of life; he becomes completely dedicated to the study of the book: “Me
quedaban unos amigos; dejé de verlos. Prisionero del Libro, casi no me asoma-
ba a la calle” (Obras 3:70) [“I had but few friends left, and those, I stopped see-
ing. A prisoner of the Book, I hardly left my house” (483)]. The fact that the
book is written in the language of Indostan, which the narrator does not know
but which he still tries to read, moves Gerardo Mario Goloboff to suggest that
this story celebrates “la palabra [que] significa por su sola/improbable presen-
cia” (262) [“the word [which] signifies by its only/ improbable presence”].
Moreover, the presence of the book awakens in the narrator two persistent
preoccupations: “el temor de que lo robaron, y después el recelo de que no fuera
verdaderamente infinito” (Obras 3:70) [“. . . the fear that it would be stolen
from me, and to that, the suspicion that it might not be truly infinite.” (483)].
The doubting of the infinite evokes claustrophobia: a fear of being bounded
by the limits of the universe. This fear of finitude may be also considered one
of the expressions of “a theme of the preparation for death” (Brant 73) which
in Herbert J. Brant’s opinion is characteristic of Borges’s stories in El libro de
arena.
To overcome their epistemological and ontological worries, both the salesman
and the narrator try to get rid of the monstrous book. To the narrator’s surprise,
the salesman does not haggle over the price the narrator offers him: “Me asom-
bró que no regateara . . . No contó los billetes, y los guardó” (Obras 3:70) [“I was
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 28
astonished that he did not haggle . . . . He did not count the money, but
merely put the bills into his pocket” (482)]. As the narrator points out, “Sólo
después comprendería que había entrado en mi casa con la decisión de vender
el libro” (Obras 3:70) [“Only later was I to realize that he had entered my house
already determined to sell the book” (482)]. Following Chesterton’s observa-
tion that “ el mejor lugar para ocultar una hoja es un bosque” (Obras 3:71) [“the
best place to hide a leaf is in the forest” (483)], the narrator himself leaves the
book in the National Library and tries to forget its location: “Aproveché un des-
cuido de los empleados para perder el Libro de Arena en uno de los húmedos
anaqueles. Traté de no fijarme a qué altura ni a qué distancia de la puerta. Siento
un poco de alivio, pero no quiero ni pasar por la calle México” (Obras 3:71)
[“I took advantage of the librarians’ distraction to hide the Book of Sand on one
of the library’s damp shelves; I tried not to notice how high up, or how far from
the door. I now feel a little better, but I refuse even to walk down the street the
library’s on” (483)]. The character’s approach to the book reflects the ambiguity
of the human aspirations to embrace the infinite, to examine it in terms of
logic, and at the same time to resist the idea of the limits, uniformity and
exhaustibility of the world.
The use of the pseudorealistic setting stands in contrast to the magical
nature of the book and to other distant locations mentioned in the text. The
narrator lives “en un cuarto piso de la calle Belgrano” (Obras 3:68) [“in a fifth-
floor apartment on Calle Belgrano” (480)]. This, together with the facts that
he worked in “la Biblioteca Nacional,” possessed Wyclif’s Bible, and expressed
his affection for Robert Stevenson and David Hume, allows the reader to rec-
ognize the presence of a ‘slightly fictionalized’ Borges-author in this story. At
the same time, the enigmatic stranger of Norwegian origin, as the narrator first
supposes, turns out to be from the remote “Orcadas” [“Orkneys”], a place men-
tioned in Scandinavian Eddas.31
The narrator’s account of his meeting with the stranger also echoes the one
between the woodcutter and the king in “El disco”: “Hará unos meses, al
atardecer, oí un golpe en la puerta. Abrí y entró un desconocido. Era un hom-
bre alto, de rasgos desdibujados” (Obras 3:68) [“One evening a few months ago,
I heard a knock at my door. I opened it, and a stranger stepped in. He was a tall
man, with blurred, vague features” (480)]. Likewise, the woodcutter recalls his
memories: “Una tarde oí pasos trabajosos y luego un golpe. Abrí y entró un
desconocido. Era un hombre alto y viejo” (Obras 3:66) [“One evening I heard
heavy, dragging footsteps and then a knock. I opened the door and a stranger
came in. He was a tall, elderly man” (475)]. Considering the use of repetition
01.qxd 29/8/07 6:16 PM Page 29
in Scandinavian medieval literature, Borges points out: “La repetición de situa-

ciones y de palabras textuales es intencional de parte de los autores y su propósi-
to, sin duda, ha sido señalar al lector la correspondencia entre lo aparentemente
nuevo y lo antiguo” (LGM 135) [“The repetition of situations and specific words
is intended by the authors as an illustration, no doubt, of correspondencies
between the old and the new”]. Repetition seems to play a similar function in
Borges’s own narratives, especially in “El disco” and “El libro de arena.” In this
way, a co-presence of the distinct locations and the fictional worlds in the sto-
ries subverts conventional measures of time and space and shows Borges’s oeu-
vre to be a continuum. The Book of Sand is metaphorical representation of the
primacy of the enigmatic universe over inevitably incomplete interpretations
attempted by human beings. As Borges points out in his lecture on the Kabbalah,
the concept of Ein-sof (infinity), which is relevant for both the Bible and the
Book of Sand, is intrinsically connected with “lo oculto” (Obras 3:272), with
the hidden and with the mysterious. This makes the equally paradoxical
places—the book and the world—constant objects of temptation for the human
intellect.
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02.qxd 30/8/07 10:46 AM Page 31
·2·
PLACE AS DISPLACEMENT IN
CORTÁZAR ’ S HOPSCOTCH
[T]he path almost always seems to lead nowhere in particular, and . . . the important
point is not where it leads but that it should lead somewhere
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Borges’s approach to place as a metaphysical and metafictional construct was

influential for Cortázar’s oeuvre. This chapter unravels the significance of Borges’s
works in the gestation of the cities in Rayuela [Hopscotch], as well as Cortázar’s
swerving from Borges’s conceptions.1 In Rayuela the notions of place and dis-
placement converge to underline one of the novel’s major themes: the protago-
nist’s permanent condition of exile. The blurring of the boundaries between
place and displacement begins in the first part, “Del lado de allá” [“From the
Other Side”], becomes more prominent in the second, “Del lado de acá” [“From
This Side”], and culminates in the third section, “De otros lados” [“From
Diverse Sides”]. The binary functioning of Paris as a chronotope and a metaphor
in “Del lado de allá” [“From the Other Side”] conveys Oliveira’s displacement
in the city of his choice. The carnivalesque and metaphysical features of
Buenos Aires in “Del lado de acá” [“From This Side”] underscore Oliveira’s
anxiety and alienation in his native city to which he is forced to return.
Although the actions of the first part (“Del lado de allá” [“From the Other
Side”]) occur in Paris, and those of the second (“Del lado de acá” [“From This
02.qxd 30/8/07 10:46 AM Page 32
Side”]) in Buenos Aires, the third section (“De otros lados” [“From Diverse
Sides”]) retroactively makes one question an apparent division established by and
between the previous two, and thus emphasizes Oliveira’s homelessness as a per-
manent condition in the novel. Indeed, by ludically combining the two distinct
urban spaces profiled in earlier chapters, and thus creating a hopscotch-like
movement whereby the previous chapters alternate in an unpredictable pattern,
“De otros lados” [“From Diverse Sides”] leads the reader, in the end, to question
the ‘real’ place of action in the text. Following this structure, the reader is
invited to “jump” from chapter to chapter, to read the novel in a particular order
indicated by the author in “Tablero de direcciones” [“Table of instructions”]
rather then by following a linear sequence of numbers. This last section, where
Paris and Buenos Aires become almost interchangeable, undermines any
idea of stability traditionally associated with the mention of a given place.2
The first two parts internalize and thematize Oliveira’s displacement by
combining references to specific urban topography and the overt metafiction-
al dimension of both Paris and Buenos Aires. I have noticed that Cortázar’s
cities have been created in a ludic dialogue with the long literary tradition of
nineteenth century European novelists such as Honoré de Balzac and Fyodor
Dostoevsky as well as with the Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges, who appear to
be Cortázar’s implicit interlocutors. Indeed, Paris in Rayuela serves a double
function: like its nineteenth century precursors, traditional in the creation
of the novelistic space and unlike its literary antecedents, overtly metafic-
tional. Motifs such as the cramped room in the city, the search with no par-
ticular purpose, the path, the capital as a center of intellectuals and a challenge
of their aspirations, and the woman-city equation are familiar to the readers
of Balzac’s and Dostoevsky’s classical works, where the city fulfills “the
representational” function of the chronotope as described by Bakhtin: “[it]
makes narrative events concrete, makes them take on flesh, causes blood
to flow in their veins” (250). Abundant in parallels with its nineteenth cen-
tury precursors and being explicitly metaphorical, Paris also is a metafic-
tional construct in Rayuela, another version of reality created by the human
imagination.
Likewise, Buenos Aires is both a recognizable city and a deliberately
invented world. It is both a carnivalesque and metaphysical urban space.
Cortázar’s Buenos Aires is also imbued with ludic references to motifs and
symbols recurrent in Borges’s works, such as human life as determined by lit-
erary scenarios, Pascal’s notion of the sphere, and the labyrinth. Indeed, the
02.qxd 30/8/07 10:46 AM Page 33
place as displacement in cortázar ’ s HOPSCOTCH 33
metaphysical-artistic Buenos Aires of Rayuela, an image created by the

protagonist’s imagination overtly distanced from the empirical urban space, is
probably inspired by Borges’s Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923). In Borges’s early
poetry, such an approach to place possibly results from a tension between the
author’s preoccupation with articulating a poetics of the local, the city he
encountered after his return from Europe in 1921, and his commitments to
philosophical idealism, that is, between topos and logos. In Cortázar’s novel, on
the other hand, the city’s both carnivalesque and metaphysical aspects artisti-
cally convey the protagonist’s and the author’s despair in a world he (they)
cannot accept, and function as a mask of anxiety.3
The prominence of the metafictional dimension in the representations of
Paris and Buenos Aires in the first two sections of the novel emphasizes their
common thematic function as places of exile, palimpsests where solitude and
similitude dominate. Indeed, the life of Horacio Oliveira, “un intellectual en grado
extremo” [“an intellectual to the extreme”] (Barranechea 677), in both these
cities exemplifies exile, defined by Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger as
a necessary condition for the intellectual and spiritual development of the indi-
vidual. Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism—a philosophical school stud-
ied by Cortázar—is among the first philosophers who described the feeling of
displacement in one’s own home.4 Connecting physical and mental topography,
Kierkegaard associates displacement with freedom, both artistic and personal.
He states that “displacement is what returns us to our selves . . . to our true place
or to our place in truth” (qtd. in Houe 359).
Developing Kierkegaard’s thoughts, Edward Said, in his lecture “Intellectual
Exile: Expatriates and Marginals,” affirms that to be out of place is to be in the right
place for the modern intellectual. After referring to Theodor Adorno’s represen-
tation of the intellectual (for whom to be in a permanent exile is a part of moral-
ity), Said metaphorically describes an intellectual as a “shipwrecked person who
learns how to live in a certain sense with the land, not on it . . . whose sense of mar-
velous never fails him and who is always a traveler, a provisional guest” (44).
In a similar fashion, in his lecture course entitled An Introduction to
Metaphysics, Heidegger also refers to the idea of ‘true’ being as division. For him,
the creative person is one “who must risk dispersion, instability, disorder” (78).
Along the same lines, Oliveira’s dwellings in both Paris and Buenos Aires
exemplify the protagonist’s exile, both territorial and spiritual; his place can be
described (by a heideggerian term) as an “irrecuperable dis-placement”
(Heidegger qtd. in Casey 81).
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Towards the Challenge and the Refuge:

Oliveira’s Paris and the Capital Cities
in Nineteenth Century Novels
In the first part of the novel, the action takes place in Paris, “the capital of the
nineteenth century” (Benjamin 146), which is both the modern city par excel-
lence, and a metafictional construct. Indeed, the life of Oliveira in Paris echoes
that of Balzac’s and Dostoevsky’s characters who dwell in their respective cap-
ital cities.5 The description of Paris in “Del lado de allá” reminds the reader of
the opening of Balzac’s Pére Goriot, which takes place in Paris’s Latin quarter,
where “[a] Parisian who gets lost, . . . would see only pensions and hospitals
and private schools, only misery or boredom . . . just as, descending into the
Catacombs, daylight fades further into darkness with every step, and the guide’s
song turns hollow” (Balzac 6). Likewise, Oliveira depicts the Latin Quarter as
a place where “había solamente suciedad y miseria, vasos con restos de cerveza,
medias en un rincón” (Cortázar 19) [“there was only filth and misery, glasses
with steel beer, stockings in a corner” (Cortázar 13)].6
Located in the Latin Quater, Oliveira’s room also evokes images of the
lodgings of Eugene Rastignac and Rodion Raskolnikov, typical settings of
nineteenth century individualists as described in Balzac’s Pére Goriot and
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, respectively. Rastignac is described as liv-
ing in a small, shabby room on the third floor, just below the attic, of a rundown
pension in “the ugliest quarter” (3) of Paris where “there are no houses, and the
inhabitants of the big city live in superimposed boxes” (Bachelard 26).7
Likewise, Raskolnikov has left his mother and sister in their provincial town
to come to live in a St. Petersburg room that the narrator characterizes as “more
like a cupboard (škaf) than a place to live in;” it is “tucked away under the roof
of the high five-storied building” (1).8 As if recalling Rastignac’s and
Raskolnikov’s student lodgings, Oliveira and his Uruguayan girl-friend
La Maga live in “dos habitaciones de falsos estudiantes en París” (11)
[“every cranny we holed up during our pseudo-student existence in Paris” (3)]
located close to “la zona de terrenos baldíos” (14) [“the vacant lots” (6)], “una
de las pocas zonas de París donde el cielo vale más que la tierra” (14) [“one of
the few places in Paris where sky is worth more than ground” (6)].
The rooms in the hotel where Oliveira spends time with la Maga when they
start dating, as well as his own place, carry almost the same signs of poverty as
those of his literary precursors: “Olía a blando, a sopa, en la alfombra del pasillo
02.qxd 30/8/07 10:46 AM Page 35
alguien había tirado un líquido azul que dibujaba como un par de alas. La pieza
tenía dos ventanas con cortinas rojas, zurcidas y llenas de retazos; una luz húme-
da se filtraba como un ángel hasta la cama de alcolchado amarillo” (31) [“There
was a smell of toilet soap, of soup, on the rug in the hallway someone had spilled
a blue liquid which had taken the shape of a pair of wings. The room had two
windows with red curtains, full of patches. A damp light spread out like an angel
over to the bed with a yellow spread.” (27)]. Oliveira’s living space is also
cramped and airless, particularly when he, la Maga and her sick son Rocamadur
live together: “Con la cama y Rocamadur y la cólera de los vecinos ya no qued-
aba casi espacio para vivir” (73–74) [“With the cot and Rocamadour and the
complaints of the tenants there was barely any living-space left” (77)]. Life in a
cramped room contributes to the development of dissatisfaction which leads
to the protagonist’s metaphysical search analogous to that of Rastignac and
Raskolnikov. Throughout the novel, Oliveira recognizes that “me costaba
mucho menos pensar que ser” (26) [“it was always easier to think than to be”
(13)]. He constantly asks himself, “¿ Por qué no aceptar lo que estaba ocurriendo
sin pretender explicarlo?” (27) [“Why couldn’t I accept what was happening
without trying to explain it” (14)].
Like his literary predecessors, Oliveira is lacking a home. According to
Bachelard’s phenomenological study of the influence of place on the formation
of human psychology and imagination, at home an individual naturally devel-
ops a “primary metaphysics,” a sense of well-being and integration with life
(Bachelard 9).9 Oliveira’s room, on the contrary, does not bring harmony into
the protagonist’s life. For a religious understanding, for example, his airless and
cramped place is rather associated with hell than with paradise. Whereas for
Dostoevsky and Balzac this religious perspective can be inspirational for the cre-
ation of their characters and their lodgings, Cortázar is not profoundly inter-
ested in the theological counterpoise between the places of the Devil and the
Good Lord. Nevertheless, a theological vision of the influence of the place of
dwelling on the formation of the individual’s outlook can be equally illumi-
nating for the understanding of Oliveira’s perception of the surrounding world.
As Janet A. Walker points out, in the Christian West “the quality of infinity
is ascribed to God and limitation in space is reserved for the devil” (290), as it
is seen in the remark of the ancient Greek alchemist Olympiodorus that God
“is everywhere” and “not in the smallest place like the daemon.” (qtd. in Jung
285). Carl Jung further notes that “the individual ego, separated and split off
from God is likely to become daemonic as soon as it accentuates its indepen-
dence of God by its egocentricity” (qtd. in Walker 292). Given this context,
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then, it is appropriate to view Raskolnikov’s, Rastignac’s and Oliveira’s cramped

rooms as places of the cultivation of “daemonic egocentricity” and of the
attempt to find an alternative to the existent order. All of them are tortured
by the inability to “be” (Brody 13). Just as Raskolnikov tries to define the nature
and limits of his self, Oliveira is looking for a totality, for a center, whose syn-
onyms in the text are “un kibbutz del deseo,” [“a kibbutz of desire”], “una isla
final” [“a final island”] and “la tierra de Hurqalya” [“the land of Hurqalya”].
However, whereas Raskolnikov’s metaphysical search leads him to commit a
murder, a major crime against humankind in an act of self-assertion, Oliveira’s
remains on the level of meditation and does not lead to any actions: “Entonces
más valía pecar por omisión que por comisión” (344) [“So it was better to sin
through omission than through commission” (418)].
As with the cities of his European precursors, Cortázar’s Paris is a center,
a challenge and a refuge, for aspiring intellectuals, who link the city to their
hopes and dreams.10 The association of Paris with the center of the world
appears in the discourse of Balzac’s contemporaries. For instance, Jules Michelet
refers to the 19th century Paris as “the central point of the globe where all the
lines of magnetic force meet and combine” (qtd. in Bellos 58). Both Rastignac
and Raskolnikov arrive in the capital/center, Paris and St. Petersburg, respec-
tively, with the best intentions and aims of making their ways to the top of the
society. Oliveira identifies Paris with his metaphysical search for a center:
“este París donde me muevo como una hoja seca, no serí[a] visibl[e] si detrás no
latiera la ansiedad axial, el reencuentro con el fuste” (20) [“this Paris where
I move about like a dry leaf, would not be visible if behind it there did not
beat an anxiety for an axis, a coming together with the center shaft” (15)]. This
center is associated with an unobtained (and unobtainable) condition and with
the reinvention of reality. As Cortázar explains in his conversation with Prego,
Oliveira considers reality to be a human invention with which he is not satis-
fied, and therefore he rejects it. The center, Cortázar suggests, will open new
possibilities for him to create and reinvent reality. And Cortázar continues:
“Centro sería ese momento en que el ser humano, individual o colectivo,
puede encontrarse en una situación donde está en condiciones de reinventar
la realidad” (Prego 170) [“A center would be the moment when the human
being, individual or collective, can find himself in a situation when he or she
would be in position to reinvent reality”].
Paris is also a challenge for Oliveira. As Balzac’s Rastignac looks down from
the hillside cemetery, he dreams of conquering the city. “Left alone, Rastignac
walked to the highest part of the cemetery and looked down at the heart of
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Paris . . . then declared, grandly, “Now it’s just the two of us!—I’m ready”
(217). In the same vein, Oliveira is looking for “derecho de ciudad” (154)
[“[r]ule of the city” (180)], which, in the opinion of his antithesis and fellow
immigrant Gregorovius, is “una ambición mal curada” (154) [“a half-cured
ambition” (180)]. Probably jealous of Oliveira’s ability to dream, Gregorovius
expresses irony with respect to the idyllic-bookish image of Horacio’s Paris,
which he identifies with the magic-oriental city he strived to conquer as a child;
“la ciudad de Ofir, según ha llegado al occidente por vías de la fábula” (117) [“the
city of Ophir, according to the legends that have reached the West through
storybooks” (134)]. Indeed, the romantic image of the ideal city is also con-
nected with Paris.11 As the narrator points out, “En fin, había que irse, subir a
la ciudad, tan cerca ahí a seis metros de altura, empezando exactamente al otro
lado del pretil del Sena, detrás de las cajas RIP de latón, donde las palomas
dialogaban esponjándose a la espera del primer sol blando y sin fuerza, la páli-
da sémola de las ocho y media que baja de un cielo aplastado, que no baja porque
seguramente iba a lloviznar como siempre” (174) [“Finally he had to go, go up
into the city, so close by there, twenty feet above, where it began exactly on
the other side of the Seine embankment, in back of the lead RIP boxes where
the pigeons were talking among themselves and fluffing up as they waited
for the first rays of the bland, unforceful sun, the pale eight o’clock pablum that
floats down from a mushy sky because it certainly was going to drizzle the way
it always did” (208–209)]. Gregorovius gives the following interpretation to
Horacio’s aspirations to conquer a Paris created by his imagination: “tenés
una idea imperial en el fondo de la cabeza. ¿Tu derecho de ciudad?” (154)
[“You . . . have an imperial notion in the back of your head. Freedom of the
city?” (180)].12 In his opinion, Horacio “adivina que en alguna parte de París,
en algún día o alguna muerte o algún encuentro hay una llave, la busca como
un loco” (160) [“He guesses that in some part of Paris, some day or some death
or some meeting will show him a key; he’s searching for it like a madman”
(133)]. The key would confer “derecho de ciudad” (117, 215) [“[r]ule of the city”
(180)]: understanding, presence and power.
The terrestrial and idyllic dimensions of the capital, its simultaneous func-
tions as a challenge and a refuge, are reconciled in the metaphoric image of Paris
as a woman, a device that has a long literary tradition. Symbolic representations
of abstract entities (Justice, Faith, Hope, Charity, Liberty) as women have been
common from the time of the classical Greeks, and the standard emblem of
France, from the Revolution, is the figure of Marianne. In Balzac’s Pére Goriot
Paris is also personified; the capital city is identified with a courtesan.13 As one
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of the central characters (Vautrin) observes, “The proud aristocracies of all of

Europe’s capitals may refuse to admit an infamous millionaire to their ranks, but
Paris will open him her arms, rush to his parties, eat at his dinners, and shares
toasts with his infamy.” (114; italics added).
As if being a literalization of Cortázar’s statement that “[l]as ciudades son
siempre mujeres para mi” (qtd. in Zampaglione 1) [“Cities are always women
to me”], La Maga is persistently associated with Paris, and vice versa, in
Oliveira’s discourse. Describing his love relationship with La Maga, Oliveira
observes: “Tendí la mano y toqué el ovillo París, su materia infinita arrollándose
a sí misma” (19; italics added) [“I held out my hand and touched the tangled ball
of yarn which is Paris, its infinite material all wrapped up around itself” (13;
italics added)]. The physical gesture, the proximity of La Maga, the words
“ovillo” and “arrollándose” suggest the city (Paris)-woman image. Oliveira’s love
for La Maga is both a bridge to and an embodiment of Oliveira’s distance from
Paris.14 After he has left La Maga, Oliveira reflects that “ya es como no estu-
viera en París” (140) because the “mundo Maga” (18)[“the Maga world” (14)],
as Julie Jones perceptively notices, “is coextensive with the ‘París fabuloso’ (26)
[“a fabulous Paris” (21)]” to which she introduced Horacio (A Common Place,
33). Further, bridges, synecdoches for the city, are metaphorically associated
with love and Oliveira’s inability to merge with the irrational side of life
embodied by La Maga. Referring to his own perception of the world and his
relationships with others as the bridge over “[los] ríos metafísicos” (83)
[“metaphysical rivers” (89)], Oliveira’s emphasizes the gap between himself and
La Maga: “Yo describo y defino y deseo esos ríos, ella los nada. Yo los busco, los
encuentro, los miro desde el puente, ella los nada” (87; italics added) [“I describe
and define and desire those rivers, but she swims in them. I look for them, find
them, observe them from the bridge, but she swims in them” (96)].15
The woman-city equation is also true for Pola, Oliveira’s ex-girlfriend,
“polo de París, París de Pola, la luz verdosa del neón encendiéndose y apagán-
dose contra la cortina de rafia amarilla, Pola París, Pola París, la ciudad desnu-
da con el sexo acordado a la palpitación de la cortina, Pola París, Pola París,
cada vez más suya” (349) [“pole of Paris, Paris of Pola, the greenish light of
a neon sign going on and off against the yellow raffia curtain, Pola Paris, Pola
Paris, the naked city with its sex in tune to the palpitation of the curtain. Pola
Paris, Pola Paris, every time more his” (424)]. With her collection of stylish
books and ample income, according to Steven Boldy, she also represents the lib-
eral bourgeois experience of Paris (116). The clocharde Emmanuéle, a beggar
from downriver, who seems to illustrate Panugre’s grotesque observation that
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“in this city women are cheaper than stone” (Rabelais qtd. Bakhtin 191), is also
associated with Paris, with the city as a mud-pit, the underworld and the road.
Like la Maga, Pola, Paris and the game of hopscotch, she is also one of Oliveira’s
guides to harmony, to “el kibbuz del deseo” [“a kibbutz of desire”].
Moreover, being identified with the mandala by Oliveira, Paris becomes an
overtly metafictional construct. Indeed, Paris is a metaphor where the notions
of self, geometry (urban space) and art converge.16 This city is also “el Gran
Tornillo” (315) [“the Great Screw” (385)], “el mundo . . . petrificado y estable-
cido” (19) [“[t]he world petrified and established”] (13), and “una barricada”
(59) [“a barricade”] (59). These all are variations of the same metaphorical
image built on the intersection of the physical, the spiritual and the meta-
physical. Gregorovius explicitly refers to Paris as a metaphor. He explains to la
Maga that Oliveira’s Paris, associated with freedom and self-realization, is an
utopic world of illusions: “Horacio es tan sensible, se mueve con tanta dificul-
tad en París. El cree que hace lo que quiere, que es muy libre aquí, pero se anda
golpeando contra las paredes” (111–112, italics added) [“Horacio is so sensitive,
it’s difficult for him to get around in Paris. He thinks that he’s doing what
he wants to do, that he has a lot of liberty here, but he goes around running into
barriers” (127)].
Gregorovius’s thoughts, and the motif of the stone wall in his arguments,
evokes a discourse of the “people with strong nerves,” the philistines described
by the protagonist, the Underground Man, in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the
Underground. As the Underground Man observes, “[the] impossible to them (the
people with strong nerves) equivalent to a stone wall. What stone
wall? . . . ‘Good Lord,’ they’ll scream at you . . . A stone wall, that is, is a stone
wall . . . etc., etc.” (126–127). Later in Rayuela, Horacio explicitly identifies
Gregorovious with Dostoevsky’s ambivalent characters: “Sos dostoievskiana-
mente asqueroso y simpático a la vez, una especie de lameculos metafísico”
(148) [“You’re so damned Dostoevskian, repulsive and pleasant at the same
time”].17 Gregorovius can be contrasted with both The Underground Man and
Oliveira, both of whom deliberately choose to live in rooms-holes and are proud
of their lack of action, but would not surrender before any obstacles. The
Underground Man rejects “the Crystal Palace” (151) as an embodiment of
philistine satisfaction. For the same reason, Oliveira cannot accept life in “[la]
caja de vidrio” (92) [“the glass cage” (101)]. The “glass cage,” Cortázar’s mod-
ification of Dostoevsky’s image, emphasizes invisibility and protection, a
vacuum-tight seal against the outside world, while preserving the original
connotations of lifelessness and emptiness implied by the discourse of the
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Underground Man. Like his Russian precursor, Oliveira refuses to accept “el
reino de material plástico” [“The kingdom” “made out of plastic material”
(380)], “un mundo delicioso” (311) [“a tasty world”] with the water of different
colors and bathrooms with telecommunication, which he associates with an
Orwellian nightmare. Both Dostoevsky’s and Cortázar’s characters find them-
selves in a “callejón sin salida” (Ezquerro 627) [“a ravine with no exit”]. They
refuse, however, to step out from the obstacles. As the Underground Man
contends, “[n]o doubt I shall never be able to break through such a stone wall
with my forehead, if I really do not possess the strength to do it, but I shall not
reconcile myself to it just because I have to deal with a stone wall and I haven’t
the strength to knock it down” (127).18 Oliveira, the non-conformist created
by Morelli, a fictional writer whose function in the novel is to serve as Cortázar’s
super ego (as convincingly argued by numerous critics), follows a similar line
of thought. The writer describes his creation in a following way:
Este hombre [El inconformista] se mueve en las frecuencias más bajas y las más altas,
desdeñando deliberadamente las intermedias, es decir la zona corriente de la aglom-
eración espiritual humana. Incapaz de liquidar la circunstancia, trata de darle la espalda;
inepto para sumarse a quienes luchan por liquidarla, pues cree que esa liquidación será
una mera sustitución por otra igualmente parcial e intolerable, se aleja encogiéndose de
hombros. (316)
This man [The nonconformist] moves within the lowest and the highest of frequen-
cies, deliberately disdaining those in between, that is to say, the current band of the
human spiritual mass. Incapable of liquidating circumstances, he tries to turn his back
on them; too inept to join those who struggle for their liquidation, he thinks there-
fore that this liquidation is probably a mere substitute for something else equally par-
tial and intolerable, he moves off shrugging his shoulders. (386)
Paris is also an embodiment of the protagonist’s search with no particular

purpose.19 The object of Oliveira’s search is not definite. As la Maga observes,
“[v]os buscás algo que no sabés lo que es” (73) [“[y]ou’re looking for something
you don’t know” (76)]. Further, Oliveira’s failure to find an indefinite object of
his search in Paris is even considered to be a victory. As Cortázar points out
in his conversation with Prego, “el personaje busca sobre todo los parametros
de la sociedad judeo-cristiana. . . . Él está . . . condenado a eso, a una búsqueda
sin encuentro prometido ni definido, ni definitivo” (170) [“the character is look-
ing for the parameters of the jewish–cristian society. He is . . . doomed to this,
a search with no promised result, neither defined nor definite”]. The endless
search leaves the intellect alert.
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Oliveira’s thoughts about a search with no particular purpose, and his

recurrent references to the motif of “the path” throughout the novel, may also
be considered a parodic echo of the meditations of Dostoevsky’s Underground
Man. Parody functions as a textual displacement that emphasizes Oliveira’s exis-
tential one. As Linda Hutcheon observes, “the pointing to the literariness of
the text may be achieved by using parody: in the background will stand another
text against which the new creation is implicitly to be both measured and
understood” (31). Notes from the Underground is implicit in the background of
Rayuela. Indeed, both the Underground Man and Oliveira associate the end-
less search of human beings with the building of the paths which lead to the
unknown. As the Underground Man asserts, “man is above all a creative ani-
mal, condemned consciously to strive towards a goal and to occupy himself with
the art of engineering, that is, always and incessantly clear with a path for him-
self wherever it may lead . . . Man likes to create and to clear paths—that is
undeniable” (Dostoevsky 148; italics added). Oliveira’s discourse echoes sim-
ilar thoughts which he, ironically, both criticizes and follows. “¿De qué sirve
saber o creer saber que cada camino es falso si no lo caminamos con un propósi-
to que ya no sea el camino mismo?” (239) [“What good to know or to think we
know that every road is false if we don’t walk with an idea that is not the road
itself? (291)”]. The narrator’s account of Oliveira’s meditations also reveals their
paradoxical nature: “Caminar con un propósito que ya no fuera el camino
mismo. De tanta cháchara (qué letra, la ch, madre de la chancha, el chamamé
y el chijete) no le quedaba más resto que esa entrevisión. Sí era una fórmula med-
itable” (239; italics added) [“Walking with an idea that is no longer the road
itself. From all that chatter (what a combination, ch, mother of chigger, cheese,
and chili beans) the only thing left was the glimpse. Yes, it was a formula that
deserved meditation” (292)]. In contrast to the reasoning of the Underground
Man, Oliveira’s thoughts self-consciously thematize the philosophical questions
formulated by earlier literature through the use of pseudo-lexical onomotopeic
analysis, and the result provokes a comic effect.20 Sharing with the Underground
Man an essential skepticism about the mediocre surrounding world, Oliveira,
unlike his Russian literary precursor, does not see his perspective as unique. On
the contrary, he is aware of the fact that his own thoughts are lacking in orig-
inality. Oliveira’s “meditación siempre amenazada por los idola fori” (239) [“in
meditations constantly menaced by idola fori” (291)] is a manifestation of
stereotypical thinking influenced by familiar literature. In addition, Oliveira’s
own life, as an illustration of the endless search he is sceptical about, makes him
out to be an “inevitably ironic character” (Frye 42). Horacio-“inconformista,”
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[“nonconformist”] carries striking similarities with the nineteenth century

individualists created in Russian literature. As the narrator observes, Oliveira
gradually “tomaba un aire de personaje de la novela rusa” (192) [“he was begin-
ning to assume the airs of a hero in Russian novel” (230)].
Likewise, an overtly metafictional image of Paris suggests that Cortázar’s city
has been inspired by the European literary tradition.21 Morelli explicitly refers
to the capital city as a metaphor of writing.22 As the fictional writer indicates
in his comments, to read the city, which is also the world, is to write it. Thus,
the description of Paris oscillates between two dimensions. On the one hand,
the city, emphatically corporeal and materialistic, attracting intellectuals from
all over the world throughout the centuries, fulfills “the representational”
function of the chronotope as described by Bakhtin. Paris breathes life into the
novelistic actions. As Cortázar himself points out in his conversations with
Prego, “esa descripción de París se pone . . . un poco al servicio de una acción
novelesca” (154–155) [“this description of Paris places it, a little bit in the func-
tion of the novelistic action”]. On the other hand, the multiple
parallels between Cortázar’s city and the image of Paris/capital city (e.g.
St. Petersburg) developed in nineteenth century fiction and the explicit asso-
ciation of Paris with “metaphor” emphasize the metafictional aspect of this
urban space in the novel. Cortázar’s Paris is an invented reality that unites in
itself both Horacio’s metaphysical-epistemological search and the echo of the
long literary tradition of the representation of the modern city in literature.23
It is another version of reality created by the human imagination which exem-
plifies Goodman’s observation that “worldmaking . . . starts from worlds already
on hand, that making is a remaking” (6). This overtly metafictional functioning
of Paris/urban space (as part of the author’s intentio operis) distances Cortázar’s
city from its nineteenth century precursors and emphasizes Oliveira’s existen-
tial displacement in the city of his choice.24
Borges’s Voice in Cortázar’s

Buenos Aires
The artistic vision of the city as an invented reality culminates in the repre-
sentation of Buenos Aires, where the actions of the second part of the novel,
“Del lado de acá,” take place. On the one hand, there are topographic references
to streets such as Santa Fe (183) and Carmen de Patagones (183), and buildings,
for example, a cinema “Presidente Roca” (181) which can be easily recognized.
02.qxd 30/8/07 10:46 AM Page 43
On the other hand, being imbued with metaphysical and carnivalesque

elements, the city becomes gradually dematerialized. Buenos Aires in Rayuela
appears to be both a verbal construct that reminds the reader of the city creat-
ed by the young Borges in Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) and a carnivalesque
space as defined by Bakhtin. Referring to Borges’s Buenos Aires in his conver-
sation with Garfield, Cortázar points out: “es un Buenos Aires muy fantástico y
muy inventado—, existe también ese Buenos Aires pero está lejos de ser la totali-
dad de la ciudad” (12) [“this is a very fantastic and invented Buenos Aires—,
this Buenos Aires exists but is far from being a city in its totality”]. This inter-
pretation of Borges’s Buenos Aires is in tune with the explicit references to the
discrepancy, in Fervor, between the metaphysical city created by the poet and
the “real” urban structure. The image of Buenos Aires oscillates between real-
ity and dream in the poem “Amanecer,” where the lyrical voice observes: “Si
están ajenas de sustancia las cosas/y si esta numerosa Buenos Aires/ no es más
que un sueño” (26–28; italics added) [“If things are void of substance/and if this
teeming Buenos Aires/is no more than a dream” (25–27)].25 Buenos Aires’s
plural existence is emphasized through the word “numerosa,” which expresses
the city’s existence in several realms, one of which is the poet’s imagination.
In the poem “Un Patio,” a distinction between the celestial and the terrestri-
al turns out to be blurred in an expression of the author’s admiration of the sim-
ple world which surrounds him:
Patio, cielo encauzado.

El patio es el declive
por el cual se derrama el cielo en la casa. (Obras 1:23)
Patio, heaven’s watercourse.

The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house. (5–7)26
Further, in “Calle desconocida” [“Unknown Street”] the street, a synec-

dochical representation of the urban world, obtains its life through the poetic
word. The real street appears to be that of the “leyenda” or “[el] verso.” As the
lyrical voice suggests,
Quizá esa hora de la tarde de plata

diera su ternura a la calle,
haciéndola tan real como un verso
olvidado y recuperado. (Obras 1:20)
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Perhaps that moment of the silver evening

suffused the street with a tenderness,
making it as vivid as a verse
forgotten and now remembered. (18–21) 27
The metapoetical nature of the street is also emphasized through the
synaesthetic image of time which is, on the contrary, materialized (“esa hora
de la tarde de plata” [“that moment of the silver evening”]) and personified
(“diera su ternura” [“suffused the street with a tenderness”]) in the poem. The street
and the poem share a destiny of being forgotten and brought back to life (“olvi-
dado y recuperado” [“forgotten and now remembered”]) by the action of time.
David Larway points out that the relatively abstract qualities of Borges’s
urban topography might be regarded as an attempt to “found” Buenos Aires
poetically following his return to Argentina after his long absence in Europe.
The representation of Buenos Aires and the question of homecoming appear
to be interconnected both in Borges’s Fervor and in Cortázar’s Rayuela, where
Oliveira is deported from Paris to his native city by French officials. The lyri-
cal voice in Fervor maintains an idealistic vision of the city. As its ironic echo,
in his intention to escape Buenos Aires’s reality with its “melancolía porteña”
(185) [“the melancholy of Buenos Aires” (221)] and “una vida sin demasiado”
(185) [“a life that did not have too much” (221)], Oliveira perceives a sur-
rounding world as a more or less precise realization of fiction.
Justifying his unwillingness, for instance, to go and get mate by himself,
Oliveira refers ironically to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin
when he replies to Traveler: “—¿ Pero vos estás loco, pibe? Bajar tres pisos,
cruzar por entre el hielo y subir otros tres pisos, eso no se hacen ni en la cabaña
del tío Tom” (199) [“ ‘Are you out of your mind? Go down three flights, cross
the street through all the ice, climb up three more flights, they don’t even do
that in Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (239)]. Moreover, Oliveira, influenced by his read-
ings of Slavic narratives (some of which have been identified above), deliber-
ately misinterprets reality. The text ironizes his upside-down vision of the
surrounding world through the ludic reference to a fiction familiar to him:
‘Qué frío bárbaro hace,’ se dijo Oliveira que creía en la eficacia de la autosugestión.
El sudor le chorreaba desde el pelo a los ojos era imposible sostener un clavo con la
torcedura hacia arriba porque el menor golpe del martillo lo hacía resbalar en los dedos
empapados (de frío) y el clavo volvía a pellizcarlo y a amoratarle (de frío) los dedos.
Para peor el sol empezaba a dar de lleno en la pieza (era la luna sobre las estepas cubier-
tas de nieve, y él silbaba para azuzar a los caballos que impulsaban su tarantás), a las
tres no quedaría un solo rincón sin nieve, se iba a helar lentamente hasta que lo ganara
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la somnolencia tan bien descrita y hasta provocada en los relatos eslavos, y su cuerpo quedara
sepultado en la blancura homicida de las lívidas flores del espacio. Estaba bien eso: las livi-
das flores de espacio. (194–195; italics added)
‘God, it’s cold,” Oliveira said to himself, because he was a great believer in autosug-
gestion. Sweat was pouring over his eyes out of his hair and it was impossible to hold
a nail with the hump up because the lightest blow of the hammer would make it slip
out of his fingers which were all wet (from the cold) and the nail would pinch him again
and he would mash his fingers (from the cold). To make things worse, the sun had begun
to shine with full force into the room (it was the moon on snowing-covered steppes,
and he whistled to goad the horses pulling against their harnesses), by three o’clock
the whole place was covered with snow, he would let himself freeze until he got to that sleepy
state described so well and maybe even brought about in Slavic stories, and his body would
be entombed in the man-killing whiteness of the livid flowers of space. (234; italics added)
As with his Russian precursor, the Underground Man, Oliveira deliberately

ignores the world in which he has been forced to live. To escape, he prefers to
consider himself a part of the fictional universe, the only one in which he feels
comfortable. This intention to escape the surrounding world by means of fic-
tion is mocked by the text. As Henri Bergson points out, “[a] comic meaning
is invariably obtained when an absurd idea is fitted into a well-established
phrase-form” (133). Thus, in contrast to Borges’s mythical/metaphysical/
intimate reinvention of Buenos Aires in Fervor de Buenos Aires, Oliveira’s
overtly metafictional (metapoetical) perception and reinvention of the sur-
rounding world evokes burlesque ethos. Cortázar adds humor to Borges’s
metaphysical depiction of the city. An ambiguity with respect to the “real”/
“metaphysical” Buenos Aires is maintained in both Borges’s early poetry and
Cortázar’s novel. Whereas in Borges’s texts this discrepancy is a result of
an attempt to rediscover an intimate connection through the appeal to the
universal, in Rayuela a gestation of the metaphysical city is an expression of the
anxiety of despair caused by the protagonist’s awareness of his alienation.28
The description of the protagonist’s life in Buenos Aires is also permeated
with allusions to Borges’s narratives, such as a parodic reference to Pascal’s state-
ment that “[l]a naturaleza es una esfera infinita, cuyo centro está en todas
partes y la circunferencia en ninguna” (qtd. in Borges Obras 2:16) [“a fearful
sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”
(192)], the starting point for Borges’s famous argument developed in his essay
“La esfera de Pascal” [“The Fearful Sphere of Pascal”].29 According to Borges,
the French philosopher wrote this statement when he “[s]intió el peso incesante
del mundo físico, sintió vértigo, miedo y soledad” (Obras 2:16) [“[h]e felt
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the incessant weight of the physical world, he experienced vertigo, fright and
solitude” (192)]30.
Similarly, in Rayuela, the narrator’s reference to “un círculo que está en
todas partes y su circunferencia en ninguna” (409) [“a circle whose center is
everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere” (496)] appears in the con-
text of the protagonist’s existential preoccupations as expressed in rhetorical
questions:
Terrible tarea la de chapotear en un círculo cuyo centro está en todas partes y su circunfer-
encia en ninguna, por decirlo escolásticamente. ¿Qué se busca? ¿Qué se busca? Repetirlo
quince mil veces, como martillazos en la pared. ¿Qué se busca? ¿Qué es esa conciliación
sin la cual la vida no pasa de una oscura tomada de pelo? (408, italics added)
It’s a terrible joke, splashing around in a circle whose center is everywhere and whose cir-
cumference is nowhere, to use the language of scholasticism. What is being searched for?
What is being searched for? Repeat it fifteen thousand times, like hammer-blows on the wall.
What is being searched for? What is that conciliation without which life doesn’t go
beyond being an obscure joke? (496, italics added)
Oliveira’s meditations, however, evoke laughter as the result of the clash

between the philosophical and colloquial registers. The transposing of Pascal’s
ideas to the situation of the everyday routine appears to be an overt parody on
Borges’s essay, where “a critical distance is implied between the background text
being parodied and the new incorporating work, a distance usually signaled
by irony” (Hutcheon 33). Parody emphasizes that the protagonist’s thoughts
are formulated on the crossroads of various literary discourses that ludically
reinforces an expression of his displacement.
The dialogue with Borges’s recurrent motifs continues in Cortázar’s Buenos
Aires, where encyclopedias are of importance for Oliveira and his friends
Traveler and Talita.31 Already in the first chapter of “Del lado de acá,” [“From
this side”] Talita, Traveler’s wife, is introduced as “lectora de enciclopedias” [“a
reader of encyclopedias” (219)] who “se interesaba por los pueblos nómades y
las culturas trashumantes” (183) [“is interested in wandering peoples and cul-
tures” (219)]. Moreover, Oliveira realizes that in order to survive in Buenos
Aires, he needs an encyclopedia that, probably, contains a key to the city and
at the same time encourages the reader’s imagination to travel to other places.
An encyclopedia becomes for him a virtual escape from the surrounding reality.
This escape is a vital necessity, as Oliveira observes: “Buenos Aires. Uno vive.
Manera tan rara. Se acaba por tener una enciclopedia” (198) [“Buenos Aires.
You get along. Funny thing. You end up owning an encyclopedia” (238)].
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An encyclopedia that can virtually take one to any country at any time period
would give Oliveira an illusion of freedom and of belonging to the world in
its totality, as a desirable alternative to claustrophobia which he experiences
in Buenos Aires. Dreams of imaginary trips also visit Oliveira’s friend Traveler,
who has never “traveled”: “Dormido se le escapaban algunas veces vocablos
de destierro, de desarraigo, de tránsitos ultramarinos” (183) [“When he was
asleep he would sometimes come out with words that had to do with uproot-
ing, trips abroad, troubles in customes, and inaccurate alidades” (219)]. As
his wife Talita affirms, “Yo soy el mejor de sus viajes” (183) [“I have been his
best trip” (219)]. According to Boldy, Traveler, whose name and actions
contradict each other, exemplifies that “Buenos Aires . . . [is] the capital of
words” (49). Thus, Cortázar’s Buenos Aires displays a multidimensional ludic
presence of Borges’s texts which emphasizes the city’s both metaphysical and
metafictional aspects.
Talita’s Dream: Between Borgesean

and Carnivalesque Worlds
Metaphysical conceptions and literary motifs akin to those of Borges are used
as ingredients in Cortázar’s own literary world imbued with carnivalesque
elements. Borgesean and carnivalesque worlds, for example, merge in Talita’s
dream in “Del lado de acá” [“From this side”]. According to Bakhtin, the
“unusual dreams” are typical for mennipean satire (Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Poetics 115), a combination of apparently incompatible and heterogeneous
elements, including the philosophical, adventurous and fantastic, which form
a carnivalesque genre par excellence. As in the mennipean satire, in Cortázar’s
text Talita’s dream is a challenge to a finalized perception of her identity.
For instance, she dreams of “un museo espantoso” [“a frightful museum”
(275)], a horrifying labyrinth that carries striking similarities with Giovanni
Battista Piranesi’s prisons: “La llevaban a una exposición de pintura en un
inmenso palacio en ruinas, y los cuadros colgaban a alturas vertiginosas, como
si alguien hubiera convertido en museo las prisiones de Piranesi” (226) [“She
was being taken to an art show in an immense ruined palace, and the pictures
were hung at giddy heights, as if someone had turned the prisons of Piranesi into
a museum” (274)]. Piranesi is one of Borges’s favorite artists, and his works
appear to be a source of inspiration for many of Borges’s texts.32 The represen-
tation of “la Ciudad de inmortales” [“the City of the Immortals”] in his story
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“El inmortal” [“The Immortal”] (El Aleph) is inspired by Piranesi’s Carceri.33 The
narrator-protagonist of this story describes his way to the terrifying city of
immortals as an exhaustive and dangerous pass through the infinite labyrinth:
“La fuerza del día hizo que yo me refugiara en una caverna; en el fondo había
un pozo, en el pozo una escalera que abismaba hacia la tiniebla inferior. Bajé;
por un caos de sordidos galerías llegué a una vasta cámara circular, apenas vis-
ible. Había nueve puertas en aquel sótano . . . . Fui divisando capiteles y astrála-
gos, frontones triangulares y bóvedas, confusas pompas del granito y del marmol.
Así me fue deparado ascender de la ciega región de negros laberintos entrete-
jidos a la resplandeciente ciudad” (Obras 1:536–537) [“The force of the sun
obliged me to seek refuge in a cave; in the rear was a pit, in the pit a stairway
which sank down abysmally into the darkness below. I went down; through a
chaos of sordid galleries I reached a vast circular chamber, scarcely visible. There
were nine doors in the cellar . . . I began to glimpse capitals and astragals, tri-
angular pediments and vaults, confused pageants of granite and marble. Thus
I was afforded this ascension from the blind region of dark interwoven labyrinths
into the resplendent City” (110)]. Likewise, in Talita’s dream, her route is a per-
ilous voyage through a labyrinth to terrifying pictures, “había que trepar por
arcos donde apenas las entalladuras permitían apoyar los dedos de los pies, avan-
zar por galerías que se interrumpían al borde de un mar embravecido, con olas
como de plomo, subir por escaleras de caracol para finalmente ver siempre mal,
siempre desde abajo o de costado, los cuadros” (226) [“one had to climb up some
archways where one could get footing only on the carvings, go through galleries
that went to the edge of a stormy sea with leadlike waves, climb up spiral stair-
cases to see finally, always poorly, always from below or from one side, the paint-
ings” (274)]. Both Talita and the protagonist of “El inmortal” [“The Immortal”]
experience disillusion when they reach their respective targets, the museum
with pictures and the city of immortals, both of which display the uniformity
of emptiness. As the protagonist in “El inmortal” [“The Immortal”] points out,
the architecture of the palace lacks any purpose and manifests a repetition of
meaningless parts, “la [impresión] de lo interminable, la de lo atroz, la de lo com-
plejamente insensato” (Obras 1:537) [“the [impression] of the interminable, that
of the atrocious, that of the complexly senseless” (110)]. Similar characteris-
tics are possessed by the pictures in Talita’s dream, which have “la misma man-
cha blanquecina, el mismo coágulo de tapioca o de leche se repetía al
infinito” (226) [“the same coagulation of tapioca or milk was repeated to infin-
ity” (226)]. Both the protagonist of “El inmortal” [“The Immortal”] and Talita
refer to their visions as terrifying ones. The horrifying image of the city is
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a symbol of the protagonist’s pathological obsessive search for utopic/dystopic

immortality in Borges’s text. The museum where Talita is taken in her dream
displays her artistic imagination and subconscious interest in metaphysics, prob-
ably inspired by works of Piranesi as well as of her famous compatriot, Jorge Luis
Borges. Being generated in Cortázar’s Buenos Aires, created under the influence
of Borges’s texts, Talita’s dream exemplifies a metaphysical dimension, which
distances the city of “Del lado de acá” [“From this side”] from the version of Paris
pictured in the first section (“Del lado de alla”[“From the other side”]) of the
novel.
The Carnivalesque City and the

Anxiety of Alienation
Metaphysical and carnivalesque elements are abundant in the Buenos Aires of
Rayuela, they allow the reader to consider this place to be an invented reality.34
As Bakhtin points out in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, the carnivalesque
life is “a life turned inside out” (122), not contemplated or performed but “its par-
ticipants live in it” (122). Talita and Traveler have lived a carnivalesque life. They
utilize their experiences of working in the circus in their off-stage life, such as
the episode with the plank described in chapter 41. In this scene, which strongly
deviates from all the conventions of realism, Talita is persuaded by Oliveira and
Traveler to crawl out onto a precarious bridge of planks which are set up across
buildings to give Oliveira a small bag of mate and nails.35 As Gekrepten,
Oliveira’s former Argentinean girlfriend, explains to the astonished neigh-
bors: “Talita trabaja en un circo, son todos artistas—¿Hacen pruebas?—preguntó
uno de los chicos—. ¿Adentro de cuál circo trabaja la cosa esa?—No era una
prueba—dijo Gekrepten—. Lo que pasa es que querían darle un poco de yerba
a mi marido, y entonces . . .” (215). [“ ‘Talita works in a circus. They’re all per-
formers—’Were they rehearsing?’ asked one of the boys. ‘What circus is that girl
with?’ ‘It wasn’t a rehearsal,’ Gekrepten said. ‘What happened was that they
wanted to give my husband a little yerba, and so . . .’ ” (261)]. In this eccentric
scene a Buenos Aires street is transformed into a public carnival square that
Bakhtin describes in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics as a place which celebrates
“a new mode of interrelationship between individuals” (123).36
Moreover, the neighbors’ negative reaction to Talita’s maneuver with
the plank proves it to be a deviation from the officially accepted norm that
also is one of the main features of the carnival actions. Indeed, a subversion of
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hierarchical structures, as well as all the forms of etiquette, is typical for car-
nival. As Bakhtin observes, “[t]he laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that
determine the structure and the order of ordinary, that is noncarnival, life are
suspended during carnival” (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 123). Indeed, “la
señora Gutusso,” in her conversation with Gekrepten, points out that Talita’s
exercise is a violation of the decent routine: “Con las piernas al aire en ese tablón,
mire qué ejemplo para las criaturas. Usted no se habrá dado cuenta, pero desde
aquí se le veía propiamente todo, le juro.” (215) [“ ‘With her legs in the air on
that board, what an example for the children. You probably couldn’t see, but
from down here it was quite a sight, I can assure you.’ ” (261)].
In addition to the street of Buenos Aires, there are other carnivalesque
spaces par excellence in the novel, such as the circus and the insane asylum.
These institutions can easily replace one another, and display the relationship
of complementarity and overlap that manifests the “relativity and ambivalence
of reason and madness” (Bakhtin 125) typical of the carnival. In “Del lado de
acá,” [“From this side”] the idea of the center (which earlier in the novel was asso-
ciated with Paris) is associated with the unattainable point in the circus and
a symmetrically located one in the madhouse. As the narrator describes,
“[d]eteniéndose al lado del agujero del montacargas miró el fondo negro y pensó en
los Campos Flegreos, otra vez en el acceso. En el circo había sido al revés, un agu-
jero en lo alto, la apertura comunicando con el espacio abierto, figura de con-
sumación; ahora estaba al borde del pozo, agujero de Eleusis, la clínica envuelta
en vapores de calor acentuaba el pasaje negativo, los vapores de solfatara, el
descenso” (260; italics added) [“[s]topping by the shaft of the freight elevator, he
looked into the black depths and thought again about the Phlegrean Fields, the
way in. In the circus it had been just the opposite, a hole up above, the opening in
communication with free space, an image of consummation; now he was at the
edge of the pit, the hole of Eleusis, the clinic wrapped in sulphurous vapors, the
descent” (316; italics added)]. Moreover, Talita and Traveler prefer to think
about the madhouse in terms appropriate for referring to circus/theatrical per-
formances. As the narrator observes, “[l]os dos le buscaban el lado humorístico,
prometiéndose espectáculos dignos de Samuel Beckett, despreciando de labios para
afuera al pobre circo” (221; italics added) [“[t]he two of them tried to find the
humorous side, promising themselves spectacles worthy of Samuel Beckett, sneering
at the poor circus” (268)]. The circus is a ludic world of deception whose
actors (e.g. clowns) exercise the capacity of being simultaneously both self and
other, and which, like carnival, “proclaims the joyful relativity of everything”
(Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 125). As the narrator observes, the circus
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appears to be a deliberate ludic alternative to the existing order. “En el circo

se estaba perfectamente, una estafa de lentejuelas y música rabiosa, un gato
calculista que reaccionaba a la previa y secreta pulverización con valeriana de
ciertos números de cartón, mientras señoras conmovidas mostraban a su prole
tan elocuente ejemplo de evolución darwiniana” (218) [“Everything was
perfect in the circus, a spangled fraud with wild music, a calculating cat who react-
ed to a cardboard numbers that had been secretly treated previously with valer-
ian, while ladies were so moved that they made sure that their offspring noticed
such an eloquent example of Darwinian evolution” (264)].
Another alternative is the madhouse, which becomes ‘home’/‘prison’ for the
three friends, as Oliveira’s letter to Gekrepten indicates: “Oliveira sacó una
birome del bolsillo y contestó la carta. Primero, había teléfono (seguía el
número); segundo, estaban muy ocupados, pero la reorganización no llevaría más
de dos semanas y entonces podrían verse por lo menos los miércoles, sábados y
domingos. Tercero, se le estaba acabando la yerba. ‘Escribo como si me hubier-
an encerrado,’ pensó echando una firma” (258) [“Oliveira took a pen out of his
pocket and answered the letter. In the first place, there was a telephone (followed
by the number); second, they were very busy, but the reorganization shouldn’t
take more than two weeks and then they would be able to see each other at least
on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Third, he was running out of yerba. ‘I
write as if I were imprisoned,’ he thought, signing the letter” (313)]. Oliveira’s
life in the madhouse highlights how the border between the sane and the men-
tally ill is dissolved. It remains unclear to the reader whether Oliveira actually
loses his mind or not; however, his preparations for Traveler’s attack allow one
to interpret his behavior as being on the threshold of insanity. His actions and
thoughts correspond with what might be called “moral-psychological experi-
mentation”; “a representation of the unusual, abnormal moral and psychic
states of man—insanity of all sorts . . . split personality, unrestrained day-
dreaming . . . passions bordering on madness” (Bakhtin 116) typical of menip-
pean satire, “one of the main carriers and channels for the carnival sense of the
world in literature” (Bakhtin113). Further, in Horacio’s mind, the images of
healthy and mentally sick people are mixed. “A esa hora y con esa oscuridad lo
mismo hubiera podido ser la Maga que Talita o cualquiera de las locas” (276) [“At
that hour and in that darkness it could have just as easily been La Maga as Talita
or any one of the madwomen” (337)]. Traveler also draws a parallel between
healthy and mentally sick people when, to Talita’s question “¿Se matan así los
locos?,” he answers: “—No, vieja, pero de cuando en cuando se tiran el lance. Lo
mismo que los cuerdos, si me permitís la mala comparación” (222; italics added)
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[“ ‘Is that the way lunatics do their killing?’ ‘No, my dear, but once in a while
they give it a try. Just like sane people, if you will allow me the poor compari-
son’ ” (270)]. Thus, both the circus and the mental asylum illustrate the carni-
valesque to be essentially ambivalent, which “absolutizes nothing” (Bakhtin 125)
and challenge the self/other dichotomy. Striking similarities between these two
places, as well as difficulties in the differentiation between “locos” [mad people,
“lunatics”] and “cuerdos” [“sane people”], also appear to be powerful expressions
of the common despair the characters experience in the world in which they live.
The distance between people is also challenged through the abundance of
doubles, “paired images, chosen for their contrast . . . or for their similarities”
(Bakhtin 126), typical of carnival thinking. For instance, Traveler, “un hombre
de territorio” (283) [“the man of the territory” (347)], and homeless Oliveira
explicitly identify themselves as “doppelgänger” (281, 282, 283). As Traveler
points out, “—No estás solo, Horacio. Quisieras estar solo por pura vanidad, por
hacerte el Maldoror porteño. ¿Hablás de un doppelgänger, no? Ya ves que alguien
te sigue, que alguien es como vos aunque esté del otro lado de tus condenados
piolines” (281) [“You’re not alone, Horacio. Maybe you wanted to be alone out
of pure vanity, play the Buenos Aires Maldoror. You spoke about a Doppelgänger,
didn’t you? Now you can see that someone is following you, that someone is like
you even though he’s on the other side of your damnable threads” (344)].
Oliveira also observes to Talita that “La diferencia entre Manú y yo es que somos
casi iguales” (210) [“The difference between Manú and me is that we’re almost
exactly the same” (254)]. Talita, who ranks herself among “las mujeres eman-
cipadas e intelectuales” (191) [“the emancipated and intellectual women”
(229)], and la Maga, who has an intuitive touch with the world which allows
her to penetrate eternity, “a esas grandes terrazas sin tiempo que todos ellos bus-
caban dialécticamente” (29) [“those great timeless plateaus that they were all
seeking through dialectics” (25)], form a similar symmetrical relationship in
Oliveira’s mind. As he explains to Traveler, “—Yo sé que es Talita, pero hace
un rato era la Maga. Es las dos, como nosotros” (282) [“ ‘I know she’s Talita, but
a while ago she was La Maga. She’s two people, just like us’ ” (346)]. He often
confuses them, playing with their images rather than with the characters them-
selves: “un beso a Talita, un beso de él a la Maga a Pola, ese otro juego de espe-
jos como el juego de volver hacia la ventana y mirar a la Maga parada ahí al
borde de la rayuela mientras la Cuca y Remorino y Ferraguto amontonados cerca
de la puerta estaban como esperando que Traveler saliera a la ventana” (279;
italics added) [“a kiss on Talita, a kiss he gave La Maga or Pola, that other game
of mirrors like the game of turning his head towards the window and looking
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at Las Maga standing there next to the hopscotch while cuca and Remorino
and Ferraguto, crowding around the door, seemed to be waiting for Traveler to
come to the window” (340)]. In “Del lado de allá” [“From other side”], Oliveira’s
love for La Maga is both a bridge to and an embodiment of his distance from
Paris. In Buenos Aires, Talita performs a similar function. There is an inre-
coverable lack of internal connection, however, as there is no bridge between
Oliveira and Buenos Aires: “Había que seguir, o recomenzar o terminar: todavía
no habiá puente” (189; italics added) [He had to keep going, either start over
again or end it: there was still no bridge as yet” (226; italics added)].
The topos of the double as literary device questions the boundaries of the
fictional universe. Oliveira, for instance, explicitly refers to Dostoevsky’s char-
acters when he recommends Traveler: “Consultá a Dostoievski para eso de las
sustituciones” (282) [“Look up that business of substitutions in Dostoyevsky”
(345)].37 The presence of both tragic and the comic elements, characteristic of
Dostoevsky’s doubles, is also relevant to Cortázar’s characters.38 In contrast to
Dostoevsky’s works, however, in Cortázar’s novel, doubles as a literary device
obtain an overt metafictional significance.
The context of Oliveira’s mentioning of the Russian writer evokes laughter,
for it follows the protagonist’s meditations about himself in light of the motif
of “pity,” one of the most important in Dostoevsky’s works.39 Oliveira consid-
ers himself a victim of “piedad” [“pity”] which prevents his union with the sky
associated with “rayuela”: “Un día meto un dedo en la costumbre y es increíble
cómo el dedo se hunde en la costumbre y asoma por el otro lado, parece que
voy a llegar por fin a la última casilla y de golpe una mujer se ahoga, ponele, o me
da un ataque, un ataque de piedad al divino botón, porque eso de la piedad . . .” (282,
italics added) [“One day I stick my finger into habit and it’s incredible how one’s
finger sinks into habit and comes out the other side, it looks as if I’m finally
going to get to the last square and suddenly a woman drowns, let’s say, or I get
an attack, an attack of useless pity, because that business of pity . . .” (345)].
These meditations, which in a satiric way combine sarcastic self-critique and
the unlimited influence of stereotypical thinking, provoke laughter, which in
a sense both indicates and disguises the protagonist’s existential anxiety caused
by an awareness of his continuously ‘displaced’ condition.
In this way, exemplifying the influence of Dostoevsky’s literary universe on
that created by Cortázar in Hopscotch, the presence of the double and the
notion of the shift thematized in the text’s discourse offer a further challenge
on the place/displacement opposition. The polysemic use of the word “territory”
appears to be connected with that of the double, and indicates the presence of
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the shift, a core of carnival thinking on the lexical level. The concept
of territory conventionally associated with the link between land, identity
and culture (see Lavie et al. 1), and with the ideological notions of sovereign-
ty and property, is both present, personified and ironized in Cortázar’s text.
Undermining traditionally hierarchical dualities between ‘home’ and ‘abroad,’
the center and the margin, and self and other, the novel invites readers to recon-
sider their confidence in the permanent junction between a particular culture
and a stable terrain, determinant for modern concepts of nations and cultures.
A consistent identification of Traveler with the territory in Oliveira’s
discourse emphasizes a parallel between personal (self/other) and spatial
(domestic/foreign) relationships, and challenges their perception in terms of
strict dichotomies.
As Oliveira explains to Traveler, “sos mi doppelganger, porque todo el tiempo
estoy yendo y viniendo de tu territorio al mío, y en esos pasajes lastimosos me parece
que vos sos mi forma que se queda ahí mirándome con lástima, sos los cinco mil
años de hombre amontados en un metro setenta, mirando a ese payaso que
quiere salirse de su casilla.” (282; italics added) [“you’re my Doppelganger,
because all the time I’m coming and going from your territory to mine, if I real-
ly ever do get to mine, and in those weary passages it seems to me that you’re
my form staying there looking at me with pity, you’re the five thousand years
of man piled up into six feet, looking at the clown who wants to get out of his
square” (345)]. In addition, territory is a physical space of the game “rayuela,”
as Horacio explains to Traveler: “Si te salieras del territorio, digamos de la casil-
la una a las dos, o de la dos a la tres . . .” (281–282) [“If you were to leave the
territory, let’s say from square one to square two, or from two to three . . .”
(344)]. In this way, in the word “territory,” the geographical, the human
and the ludic appear to converge. Oliveira’s references to Argentina, its per-
sonification and demistification carry similarities to carnivalesque “bringing
down to earth” (Bakhtin 123). In Oliveira’s attempt to undermine the official
vision of the country is contrasted with the emphatically fleshly grotesque
identification of the country with “matambre arrollado” (194) [“a tight-rolled
omelet” (233)].
As the narrator points out, “aunque estuviera convencido de que a la
Argentina había que agarrarla por el lado de la verguenza, buscarle el rubor
escondido por un siglo de usurpaciónes de todo género como tan bien explican
sus ensayistas, y para eso lo mejor era demostrarle de alguna manera que no se
la podía tomar en serio como pretendía” (194) [“even though he was convinced
that the only way to get a hold on Argentina was to come up on it from the
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shameful side, find the blush hidden under a century of usurpations of all kinds,
as writers had pointed out so well, and therefore the best way was to show it in
some way in which it didn’t have to take itself so seriously” (233–234)].
Identifying houses with bodies, Traveler also points to the distorting vision of
reality which populates the country and the city: “—Las ventanas son los ojos
de la ciudad . . . y naturalmente deforman todo lo que miran” (203) [“Windows
are the eyes of the city . . . and naturally they give the wrong shape to everything
they see” (245)].
Buenos Aires is also a place that generates a carnivalesque discourse
(particularly chapters 37 and 41). The incorporation of “Diálogo típico de
españoles” [“A Typical Dialogue between Two Spaniards”] a pseudo-poetic text on
the indecipherable language characterized by the narrator as “la jitanjáfora” (198)
[“nonsense” (238)] and an improvisation with the music from “Caballería ligera”
(215) [“Light Cavalry Overture”] in chapter 41, for instance, displays the hetero-
geniety of the menippean discourse, which is characterized by “a wide use of the
inserted genres,” “a mixing of prose and poetic speech” which usually produces a
comic effect. “Verse portions are almost always given with a certain degree of par-
odying” (118). Laughing at Talita in the episode with the plank, “Los chicos se
pusieron en fila y empezaron a cantar, con música de “Caballeria ligera” [“The boys
formed a line and began to sing to the tune of the Light Cavalry Overture”]:
Lo corrieron de atrás, lo corrieron de atrás,

le metieron un palo en el cúúúlo.
¡Pobre señor! ¡Pobre señor!
No se lo pudo sacar. (215)40
Oh, they came from behind, oh, they came from behind,
and they stuck a pole up his aaass-hole.
It wouldn’t come out, it wouldn’t come out,
The poor man was out of his mind. (261)
The vulgarity of this song is typical for carnivalesque discourse, which is directed
towards a shift of authority and world order. Thus, the shift becomes internal-
ized in the very structure of the discourse narrated in Buenos Aires.
Carnivalesque and metaphysical elements coexist in Cortázar’s Buenos
Aires. On the one hand there are markers that refer to a particular city. The
mentioning of the names of the streets as well as the references to the archi-
tectural characteristics of buildings make it difficult for a reader to confuse
Buenos Aires with any other place. On the other hand, it is, in at least two
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senses, an invented reality. The city is imbued with a metaphysical air akin to
Borges’s Buenos Aires in Fervor de Buenos Aires; and it is a ludic carnivalesque
space. Cortázar’s Buenos Aires manifests an inevitable gap between fictional and
empirical realities; it is an emphatic way to express the character’s anxiety of
alienation.
Oliveira’s Homelessness:
Displacement as “No Placement”
“De otros lados,” [“From Diverse sides”] a deliberate re-combination of the
previous chapters of the story in alternating format, emphasizes Oliveira’s alien-
ation and condition of exile through its very structure. This device makes the
reader reconsider the apparently strict division established by the first two sections
and intentionally creates confusion with regard to identifying the location of the
action. Paris and Buenos Aires, “el lado de acá” [“from this side”] and “el lado de
allá,” [“from other side”] are no longer complementary because Oliveira appears
to be in exile in both cities. Indeed, in Paris, Horacio is like a witness: he is pre-
sent and absent at the same time. As la Maga points out, “Vos sos como un tes-
tigo, sos el que va al museo y mira los cuadros. Quiero decir que los cuadros están
ahí y vos en el museo, cerca y lejos al mismo tiempo.” (24) [“You’re like a witness.
You’re the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the
paintings are there and you’re in the museum too, near and far away at the same
time.” (20)]. According to Emmett Joseph Sharkley, Oliveira’s simultaneous
longing to be immersed in the world and remain distanced from it appears to be
a quintessential problem of the modern hero; it is “an expression of the modern
struggle between alienation and understanding” (33). Striving to break any
attachment to his own native place, Oliveira does not display any interest in
La Maga’s city: “Oliveira escuchaba sin ganas, lamentando un poco no poder
interesarse; Montevideo era lo mismo que Buenos Aires” (26) [“Oliveira listened
without interest, a little sorry that he was not interested; Montevideo was just like
Buenos Aires” (21)]. He tries to overcome the feeling of nostalgia awakened by
his sudden memories about Buenos Aires and his friends: “él necesitaba consolidar
una ruptura precaria (¿qué estaría haciendo Traveler, ese gran vago, en que líos
majestuosos se habría metido desde su partida? Y la pobre boba de Gekrepten, y
los cafés del centro)” (26; italics added) [“he had to finish breaking away (what
was Traveler up to, that old drifter? What kind of majestic hassles had he got into
since he had left? And poor, silly Gekrepten, and the bars downtown)” (21)].
Likewise, when in Buenos Aires, he prefers not to think or to talk about Paris. As
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Traveler observes, “—‘Nunca hablas de aquello’ . . . no podía nombrar a la capi-

tal de Francia . . . —‘Ningún interés’—contestaba Oliveira” (192) [“ ‘You never
talk very much about all that’ . . . he was never able to mention the capital of
France by name . . . —‘It doesn’t interest me,’ Oliveira would answer” (231)].
Further, Oliveira is homeless both in Paris and Buenos Aires. Whereas in
Paris he lives in a small cramped room in the immigrant quarter, in Buenos
Aires he dwells in a hotel, “vegetaba con la pobre y abnegada Gekrepten en una
pieza de hotel frente a la pensión ‘Sobrales’ donde revistaban los Traveler” (190)
[“He was already vegetating with poor, humble Gekrepten in a hotel room
across from the Pensión Sobrales where the Travelers were on the rolls” (228)].
Oliveira’s consistent thoughts about “lo de la ida y la vuelta” (190) [“the busi-
ness of coming back and going away” (228)] allows one to consider him living
in the marginal traveller’s space, “the archetype of non-place” (Augé 86).41
Oliveira expresses awareness of his own unhomeness (homelessness). In “Del
lado de allá,” [“From the Other Side”] in the conversation with the grotesque
Berthe Trépat, he explains: “No puedo ofrecer mi casa por la sencilla razón de
que no la tengo” (107) [“I can’t offer you my own place for the simple reason
that I don’t have any” (122)]. In “Del lado de acá” [“From the Other Side”],
when returning from the madhouse to his room, Oliveira sarcastically uses a
clichéd-phrase about home in a broken foreign language (English) that exem-
plifies his challenge to the conventional identity-land connection and empha-
sizes his presence as an outsider/stranger in Buenos Aires: “There’s not a place
like home” (313; italics added) [“ ‘There is no place like home’ ” (382)].42 Thus,
Oliveira’s dwelling is accomplished not by residing but by wandering. He
exemplifies one of the “mobile” persons described by Casey as a “victim of place-
lessness in one guise or another” (XIV).
A permanent state of exile makes Oliveira an exemplar of an intellectual
as described by Kierkegaard and Said.43 Analyzing Oliveira’s alienation in both
Paris and Buenos Aires, Blas Matamoro concludes: “Si todos los puntos del espa-
cio son igualmente ajenos, entonces resultan intercambiables” (41). [“If all
points in space are equally distant, they turn out to be interchangeable”].
Oliveira’s Argentinean friends gradually become aware of the impossibility of
any reconciliation between Oliveira and Buenos Aires.44 Argentina turns out
to be “la patria falsa” (Fuentes 64) [“a false motherland”] for the protagonist that
challenges Talita and Traveler’s belief in the necessity of a connection between
an individual and the land where he was born.
In this way, Oliveira embodies Cortázar’s own cosmopolitan vision of the
Argentinean identity characterized by “su falta de certidumbre y de bases de tipo
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cultural, por salir de la mezcla” (in Bermejo 62) [“the lack of certainty and of
the foundations of the cultural type in order to get out of mixture”].45 Though
Traveler “espiaba en Oliveira los signos del pacto ciudadano” (190) [“could spot
that Oliveira was making his peace with the city” (228)], Oliveira hopelessly
remains alienated in his native city. “Oliveira no podía reconciliarse hipócrita-
mente con Buenos Aires, y . . . ahora estaba mucho más lejos del país que
cuando andaba por Europa” (190) [“Oliveira could not make any hypocritical
compromise with Buenos Aires, and . . . at that moment he was much father
away from his own country than when he had been wandering about Europe.”
(228)].46 Oliveira’s feeling of marginality experienced both within and without
his native land, as well as the relationship of interchangeability between Paris
and Buenos Aires gradually established by the text, display displacement as
“no placement” (Kierkegaard qtd. in Houe 359).47
An attempt to define a place typical of exile, characterized by “open-
endedness and incompleteness” (Kierkegaard qtd. in Palmer 39), appears to be
also a determinant of Rayuela’s structure of the “Open” (Eco 633) work and its
use of imagery. The title of the novel points to the game, which in itself is an
attempt to build the bridge between the celestial and terrestrial, as the narra-
tor explains: “En lo alto está el Cielo, abajo está la Tierra, es muy difícil llegar
con la piedrita al Cielo, casi siempre se calcula mal y la piedra sale del dibujo.
Poco a poco, sin embargo, se va adquiriendo la habilidad necesaria para salvar
las diferentes casillas (rayuela caracol, rayuela rectangular, rayuela de fantasía
poco usada) y un día se aprende a salir de la Tierra y remontar la piedrita hasta
el Cielo, hasta entrar en el Cielo” (178) [“On top is Heaven, on the bottom is
Earth, it’s very hard to get the pebble up to Heaven, you almost always
miscalculate and the stone goes off the drawing. But little by little you start to
get the knack of how to jump over the different squares (spiral hopscotch, rec-
tangular hopscotch, fantasy hopscotch, not played very often) and then one day
you learn how to leave Earth and make pebble climb up into Heaven” (214)].48
The ambiguity of the novel’s ending, where Horacio either does or does not
commit suicide also points to displacement as no-placement to be the text’s
narrative strategy that makes every reader come up with his/her own ‘bridge’-
interpretation.49 As Cortázar points out in his conversation with Garfield,
“el hecho de dejar el libro abierto . . . es exactamente lo que yo busco con mis
lectores” (30) [“the idea of leaving the book open-ended . . . is exactly what
I intend for my readers”].50 The task of the “lector-cómplice” would be to become
“copartícipe y copadeciente de la experiencia por la que pasa el novelista, en
el mismo momento y en la misma forma” (326) [“a co-participant and co-sufferer
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of the experience through which the novelist is passing, at the same moment and
in the same form” (397)], which implies the disappearance of the borders
between the reader and the writer. Thus, Oliveira’s exile, his non-placement
accompanied by the endless search attains both thematic and metafictional
importance in Rayuela. It allows the reader to recognize a modern intellectual
and Cortázar to express his metapoetical ideas.
In conclusion, Oliveira’s existential displacement multiplies into textual
displacement, which is a displacement of other texts, associated with incom-
pleteness and open-endedness. A strategy of textual displacement, whose most
efficient mechanisms are irony and parody, is particularly prominent in repre-
sentations of Paris and Buenos Aires, where the protagonist moves. The use of
the motifs recurrent in the nineteenth century representations of the modern
city and the lives of the individualists in it, and at the same time an explicit
recognition of the imaginary nature of Paris as a metaphor, illustrates a
dissipation of boundaries between empirical and fictional realms and underlines
the impossibility of reconciliation between the protagonist and the city.
Metaphysical Buenos Aires is both a literary construction, which evokes the
city created in Borges’s early poetry, and a carnivalesque space that underlines
Oliveira’s anxiety of alienation. Created at the crossroads of separate literary
worlds, Paris and Buenos Aires are given new lives in the polyphonic space of
Cortázar’s novel: they are Oliveira’s indispensable companions in his life-long
voyage without destination.
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·3·
FICTIONAL AND ‘ REAL’ PLACES :
CONVERGENCES AND
DIVERGENCES
Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.
Vladimir Nabokov
The controversial places of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia have attracted the
attention of philosophers, artists and critics throughout the ages. This chapter
contends that attempting to delineate these places in Borges’s and Cortázar’s
narratives allows the reader to move deeper into the fictional worlds created by
these authors, and offers further insights regarding the location of Borges’s voice
within the distinct literary universe created by Cortázar.
My reading of Borges’s stories “Utopia del hombre que está cansado” [“A
Weary Man’s Utopia”] and “La casa de Asterión” [“The House of Asterion”],
and Cortázar’s novels 62: Modelo para armar [62: A Model Kit] and Los Premios
[The Winners], is informed by ideas developed by such scholars as Judith
Schklar and Tobin Seibers. They have observed that, in the postmodern world,
any distinction between utopia, dystopia and heterotopia is questionable. This
chapter suggests that Borges’s and Cortázar’s narratives, where overtly imagi-
nary and recognizable locations consistently coexist, exemplify this vision. The
blurring of the frontier between utopias and other locales in these writers’ texts
turns out to be a common expression of the skepticism about the contemporary
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world, where violence, a lack of communication and a leveling of the unique

value of individuals have become the norm.
Undermining the distinction between utopia and dystopia in her analyses
of the use of the former, both as a political instrument and as a form of litera-
ture, Shklar points out that utopia is both “undesirable” and “dangerous” (41)
for the dreams of effortless abundance, peace and well-being are inevitably
doomed to failure. Comparing utopian and dystopian discourses as a literary
form, Laurence Davies emphasizes that both of them “offer judgments on the
present in terms of other times and places” (207). In contrast to utopia, how-
ever, she observes, dystopia does not require plain, transparent words. Giving
life to language and functioning as “a site both of resistance and deceit” (212),
dystopia presents a history and geography in an open-ended way.
In his book The Order of Things, and in a later article “Of Other Spaces,”
Foucault defines and compares utopia and heterotopia. In The Order of Things,
the French philosopher draws a contrast between utopias and heterotopias in
terms of the discourse they produce and the emotive reaction they evoke:
Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless
a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold; they open up cities with
vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the
road to them is chimerical. Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly
undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because
they shatter or tangle common names . . .. This is why utopias permit fables and discourse:
the run with the very grain of language and are part of the fundamental dimension of
the fabula; heterotopias (such as those to be found so often in Borges) dessicate speech, stop
words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve
our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences. (XVIII, italics added)
In “Of Other Spaces,” he draws a contrast, between utopias as “sites with

no real place” (24) and heterotopias as “real places.” According to Foucault,
heterotopias can be characterized by five principles: presence in any culture,
possible change of functions according to society’s needs, a capacity to juxta-
pose in a single real place several (including even contradictory) sites, a break
with a traditional notion of time, and the lack of free access. His paradigmatic
examples of heterotopias, which he calls “archetypal heterotopias,” include the
ship, the labyrinth, and the garden. Foucault distinguishes between three types
of heterotopias: of crisis or deviation, such as prisons or rest homes, “in which
individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm
are placed;” of illusion, whose function is to create illusory space that exposes sites
where life is practiced on an even more illusory level (for example, “brothels”);
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fictional & ‘real’ places 63
and of compensation, which creates an order opposite to the “ill constructed”

world where people live (for example, “colonies”).
By introducing heterotopias par excellence, and by depicting utopias which
no longer bring consolation, Borges’s and Cortazár’s texts allow for reconsid-
eration of the distinction Foucault makes between these two places. In “Of
Other Spaces,” the French philosopher himself considers the double function
of the mirror to nuance the heterotopia/utopia opposition introduced in The
Order of Things. A mirror is both “a utopia, since it is a placeless place” and a
heterotopia for “it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look
at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that
surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass
through this virtual point which is over there” (24).
Accordingly, in his book Heterotopia: Postmodern Utopia and the Body
Politics, whose title evocatively defines heterotopia by means of utopia, Siebers
argues that postmodernism, abundant in heterotopias, is an “utopian philoso-
phy” (4) with its both hopeful and pessimistic sides. In contrast to the classi-
cal utopia which aspires to order and uniformity, postmodernists include in their
planning diversity and chaos, which make postmodern utopia to be everything
that exists: “the ideal postmodern utopia is the aleph” (Siebers 27). Siebers
defines the term “aleph” as “a real world with the difference,” this difference
being, he explains, that the surrounding world in its totality becomes more
friendly and enjoyable. This difference, Siebers continues, makes heterotopia
to be “the best utopia” (28). Thus, critics coincide in their approach to the con-
cepts of utopia/dystopia/heterotopia as overlapping rather than complementary
and offer different versions on how this overlap is constituted.
Likewise overtly imaginary and recognizable (‘real’) locations form parallel
rather then contrasting constructions in Borges’s and Cortázar’s texts. In line with
classical texts that display utopian/dystopian dominants, Borges’s “Utopía de un
hombre que está cansado” (1975) and Cortázar’s 62: Modelo para armar (1968)
play with and expand on utopia’s essentially ironic and paradoxical nature, embod-
ied in “Someone’s land” and “the City,” respectively. Borges self-consciously
evokes and transforms motifs prominent in Thomas More’s, Jonathan Swift’s and
H.G. Wells’s canonical utopian texts in order to comment on political and
moral crises, meditations probably inspired by Peron’s return to power in 1973.
Cortázar’s “City” is an attempt to disengage from literary conventions, an
attempt that allows for the drawing of a parallel between the utopic functions
of place and language as an embodiment of (apparent) freedom. Cortázar’s
representation of the City in 62: Modelo de armar (1968) can be interpreted as
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challenging the frontiers of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia, in addressing such

issues as growing violence and the lack of communication in the postmodern era.
Borges’s “La casa de Asterion” (1949) and Cortázar’s Los premios (1960)
employ archetypal heterotopias, such as the labyrinth and the ship respectively.
Being intrinsically polysemic, these places, through their structure and their
symbolic functions, display a parallelism with literary texts where uniformity
and heterogeneity coexist. In Borges’s story, this parallelism allows the author
to comment on the structure of myth as well as on the tragic existential and
political condition of his epoch. For Cortázar, the undermining of clear dis-
tinctions between the functions of place and language is both an act of liber-
ation from predetermined meanings and a rebellion against the dogmatic
perception of language recurrent in the political and cultural discourse of the
time, as well as an expression of an implicit dialogue with the artistic legacy
(e.g. sea-narratives, surreal art, Schopenhauer’s aesthetic philosophy) of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, where Borges is one of Cortázar’s interlocutors.
The ‘Exotic’ or/and ‘the Familiar’:

“Someone’s Land” and the Traditions
of Literary Utopia
Evoking More’s, Swift’s and Wells’s classical texts, Borges’s “Utopía de un
hombre que está cansado” [“A Weary Man’s Utopia”] narrates a voyage of the
protagonist Eudoro Acevedo to the land, which like a mirror, exposes the
faults of the world where he actually lives.1 The very title of the story, which
echoes both More’s work and Borges’s own interpretation of Wells’ The Time
Machine, undermines the association of utopia with the happy place, for it
declares a vision of the tired man, a result of the existential experience of
exhaustion.2 The epigraph from Francisco de Quevedo’s translation of a fragment
of More’s influential work also intentionally seems to escape the ambiguity of the
title introduced by the latter and exclusively emphasizes utopia’s fictional
ontology: “Llámola Utopía, voz griega cuyo significado es no hay tal lugar.”
(Obras 3:52) [“He called it ‘Utopia,’ a Greek word which means ‘there is no such
place’ ” (460)].3
Evoking the actions of his literary predecessors, the narrator/protagonist
Eudoro Acevedo travels to the land of the future, where he meets “Someone,”
a man without a name, who shows Eudoro one of his treasures: “un ejemplar
de la Utopía de More, impreso en Basilea en el año 1518” (53) [“a copy of More’s
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Utopia, the volume printed in Basel in 1518” (462)].4 “Someone’s land” has all
the dreariness and uniformity of More’s Utopia. The main city of More’s “happy
place,” for instance, is called Amaurot, “[f]rom the Greek, implying ‘dark city’ ”
(More 35). This place which stands on the river Anyder, which means “waterless”
(More 37). As the narrator of Utopia points out, “[i]f you know one of their
cities, you know them all, for they’re exactly alike, except where geography itself
makes a difference” (More 36). Likewise, on the land where passions, emotions
and the concept of difference no longer exist, Someone “vestido en gris” (Obras
3:52) [“dressed in grey” (460)] and with “rostro severo y pálido” (Obras 3:53)
[“stern, pale face” (461)] observes that his house cannot be distinguished from
the others: “He construido esta casa, que es igual a todas las otras” (Obras 3:55;
italics added) [“ ‘I have built this house, which is like all other houses’ ” (464)].
Uniformity and sameness are characteristic of the architecture both on More’s
isle, which is Nowhere, and Someone’s land; they display a common lack
of imagination in their inhabitants. In contrast to More’s text, where the idea
of sameness might be connected with that of equality, which the imaginary
traveler worships and hopes for, Borges’s story is sceptical about the benefits of
equality and uniformity.
Moreover, the moral, ideological and social principles that govern the life
of the utopians in More’s text are maintained in “Someone’s land.” The con-
cept of “el olvido” (Obras 3:54) [“forgetfulness”], practiced in the place where
people are indifferent to the flow of time, “viv[en] sub specie aeternitatis” (Obras
3:53) [“live sub specie aeternitatis” (461)], is inspired by More’s book on
which Borges explicitly comments in his essay “La postulación de la realidad”
[“The Postulation of Reality”]: “Nuestro vivir es una serie de adaptaciones, vale
decir, una educación del olvido. Es admirable que la primer noticia de Utopía
que nos dé Thomas More, sea su perpleja ignorancia de la “verdadera” longi-
tud de uno de sus puentes” (Obras 1:218) [“For us, living is a series of adap-
tatations, which is to say, an education in oblivion. It is admirable that the first
news of Utopia Thomas More gives us in his puzzled ignorance of the ‘true’
length of one of its bridges” (61)].5 Echoing More’s proto-anarchistic slogan that
“The love of money is a root of all evil” (96) and such ideas as the lack of pri-
vate property and the devaluation of money, familiar to the Borges-reader,
Someone points out to the narrator: “Ya no hay quien adolezca de pobreza, que
habrá sido insufrible, ni de riqueza, que habrá sido la forma más incómoda de
la vulgaridad. . . . Ya que no hay posesiones no hay herencias” (Obras 3:54) [“No
one any longer suffers poverty, which must have been unbearable—nor suffers
wealth, for that matter, which must have been the most uncomfortable form
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of vulgarity. . . . Since there are no possessions, there is no inheritance” (463)].

However, in contrast to the ideas of harmony and prosperity, which are merely
questioned in the classical utopia, these social principles lead to slow death in
Someone’s land.6 As Someone observes, “No conviene fomentar el género
humano . . . . Creo que ahora se discuten las ventajas y desventajas de un sui-
cidio gradual o simultáneo de todos los hombres del mundo” (Obras 3:54) [“It
is not advisable that the human race too much encouraged . . .. I believe that
what is being discussed now is the advantages and disadvantages of the grad-
ual or simultaneous suicide of every person on earth” (463)]. These meditations
about a collective suicide can be considered a radical manifestation of the ill-
ness which Someone and the narrator have in common: a tiredness and depres-
sion caused by their awareness of the universe “suddenly emptied of meaning,”
where pain does not exist (Styron qtd. in Siebers 32). As David Morris observes,
“a world without pain is neither possible, desirable, nor meaningful” (32),
because, in his opinion, the understanding of how pain affects and afflicts
people (both themselves and others) is crucially important for remaining
human. Thus, as with its literary precursor (More’s Utopia), Borges’s text under-
mines the meaning of the ideals it suggests, and exudes hopelessness. In contrast
to More’s book, in Borges’s story there is no intention to educate readers or uplift
them morally. His story is bent upon exposing the irremediable and intolera-
ble evils of contemporary civilization, where people have lost the ability to
empathize with others. Artistically incorporating historical facts such as the
industrial mass murder developed during the Second World War (“la cámara
letal” [“the death chamber”] (465)), and alluding to the Holocaust and Hitler,
Borges’s text makes the future, present and past into a vicious circle from
which there is no escape or liberation. Therefore, Someone desires his own
death. “—Es el crematorio—dijo alguien . . . Mi huésped susurró unas palabras.
Antes de entrar en el recinto se despidió con un ademán” (Obras 3:56) [“ ‘It is
the crematory . . . My host whispered a few words. Before going in, he waved
good-bye.’ ” (465)].
The essential unmendability of Someone’s land, where pain does not exist,
and where people lost the ability to sympathize with each other, stands in a
mirror relationship with the one from which Acevedo comes (Buenos Aires,
Argentina), and it is compatible with the vision developed by another author
of utopian/dystopian literature, Swift, in his Gulliver’s Travels. Indeed, among
his readings, Someone refers to two fantastic books: “ ‘Los Viajes del Capitán
Lemuel Gulliver,’ que muchos consideran verídicos, y la Suma Teológica”
(Obras 3:53) [“the Travels of Captain Gulliver, which many people believe to
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have really taken place, and the Summa Theologica” (461)].7 Swift’s dystopian
world, where digressions form the norm, appears to be broadly present in
Borges’s story. The first meeting of the narrator with Someone evokes a fear
which reminds the reader of Gulliver’s first encounter with his new master in
the Brobdingnag. As Gulliver recalls, he had found himself “[s]cared and con-
founded” while looking at the man “as Tall as an ordinary Spire-steeple” (Swift
65). Likewise, the narrator experiences fear when Someone “severo y pálido”
opens the door: “Me abrió la puerta un hombre tan alto que casi me dio miedo”
(Obras 3:52) [“The door was opened by a man so tall it almost frightened me”
(460)]. The asceticism of Someone’s life reminds one of Swift’s Houyhnmns,
found among the last of Gulliver’s travels characterized by Borges in his pro-
logue to Swift’ book as “terribles” (Obras 4: 512) [“terrible”]. Displaying a
common lack of morality and inability to feel any kind of passions, the
Houyhnmns exemplify a devitalised and impoverished society. Swift’s fatalism
reaches its climax when Gulliver gradually starts to admire the Houyhnmns and
accept their judgement about himself and humanity. At first sceptical about the
Houyhnmns’ comparison of him and the Yahoos, Gulliver rejects any parallel
between himself and “their [the horses’] degenerate and brutal nature.” (182).8
Later, realizing that a female Yahoo is attracted to him, he concludes: “[f]or now
I could no longer deny, that I was a real Yahoo, in every Limb and Feature”
(233). Gradually he starts observing physical resemblances between himself and
Yahoos, and later a moral one: “my horror and astonishment are not to be
described, when I observed, in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure”
(183). In her perceptive essay “Swift: the Metamorphosis of Irony,” Ann Dyson
observes that Gulliver’s acceptance of the Houynhnms’ view of similarities
between people and Yahoos can be interpreted as a metaphor for a human con-
dition that is incurably unhealthy, but nevertheless has to be shown and
accepted as inevitable.
In Borges’s story, by contrast, Someone, tired and dispirited by his lifeless
existence, chooses suicide as an act of liberation from his own nature and a
surrounding world of indifference. His reflections are in tune with Swift’s fatal-
ism, expressed in a way typical of the utopian satire. According to Frye, the
latter is characterized by a “growing sense that the whole world is destined to
the same social fate with no place to hide” (327). In his Prologue to Gulliver’s
Travels, Borges quotes William Thackerey’s words: “pensar en Swift . . . es como
pensar en la declinación de un gran imperio” (Obras 4: 512) [“to think about
Swift . . . is like thinking about the decline of a great empire”]. The description
of Someone’s suicide in the crematory by means of the efficient mass death
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invented in the twentieth century, which the entire population is contemplat-

ing, can be read in a similar way: “—Es crematorio . . .. Adentro está la cámara
letal. Dicen que la inventó un filántropo cuyo nombre, creo, era Adolfo Hitler.
El cuidador, cuya estatura no me asombró, nos abrió la verja” (Obras 3:56) [“ ‘It
is the crematory . . .. The death chamber is inside. They say it was invented by
a philanthropist whose name, I believe, was Adolfo Hitler. The caretaker, whose
height did not take me aback, opened the gate” (465)].9 Moreover, the elements
of the metafictional discourse in Someone’s words (“Dicen que . . .”) show his-
tory to be a part of “a speculative myth” (Frye 323) that is part of a fiction where
skepticism dominates. As Someone observes, “Por lo demás, ni lo que ha sido
ni lo que será me interesan.” (Obras 3:53) [“And in any case, neither that
which has been nor that which is to be holds any interest for me” (461)].10
The motif of traveling to the future, and the implicit questioning of the
linearity and diachronic nature of time, display the influence of Wells’s The Time
Machine upon “Utopía de un hombre que está cansado.” For Wells, a man who
travels to the future can come back to the present and even past. His Time
Traveller brings back a souvenir from the future, two “strange” (Wells 78)
flowers, that a doctor cannot identify and which the narrator describes as
“shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle”: “And I have by me, for my com-
fort, two strange flowers—shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to
witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual
tenderness still lived on in the heart of man” (Wells 78). These flowers, occu-
pying the same space at two different times, are illustrations of the author’s
approach to time as a function of space. In the words of the Time Traveller,
“[t]here is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space
except that our consciousness moves along it . . .. Scientific people . . . know
very well that Time is only a kind of Space” (Wells 4–5).
Borges reverses this subordination. For him space is “un episodio de tiempo.”
This view influences his interpretation of the use of the flower in Wells’s
novel. In his essay “La flor de Coleridge,” written well before “Utopía de un
hombre que está cansado,” Borges’s narrator observes: “El protagonista de
Wells . . . viaja físicamente al porvenir. Vuelve rendido, polvoriento y maltre-
cho; vuelve de una remota humanidad que se ha bifurcado en especies que
se odian; . . . vuelve con las sienes encanecidas y trae del porvenir una flor
marchita . . . una flor celestial o que la flor de un sueño es la flor futura, la contra-
dictoria flor cuyos átomos ahora ocupan otros lugares y no se combinaron aún”
(Obras 2:18; italics added) [“Wells’s protagonist travels physically to the future.
He returns tired, dusty and shaken from a remote humanity that has divided
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into species who hate each other . . . . He returns with his hair grown gray and
brings with him a wilted flower from the future . . . a celestial flower or the flower
of a dream is a flower of the future, the unlikely flower whose atoms now occupy
other spaces and have not yet been assembled” (164)].11 A similar device, a paint-
ing canvas looking to the past as Wells’s flowers do to the future, was used by Wells’s
friend Henry James in The Sense of the Past, as Borges further notes in “La flor de
Coleridge”: “En The Sense of the Past, el nexo entre lo real y lo imaginativo (entre
la actualidad y el pasado) no es una flor . . . es un retrato que data del siglo XVIII”
(Obras 2:18) [“In The Sense of the Past the nexus between the real and the imag-
inative (between present and past) is not a flower . . . , but a picture from the eigh-
teenth century that mysteriously represents the protagonist” (165).
Commenting on James’s work, Borges observes, “un incomparable regressus
in infinitum. . . . La causa es posterior al efecto, el motivo del viaje es una de las
consecuencias del viaje” (Obras 2:18) [“an incomparable regressus in infini-
tum. . . . The cause follows the effect, the reason for the journey is one of the
consequences of the journey” (165)]. From these comments, it can be suggested
that Borges sees the future determining the present and the past and in Wells’s
and James’s novels, as well as being determined by it. Borges combines both
images, Wells’s flower of the future and James’s canvas (which inspired a voy-
age to the past) in his final lines of “Utopia de un hombre que está cansado,”
where the protagonist-narrator observes: “En mi escritorio de la calle México
guardo la tela que alguien pintará, dentro de miles de años, con materiales hoy
dispersos en el planeta” (Obras 3:56) [“In my study on Calle México still hangs
the canvas that someone will paint, thousands of years from now, with sub-
stances that are now scattered across the planet” (72)]. This image suggests that,
in line with his creative interpretation of Wells’s flowers (offered in “La flor de
Coleridge”), Borges re-elaborates his own speculation that, whereas space may
vary, time is a single constant where present, past and future coexist.
Indeed, in contrast to both Wells’s and James’s narratives, in Borges’s para-
doxical metaphysics, as it appears in “Utopía del hombre que está cansado,”
different time periods overlap rather then form a succession. Someone, a
400-year-old man from the future, for example, shows the narrator books that
remind him of antique writings/manuscripts: “En una de las paredes vi un
anaquel. Abrí un volumen al azar; las letras eran claras e indiscifrables y trazadas
a mano. Sus líneas angulares me recordaron el alfabeto rúnico, que sin embargo,
sólo se empleó para le escritura epigráfica. Pensé que los hombres del porvenir no sólo
eran más altos sino más diestros” (Obras 3:53; italics added) [“On one of the walls
I noticed a bookshelf. I opened a volume at random; the letters were clear and inde-
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cipherable and written by hand. Their angular lines reminded me of the runic
alphabet, though it had been used only for inscriptions. It occurred to me that the
people of the future were not only taller, they were more skilled as well” (67; italics
added)].12 He offers Acevedo a painting “como recuerdo de un amigo futuro”
(Obras 3:56; italics added) [“as a souvenir of a future friend” (71; italics added)].
The visitor picks up one that “encerraba algo infinito” (Obras 3:56) [“sug-
gested . . . something of the infinite about it” (71)]. The eclectic setting inside
his house where one room has wooden doors “las paredes de madera” and in the
kitchen “todo era de metal” (Obras 3:52) [“everything was made of metal”] may
be considered a synecdochal representation of the Utopian land where differ-
ent epochs simultaneously coexist.13
Borges’s metaphysical concept of a future that embraces the past and the
present, as well as the description of Eudoro’s journey, makes the notions of
utopia, dystopia and heterotopia converge. The word “utopia,” which appears
in the title, refers to “Someone’s land,” which is visited in the story by the pro-
tagonist Eudoro. Someone’s indifference and cruelty, which the people from his
land willingly accept (and even strive for), allow one to identify this place with
dystopia. Finally, the uncertainty about the distance between Someone’s land
and the world the narrator comes from, and striking similarities (as described
by the narrator) between “real” geographic and overtly fictional places, as well
as such characteristics as a break from the traditional notice of time, the lack
of free access and a possible change of functions according to society’s needs
marks the locale as heterotopic in nature. Indeed, the narrator’s references to
his way to the land of Utopia (before his meeting with Someone) emphasize
uniformity between ‘real’ geographical and fictional places which mirror each
other: “No hay dos cerros iguales, pero en cualquier lugar de la tierra la llanu-
ra es una y la misma . . . . Me pregunté sin mucha curiosidad si estaba en
Oklahoma o en Texas o en la región que los literatos llaman la pampa” (Obras
3:52) [“No two mountain peaks are alike, but anywhere on earth the plains are
one and the same. . . . I asked myself without much curiosity whether I was in
Oklahoma o Texas or the region that literary men call ‘las pampas’ ” (65)].
Further, Eudoro’s perception of ‘real’/geographical places is configured by the
books he has read. He prefers to think about the surrounding world in terms of
familiar poetry, which introduces the Argentine literary motif:
Como otras veces repetí despacio estas líneas, de Emilio Oribe:

En medio de la pánica llanura interminable
Y cerca del Brasil, (Obras 3:52).14
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As on other occasions, I slowly murmured these lines, more or less from

Emilio Orbe:
Riding through the ongoing, ongoing and interminable
Terrifying plains, near the frontier of Brazil . . . (65)
This use of the Argentinean national literary motif, and an emphasis on

the fictional nature of the topography of the world the narrator comes from,
where ‘reality’ exists exclusively through the media and “[l]as imágenes y la letra
impresa [que son] más reales que las cosas” (Obras 3:54) [“[i]mages and the printed
word [which have been] more real than things” (68)], allow “Someone’s land”
to function as a heterotopia of illusion that is like “a space of illusion that expos-
es every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still
more illusory” (Foucault 27).
Further, in contrast to More, Swift and Wells, Borges does not clearly
explain how Eudoro reaches “Someone’s land.” The prior protagonists sailed or
flew to their locations, but it can be assumed that Eudoro walked to his desti-
nation: “Yo iba por el camino de la llanura” (Obras 3:52) [“I was riding down
a road across the plains” (65)]. Someone’s comment on traveling to outer
space and walking to the neighbour’s house as parallel actions, allows one to
suggest that Eudoro probably did not have to leave Argentina in order to enter
the land of the future; boundaries between familiar and overtly imaginary
places turn out to be subverted. As Someone observes, “todo viaje es espacial.
Ir de un planeta a otro es como ir a la granja de enfrente. Cuando usted entró
en este cuarto estaba ejecutando un viaje espacial” (Obras 3:55) [“every journey
is a journey through space. Going from one planet to another is much like going
to the farm across the way. When you stepped into this room, you were engag-
ing in space travel” (70)]. Given this vision of the future, Eudoro’s own past
becomes “curioso.” Indeed, his account of the near past displays a grotesque and
absurd society in its superficial aspirations to maintain the illusion of
actuality, which is a manifestation of a dystopian emptiness of everyday life
governed by ignorance:
—En mi curioso ayer— contesté—, prevalecía la superstición de que entre cada tarde
y cada mañana ocurren hechos que es una verguenza ignorar. El planeta estaba pobla-
do de espectros colectivos, el Canadá, el Brasil, el Congo Suizo y el Mercado Común. Casi
nadie sabía la historia previa de esos entes platonicos, pero sí los más íntimos pormenores
del último congreso de pedagogos, la inminente ruptura de relaciones y los mensajes
que los presidentes mandaban, elaborados por el secretario del secretario con la pru-
dente imprecisión que era propia del género” (Obras 3:54; italics added).
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“In that strange yesterday from which I have come,” I replied, “there prevailed the
superstition that between one evening and the next morning, events occur that it
would be shameful to have no knowledge of. The planet was peopled by spectral
collectives—Canada, Brazil, the Swiss Congo, the Common Market. Almost no one
knew the prior history to those Platonic Entities, yet everyone was informed of the most
trivial Details of the latest conference of pedagogues or the imminent breaking off of
relations between one of these entities and another and the messages that their
presidents sent back and forth—composed by a secretary to the secretary, and in the
prudent vagueness that the form requires.” (68)
Thematizing the journey to the future is in line with classical utopic texts, where
this voyage is “an unconscious desire to escape the culture whose product [the
traveler] is” (Leddy 85). This motif reappears in Borges’s text in a modified form
because as the present and future form a single metaphysical moment, and space
is a function of time, there is no need to abandon familiar places to enter
nowhere, or Utopia. The notion of utopia as a “placeless place” (Foucault 24)
turns out to be undermined in Borges’s story, which suggests its presence with-
in the limits of familiar topography.
In this way, “Utopia del hombre que está cansado” enters in an implicit
dialogue with the literary tradition of utopic/dystopic writing, and offers its
own contribution to the genre. Whereas in More’s Utopia such values as
equality, asceticism, and a rejection of private property are introduced as pos-
itive but remain intrinsically ambiguous, in Borges’s text there is no place for
ambiguity; they are negative. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels links the physical place-
ment of the characters (e.g. Houyhnmns) with a moral one (decadence);
while for Borges’s story the grotesque effect is obtained by the linkage of the
apparently human appearance of the inhabitants of Someone’s land with
their total lack of emotion of any kind, which makes them capable of unlim-
ited monstrosity. In a ludic dialogue with Wells’s influential text, Borges’s story
both thematizes and inverts a time- space relationship, and develops a meta-
physical notion of time where future, present and past coexist. In contrast to
Wells’s text, in Borges’s story space is but a function of time, where the past,
present and future overlap. Consequently, the distance between the overtly
imaginary land of the future and recognizable present-day locations is ques-
tioned. As opposed to the works of his precursors, Borges’s text reduces the
distance between ‘fictional’ and ‘real’ places, both of which emphatically
share a dystopian dominant, terrifying in its simultaneous impossibility and
familiarity.
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Challenging Conventions and Breaking

Illusions: the City and the Language
in 62: Modelo para armar
In contrast to Borges’s story, which expresses the author’s awareness of canon-
ical utopian texts, Cortázar’s 62: Modelo para armar [62: A Model Kit] appears
to be the embodiment of the writer’s conscious attempt to disengage from any
literary conventions and traditional perceptions of semantics that make the
notions of utopia as a place and that as a language to converge.15 The repre-
sentation of the City (at the crossroad of the apparently familiar and the dis-
tanced) in this novel, nevertheless, also allows the reader to relate the concepts
of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia.16
As Jason Weiss points out, “place is the underlying problem for the char-
acters in 62. It seems that no one is really where they should be, or they are
already on the way to somewhere else” (45).17 Evoking the traditions of utopi-
an literature, all the characters in the novel make virtual voyages to the
‘in-between’ dreamlike poetic place, the City.18 The imaginary visits to the City
are associated with the satisfaction of desires impossible within capital cities or
a zone mentioned in the novel: “tal vez sea en la ciudad donde realmente va a
ocurrir lo que aquí les parece . . . o imposible o never more” (88; italics added)
[“maybe it’s in the city where what seems . . . impossible or nevermore to them
here is really going to occur” (89)]. The characters associate their hopes and
dreams with this place which thus functions as a utopia. Juan, the protagonist,
for example, desperately wanders in the city in order to pursue the anesthetist
Helene, whom he obsessively loves; Nicole, who no longer loves a sculptor,
Marrast, enters the city with the intention to commit suicide; and Austin, the
former neurotic who has an affair with the young Celia, comes to the City in
order to kill Helene in an act of revenge for the seduction of his lover.19 A sense
of expansive human possibilities is usually associated with utopian locales, as
with, for instance, according to Raphael Hythloday, the narrator of More’s
Utopia. This ethos turns out to be destructive in the City, which both empha-
sizes its affinity with and points to the distance from the urban spaces described
in classical utopian literature.20
The City’s indefinite location is everywhere and nowhere; its both fictitious
and ‘real’ ontology is a vague amalgam of Paris, Buenos Aires, London, Vienna
and other capitals, and of a verbal construct which emerges in the discourse of
“mi paredro” (23) [“my paredros” (24)], an associated divinity, suggests Louis
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Marin’s semiotic approach to the utopia as a “synthesis” (415) as the most

applicable to this mysterious place.21 Indeed, the City cannot be mapped out
and appears to be an infinite labyrinth, omnipresent and slipping away at the
same time: “La ciudad podía darse en París, podía dársele a Tell o a Calac en
una cervecería de Oslo, a alguno de nosotros le había ocurrido pasar de la ciu-
dad a una cama en Barcelona, a menos que fuera lo contrario” (28) [“The city
might appear in Paris; it might appear for Tell or Calac in a beer hall in Oslo;
it had happened to one of us to go from the city to a bed in Barcelona, unless
it were the opposite.” (19)].22
Both the characters’ and the readers’ knowledge about the city is elliptical.
When Tell, for instance, refers to the “límite de la ciudad,” Juan responds:
“Oh, el límite . . . Nadie lo conoce, sabes” (65) [“Oh, the edge of the city . . . .
Nobody knows where it is, you know” (65)]. The City’s unknown location and
the use of the general term for its designation emphasizes that Cortázar’s utopia
is hardly a distinguishable place, a name that constitutes “a distance or a gap
that does not allow any affirmation or negation to be asserted as truth or a false-
hood” (Marin 411). Indeed, as if illustrating Marin’s approach to utopia as
“interval” (404) and “in between” (411), the protagonist’s poetic description
of the city abounds in indefinite pronouns and elliptical constructions. At the
same time, the recurring reference to the City as “mi ciudad” emphasizes its
highly subjective and idiosyncratic nature:
Entro de noche a mi ciudad, yo bajo a mi ciudad

donde me esperan o me eluden, donde tengo que huir
de alguna abominable cita, de lo que ya no tiene nombre,
una cita con dedos, con pedazos de carne en un armario,
con una ducha que no encuentro, en mi ciudad hay duchas,
hay un canal que corta por el medio mi ciudad
y navíos enormes sin mástiles pasan en un silencio
intolerable
hacia un destino que conozco pero que olvido al regresar,
hacia un destino que niega mi ciudad
donde nadie se embarca, donde se está para quedarse
aunque los barcos pasen y desde el liso puente alguno esté
mirando mi ciudad.
Entro sin saber cómo en mi ciudad, a veces otras noches
salgo a calles o casas y sé que no es en mi ciudad,
mi ciudad la conozco por una expectativa agazapada
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algo que no es el miedo todavía pero tiene su forma y su

(perro y cuando es mi ciudad
sé que primero habrá el mercado con portales y con
(tiendas de frutas . . . los rieles de un tranvía . . .
. . . un barrio como el Once en Buenos Aires . . .
. . . mi ciudad es de hoteles infinitos y siempre el mismo hotel,
. . . o en las deshabitadas galerías de algo que ya
no es el hotel, la mansión infinita a la que
llevan todos los ascensores y las puertas, todas
las galerías. (32–33; italics added)
[I enter my city at night, I go down to my city

where they wait for me or elude me, where I have to
flee
from some abominable meeting, from what no
longer has a name,
a meeting with fingers, with pieces of flesh in
a cupboard,
with a showerbath that I can’t find, there are showers
in my city
and enormous ships without masts pass in an
unbearable silence
toward a fate that I know but which I forget when
I return,
toward a fate that denies my city
where no one embarks, where one is to remain
even though the ships pass and from the smooth
deck someone is looking at my city.
I enter my city without knowing how, sometimes

on other nights
I go out to streets and houses and I know that it isn’t
my city,
I know my city by a crouching expectation,
something that isn’t yet fear but which has its shape
and its dog and when it is my city
I know that first there’ll be the market place with
doorways and fruit stands,
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the shimmering rails of a streetcar that is lost in a

direction
where I was young but not in my city, a district like
El Once in Buenos Aires . . .
my city is infinite hotels and always the same hotel,
...
that is no longer the hotel, the infinite mansion
reached
by all elevators and doors, all hallways, . . . (30–31)
Further, Juan’s references to the city, in a language consisting of separate

fragments which reminds one of an echo, allow the reader to consider this place
to be a metaphoric embodiment of the utopia of language (rather then an archi-
tectural construct). Uniting in itself the notions of infinite possibility, bound-
lessness and subjectivity, the ‘representation’ of the city is an epistemological
challenge to the idea of absolute knowledge about an object and to the dog-
matic perception of language as a construction consisting of a-priori defined ele-
ments.23 The image of the City, like language itself, is neither centered nor
closed. This allows it to function as a utopia of possibilities, where identity and
meaning are fragile values, always in question, always on the brink of
disappearance.24 As if in the middle of a deconstruction of the familiar when
the target is not yet reached, it is impossible to read topography of a new land
that may not be delineated or described in its totality.
Aligning the Utopian function of language with the forces of freedom,
Roland Barthes observes: “[The] salutary trickery . . . which allows us to under-
stand speech outside the bonds of power . . . I for one call literature” (6). In his
essay “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” he points to attempts to escape singu-
lar meaning through the limitless expansion of the signifiers, and draws a par-
allel between the utopian vision of freedom in history and the subjectivity
of interpretation. Similarly, the City, most often referred by the characters
as “mi ciudad” (23, 28, 112), has “a shape of overlapping subjectivities”
(McHale 44) which include shared fantasies and nightmares that make its
meaning elusive. Being a poetic expression of “la radicalización de lo subjeti-
vo” (Yurkievich 472) [“the radicalization of the subjective”], the City embod-
ies the characters’ aspirations for liberation from their dissatisfactory present
by means of imagination. Wish-fulfilling/utopic functions become associated
with both the City and the language that creates this mysterious urban space
as “a web of sense” (Nabokov qtd. in Cortázar Ultimo Round 259) rather than
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as a determinate realm/place.25 An approach to language (art) as a creator of

(alternative) reality echoes Borges’s metapoetical ideas explicitly mentioned by
one of the Argentines in the novel. To Nicole’s comment that the name of “el
superintendente” [“the director”] of the City is Harold Haroldson, Calac
responds: “Y uno que creía que nombres así solamente en Borges, hay que con-
vercerse que la naturaleza imita al arte” (153) [“And people think that names
like that only turn up in Borges. You have to convince people that nature imi-
tates art” (159)].26 Likewise, his compatriot Polanco calls the artist Marrast as
“inventor de nuevas nubes” [“an inventor of new clouds” (128)], who fills “el
universo de cosas transparentes y metafísicas. . . . Y entonces te nace la rosa
verde . . . , o, al revés, no te nace ninguna rosa y todo revienta, pero en cambio,
hay perfume y nadie comprende cómo puede haber ese perfume sin flor. Lo
mismo que yo, que soy un inventor incomprendido, pero impertérrito” (124) [“the
universe with transparent and metaphysical things . . . And then the green rose
is born for you . . . or, on the contrary, no rose at all is born and everything
explodes, but, on the other hand, there’s an aroma, and no one understands how
that aroma can be there without the flower. Like you, I’m an inventor who is
misunderstood but undaunted” (128)]. Development of this metapoetical
theme culminates in the image of the City. It may be seen as a metaphoric rep-
resentation of the utopian thought where both poetic language and fictional
place display the literary imagination that as Frye perceptively observes, is
“less concerned with achieving end than visualizing possibilities” (Frye 329).27
The associations with fear and violence that the City evokes in the mind
of the characters, and the impossibility of meeting there, challenge the notion
of utopia as a “happy place.” The City turns out to be a sort of dystopia, the
geography of which cannot be taken in at a single glance.28 The main pragmatic
function of the city-labyrinth, abundant in hotels and trams, appears to be that
of a transitory agency.29 Working as an interpreter, Juan, like Cortázar himself,
describes his life passed in non-places/hotels whose archetype is a hotel in the
city: “Acabé por descubrir que en cualquiera de los hoteles donde me tocara
vivir, me ocurría entrar con más frecuencia en el hotel de la ciudad para volver
a andar interminablemente por sus habitaciones de empapelados claros, bus-
cando a alguien que en el momento no hubiera podido nombrar” (58) [“I
ended up discovering that in any of the hotels where I happened to be staying,
it got so that I would enter the hotel of the city more frequently, walking
through its interminable rooms with light wallpaper again, looking for some-
one I couldn’t have named at the moment” (58)].30 These connections, how-
ever, are just illusions because any search in the City results in frustration: “Tell
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estaba segura de haber visto de lejos a Nicole y quizá a Marrast que vagaban por
el barrio de los mercados, y era como si Nicole anduviera buscando (y no los
encontraba, y era tristísimo) esos collares de grandes piedras azules que se
vendían en las calles de Teherán” (59) [“Tell was sure of having seen Nicole and
maybe Marrast from a distance as they wandered through the market district,
and it was as if Nicole were searching (and she was unsuccessful and terribly
sad) for those necklaces with large blue stones that were sold on the streets of
Teheran” (59)]. Also, in contrast to other cities, the characters aspire to but fail
to meet each other in the City: “Es una región que te encoge el alma, que te
da tristeza sin razones, nada más que por estar ahí” (65) [“It’s a place that curls
up in your soul, makes you sad for no reason, just being there . . .” (66)].
The City is a lifeless place and it has connotations with the fatal and the
dead. Looking at the dying boy, Hélèna thinks about the City as lacking in vital-
ity typical of other places: “en la ciudad donde caminar tenía siempre algo de
pasivo, por inevitable y decidido, por fatal . . . . Lo que pudiera ocurrirle en la
ciudad nunca la había preocupado tanto como el sentimiento de cumplir itin-
erarios en los que su voluntad poco tenía que ver, como si la topografía de la
ciudad, el dédalo de calles cubiertas, de hoteles y tranvías, se resolvieran siem-
pre en un solo derrotero pasivo” (102) [“the city, where walking always had
something passive about it, because it was inevitable and all decided, fated . . . .
What could have happened in the city had never worried her as much as the
feeling of following an itinerary where her will had little bearing, as if the topog-
raphy of the city, the maze of covered streets, hotels and streetcars would
always be resolved into one single, inevitable, passive course” (104)].
Emphasizing the reflexive relationship between “París subterraneo” [“that
underground Paris”] and “la ciudad,” she concludes that to be in the hospital
“[e]s casi como estar en la ciudad” (102) [“[i]t’s almost like being in the city”
(104). In the hotel where Hélèna is killed, there are the same “verandas [trop-
icales] protegidas por cañas” (115) [“[tropical] verandas protected by bamboo”
(118)] described in Juan’s poem. Thus, the City, both apocalyptic and wish-
fulfilling, undermines the utopia/dystopia dichotomy. On the one hand, the
characters associate their hopes and dreams with this place. On the other, the
actions which happen there consistently bring violence and destruction and
corrupt communications between the parties.
Further, in addition to functioning as both utopia and dystopia (forms
conventionally associated with the fictional places), the City both reflects
and incorporates ‘real’ urban spaces, which also allows one to regard it as
heterotopic in nature.31 The blurring of the boundaries between recognizable
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locations and overtly invented metaphysical spaces, an occurrence familiar to

the readers of Rayuela, finds its culmination in Cortázar’s subsequent creation:
the City of 62: Modelo para armar.
Whereas in Rayuela, as pointed out in Chapter II of this book, a representa-
tion of Buenos Aires at the intersection of familiar geographics and metaphysical
and carnivalesque discourses undescores the protagonist’s alienation from (and in)
his native land; in 62: Modelo para armar, the City, which cannot be mapped, can
be seen as an expression of the characters’ anxiety of displacement, a condition
which does not know geographical boundaries and cannot be resolved. Indeed, the
City is at the same time one and many, for as Juan observes, “las ciudades donde
vivíamos eran siempre las ciudades y la ciudad.” (28) [“the cities where we lived
were always cities and the city” (25)]. Located everywhere and nowhere, the City
exemplifies a “form of a contradictory site” typical for heterotopia (Foucault 25).
It has multiple connections with the surrounding world, and therefore in the nar-
rator’s words: “no hay razón para extrañarla—en el sentido de darle un valor privi-
legiado por oposición a las ciudades que nos eran habituales—conviene hablar
desde ahora porque todos nosotros estábamos de acuerdo en que cualquier lugar
o cualquier cosa podían vincularse con la ciudad” (22) [“there’s no reason to
make it strange—in the sense of giving it a privileged value in contrast to the cities
we were used to. . . Now it is proper to talk about it from here on because we all
agreed that any place or anything could be attached to the city” (19)]. As McHale
asserts, the City is a “heterotopian zone . . . constructed and deconstructed at the
same time” (44). Consequently, undermining language because it makes it impos-
sible “to name this and that” (Foucault 18), the heterotopic existence of the City
can hardly be explained in terms of logic: “La ciudad no se explicaba, era” (22)
[“The city was not explained; it was” (19)].32
The City also displays a break with traditional time, celebrating parallelism
and synchrony as an alternative to linearity. In his conversation with Prego, for
example, Cortázar emphasizes the possibility of a simultaneous presence in “la
ciudad” and in some other geographic place: “la idea de la ciudad me
vino . . . como una especie de punto de reunión eventual de los personajes que
se encuentran en la ciudad e incluso les suceden cosas en la ciudad mientras uno
de ellos está viviendo en Londres y el otro, por ejemplo, está viviendo en
Viena” (134) [“the idea of the city came to me . . . as a sort of a point of
reunion for the characters who meet in the city and to whom also things hap-
pen in the city when one of them live in London, and another, for example, is
living in Viena”]. In this way, the heterotopic City appeals to the psycho-
geography of everyday life and offers an alternative to a successive flow of time.33
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The motif of the mirror, which questions ‘real’/’fictional’ place opposition

and where the concepts of utopia and heterotopia converge, according to
Foucault, is also consistently associated with the City in the novel.34 Juan’s
observation in front of the mirror in the restaurant Polidor, the setting that
opens the text, for instance, can be easily applied to the City as a whole,
where the very notions of linearity and presence are suspended. He has an
impression that “un espejo de espacio y un espejo de tiempo habían coincidi-
do en un punto de insoportable y fugacísima realidad antes de dejar[le] otra vez
a solas con tanta inteligencia, con tanto antes y atrás y adelante y despúes” (30,
italics added) [“a mirror of space and a mirror of time had coincided at a point
of unbearable and most fleeting reality before it left me alone again with so
much intelligence, with so much before and after and so much in front and in
back” (27)]. Juan’s experience with the mirror is considered as originating in
the City: “y así a Juan no le parecía imposible que de alguna manera lo que
acababa de ocurrirle fuese materia de la ciudad” (21) [“and so it didn’t seem
impossible to Juan that what had just happened to him had been matter from
the city” (19)]. The functioning of the City turns out to be that of a mirror
where heterotopia, utopia and dystopia converge. It accumulates ‘real’ (recog-
nizable) places and at the same time appears to be an overtly imaginary con-
struct. An intrinsic ambiguity in the representation of the City bears on the
characters’ aspirations to escape from their culture, its dogmatic language, and
the organization of the self determined by it. The City, which both inspires
dreams and consistently manifests frustration, exemplifies the author’s fatalis-
tic view of the impossibility of overcoming violence and fear, and the lack of
communication characteristic of the epoch in which he lives.
Revisiting the Minotaur: Heterotopia as Place

and Mode of Representation in Borges’s
“La casa de Asterion”
As in 62: Modelo para armar the representation of Cortázar’s city allows one to
interrelate the functions of place and that of language, in Borges’s “La casa de
Asterión” [The House of Asterion”], heterotopia is both a place where the pro-
tagonist-minotaur lives and a mode of representation, a metapoetical structure
of palimpsest.35 Similarly to archetypical heterotopia described by Foucault,
Asterion’s house is multifunctional. It is a claustrophobic place that is simul-
taneously a home, a labyrinth, a prison and an entire world. The protagonist’s
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house is a cultural product built as a defense against the vagaries of nature:

“Por lo demás, algún atardecer he pisado la calle; si antes de la noche volví, lo
hice por el temor que me infundieron las caras de la plebe” (82) [“Besides, one
afternoon I did step into the street; if returned before night, I did so because of
the fear that the faces of the common people inspired in me” (138)]. According
to Cristina Grau, “la descripción de la casa-los aljibes, los patios—, remite a la
arquitectura domestica bonaerense” (165) [“the description of the house, its
pools, its courtyards; all evoke the domestic architecture of Buenos Aires”]. The
most characteristic feature of this house is the repetition of its parts, “cualquier
lugar es otro lugar. No hay un aljibe, un patio, un abrevadero, un pesebre” (83)
[“any place is another place. There is no one pool, courtyard, drinking through,
masanger” (139)]. The galleries are identical and it is very easy to get lost, only
“los cadáveres ayudan a distinguir una galería de las otras” (83) [“bodies help
distinguish one gallery from another” (140)]. This makes Asterion’s house
a labyrinth, which is a recurrent motif in Borges’s fiction.36 The labyrinth may
be regarded as a claustrophobic place from which it is difficult to find an exit,
and from which the protagonist hopes to be liberated: “Ojalá me lleve a un lugar
con menos galerías y menos puertas” (82) [“I hope he will take me to a place
with fewer galleries and fewer doors” (140)]. As Barbara Gold points out,
labyrinth comes from a pre- Hellenic word and means “House of Double-Axe”
in Greek (49). Therefore, when the protagonist refers to “el templo de las
Hachas” (82, 83) he refers to his own house.
Although the protagonist insists that he is not a prisoner and emphasizes
that the numerous doors of his house “están abiertas día y noche a los hombres,
y también a los animales” (82) [“its doors . . . are open day and night to men and
to animals as well” (138)] the architectural peculiarities of this house remind one
of the prison. Indeed, Asterion’s place, which combines an infinite number of
triangular courtyards and galleries, reminds one of a circular prison. Waiting for
his death, and trying to overcome his miserable state of solitude, the protago-
nist fantasizes the arrival of a second Asterion: “de tantos juegos el que prefiero
es el de otro Asterion. Finjo que viene a visitarme y que yo le muestro la casa”
(82) [“But of all the games, I prefer the one about the other Asterion. I pretend
that he comes to visit me and that I show him my house” (139)]. 37 The pres-
ence of this double, however, does not bring the protagonist any relief.
Furthermore, there is an explicit parallelism between the house where
“son catorce, son infinitos los pesebres, abrevaderos, patios, aljibes” (82) [“the
mangers, drinking troughs, courtyards, pools are fourteen (infinite) in number”
(139)] and the world where “son catorce, son infinitos los mares y los templos”
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(83) [“the seas and temples are also fourteen (infinite) in number” (139)], which
allows Asterión to identify his house with the world: “la casa es del tamaño del
mundo; mejor dicho, es el mundo” (83) [“[t]he house is the same size as the
world; or rather, it is the world” (139)]. Consequently, Asterion’s house extends
infinitely; the inside and outside are one and the same claustrophobic space for
Asterion.38 As Gold points out, “the labyrinth seems to have a limit, but actu-
ally is infinite or cyclical” (50). The multifunctional heterotopia described in
Borges’s story can be seen as a challenge to any opposition between the public
and the private, considered by Foucault as “simply given” (23).
Moreover, the ludic structure of the palimpsest and the hybrid nature of the
protagonist may be considered metapoetical/artistic analogues to the concept of
heterotopia, an eclectic locus. There are two hypotexts distinguished by the
author himself and explicitly indicated in the story. The first one is the ancient
Greek myth described in Apollodorus’s The Library from which the epigraph for
the story is taken: “Y la reina dio a luz un hijo que se llamó Asterión” (Obras
1:569) [“And the queen gave birth to a child who was called Asterion” (138)].
The second hypotext is Watt’s painting “The Minotaur” (1896) to which, as
Borges confesses in the epilogue of El Aleph, he owes “el carácter de mi pobre
protagonista” (Obras 1:629) [“the character of my poor protagonist”].39 According
to the Greek writer, the Minotaur was the unfortunate product of the mating
of the sacred bull with the king’s wife Pasiphae, a sign of shame as well as of mon-
strosity that has been confined in the labyrinth built by Daedalus: “And Pasiphae
gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull,
but the rest of him was human; and Minos shut him up and guarded him in the
labyrinth” (Appolodorus 1:305). Evoking Foucault’s definition of “heterotopia
of deviation” (Foucault 25), the labyrinth is build in order to isolate the terri-
fying Minotaur. As described in Apolodorus’s text, it reminds one of a prison, a
place contrasted from those where people live. In Borges’s text, on the contrary,
the relationship of equivalence between Asterion’s house (prison, labyrinth) and
the world displays the former as a tragic norm from which there is no escape and
liberation except death. Asterion’s house functions as heterotopia of illusion,
which reveals the apparent freedom outside of it as a deception.
Further, by introducing the first person narrator and mentioning only the
name of Asterión (which is not common knowledge), Borges offers a rewriting
of the well-known myth. Though there are some hints at the hybrid nature of
Asterión, who lives in an unfurnished house and whose activities allude to his
animal nature, the presence of Minotaur and the labyrinth is disguised until the
last paragraph narrated in the third person and where the name of Theseus is
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explicitly mentioned: “—¿Lo creerás, Ariadna?—dijo Teseo—. El minotauro

apenas se defendió” (Obras 1:570; italics added) [“ ‘Would you believe it,
Ariadne?’ said Theseus. ‘The Minotaur scarcely defended himself’ (140)]. The
structure and symbolic functions of Asterion’s house as well as the disguised
presence of the Minotaur, which both evoke and deviate from images elabo-
rated in earlier versions of the myth can also be seen as the author’s metapo-
etical comment on myth as a-centric narrative, which is in tune with Claude
Levi-Strauss’s observations about this genre. In his last book The Raw and the
Cooked, Levi-Strauss pointed out: “There is no unity or absolute source of the
myth . . .. The discourse of the a-centric structure that myth itself is, cannot
itself have an absolute center” (5).
Heterotopia, which is capable in combining in itself several, often incom-
patible sites, can be described in similar terms. Whereas the absence of the cen-
ter in the myth is the absence of a subject and the absence of an author, the
absence of the center in heterotopia is due to its intrinsically eclectic nature
and persistent changes of functions (see Foucault 25). A combination and trans-
formation of familiar elements of the famous myth, distinct narrative strategies,
and a description of the Minotaur as a reasonable creature, whose tragic con-
dition of solitude evokes pity rather then fear, make it possible to consider
Borges’s story as analogous to that of an accumulating heterotopic locus as
described by Foucault.40 A parallelism between the House of Asterion, the
protagonist’s hybrid nature and the eclectic discursive strategy of palimpsest
allows Borges’s metafictional story to offer another characteristic of heterotopia:
the absence of a center.
Boarding the Ship: the Unresolved Mystery

of Cortázar’s “Malcolm”
Cortázar’s first published novel, Los Premios [The Winners], also suggests an elab-
oration of an archetypal heterotopia which in this case is the protagonist, the ship
“Malcolm.”41 The emphatically heterogeneous characters of the novel, repre-
sentatives of different social groups, embark on the “Malcolm” as the winners of
the state lottery that illustrates the ship to be heterotopia.42 As Foucault observes,
heterotopias are “not freely accessible like a public place” (Foucault 26). The ship
is intrinsically polysemic: it is a place of meeting of the diverse groups of people,
a claustrophobic space of labyrinth, Picasso’s guitar and the infinite Argentine
pampas. The variety of contradictory associations suggest the “Malcolm” to be
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both synthesis and fragment that challenges the idea of the absolute determi-
nation of being/object as defined by certain physical characteristics.
This mode of representation of the ship as an intrinsically paradoxical site
is recurrent in sea-narratives familiar to Cortázar and to his characters. Persio,
who beforehand knows about the coming events, “que tiene todas las cartas en
la mano” (Cortázar in Prego 122) [“who has all cards in his hands”] and func-
tions as Cortázar’s super-ego in the novel, tell his young friend Jorge that he has
never traveled on a ship but has read “las novelas de Conrad y de Pío Baroja”
(43). Indeed, like “Malcolm,” the ship in Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the
Narcissus is associated both with the total unity and with permanent incom-
pleteness: “The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the
earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet” (Conrad 21). In addition, the
same paradox of representation haunts the “Neversink” in Herman Melville’s
White-Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War: “For a ship is a bit of terra firma cut
off from the main; it is a state in itself” (24; italics added).
The ambivalence of “a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that
exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to
the infinity of the sea” makes the ship “the greatest reserve of imagination”
(Foucault 27). Indeed, mystery dominates the “Malcolm,” which is a constant
object of curiosity for its passengers. For the non-convincing reason that an
unusual strain of typhus has broken out among the sailors, the passengers find
themselves quarantined in claustrophobic isolation, cut off from the crew and
from the radio room that is their only connection with Buenos Aires. Annoyed
by being denied access to the stern, some of the men, Gabriel Medrano, a den-
tist, Carlos López, a school teacher, and a representative of a lower class, Atilio
Presutti, nicknamed Pelusa, unsuccessfully try to penetrate the mysteriously for-
bidden area. Meanwhile the gay man Raúl Costa attempts to seduce the young
Felipe Trejo, and friendship/attraction grows between Medrano and Claudia
Freire; and between Carlos López and Paula Lavalle.43 Bringing disillusion to
the characters who expected an engaging voyage all over the world, the ship
does not go anywhere and finally anchors off shore at Quilmes, a very short dis-
tance away from Buenos Aires.
As Foucault in his article “Of Other Spaces” points out, the ship does not
allow “dreams [to] dry up” (27). Similarly, in Cortázar’s novel, inspiring Persio’s
metaphysical meditations, the “Malcolm” itself obtains a life of poetic image.44
The ship becomes a trope metaphorically identified with Picasso’s guitar, a
picture owned by Guillaume Appolinaire: “Extrañamente la gran guitarra ha
callado en la altura, el Malcolm se mueve sobre un mar de goma, bajo un aire de tiza”
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(357) [“Strangely, the enormous guitar has fallen silent up above, and the
Malcolm sails over a sea of rubber, under an atmosphere of chalk” (313)]. Like
a cubist painting, it is associated with the multiplicity of fragmented perspec-
tives in a spatial arrangement similar to the labyrinthine interactions of the pas-
sengers or the compartments of the ship: “Las jaulas de los monos, los leones
rondando los puntes, la pampa tirada boca arriba, el crecer vertiginoso de los cohi-
hues, irrumpe y cuaja ahora en los muñecos que ya han ajustado sus caretas y sus pelu-
cas, las figuras de la danza que repiten en un barco cualquiera las líneas y los círculos
del hombre de la guitarra de Picasso (que fue de Apollinaire)” (357) [“The monkey
cages, the lions haunting the decks, the pampas stretched out face up, the ver-
tiginous growth of South American pines, all explode and come back together
again now in the dolls which have already adjusted their masks and wigs, the
figures of the dance which repeat on any ship the lines and circles of Picasso’s
man with the guitar (which belonged to Apollinaire)” (313–314)].
At the same time the ship is identified with the pampas, a wide and absorb-
ing land whose limits are left beyond the human perception and where a per-
son is doomed to solitude. Persio’s perception of the ship is similar: “Los sentidos
dejan poco a poco de ser parte de él para extraerlo y volcarlo en la llanura negra; ahora
ya no ve ni oye ni huele ni toca, está salido, partido, desatado, enderezándose como
un árbol abarca la pluridad que es el caos resolviéndose, el cristal que cuaja y se ordena,
la noche primordial en el tiempo americano” (112) [“Little by little, his senses grow
disembodied, and he is hoisted and turned over on the black plains; he no
longer sees nor hears nor smells nor touches, he is gone, departed, let loose
standing straight as a tree encompassing plurality in one single enormous pain,
which is chaos resolving itself, the shattered crystal fusing in an orderly pattern,
the primeval night in American time” (280)]. This vision evokes the character’s
pessimistic thoughts about the American identity formed on this mythical and
chaotic land: “Qué debía quedar de todo eso, solamente una tapera en la pampa,
un pulpero socarrón, un gaucho perseguido y pobre diablo, un generalito en el
poder? . . . ¿es esto lo sudamericano? . . . Menos que maniqueos, menos que hedóni-
cos vividores, ¿representamos en la tierra el lado espectral del devenir, su larva sardónica
agazapada al borde de la ruta, el antitiempo del alma y el cuerpo, la facilidad barata,
el no te metás si no es para avivarte?” (115) [“And what remains of all these? Only
an abandoned hut in the pampas, a cunning tapster, a poor devil of a pursued
gaucho, a pipsqueak of a general in power? . . . is this South America? . . . Less
than Manicheans, less than rotten hedonists, are we the earthly represen-
tatives of the spectral side of becoming, its sarcastic larva crouching at the
side of the road, the anti-time of both body and soul, the cheap facility, the
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don’t—get-involved-if-there-isn’t-something-in–it-for-you.” (281)]. Thus, the

ship and the Argentines appear to be consistently connected with Persio’s
meditations.
Ironically, they even seem to be inspired by one of the favourite books of
his compatriot Jorge Luis Borges: Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and
Representation.45 A reference for this work appears in the metapoetical opening
of the monologue which follows the description of the first day of the trip. Thus,
the narrator expresses his admiration for this text by the German philosopher
and implicitly, by using parallel constructions, suggests that Persio’s creative play
of imagination follows Schopenhauer’s thoughts: “Así como es maravilloso que
el contenido de un tintero pueda haberse convertido en El mundo como voluntad
y representación . . . así la meditación tinta secreta y uña sutil percutiendo el tenso
pergamino de la noche, acaba por invadir y desentrañar la materia opaca que rodea
su hueco de sedientos bordes” (224) [“Just as it’s marvellous that the contents of
an inkwell may be converted into The World as Will and Representation . . . it
is not less marvellous that meditation, secret ink, and subtle fingernail tapping
against the tense parchment of night ends up by invading and penetrating the
opaque material which surrounds the thirsty rims of the hollow” (195)].
Deviating from Schopenhauer’s approach to a superior nature of human
being as a creator of reality, Persio draws a parallel between things (the ship)
and humans (the passengers), which culminates in the personification of the
ship as raping the sea: “una inmensa vaca gelatinosa y verde ciñe la nave que la viola
empecinada en una lucha sin término entre la verga de hierro y la viscosa vulva que
se estremece a cada espumarajo” (225–226) [“an immense, gelatinous green cow
girding the ship which violates it persistently, in an endless battle between the
iron penis and the viscous vulva, which shudders at every towering of spume”
(196)]. The travelers, to the contrary, are viewed as a single almost mechani-
cal body “un solo cuerpo” (42), which prevents any differentiation between the
individuals.46 The association of the winners with the chess pieces and the pos-
sible correspondence between Atilio Presutti and “el guitarrero pintado por
Picasso” (53) [“Picasso’s guitarist” (40)] subvert the very idea of individual iden-
tity.47 The borders between humans and objects (things) appear to be also dis-
solved in Persio’s expression of his admiration for Dali’s surrealistic vision of a
person as a construction which should be deciphered: “ ‘Ese mozo Dalí sabe lo que
hace . . . cuando pinta un cuerpo lleno de cajones. A mí me parece que muchas
cosas tienen manija’ ” (29) [“ ‘That chap Dali knows what he’s doing . . . when
he paints a body full of drawers. It seems to me many things have handles’ .” (19)].
The reading of the artistic text requires in his opinion similar hermeneutic
03.qxd 30/8/07 10:48 AM Page 87
procedures, as he explains to Claudia: “Fíjese por ejemplo en las imágenes

poéticas. Si uno las mira desde fuera, no ve más que sentido abierto, aunque a
veces sea muy hermético. ¿Usted se queda satisfecha con el sentido abierto? No
señor. Hay que tirar de la manija, caerse dentro del cajón. Tirar es apropiarse,
apropincuarse, propasarse” (29) [“ ‘For example, poetic images. If one sees
them from the outside, only the outer and obvious meaning can be grasped,
even if it’s sometimes well concealed. Are you satisfied with the exterior, the
obvious meaning? No, you’re not. You have to pull the handle and fall into the
drawer. To pull is to appropriate, to approach, and even to go too far” (19)]. In
this way, ship, human being (body) and text aspire to the unity beyond plurality
and appear to be heterotopias which emerge as a result of the desire to transcend
the social, the individual, and the particular while simultaneously represent-
ing it. Both exemplifying and modifying Foucault’s concept of heterotopias,
Cortázar’s novel undermines the radical distinction between place/object
(machine), place/human being and place/text. Being products of the same
culture, characterized by Foucault as an “epoch of simultaneity,” they celebrate
a paradoxical symbiosis of fragment and monad, of homogeneity and hetero-
geneity, of sameness and difference.
To conclude, the functioning of fictional and ‘real’ places in Borges’s and
Cortázar’s texts makes one question the relevance of the perception of place in
terms of conventional dichotomies, as well as allowing for the comparison and
contrast of the authors’ metapoetical views. Both authors’ texts blur the bound-
aries between overtly imaginary and recognizable sites. Borges chooses exotic
locations (Someone’s land, the House of Asterion) for his stories, sites that
become both terrifyingly familiar and impossible as the narratives develop.
In both stories the only possible method of liberation from them is death.
Cortázar’s texts, on the other hand, incorporate apparently recognizable
locations such as the City and the ship, which the characters’ capacities and
limitations transform into extraordinary locales.
Keeping with the traditions of literary utopia, both Someone’s land
(“Utopia del hombre que está cansado”) and the City (62: Modelo para armar)
appear as a consequence of the characters’ dissatisfaction with the reality in
which they live. The imaginary trips to these horrifying locations, however, do
not bring any relief to the travelers, showing that attempts to distinguish
between utopian and dystopian thinking are ultimately bound to fail. Further,
the mirror relationship between Someone’s land and Eudoro’s world, as well as
between the overtly imaginary City and such familiar capitals as London,
Paris, Buenos Aires and Vienna challenges the notion of utopia as “nowhere,”
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and undermines the conventional fictional/‘real’ places opposition that makes

one perceive a familiar world as continuously displaced.
Someone’s land and the City can be contrasted, however, in terms of their
metapoetical functions in the narrative worlds where they emerge. Borges’s
description of the Utopian land explicitly expresses its awareness of multiple
connections with earlier utopian/dystopian literary works, as indicated in the
text, by More and Swift. The image of the City, on the other hand, appears to
be an artistic embodiment of the author’s conscious attempt to disengage from
any literary conventions and to declare an absolute freedom from epistemo-
logical determinacy and semantic causality that makes the notions of utopia as
locus and that of language to converge in this place.
Borges’s “La casa de Asterión” and Cortázar’s Los premios depict archetypal
heterotopias as claustrophobic places where uniformity and heterogeneity
paradoxically coexist and undermine private/public and object(thing)/human
being dichotomies. In both narratives, heterotopia appears to be a polysemic
concept associated with locus, body and text. In Borges’s story, ironic parallelism
between the protagonist’s house, the eclectic nature of the Minotaur and the
narrative strategy of palimpsest allow one to suggest an a-centric structure as
characteristic for heterotopia and comment on myth as an a-centric narrative.
In Cortázar’s text a plurality of meaning about the “Malcolm,” created under
the influence of the nineteenth and twentieth century sea-narratives, surreal-
ist art and Schopenhauer’s philosophy demonstrates both the accumulating and
modifying capacity of heterotopia in an artistic perception of place. Whether
explicit (62: Modelo para armar) or implicit (Los premios), the presence of
Borges in Cortázar’s texts can be considered a vivid illustration of the latter’s
own comment that “ningún buen escritor se ponga a escribir para matar a
sus precursors” (in Prego 148) [“no good writer writes in order to kill his/her
precursors”].
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·4·
DISPLACEMENT, DREAMS AND
ARCHIVE IN BORGES ’ S ESSAYS
Our disputes are purely verbal. I ask what is ‘nature,’ ‘pleasure,’ ‘circle,’ ‘substitution’.
The question is one of words, and is answered in the same way.
Michel Montaigne
Borges’s essays together with his short stories, brought the author interna-
tional fame. In the writer’s own words, his style does not change when he
composes essays: “Me pregunto si hay alguna diferencia entre el estilo de la
narrativa y el estilo del ensayo. En mi caso, no lo hay” (176) [“I ask myself
whether there is any difference between the narrative style and that of the
essay. In my case, there is none”].1 My interpretation of the functioning of archi-
tectural structures and the notion of place as physical locality in “El sueño de
Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s Dream”] and “La muralla y los libros” [“The Wall and
the Books”] from Otras Inquisiciones aims to show that these texts are both
indispensable for an understanding of the author’s metapoetical ideas, and illu-
minating for an investigation of the complexities of some apparently familiar
concepts such as dream-work, history, and artistic expression.2
Borges’s exploration of the cross-cultural and cross-temporal dreams of the
palace “Xanadu” in “El sueño de Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s Dream”] allows one
to place this essay in an implicit dialogue with Freud’s original concept of
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displacement. Freud and Borges similarly view human imagination as operating

through dream-symbols, and their writings manifest displacement as an essen-
tial mechanism of both dream-creation and its interpretation. In contrast to
Freud, however, who considered the interpretation of dream-work to clarify
the understanding of human psyche, Borges appears to be attracted by the enig-
matic nature of dreams, which is resistant to any definitive analysis. In light
of Derrida’s concept of “repression” and “archive,” inspired by his reading of
Freud’s writings, we will further examine the parallelism between the con-
struction of the wall and the burning of books in Borges’s essay to compare the
functions of displacement as a mechanism of dream-work, and as an instrument
of political control. Finally, a comparative reading of Borges’s “La muralla y los
libros” with Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China” will suggest a relationship
between the circular nature of history and a perception of an aesthetic
phenomenon where form acquires a determinant significance.
Derrida’s vision of history as archive is informed by Freud’s concepts of
displacement and repression. Freud introduces the concept of displacement and
“de-centering” in his investigation of dreaming. Insisting on the mutual depen-
dence between displacement and imagination, he considers the latter to be
“nothing less than the essential portion of the dream-work” (The Interpretation
121). The displacement/imagination relationship implies “de-centering,”
for “the dream is, as it were, differently centered from the dream-thoughts—
its content has different elements as its central point” (The Interpretation 305).
Considering dreams as a manifestation of the “suppressed material,” Freud sug-
gests that displacement also involves repression, which takes place when the
fulfillment of wishes provokes a “transformation of effect” (604): it no longer
has an effect of pleasure as in original thought but rather has one of unpleasure.
In his interdisciplinary approach developed in Moses and Monotheistic Religion,
Freud also introduces a parallelism between repression as a mental mechanism
and repression in a historical sense. The life of the individual as the history of
humans, according to the father of psychoanalysis, is characterized by the
reappearance of the displaced or repressed.
Derrida’s concept of history as an archive is informed by Freud’s notions of
displacement and repression.3 Significantly, at his conference held at the Freud
archives in England, Derrida characterizes “repression” (Archive Fever 64)
as archivization. For Derrida, displacement is an intrinsic characteristic of
the archive, which is essentially fragmentary. He suggests that one recalls
and archives the very thing one represses, and that it is impossible to erase
“unconscious” and “virtual” archives.
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displacement, dreams & archive in borges’s essays 91
Dreaming with Freud: Displacement,

Art and Magic in “El sueño de
Coleridge”
Interpreting Borges’s “El sueño de Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s Dream”] in light of
Freud’s original concept of displacement allows for a comparison between the
two authors’ approaches to the making and interpretation of dreams.4 As intro-
duced in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, the act of displacement appears
to be an essential mechanism of dreaming and an organizing principle of the
narrator’s discourse which allows it, like a dream itself, to acquire a spatial
dimension.5 Freud asserts that “the analysis . . . of dreams . . . exhibits the same
processes of displacement and condensation as [the dream-work]” (The
Interpretation 597). Both Freud and Borges explicitly identify an imaginative
writer as “one who dreams in broad daylight” (“The Relation” 50) and “a man
who is continually dreaming” (Eighty 164).6 Though known as mainly skepti-
cal about psychoanalysis, Borges, in his conversation with María Esther
Vázquez, points out that “es muy importante como estímulo para la imaginación
literaria” (qtd. in Balderstón et al 139) [“it is very important as a stimulus for
the literary imagination”].7 The creative and ‘distorting’ functioning of dis-
placement, a movement that makes dream possible, transfers dream-thought
to manifest content and governs its interpretation in “El sueño de Coleridge,”
and allows one to relate Freud’s conceptions to Borges’s exploration of dream-
making in this text.8
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s creation of “Kubla Khan” is one of many exam-
ples of displacement as an act that both produces and transfers dream-thought
into different art forms. Traditionally considered by scholars as “a supreme
example of purely imaginative composition” (Alexander XII), the lyric fragment
“Kubla Khan” “fue soñado por el poeta inglés Samuel Taylor Coleridge, en uno
de los días del verano de 1797” (Obras 2:20) [“was dreamed by the English poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on a summer day in 1797” (369)]. As the narrator
observes, the act of creation appears in response to the poet’s previous readings,
which are both disseminated and transformed, displaced, in his dream:
Coleridge escribe que . . . el sueño lo venció momentos después de la lectura de un

pasaje de Purchas, que refiere la edificación de un palacio por Kublai Khan, el emper-
ador cuya fama occidental labró Marco Polo. En el sueño de Coleridge, el texto casual-
mente leído procedió a germinar y a multiplicarse; el hombre que dormía intuyó una
serie de imágenes visuales y, simultáneamente, de palabras que las manifestaban; al cabo
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de unas horas, se despertó, con la certidumbre de haber compuesto, o recibido, un poema

de unos trescientos versos.
(Obras 2:20, italics added)
Coleridge writes that . . . sleep overcame him a few moments after reading a passage in
Purchas that describes the construction of a palace by Kublai Khan, the emperor whose
fame in the West was the work of Marco Polo. In Coleridge’s dream, the text he had coin-
cidentally read sprouted and grew; the sleeping man intuited a series of visual images, and,
simply, the words that expressed them. After a few hours he awoke, certain that he had com-
posed, or received, a poem of some three hundred lines. (369, italics added)
This description of the creative process, as a combination of both invention

and reception, evokes Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical interpretation of Freud’s
approach to the two beginnings of meaning contained in language essential for
a formation of a dream-symbol, “a language richly endowed with the enigmas
that men have invented and received in order to express their fears and hopes”
(496; italics added). Further, Freud observes that all people dream with the same
dream-symbols (fantasies), which are recognizable in spite of their different
modes of expression. In a similar fashion, in Borges’s essay, both Kubla Khan
and Coleridge dream up the Mongolian palace “Xanadu,” which the former
erected in the 13th century, and the latter created in his dream-poem in the
eighteenth century: “Un emperador mongol, en el siglo XIII, sueña un palacio
y lo edifica conforme a la visión; en el siglo XVIII, un poeta inglés que no pudo
saber que esa fábrica se derivó de un sueño, sueña un poema sobre el palacio”
(Obras 2:21–22) [“A Mongolian emperor, in the thirteenth century, dreams a
palace and builds it according to his vision; in the eighteenth century, an
English poet, who could not have known that this construction was derived
from a dream, dreams a poem about the place” (371)]. Moreover, as the nar-
rator admits, Coleridge’s poem is not the last creation of the magnificent
palace “Xanadu”: “Si no marra el esquema, alguien, en una noche de la que nos
apartan los siglos, soñará el mismo sueño y no sospechará que otros lo soñaron
y le dará la forma de un mármol o de una música” (Obras 2:22; italics added)
[“If this plan does not fail, someone, on a night centuries removed from us, will
dream the same dream, and not suspect that others have dreamed it, and he will
give it a form of marble or of music” (372, italics added)]. Thus, the act of dis-
placement turns out to be an essential element of the creative process, which
involves repetition and a play of differences (“le dará la forma de un mármol o
de una música” [“he will give it a form of marble or of music”]), either in
dream or day-dream that paradoxically both emphasizes and de-centers the
notion of meaning, and calls attention to the artistic form.
04.qxd 29/8/07 6:21 PM Page 93
In Jacques Lacan’s terms, displacement appears to be linked to “the idea of

veering off of signification” (159). Indeed, the narrator insists that the poem’s
translation is unnecessary for the main beauty of this poem is music, and it is
precisely a form that conveys emotions, and allows the narrator to character-
ize Coleridge’s creation as “el más alto ejemplo de la música de inglés” (Obras
2:20) [“the supreme example of music in the English language” (369)].9 In this
way, displacement, as a basic mechanism of dream-work, turns out to be one
of the major tools of human imagination, which makes (re)-creation possible
and allows it to acquire various forms.
Further, both Freud and Borges explain the transition from dream-thought
to manifest content as an act of displacement that involves creation of a
narrative/artistic form by means of distortion. According to Freud, “[t]he
direction taken by the displacement usually results in a colorless and abstract
expression in the dream-thought being exchanged for a pictorial and concrete
one” (The Interpretation 339). “El sueño de Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s Dream”] also
manifests distortion as an inevitable element in the transition from dream-
thought to manifest content, as displacement turns out to be an intrinsic con-
stituent of creation. As the narrator observes, Kubla Khan’s and Coleridge’s
dreams are transformed into the artistic forms whose structures are essentially
incomplete, either as a result of physical displacement, in the case of the
palace, or of the work of memory as it happened with the poem: “En 1691, el
Padre Gerbillon, de la Compañía de Jesús, comprobó que del palacio de Kublai
Khan sólo quedaban ruinas; del poema nos consta que apenas se rescataron cin-
cuenta versos” (Obras 2:22) [“In 1691, Father Gerbillon of the Society of Jesus
confirmed that ruins were all that was left of Kublai Khan’s palace; of the
poem, we know that barely fifty lines were salvaged” (372)].10 This parallelism
points to the mirror relationship between the interior and exterior worlds
which are articulated through the very similar mechanism of displacement that
challenges the conventional boundary between inside and outside, as well as
between factually existing locations and those that are openly imaginary.
Displacement also appears to be an organizing principle of the narrator’s
discourse, which moves through the “associative paths” in order to suggest pos-
sible explanations of the ‘curious coincidence’ of Kubla Khan’s and Coleridge’s
dreams separated by time and space. Ken Freiden’s characterization of the
narrator-psychoanalyst in The Interpretation of Dreams as “interpreter and
seducer” (131) is likewise applicable to the narrator of Borges’s essay. The con-
tinuous displacement of his suggested interpretations makes his discourse acquire
a spatial dimension and evoke a movement of association, an allusiveness that
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both increases the readers’ temptation to receive a final explanation as well as

unsettles any assurance of getting it.11
Further, the narrator’s hypotheses, neither of which, he urges, is a final
explanation of the coincidence between Kubla Khan’s and Coleridge’s dreams,
can be considered a ludic critique of Freud’s assertion that after the analysis, the
dream appears to be very logical, “based on relations and connections.” (57).12
Thus, being aware of and rejecting any type of “verosímil” explanation, the nar-
rator prefers “las hipótesis que trascienden lo racional” (Obras 2:22) [“the
hypotheses that transcend reason” (371)]. He first suggests an explanation of the
phenomenon in terms of Hinduism, a religion which is based on the transmi-
gration of souls: “cabe suponer que el alma del emperador, destruido el palacio,
penetró en el alma de Coleridge, para que éste lo reconstruyera en palabras, más
duraderas que los mármoles y metales” (Obras 2:22; italics added) [“after the
palace was destroyed, the soul of the Emperor penetrated Coleridge’s soul in order
that the poet could rebuild it in words, which are more lasting than metal and
marble” (372)].13 The second hypothesis according to which the world is some-
body’s dream has its roots in Buddhism, a religion from the land of Kubla Khan
from the sixteenth century, attractive to Hume and Schopenhauer and his suc-
cessors, among whom is Borges himself: “El primer sueño agregó a la realidad un
palacio; el segundo, que se produjo cinco siglos después, un poema . . . sugerido
por el palacio; la similitud de los sueños deja entrever un plan; el período
enorme revela un ejecutor sobrehumano. Indagar el propósito de ese inmortal
o de ese longevo sería, tal vez, no menos atrevido que inútil, pero es lícito
sospechar que no lo ha logrado” (Obras 2:22) [“The first dream added a palace
to reality; the second, which occurred five centuries later, a poem . . . suggested
by the palace; the similarity of the dreams hints of a plan; the enormous length
of time involved reveals a superhuman executor. To speculate on the intentions
of that immortal or long-lived being would be as foolish as it is fruitless, but it
is legitimate to suspect that he has not yet achieved his goal.” (372)].14 The third
explanation is fantastic; it echoes the platonism favored by Coleridge: “[a]caso
un arquetipo no revelado aún a los hombres, un objeto eterno (para usar la
nomenclature de Whitehead), esté ingresando paulatinamente en el mundo; su
primera manifestación fue el palacio; la segunda el poema. Quien los hubiera
comparado habriá visto que eran esencialmente iguales” (Obras 2:22; italics
added) [“Perhaps an archetype not yet revealed to mankind, an eternal object
(to use Whitehead’s term), is gradually entering the world; its first manifestation
was the palace; its second, the poem. Whoever compares them will see that they
are essentially the same” (372)].15 These hypotheses, abundant in indefinite
04.qxd 29/8/07 6:21 PM Page 95
pronouns, adverbs and verbs, expose only several of the numerous ways to
approach a work of human imagination, which, like dream itself, is a “rebus”
(Lacan 156).
Moreover, the narrator interprets Kubla Khan’s and Coleridge’s creations
as elements of “la serie de los sueños” [“the series of dreams”], repetitive and
enigmatic. Whereas for Freud dreams bring clarity, and their interpretation is
“the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (The
Interpretation 608), for Borges dreams increase doubts. According to Borges,
dreams are another manifestation of the work of enigmatic human imagination,
as the narrator expresses in an apparently contradictory sentence: “Quizá la serie
de los sueños no tenga fin, quizá la clave esté en el último” (Obras 2:22)
[“Perhaps this series of dreams has no end, or perhaps the last one will be the
key” (372)]. The first part of the sentence points to infinity, the second indica-
ted a possibility of closure.
In this way, “El sueño de Coleridge” allows one to compare and contrast
Freud’s and Borges’s approaches to dream-work, its result and its interpretation.
In line with Freud’s approach to interpretation of dreams, Borges suggests that
the human imagination is guided by displacement and operates with recurrent
dream symbols/archetypes. Both Borges and Freud see the discourse of the
dream and its interpretation as using similar narrative strategies that involve dis-
placement. As in The Interpretation of Dreams, in “El sueño de Coleridge,” any
creative attempt to interpret Kubla Khan’s and Coleridge’s creations is an act
of displacement that leads to the creation of a day-dream-space similar to the
one interpretation aims to decipher. Borges diverges from Freud’s conceptions,
however, by questioning any logical explanation to dreams and dream-making
as too simple, and favors magical ones. Whereas Freud was essentially interested
in the semantics of dreams, which in his opinion, can be reduced to a few clear
patterns, including the psycho-sexual development, the Argentine writer
approaches dream as a syntactic phenomenon that can acquire infinite and
unpredictable forms and makes a plurality of interpretative versions possible.
The Repression of Archive and the

Archivization of Repression in
“La muralla y los libros”
Freud’s notion of displacement introduced in The Interpretation of Dreams is
further developed in his theory of repression. In the essay “Repression,” this
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phenomenon is described as operating through the mechanism of displacement,

consisting of “turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the
consciousness” (147). Derrida, an avid reader of Freud, both uses and displaces
Freud’s concepts of displacement and repression for his own elaboration of the
notion of history as an archive. As the French philosopher observes, “with the
single but decisive conception of a topic of the psychic apparatus (and thus of
repression or of suppression, according to the places of inscription, both inside
and outside), Freud made possible the idea of an archive” (Archive 91). Derrida
distinguishes fragmentation as an essential characteristic of archive, and he
views repression and manifestation of the repressed as one and the same thing.
“La muralla y los libros” [“The Wall and the Books”] can be viewed as an
artistic illustration of Derrida’s notion of archive, repression as archivization,
and a manifestation of the affinity between the notions of “reinscription” and
différance, essential for a formation of the contradictory views of history shared
by the Argentine author and the French philosopher.16 I will also show that a
comparative reading of Borges’s text and Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China”
in a metafictional mode allows one to observe Kafka’s artistic influence on
Borges’s perception of the work of art, which can be read along the lines of
Derrida’s concept of “textual displacement.” 17
The word “archive,” Derrida suggests, evokes both “the commencement”
and “the commandment” (Archive 1). And he continues, “[t]his name appar-
ently coordinates two principles in one: the principle according to nature and
history, there where things commence—physical, historical, or ontological
principle—but also the principle according to the law, there where men and
gods command, there where authority, social order are exercised, in this place from
which order is given—nomological principle. . . . We have there two orders of
order: sequential and jussive” (Archive 1). The chronological order is one of the
essential questions the archive confronts: “The question of the archive remains
the same: What comes first? Even better: Who comes first? And second?”
(Archive 36). As Derrida suggests, “[t]here is no political power without
control of the archive, if not of memory” (Archive 4), and this control involves
displacement, “repression” and “suppression,” the modes of archivization.
As described in Borges’s essay, the Emperor’s actions display two aspects of
archive distinguished by Derrida, “the commencement” and “the command-
ment,” and allow one to relate the notions of repression and archivization.
Indeed, the Emperor aspires to control the archive by destroying the books and
erecting the Great Wall. The ideas of both destruction and construction spring
from an attempt to subvert an existent historical and natural order, that is, to
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reconstruct history, to obtain immortality and to create an alternative world for-

eign to death. Exercising a mechanism of repression that involves displacement
of events, treating them as “not happened” (Freud, “Inhibition, symptoms and
Anxiety” 20: 77), the Emperor strives to place himself at the beginning of his
people’s ancient history: “Tres mil años de cronología tenían los chinos . . .
cuando Shih Huang Ti ordenó que la historia empezara con él . . . la muralla en
el espacio y el incendio en el tiempo fueron barreras mágicas destinadas a
detener la muerte” (Obras 2:11) [“The Chinese had three thousand years of
chronology . . . when Shih Huang Ti ordered that history begin with him. . . . the
wall in space and the fire in time were magic barriers designed to halt death”
(186–187)]. Indeed, “el Emperador y sus magos creyeron que la inmortalidad es
intrínseca y que la corrupción no puede entrar en un orbe cerrado” (Obras 2:12)
[“the Emperor and his sorcerers believed that inmortality is intrinsic and that
decay cannot enter a closed orb” (187)].18 Trying to erase his ancestors from his
nation’s memory, he establishes his own chronology: “ordenó que sus heredores
se llamaran Segundo Emperador, Tercer Emperador, Cuarto Emperador, y así hasta
lo infinito” (Obras 2:12) [“he ordered that his heirs be called Second Emperor,
Third Emperor, Fourth Emperor, and so on to infinity (187)”].19 Taking on him-
self the function of God, the Chinese emperor “dió su nombre verdadero a las
cosas” (Obras 2:12) [“gave things their true name” (187)] in an attempt to mod-
ify the existent signifier-signified connection.20 To attain his goal, the Emperor
uses repression as an instrument of political control, which, according to the
scholars, (as the narrator emphasizes), reaches an outrageous level of cruelty:
“Herbert Allen Giles cuenta que quienes ocultaron libros fueron marcados con
un hierro candente y condenados a construir, hasta el día de su muerte, la
desaforada muralla” (Obras 2:12) [“Herbert Allen Giles tells that those who hid
books were branded with the red-hot iron and sentenced to labor until the day
of their death on the construction of the outrageous wall” (188)].
Characterized by the narrator as “la propuesta mágica” (Obras 2:12), the
realization of the Emperor’s project, the destruction of the archive, turns out
to be an illusion, a kind of semantic mirage. It manifests displacement as moti-
vated by a production of différance, which is not a presence but a desire for pres-
ence: “Without the possibility of différance, the desire of presence as such
would not find its breathing-space. . . . this desire carries in itself the destiny
of its nonsatisfaction” (Speech 143). Indeed, though it involves dissemination
and transformation, displacement does not produce a radical change and
rather appears to be a “reinscription” of new chains of old terms. The title of
the essay already introduces the wall and the books as complementary notions.
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Paradoxically, they also become synonymous in the Emperor’s circular vision

of history, as imagined by the narrator: “alguna vez habrá un hombre que sien-
ta como yo, y ése destruirá mi muralla, como yo he destruido los libros, y ése
borrará mi memoria y será mi sombra y mi espejo y no lo sabrá” (Obras 2:12)
[“but someday there will be a man who feels as I do and he will efface my mem-
ory and be my shadow and my mirror and not know it” (188)]. The Emperor’s
actions of displacement exemplify construction and deconstruction as belong-
ing to “the order of the same” (Speech 129): “Acaso el incendio de las bibliotecas
y la edificación de la muralla son operaciones que de un modo secreto se anu-
lan” (Obras 2:12) [“Perhaps the burning of the libraries and the erection of the
wall are operations which in some secret way cancel each other” (188)]. Thus,
displacement, which does not mean a simple repetition and does not guaran-
tee a leap into novelty, manifests the play of differences, associated with
différance, that is, with “the sameness which is not identical” (Speech 130).21
The Emperor’s actions and meditations also evoke Derrida’s approach to
history as a contradictory concept.22 Although Derrida aims to deconstruct the
metaphysical concept of history, with its implications such as “a certain type
of traditionality, a certain concept of continuity, of truth” (Positions 57) through
the act of displacement, he points out that in order to come up with a new con-
cept, one cannot disregard a “logic of repetition and the trace” (Positions 57)
intrinsic also in a metaphysical concept of history. The notions of trace and rep-
etition reappear in Derrida’s concept of archive, when he observes that “[t]here
is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repeti-
tion, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside” (11). As
Derrida also notices, “[i]f repetition is thus inscribed at the heart of the future to
come, one must also import there, in the same stroke, the death drive, the vio-
lence of forgetting, superrepression (suppression and repression)” (79). He views
repression as an archivization and suggests that repressing the archive and
archiving the repression is one and the same thing.
In Borges’s essay, the Emperor’s acts of repression can be seen as archivizing
his own personal trauma: the banishment of his libertine mother.23 The narrator
suggests the parallel between his family story of “infamia” and the destruction of
the accusatory canonical books by the son.24 Further, as the narrator points out,
the Emperor’s actions have been previously repeated in history: “Shih Huang Ti,
tal vez, quiso borrar los libros canónigos porque estos lo acusaban; Shih Huang
Ti, tal vez, quiso abolir todo el pasado para abolir un solo recuerdo: la infamia de
su madre. (No de otra suerte un rey, en Judea, hizo matar a todos los niños para
matar a uno). . . . Acaso Shih Huang Ti amuralló el imperio porque sabía que éste
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era deleznable y destruyó los libros por entender que eran libros sagrados, o sea
libros que enseñan lo que enseña el universo o la conciencia de cada hombre”
(Obras 2:11–12) [“Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, wanted to obliterate the canonical
books because they accused him; Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, tried to abolish the
entire past in order to abolish one single memory: his mother’s infamy. (Not in
an unlike manner did a king of Judea have all male children killed in order to kill
one.) . . . Perhaps Shih Huang Ti walled in his empire because he knew that it
was perishable and destroyed the books because he understood that they were
sacred books, in other words, books that teach what the entire universe or the
mind of every man teaches” (188–189)]. Thus, the repression exercised by the
emperor turns out to be an act of archivization, evoking the past as much as it
attempts to destroy it. As Derrida observes, “[o]ne recalls and archives the very
thing one represses” (Archive 80).
Moreover, the Emperor’s actions can be seen as traces of those performed
by his ancestors, the difference is only in scale: “Históricamente, no hay mis-
terio en las dos medidas. . . . Quemar libros y erigir fortificaciones es tarea
común de los príncipes; lo único singular en Shih Huang Ti fue la escala en que
obró” (Obras 2:11) [“Historically speaking, there is no mystery in the two
measures. . . . Burning books and erecting fortifications is a common task of
princes; the only thing singular in Shih Huang Ti was the scale on which he
operated” (186)]. Thus, the Emperor’s actions evoke the history he wants to
destroy, suggesting a relationship between repression, repetition and the archive,
and can be described along the lines of Derrida’s speculation about Freud’s vision
of the future: “As Freud might say (this would be his thesis), there is no future
without the specter of the oedipal violence that inscribes the suppression into
the archontic institution of the archive, in the position, the autoposition or the
hetero-position of the one and of the Unique” (81).
Further, there is a parallelism between Derrida’s ambivalent concept of
history, where chronology is both recognized and displaced, and Borges’s
perception of history, where the notion of continuity and a questioning of
chronology coexist. The narrator in “Deutsches Requiem,” for instance, asserts
that “La historia de los pueblos registra una continuidad secreta” (Obras 1:577)
[“the history of nations records a secret continuity” (233)].25 In “El pudor de la
historia” [“The Modesty of History”] on the other hand, any idea of chronol-
ogy appears to be deconstructed: “Tácito no percibió la Crucifixión, aunque la
registra su libro” (Obras 2:132) [“Tacitus did not perceive the crucifixion,
although his book recorded it” (246)].26 In a likewise paradoxical fashion,
whereas the Emperor tries to abolish the past, destroying the books and
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closing himself in a palace-labyrinth where there were “tantas habitaciones

como hay días en el año” (Obras 2:11) “as many rooms as there are days in the
year” (187); he metaphorically reconstructs it in building a wall: “Acaso la
muralla fue una metáfora, acaso Shih Huang Ti condenó a quienes adoraban
el pasado a una obra tan vasta como el pasado, tan torpe y tan inútil” (Obras
2:12) [“Perhaps the wall was a metaphor, perhaps Shih Huang Ti sentenced
those who worshiped the past to a task as immense, as gross and as useless as
the past itself ” (188)].27 Thus, the Emperor’s actions of displacement illustrate
both dissemination and transformation, synonymous with “reinscription” and
différance as determinant elements which both display and create a circular
nature of history, seen as a single block which supersedes chronology.
Shaping the Word: Displacement and

Dialogical Discourse in Borges’s
“La muralla y los libros” and Kafka’s
“The Great Wall of China”
Like history, writing is impossible without displacement, substitution and
repression. In his essay “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” Derrida describes writ-
ing as involving displacement and repression: “Writing is unthinkable without
repression” (113). He observes that Freud himself establishes a connection
between the notion of displacement as a mechanism of dream-work and writ-
ing as an act of displacement: “No doubt Freud conceives of the dream’s dis-
placements as a . . . form of writing” (88). Both being inspired by and swerving
from Freud’s approach to displacement, Derrida elaborates his own notion of
“textual displacement” in relation to writing. In Positions, Derrida opposes the
notion of textual displacement to that of polysemy and criticizes a semantic
vision of the meaning as totality, and a meaning-truth connection.
In “La muralla y los libros,” displacement, replacement and repression are
thematized and internalized in the dialogical structure of discourse through
literal and symbolic references to the Great Wall. A comparative intertextual
reading of Borges’s “La muralla y los libros” and Kafka’s “The Great Wall of
China,” a parabola translated by Borges, permits the reader to relate the con-
cepts of writing, displacement, and the dialogue and consider Kafka’s text as one
of the possible sources of inspiration for Borges’s essay.28 The deconstruction-
ist notion of textual displacement as dissemination associated with “generative”
(Positions 56) multiplicity is both present and ironized in these narratives,
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where construction, both as creation and interpretation, mainly generates

breaches in the structure.29
In Kafka’s text, the building of the Chinese Wall can be interpreted as a
metaphor of textual displacement that thematizes the notion of a semantic gap
on various levels and celebrates the importance of the artistic form. The Wall’s
“piecemeal construction,” intentionally incomplete evokes association with a
parabola, whose meaning is paradoxical and elusive. A movement of continu-
ous displacement, characteristic for the process of building, can be considered
a metaphoric illustration of the intent to avoid reconciliation and to undermine
the conventional notion of meaning as signifier-signified connection: “It was
done in this way: gangs of some twenty workers were formed who had to accom-
plish a length, say, of five hundred yards of wall, while a similar gang built
another stretch of the same length to meet the first. But after the junction
had been made the construction of the wall was not carried on from the
point . . . where this thousand yards ended; instead the two groups of workers
were transferred to begin building again in quite different neighborhoods” (148).
A similar lack of communication appears between the Emperor and his people,
as described by “the parable,” when the messenger is sent to the only “humble
object.” Like the very process of building, his movement would be described by
Borges as Zeno’s paradox: “he is only making his way through the chambers of
the innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded
in that nothing would be gained” (167). As a text, the wall can be interpreted
in light of the deconstructionist approach to writing as an intrinsically incom-
plete process, which generates multiple possibilities of meanings. Consequently,
every interpretation of the written work leaves a gap. The narrator’s account of
the building of the Great Wall is not an exception, as he explicitly points out
at the end of the story, for his account of the events is not final: “I shall not pro-
ceed any further at this stage with my enquiry into these questions” (173).
The Chinese Wall is also a metaphor for the artistic work in Borges’s essay.
After suggesting several hypotheses aimed at evoking further meditations about
the Emperor’s actions, the narrator of “La muralla y los libros” moves to a par-
allel discussion, that of the perception of the aesthetic phenomenon that
escapes any approximation and embodies “esta inminencia de una revelación,
que no se produce” (Obras 2:13) [“this imminence of a revelation which does
not occur” (188)]. Like a realization of the Emperor’s utopic/dystopic project
of abolishing the past and obtaining immortality, any interpretation of a work
of art is doomed to displacement and transformation and inevitably leaves the
gap between a totality of repressed possibilities and a chosen one. This gap turns
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out to be an intrinsic characteristic of meaning. Displacement becomes to be

a movement that designates nothing and does not have semantic constants and
where form acquires a determinant significance. In this way, the Chinese wall,
as a work of architecture which Borges describes as “música conjelada” (Borges
and Bioyo Casares 75) [“congealed music”], recalls Borges’s idea about the
importance of form in art, as it is developed in the last paragraph of the essay:
“Generalizando el caso anterior, podríamos inferir que todas las formas tienen
su virtud en sí mismas y no en un “contenido” conjetural” (Obras 2:12)
[“Generalizing from the preceding case, we could infer that all forms have
virtue in themselves and not in any conjectural ‘content.’ ” (188)].30 Thus,
anticipating Derrida’s ideas, the functioning of textual displacement in Kafka’s
and Borges’s texts subverts the conventional approach to meaning as a final
totality and reasserts the importance of form in art. Displaying perception less
radical than that offered by Derrida, textual displacement in these narratives
does not point to the exhaustion of meaning, but rather celebrates its de-
centralization through displacement, substitution, and repression, which opens
space for the story to be told.
The notion of displacement as a narrative strategy in Borges’s and Kafka’s
texts is also related with their dialogical quality. In Kafka’s text, the dialogue
between different narrative genres results from a combination of the ludic
intention to write a historical survey and to transmit the imaginary personal
experience.31 Characterizing his “enquiry” as a “purely historical” (159) account
of the building of the Great Wall of China, the first-person narrator is both a
witness and a participant in this event: “I was lucky in as much as the build-
ing of the wall was just beginning when, at twenty, I had passed the last
examination of the lowest grade school” (151). Further, the story, “born in a
dialogue as a living rejoinder within it” (Bakhtin 277), ironically refers to other
texts that motivated and guided the project of building. This also suggests that
the Wall, as well as of the process of its creation, belongs to the realm of fic-
tion. The concept of danger, for instance, against which the Chinese Wall was
supposed to protect, is derived from books: “No northern people can menace
us there. We read of them in the books of the ancients” (160; italics added).
Thus, as any discourse, the building of the Great Wall cannot fail to be ori-
ented toward “the already uttered” and “the already known,” the “common
opinion” (Bakhtin 279). The mention of danger which appears in ancient texts
acquires a new life, by means of dissemination and displacement, in the
following narrative that emphasizes the notion of fiction as both a continuum
and fragment.
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The very process of building is guided by the text written by one scholar
who “drew a comparison in the most exhaustive way” (155) between the Great
Wall of China and the Tower of Babel, which emphasizes that no work is cre-
ated in isolation from already existent texts. Whereas, as told in Genesis 11,
the building project failed, the city was abandoned and the people scattered
when their language became subverted; the Great Wall alone would provide
for the first time in the history of mankind “a secure foundation of a new
Tower of Babel” (156). Ironically, the edifice may be completed, as a scholar
predicts, only when it becomes a new Tower of Babel, the biblical myth where
displacement is embodied in a symbol traditionally associated with a wild
enterprise that brings disaster and disorder. Along the same lines, Bakhtin
uses an image of the Tower of Babel in his reference to the multiple linguistic
and extra-linguistic influences that inevitably contribute to the creation of any
literary work/utterance: “Along with the internal contradictions inside the
objects itself, the prose writer witnesses the unfolding of social heteroglossia
surrounding the object; the Tower-of-Babel mixing of languages that goes on around
any object; the dialectics of the object are interwoven with the social dialogue
surrounding it” (278). Evoking Bakhtin’s observation, the wall in Kafka’s text
manifests the “vast work” of fiction to be both continuity and a fragment, where
the notions of displacement and dialogue converge.
Whereas for Kafka, displacement as a narrative strategy is a way to build
an intrinsic connection between intellectual quest, existential experience and
an illustration of the dynamic presence of language in human consciousness and
acts, in Borges’s essay displacement and dialogue interrelate in the expression
of the author’s aesthetic and philosophical concerns. Indeed, the narrator’s
meditations in “La muralla y los libros” appear in response to the existent text:
“Leí, días pasados, que el hombre que ordenó la edificación de la casi infinita
muralla china fue aquel Primer Emperador, Shin Huang Ti, que asimismo dis-
puso que se quemaron todos los libros anteriores a él. Que las dos vastas opera-
ciones—las quinientas a seiscientas leguas de piedra opuestas a los bárbaros, la
rigurosa abolición de la historia, es decir del pasado—procedieran de una per-
sona y fueran de algún modo sus atributos, inexplicablemente me satisfizo y, a
la vez, me inquietó. Indagar las razones de esa emoción es el fin de esta nota” (Obras
2:11; italics added) [“I read, some days past, that the man who ordered the erec-
tion of the almost infinite wall of China was the first Emperor, Shih Huang Ti,
who also decreed that all books prior to him be burned. That these two vast
operations-the five to six hundred leagues of stone opposing the barbarians, the
rigorous abolition of history, that is of the past—should originate in one person
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and be in some way his attributes inexplicably satisfied and, at the same time,
disturbed me. To investigate the reasons for that emotion is the purpose of this
note.” (186)].
Furthermore, his ludic analysis of the myth, he explicitly refers to the wall
as “la segunda cara del mito” (Obras 2:11) [“the second part of the myth”
(187)], he has read about manifests displacement as a movement born from the
dialogue that includes both the dissemination, and the transformation of other
texts. His thoughts also can be seen as an artistic illustration of the concept of
“understanding,” which, according to Bakhtin, is a dialogical activity. As this
critic observes, “Understanding and response are dialectically merged and
mutually condition each other; one is impossible without the other” (282). In
this way, Borges’s essay inspired by Kafka’s parable, allows us to suggest a pos-
sible compatibility between a modified deconstructionist concept of displace-
ment, associated with dissemination and transformation and the concept of a
dialogical discourse, where meaning is not exhaustive, but infinitely incomplete.
In Borges’s “El sueño de Coleridge” and “La muralla y los libros,” both the
architectural structures and the notion of place as a physical locality serve as
points of departure for an artistic exploration of the aesthetic work, history and
dreams as interrelated realms. These three phenomena operate by the common
mechanism of displacement through disseminating and transforming move-
ments, which are also required for their interpretation.
In “El sueño de Coleridge,” displacement as a mechanism of dream-work
both evokes and deviates from Freud’s original concept. In Borges’s essay, as in
Freud’s psychoanalysis, displacement has both distorting and creative functions,
and it is used as the narrative strategy in the attempted exploration of dream-
work. In contrast to Freud, who viewed the interpretation of the displacement
as a means of clarifying and furthering the understanding of dream-work and
the operation of the human psyche, Borges’s essay implicitly suggests that
dreams exemplify complexity, rather then offer clarifications, and can acquire
infinite and unpredictable forms. Dreams transcend the limits of the rational,
and therefore their mechanisms can be explained only in terms of magic.
Whereas “El sueño de Coleridge” allows one to compare and contrast
Borges’s and Freud’s vision of dreams, “La muralla y los libros” makes it possi-
ble to relate the views expressed in the essay with Derrida’s notions of “repres-
sion,” “archive,” and “textual displacement,” which are informed by his creative
reading of Freud.
The building of the Great Wall of China as an apparent alternative to burnt
books reflects the notion of displacement as dissemination and transformation
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as compatible with re-inscription/repetition and trace. Both of the Emperor’s

actions are inspired by his personal trauma; archiving the repression turns out
to be the same thing as repressing the archive. A suggested vision of a circular
nature of history as a single block that supersedes chronology can be seen as a
parallel to Derrida’s paradoxical vision of history as an a-temporal continuity.
Like history, writing is impossible without displacement/substitution/
repression. Borges’s “La muralla y los libros,” created under the artistic influence
of Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China,” also can be seen as an artistic response
to Derrida’s concept of textual displacement. Exposing a vision less radical than
the one offered by Derrida, who considers writing to be an act of displacement
that displays meaning as a no longer essential category (at least for decon-
struction), Borges’s essay suggests that the notion of meaning appears to be
incessantly deferred (de-centered), for it is neither possible to grasp its totality
nor to exhaust it, and the form of an aesthetic phenomenon obtains a deter-
minant significance.
A suggested reading of Borges’s and Kafka’s works in a metafictional mode
displays unbridgeable gaps, generated by the very structure of the Great Wall
and various attempts to explain it, as a powerful motivation for and an
inevitable result of the creative processes of writing and reading that bring them
immortality.
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05.qxd 29/8/07 6:24 PM Page 107
·5·
DISPLACEMENT AND THE DIVIDED
SELF IN CORTÁZAR ’ S STORIES
Queda la posibilidad de que todo sea una alucinación de la culpa.

[The possibility is left open that everything is a guilt-inspired hallucination].
Jorge Luis Borges
An exploration of the dynamics of place and displacement in narrative worlds

created by Borges permits one to delineate his aesthetic and philosophical con-
cerns, which, as he admits, have been of interest for him since childhood. In
Cortázar’s texts, as this chapter will show, the questioning of place/displacement
dichotomy carries strong existential and psychological connotations. In his
short stories, physical displacement can be read as a trope for psychological divi-
sion. Cortázar’s texts, which thematize dislocation, display integrity as a never
achieved condition and adopt open-endedness as a narrative strategy, can be
interpreted as artistic manifestations of a parallelism between the notions of
self, space and writing. In the stories analyzed herein, displacement is conveyed
in three different, yet ultimately related, ways. In “Lejana” [“The Distances”]
this condition is overt, for the protagonist is aware of her own multiple exis-
tences, and her diary entries exemplify her search for physical displacement as
a way of resolving her psychological division.1 In “La puerta condenada” [“The
Sealed Door”], self-division is concealed.2 It is revealed, apparently by chance,
through the character’s physical displacement, a business trip that brings him
05.qxd 29/8/07 6:24 PM Page 108
to a room with a particular setting. Finally, in “Cartas de mamá” [“Letters

from Mother”], the division is semi-concealed in the protagonists’ existing dis-
placement, an attempted exile from the burden of memories and feelings of guilt
that turns out to be self-deceptive.3 In all these texts, interrelated physical dis-
placement and psychological division can be seen as an expression of the pro-
tagonists’ existential dilemma arising from their dissatisfaction with the world
in which they live, or with their own acts.
My reading of Cortázar’s texts is informed by psychoanalytical, phenomeno-
logical, postmodern anthropological, and feminist theories, all of which maintain
a vision of space and subjectivity as interrelated realms. The psychoanalytical
notion of displacement, which is associated with de-centering, gives spatial dimen-
sions to both dreams and their interpretation. This view of displacement subverts
any fixed notions of subjectivity, spatiality and reality, and is essential, according
to Freud and his followers, for an understanding of the human self. Considering
psychoanalysis “a spatial discipline,” Steve Pile suggests that such reactions as
“shock,” “fear” or “fury,” when provoked by the displacement of borders, are about
the senses of self and space. The notion of displacement, where self and space con-
verge, is determinant for Lacan’s “mirror stage,” which implies the transformation
of a child into an image and makes him/her assume that identity. This device shows
a split, a divided self to be at the core of every human being. The reflection pro-
vides images of an ‘exterior’ world that is doubled, situated in a space between the
visible and invisible (see 124 Pile). Acknowledging his interest in psychoanaly-
sis, in a conversation with Evelyn Picone, Cortázar points out: “Yo verifico en mi
mismo la verdad de muchas afirmaciones de Freud” (71) [“I verify in myself the
truth of many Freud’s statements”].
A perception of places in terms of the self’s experiences is also an intrinsic
characteristic of Bachelard’s phenomenological poetics of space, which was famil-
iar to Cortázar.4 For this French philosopher (as well as for one of his
followers, Henri Lefebvre (1974)), for example, “the city and the house have the
qualities of a memory, of a persistent dream” (Bachelard 214–215). In a similar
fashion, Casey asserts that “[b]uilt places are extensions of our bodies” (120) and
he associates displacement with “nostalgia” (37). Reconsidering the self-place
connection essential for traditional anthropology, postmodern anthropology
draws a parallel between the “fragmentation of identity” (Lavie et al 10), which
obliterates the self/other opposition and questions approaches to space in terms
of existent dichotomies (e.g. center/margin), and that of divided territory. The
postmodern approach displaces the hierarchical division of the world into the
self and the other, which uncovers a radical uncertainty about identity.
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displacement & the divided self in cortázar’s stories 109
Being influenced by both psychoanalytical and phenomenological

approaches, Patricia Waugh, one of the most prominent scholars in feminist
criticism, considers displacement as the subject-space-writing relationship
associated with the lack of place for the feminine discourse “marginalized by
the dominant [masculine] culture” (Waugh 3). In her analysis of women’s writ-
ing, for example, she suggests a loss of self-integrity to be a result of displace-
ment synonymous to marginalization. In both the phenomenological and the
psychoanalytical approaches to the space-self relationship, and in the realms of
postmodern anthropology and feminist criticism influenced by them, displace-
ment and self-division become synonymous terms, and the subject/object
antithesis is undermined.5
Displacement as a rhetorical mechanism also obtains a metapoetical
significance in Cortázar’s theory of the short story. Offering his understanding
of the short story/novel opposition in the programmatic essay “Algunos aspec-
tos del cuento [“Some aspects of the Short Story],” Cortázar observes: “la nov-
ela y el cuento se dejan comparar analógicamente con el cine y la fotografía”
(Obra 2:371) [“the novel and the short story can be compared analogically with
the film and the photograph” (246)].6 The Argentine writer suggests that this
genre functions as a metonymy, a “photography” that is a fragment of reality
which opens a more ample one: “una apertura que proyecta la inteligencia y la
sensibilidad hacia algo que va mucho más allá de la anécdota visual o literaria
contenidas en la foto” (372) [“an explosion which fully opens a much more
ample reality, like a dynamic vision which spiritually transcends the space
reached by the camera” (246)]. Cortázar’s metapoetical vision of displacement
at the core of the creative process is applied in his own stories. My analysis of the
polysemic functions of the bridge in “Lejana” (Bestiario), the door in “La puerta
condenada” (Final del fuego), and Buenos-Aires-Paris in “Cartas de mamá” (Las
armas secretas), aims to exemplify territorial displacement, the fragmented self and
writing as interrelated concepts within Cortázar’s fictional universe.
Crossing the Bridge: Psychological Division

and the Writing of Discontent
In Cortázar’s “excessively geometrical” story (Peavler 37, Curutchet 37) “Lejana,”
the polysemic bridge is an architectural and a linguistic construction and a
metaphor for the protagonist’s divided self.7 In her rebellion against the hypocrisy
and superficial values which surround her life of a ‘society girl’ in Buenos Aires,
“Lejana” obsessively looks for her other self, which she associates with a
05.qxd 29/8/07 6:24 PM Page 110
Hungarian beggar with whom she dreams of reconciling on a bridge over the
Danube river in Budapest. This place symbolizes the common duality of both
the city and the protagonist.8 The bridge connects the two parts of the
Hungarian capital, Buda “aristocrática y rica” [“aristocratic and rich”] and Pest
“industrial y obrera” [“industrial and working”] (Lavaud 75). A similar appar-
ently antithetical relationship is maintained within a divided self: Alina Reyes/
Budapest beggar.9 The symbolic nature of both the city’s name and that of the
protagonist (Alina “la reina” [“a queen”] (429)/beggar), both of which harbor
oppositions, makes geographical and subjective dimensions converge. In
addition, Alina’s references to her self in spatial terms as “la lejana” (the one
who is far away) point to the affinity between the notions of self and territory
(e.g. urban space). An essential overlap between real, imaginary and symbolic
spatialities obtains meaning through the operation of the map of human mind.
Thus, the bridge as an architectural construction, inseparable from its
metaphorical functioning as the protagonist’s divided self in Cortázar’s text,
disrupts any fixed or static notions of subjectivity and spatiality.10
As “a place-of-conflict” (Heidegger 79) which “gathers to itself in its own
way earth and sky” (Heidegger 153), the bridge evokes Freud’s definition of
displacement, first in the protagonist’s dream and than in the day-dream of
Cortázar’s fiction.11 It is a place of transition Alina strives to reach in her dream-
thoughts, which make prominent the process of self-division.12 Experiencing
alienation and distress from her fashionable life in Buenos Aires, she obsessively
thinks about a meeting with the poor and physically abused Budapest woman
on the bridge: “Idea que vuelve como vuelve Budapest, creer en la mendiga de
Budapest donde habrá tanto puente y nieve que rezuma” (431) [“An idea that
recurs just as Budapest always recurs, to believe in the beggar in Budapest
where they’ll have lots of bridges and percolating snow” (21)]. In an act of psy-
chic displacement, accompanied by de-centeredness and shifting associations,
Alina insistently identifies herself with “la lejana” in her day-dream which
primarily brings her to the bridge: “Me digo: ‘Ahora estoy cruzando un puente
helado, ahora la nieve me entra por los zapatos rotos’” (430) [“I say to myself,
‘Now I’m crossing a bridge, it’s all frozen, now the snow’s coming in through
my shoes’ (19)”].
Further, she subordinates her life to the realization of her dream: “lo sigo por
gusto, por saber adónde va, para enterarme si Luis Mariá me lleva a Budapest,
si nos casamos y le pido que me lleve a Budapest. Más fácil salir a buscar ese
puente, salir en busca mía y encontrarme como ahora, porque ya he andado la
mitad del puente entre gritos y aplausos . . . como si esto tuviera sentido entre
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la nieve arriscada que me empuja con el viento por la espalda, manos de

toalla de esponja llevándome por la cintura hacia el medio del puente” (434)
[“I long for this and follow it by choice, by knowing where it’s going, to find
out if Luis María is going to take me to Budapest. Easier to go out and look for
that bridge, to go out on my own search and find myself, as now because now
I’ve walked to the middle of the bridge amid shouts and applause . . . as if that
had any meaning amid the whipping snow which pushes against my back with
the wind-force, hands like a thick towel around my waist drawing me to the cen-
ter of the bridge” (23)]. Alina’s preoccupation with the other woman, which
evidences the presence of de-centering and displacement in Freud’s terms,
increases to the point that, when married, she insists on a honeymoon in
Budapest, despite the fact that it is winter there: “Alina Reyes de Aráoz y su
esposo llegaron a Budapest el 6 de abril y se alojaron en el Ritz. . . . Llegó al
puente y lo cruzó hasta el centro, andando ahora con trabajo porque la nieve
se oponía y del Danubio crece un viento de abajo, difícil, que engancha y
hostiga” (437). [“Alina Reyes de Aráoz and her husband arrived in Budapest
April sixth, and tool accommodations at the Ritz. . . . She came to the bridge
and crossed it as far as the middle, walking now with some difficulty because
the snow hindered her and from the Danube a wind comes up from below, a
difficult wind which hooks and lashes (26)”].13
The protagonist’s psychic displacement is materialized in the strange
meeting, when in the exact middle of the bridge connecting the two halves of
the Hungarian capital, Alina encounters and embraces the body of the beggar:
“En el centro del puente desolado la harapienta mujer del pelo negro y lacio
esperaba con algo fijo y ávido . . . Alina estuvo junto a ella . . . y las dos se
abrazaron rígidas y calladas en el puente, con el río golpeando en los pilares”
(437) [“At the center of the desolate bridge the ragged woman with black
straight hair waited with something fixed and anxious . . ., and the two, stiff and
silent, embraced one another on the bridge with the crumbling river hammering
against the abutments” (27)].14 Though Alina’s dream turns out to be strict real-
ity in the fictional world created by Cortázar, the effect it produces deviates from
Alina’s expectations (generated by her dream).15 Indeed, the transmigration of
souls in the middle of the bridge, as a result of “la fusión total” (437), fright-
ens Alina rather than bringing her relief.16
Alina’s displacement turns out to be ‘physical’ rather then psychological.
Indeed, it remains unclear at the end of the story whether her divided self has
achieved full integrity or not. As Andrew Parker observes, the capacity to be
displaced is “a condition which renders impossible any notion of stable
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self-identity” (137).17 In this way, as an architectural construction and a place

of meeting of Alina with her self, the bridge emphasizes fragmentation rather
than unity; it is associated with a never realized desire for reconciliation.18
Alina’s displacement exemplifies a vision of the body/soul relationship as
dynamic. This manifests a dialogical relationship between Cortázar’s text and
the psycho-analytical approach to the connection between the human psyche
and the body as indispensable, yet not static.19
Alina’s linguistic games can also be metaphorically identified with a
construction of the imaginary bridge as a part of the search for her inner self.20
Both the creation and subversion of Alina-a ‘society’ girl and Alina-beggar are
the verbal/fictional ‘bridges’ that manifest displacement as imaginary removal.
Indeed, the games with words, a creation of anagrams and palindromes, make
Alina believe that she can find her way to the “other”: “Alina Reyes, es la reina
y . . . Tan hermoso, éste, porque abre un camino, porque no concluye. Porque la
reina y . . . No, horrible. Horrible porque abre camino a ésta que no es la reina,
y que otra vez odio de noche. A ésa que es Alina Reyes pero no la reina de ana-
grama; que será cualquier cosa, mendiga en Budapest . . . cualquier lado lejos y no
reina” (429) [“Alina Reyes, es la reina y . . . That one’s so nice because it opens
a path, because it does not close. Because the queen and. . . . No, horrible.
Horrible because it opens a path to this one who is not the queen and whom
I hate again at night. To her who is Alina Reyes but not the queen of the anagram;
let her be anything, a Budapest beggar . . ., any place that’s far away and not the
queen” (18)]. Indeed, the extra letter “y” reveals she has a simultaneous other
existence—part of Alina, but distinct from the person she knows herself to be. The
“y” intrigues Alina because it opens a limitless passageway, indicating an expan-
sion of self: “Tan hermoso, éste porque abre un camino, porque no concluye.
Porque la reina y . . .” (429) [“That one’s so nice because it opens a path, because
it does not close. Because the queen and . . . la reina y . . . .” (18)].21 The linguis-
tic displacement and its consequences, as a manifestation of the protagonist’s
divided self, illustrate Margarita Fazzolari’s observation that “El desplazamiento
de la personalidad, tan frecuente en los cuentos de Cortázar, expresa el paso del
yo al todo y del todo a otro yo distinto y perturbador” (195) [“A displacement of
personality that so frequently takes place in Cortázar’s stories, expresses a step
which takes ‘I’ to everything and from everything to a different and disturbing
‘I’ ”]. An overtly metafictional ontology of Alina as both queen and beggar, as
Alina’s linguistic games reveal, increases the uncertainty in distinction between
the protagonist’s ‘authentic’ (‘true’) self and a false one.22 Consequently, the dis-
tance between selves, as well as between the cities they are from (Buenos Aires
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and Budapest), turns out to be reduced.23 Though the fantastic twist, the desired
exchange of identities takes place, Buenos Aires and Budapest, as well as Alina-
“la reina” (429) and Alina-beggar, remain foreign lands for the protagonist.
Alina’s diary exemplifies the poetics of displacement, as an ‘unshakable’
bridge between Alina and her ‘true’ divided self. Her way to obtain fulfillment
lies through literary self-expression. The protagonist’s discourse turns out to be
determining, rather than reflecting or portraying, the character’s psychic reality:
her inner split. Indeed, functioning as a “self-narrative” (Steedman 28), Alina’s
writings address what is impossible to represent—the marginal and/or repressed.
Writing a diary becomes a way to get possession of her ‘self,’ the missing part of
her life. This diary could be considered an instance of an attempt “to discover . . .
a sense of unified selfhood,” (Waugh 6) which, as feminists would argue, women
as well as oppressed and marginalized groups have lost (see Stanley,
pp. 41–60). Indeed, both the Alina who lives in spiritual exile in Buenos Aires
and the beggar who consistently suffers from humiliation can be included in
these categories. Alina, for instance, confesses: “Estoy sola entre esas gentes sin
sentido” (431) [“I am alone among all these people without sensitivity” (19)].
Likewise, in her imagination, the Budapest beggar is alone and unprotected:
“A veces sé que tiene frío, que sufre, que le pegan.” (429) [“At times I know
that she’s cold, that she suffers, that they beat her” (18)].24 While early references
to the ill-treated woman allow one to distinguish between her and Alina Reyes,
in Alina’s further meditations their identities become inerchangeable: “Puedo
solamente odiarla tanto, aborrecer las manos que la tiran al suelo y también a
ella, a ella todavía más porque le pegan, porque soy yo y le pegan” (429) [“I can
only hate her so much, detest the hands that throw her to the ground and her
as well, her even more because they beat her, because I am I and they beat her”
(19)]. As Eliane Lavaud observes, in these writings “la frontera entre lo vivido
y lo imaginario se hace cada vez más frágil, más sutil” (69) [“the boundary
between the lived and the imagined every time becomes more fragile, more
subtle”]. Finally, the ambiguous use of pronouns makes it impossible to distin-
guish between the two sides of Alina’s self: “La pasaba a aquella, a mí tan
lejos . . . Porque a mí, a la lejana, no la quieren” (430) [“It was happening to that
one, to me far off . . . Because in the distances they do not love me-her”] (19).
This mixture of first and third person pronouns both reveals the notion of self
to be subversive and makes one associate presence with displacement.
Involving dissemination and transformation and producing a turbulence of
signifiers, writing appears to be the only home for Alina’s displaced self. Her
diary, which both thematizes displacement and adopts it as a narrative strategy
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exemplifies a poetics of displacement. It is the most efficient way to express a

lack and/or desire for presence that builds and undermines the bridge of Alina’s
self and questions the very notion of identity. Alina’s diary, as a literary expres-
sion of the protagonist’s divided self, functions as a metapoetical bridge, a
text-within-the text, where spatial and subjective dimensions interact in the
common movement of displacement. In this way, the literal, metaphorical
and metapoetical functions of a bridge in “Lejana” allows one to discover a par-
allel between the city, self and writing, all of which possess a spatial dimension
interrelated with a subjective one. Both echoing and modifying its conventional
functions in literature, the bridge, as a construction of displacement, turns out
to be a unifying image of the different levels of Cortázar’s story. This text embod-
ies and undermines the very concept of division (split/gap/lack) and celebrates
a subversion of borders, either physical, psychic, linguistic or metapoetical/
textual.
Beyond the Door:

Rediscovering the Multiple Self
The door in “La puerta condenada,” inspired by Cortázar’s own experience of
tiredness and solitude in a hotel room during a visit to Montevideo (Garfield
104), stands for the metaphor of the unknown about the human self and for
the symbol of the self’s lost integrity.25 This functioning of the door and the
presence of the childhood motif also allow one to consider Cortázar’s text as
influenced by H. G. Wells’s classic “The Door in the Wall.”
Displacement as imaginary removal, and the topos of divided identity asso-
ciated with symbolism of the door as a part of the setting of the protagonist’s
room, determines the development of the story, which celebrates open-ended-
ness and incompleteness. As Bachelard observes, “the door is an entire cosmos
of Half-open” (231) that implies mystery and temptation; it is one of the primal
images that stand at “the very origin of a daydream that accumulates desires”
(222). The mention of “half-open” also indicates that the mystery can be revealed
and the temptation satisfied, for at certain moments the door may be opened,
“wide-opened” (Bachelard 222). Referring to the “doors of hesitation” (223), the
French philosopher points to the essential ontological and epistemological
indeterminacy associated with this image.
The door also evokes the idea of “half-open” in Cortázar’s story. Indeed,
functioning as “a border” or “an edge” (Stavans 87), the door separates the pro-
tagonist, the salesman Petrone who is staying in the Montevideo hotel
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“Cervantes,” from the room next door, where, he is informed, lives a single
woman.26 In spite of this information, Petrone is annoyed for two consecutive
nights by the crying of a baby: “No se engañaba, el llanto venía de la pieza
de al lado. El sonido se oía a través de la puerta condenada, se localizaba en ese
sector de la habitación al que correspondía los pies de la cama” (112) [“There
was no deception; the cry came from there, from the room next to his. A sound
came through the sealed door to the sector of his room that corresponded to
his bed’s legs”]. The presence of the locked door in his claustrophobic room,
which in the author’s own words “parecía una celda, la celda de una cárcel”
(108) [“looked like a cell, a cell in a prison”], awakens Petrone’s imagination
and allows him to hear this cry, the origin of which remains mysterious till the
end of the narrative: “De no estar allí la puerta condenada, el llanto no hubiera
vencido las fuertes espaldas de la pared, nadie hubiera sabido que en la pieza de
al lado estaba llorando un niño” (277) [“If the shut off door were not there,
nobody would know about the child—this cry would not overcome thick
walls”].27 Cortázar comments on the influence of the sealed door on the
creation of the strange atmosphere in the other room: “De golpe, la noción de
por qué estaba condenada la puerta . . . le creaba a la otra habitación un ambi-
ente extraño” (107) [“Suddenly, the idea of why the door was sealed . . .; it was
creating a weird aura behind it in another room”].28
The presence of the closed door and the childhood motif generated by the
mechanism of displacement in Cortázar’s story reminds one of H. G. Wells’s
“The Door in the Wall” and suggests new dimensions of the classic metaphor
that both situate the Argentine author within a continuum of the world liter-
ature and underline his individual talent. In both texts the door marks an alter-
native, “the world of difference,” between “the busy life of a schoolboy and the
infinite leisure of a child” (Wells 149) in Wells’s text or between the life of the
salesman and the child-self in Cortázar’s story. Petrone’s longing for the baby’s
cry the last day he stays in the hotel illustrates José Ortega’s observation that
in “La puerta condenada,” the door-metaphor is “el vehículo que sirve para
apuntar hacia . . . otra realidad, es la puerta (metaforizada ya en el título)
que abre el anodino mundo de Petrone a una desconocida y enriquecedora
dimensión de la realidad” (187) [“the guide towards . . . another reality, it is a
door (already metaphorized in the title) which opens Petrone’s innocuous
world to an unfamiliar and enriching dimension of reality”].29 Indeed, after hav-
ing been disturbed by the baby’s cry for two nights, Petrone misses it and can
be relieved only by imagining that he hears it the night after the woman’s depar-
ture: “Extrañaba el llanto del niño, y cuando mucho más tarde lo oyó, débil pero
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inconfundible a través de la puerta condenada, por encima del miedo, por

encima de la fuga en plena noche supo que estaba bien y que la mujer no había
mentido, no se había mentido, no se había mentido al arrular al niño, al querer
que el niño se callara para que ellos pudieran dormirse” (282–283; italics
added) [“He was missing the cry, and when much later, he heard a weak unmistak-
able sound behind the sealed door, he realized-through fear, through desire to run
away at night—that he was fine and that the woman did not lie, that she was
right in lulling a child to calm down, so that they would be able to sleep”].
For Petrone, as well as for Lionel Wallace in Wells’s story, “the guise of wall
and door offered . . . an outlet, a secret and peculiar escape into another and
altogether more beautiful world” (Wells 157). Whereas in Wells’s story, the
door is a sort of time machine through which a voyage to the land of inspira-
tion and imagination becomes possible through “a real wall to immortal real-
ities” (142), in Cortázar’s text the door both opens the possibility of harmony
and emphasizes the character’s existential displacement, his irrecoverable
distance from it. In the “Door in the Wall,” the door is explicitly connected with
a metaphorical recovery of the lost paradise associated with childhood, a gar-
den and a dream with the existence of a higher consciousness or level of being.
This gives a sense of timelessness, wholeness and immediacy of experience
(though incessantly deferred by Lionel’s death). In “La puerta condenada,” on
the other hand, increasing the protagonist’s awareness of his own alienation and
his spiritual exile from his self, the presence of the door and the baby’s cry under-
line the loss of self-integrity, an epistemological and ontological fragmentation,
which the protagonist both possibly witnesses and displays himself.
Significantly, having been hidden by the large wardrobe, the door in
Cortázar’s story can be completely incorporated into the room’s setting
only through the act of imaginary displacement, introduced through an erotic
motif that links space and subjectivity. Echoing Freud’s placement of the
door “among the commonest sexual symbols” (397), in Cortázar’s story it is
metaphorically identified with a woman: “las habitaciones tenían alguna puer-
ta condenada . . . casi siempre con un ropero, una mesa o un perchero delante,
que como en este caso les daba una cierta ambiguedad, un avergonzado deseo
de disimular su existencia como una mujer que cree taparse poniéndose las
manos en el vientre o los senos” (276) [“the rooms had a sealed door, sometimes
openly visible, but almost always screened with a wardrobe, table or coat stand
that, as in this case, gave it a certain ambiguity, a bashful desire to mask its exis-
tence, as a woman who hopes to hide her belly and her breasts with her hands”].30
The wardrobe that covers the door has a mirror, in which the protagonist looks
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before he goes to sleep. Functioning as “a trap and a site of alienation” (Pile 160),
which according to Lacan implies “a moment of misrecognition” (Lacan 160),
the presence of the mirror in the room indicates a possibility of the self-division,
“an irrecoverable split” (Freud qtd. in Pile 161) or “gap” (Lacan qtd. in Pile 161)
that the protagonist both witnesses and displays himself. Thus, evoking both the
psychoanalytical and phenomenological approaches to the poetics of space,
according to which houses and rooms “are in us as much as we are in them”
(Bachelard XXXIII), the setting of Petrone’s room implicitly introduces a topos
of divided identity, one of the thematic focuses of the story.31
The presence of the locked door and its location evokes the protagonist’s
imagination, which exercises displacement, illustrates the lack of self-integrity
and points to an epistemological gap in knowledge about the human self. The
discovery of the door, for example, leads Petrone, for the first time, to draw an
imaginary parallel between himself and his neighbor: “Petrone imaginó que del
otro lado habría tambien un ropero y que la señora de la habitación pensaría
lo mismo de la puerta” (276) [“Petrone imagined that on the other side, there
was also a wardrobe, and that the woman in the contiguous room would have
similar thoughts about the door”].
The imaginary symmetry between two rooms and their inhabitants
culminates when Petrone mimics the crying he hears (or imagines that he
hears) from the next door at night: “se pegó a ella (la puerta) . . . y acercando
la boca a las tablas de pino empezó a imitar en falsete, imperceptiblemente, un
quejido como el que venía de otro lado . . .” (280) [“he leaned against the
door . . ., and bringing his mouth close to the pine slots, he started imitating
imperceptibly, in falsetto, the moan, which was coming from the other room”].
The facts that the crying from the other room stops when the protagonist imi-
tates it, the woman’s departure from the hotel the next morning, and the rep-
etition of the same sound coming from the empty room next night all allow
critics to consider this text as the variation of the traditional fantastic fear-ghost
for stories.32 According to Ana Hernández del Castillo, the atmosphere of the
hotel suggests in itself the idea of “suppression” and anticipates the presence of
the mother and child whom the protagonist hears behind the blocked door”
(51–52).33 Petrone’s own interpretation of the nature of the crying he hears the
first night points to the split of his neighbour’s self and suggests that she loses
a part of her self in his act of transcendence-imitation, and that this could be
a reason for a woman’s sudden departure. Indeed, the protagonist blames the
noise on the woman, who in hysterics, in his opinion, imitates the weeping of
a baby and then tries to calm the nonexistent baby down: “La mujer estaba
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imitando el llanto de su hijo frustrado, consolando el aire entre sus manos

vacías” (280) [“The woman was imitating the crying of her frustrated child, try-
ing to calm down the air between her empty arms”]. The true nature of the
sound of the crying baby remains, however, unknown. Petrone’s second night’s
illusion may be considered a psychological reaction to the unsatisfied tempta-
tion “to open up the ultimate depths of being” (Bachelard 222), which
remained closed behind “la puerta condenada” [“the sealed door”].
The fact that the night after his neighbor’s departure he still hears the baby’s
crying in the empty room illustrates displacement as a basic mechanism of the
imaginary and points to the protagonist’s own self-division and ontological anx-
iety. According to Julia Kristeva, the imaginary refers to “the representation of
strategies of identification, introjection and projection, which mobilizes the
image of the body, the ego and the other, and which makes use of primary
processes (displacement and condensation)” (289; italics added). Indeed, pro-
gressing beyond the personal “real” world, Petrone adds imaginary fragments
to his vision that exemplifies “the imaginary” to be “generated by transference”
(Kristeva 285), displacement of pedestrian boundaries imposed by his role as
a salesperson. The act of imaginary displacement through which Petrone rein-
vents/rediscovers himself allows Roger Carmosino to emphasize the similarities
between an imaginary child and the protagonist himself: “La descripción imag-
inaria del niño que hace el protagonista . . . da características que adivinamos
en el mismo. . . . Es obvio que al día siguiente no podrá cumplir con la rutina
del hombre de negocios, pues ya nunca será el mismo. Ha tenido que admitir
toda una zona del ser que antes desconocía o rechazaba” (144) [“The imaginary
description of the child which the protagonist gives . . . suggests characteristics
which we can guess are in himself . . . It is obvious that the next day he would
not be able to follow the routine of the businessman, he will never be the same.
He will need to admit a whole new zone in himself of which he was either
unaware or which he had earlier rejected”].
Cortázar’s own comment in “Del sentimiento de lo fantástico” [“On the
sense of the fantastic”] that “Los únicos que creen . . . en los fantasmas son
los fantasmas mismos” (La vuelta 1:75) [“The only beings who believe in phan-
toms . . . are phantoms themselves”] also points to the common ontology of the
protagonist and the baby, both created by the same mechanism of the imagi-
nary. The text, however, remains open-ended. That makes it possible to expand
Sosnowski’s observation that “el llanto era de una dimensión ajena a la
‘cognoscible’ ” (31) [“a cry was foreign to any ‘knowable’ dimension”]. The door
makes the text enter this “half-open” world, and leaves the nature of the baby’s
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cry closed to any final interpretation, a manifestation of the intrinsic epistemo-

logical uncertainty about the human self, which remains an unexplored con-
tinent. In this way, the symbolism of the door in “La puerta condenada,”
inspired by phenomenological and psychoanalytical theories as well as by
earlier fiction, allows one to relate spatial, epistemological and existential
dimensions of displacement: displacement as imaginary removal makes the door
as “half-open” as the human self.
Divided Lives, Overlapping Spaces,

and the Impossibility of Self-Deception
Displacement is also linked with self-division in “Cartas de mamá.”34
Exemplifying a functioning of the urban space as chronotope, a representation
of the Paris/Buenos Aires opposition in “Cartas de mamá” emphasizes the ter-
ritorial and spiritual displacement of the protagonists Luis and his wife Laura.
Neither of these cities is their home where internal integrity and harmony can
be obtained, for the couple continuously suffers from tormenting memories
about Nico, Luis’s dead brother and Laura’s former boyfriend, a situation aggra-
vated by the letters they receive from Luis’s mother in Buenos Aires.
Paris and Buenos Aires are both united and separated in the lives of Luis and
Laura, both of whom display a conflict between a presentational self and the prob-
lematic ‘real’ one. Having stolen Laura from his brother precisely at the time of
the latter’s fatal illness of tuberculosis, and having married her immediately after
Nico’s death, Luis leaves for Paris in order to free himself from the feelings of guilt
he and his wife experience. A representation of Paris as an embodiment of an
artificial order and a false sense of well-being emphasizes their condition of exile
in this city, and illustrates the protagonists’ belief in their escape to be a self-
deception. Indeed, the visible comfort and apparent forgetfulness obtained in
Paris creates an illusion of “libertad condicional” (213) [“a conditional freedom”],
which, as the narrator ironically observes, makes their life “sorprendentemente
fácil, el trabajo pasable, el departamento bonito, las películas excelentes” (219)
[“surprisingly easy, a manageable job, a nice apartment, excellent movies”].35
Their distance from Buenos Aires does not cure them, for the memories never
completely abandon Luis’s imagination and his apparently shadowless routine:
“Ahora era casi capaz de olvidarse de todo eso. Iba a la agencia, dibujaba afiches,
volvía a comer, bebía la taza de café que Laura le alcanzaba sonriendo. Iban
mucho al cine, mucho a los bosques, conocián cada vez mejor París” (219; ital-
ics added) [“Now he was almost ready to forget about all this. He was going to
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the agency, was drawing posters, was coming back to eat, was drinking a cup of
coffee which Laura served him with smile. They were going often to the cinema,
to the forests, were becoming more and more familiar with Paris.”]. Likewise,
Laura is not free from thoughts about Nico, who frequently visits her in a form
of a nightmare. As the narrator observes, “Soñaba mucho, pero la pesadilla era
distinta, Luis la reconocía entre muchos otros movimientos de su cuerpo, palabras
confusas o breves gritos de animal que se ahoga” (228) [“She dreamt often, but
nightmares could be recognized immediately. Luis recognized them among many
other movements of her body, confused words and the short screams of a suffo-
cated animal”]. Thus, the characters’ well-being in France is an artifact that inter-
nalizes the syntax of displacement.
The life of Luis and Laura in Paris is explicitly compared to that of the
displaced word, a word in brackets both separated and connected with the main
phrase: “No quedaba más que una parva libertad condicional, la irrisión de vivir
a la manera de una palabra entre paréntesis, divorciada de la frase principal de
la que sin embargo es casi siempre sostén y explicación” (214) [“No more was
left than an appearance of freedom, a mirage of life, like a word in brackets,
divorced from the main clause, for which, nevertheless, it almost always pro-
vides support and explanation.”]. This reference is a metaphorical way of estab-
lishing a hierarchy between Paris and Buenos Aires, with Buenos Aires as a
dominant. Indeed, the abundance of toponymic references to Buenos Aires
indicates its presence in the protagonists’ life in Paris, a description of which,
on the contrary, is reduced to the mentioning of “la rue de Richelieu” (214) and
the train station where the dead Nico is supposed to arrive. Thus, in spite of
the fact that the action takes place there, Paris remains a vague, distanced con-
struct which functions as a chronotope, where the present appears to be reduced
to the blank, to displacement. This representation of Paris stresses the protag-
onist’s alienation in this city and illustrates the futility of attempts to repress
memories and to obtain life free from the constraints of the past.
Buenos Aires enters a fictional world of Cortázar’s text through the
epistolary bridge of a mother’s letters, and the characters’ reaction to them and
to their own memories. As if illustrating Bachelard’s observation about the supe-
riority of the house of childhood, “most firmly fixed in our memories” (30), this
urban space has been always vividly present in the protagonists’ life although
they avoid mentioning it: “No es que a Luis no le gustara acordarse de Buenos
Aires. Más bien se trataba de evadir nombres (las personas, evadidas hacía ya
tanto tiempo, pero los nombres, los verdaderos fantasmas que son los nombres, esa
duración pertinaz)” (214; italics added) [“It was not that Luis did not like to recall
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Buenos Aires. It was more an intent to avoid names (people, avoided already
for such a long time, but names, the true ghosts of enduring persistence)”]. The
mentioning of the recognizable places of Buenos Aires functions as a metonymy,
a rhetorical mechanism of displacement that brings the familiar urban space
into the protagonists’ lives and indicates the hidden nostalgia they experience:
“Rivadavia al seis mil quinientos, el caserón de Flores, mamá, el café de San
Martín y Corrientes donde lo esperaban a veces los amigos, donde el mazagrán
tenía un leve gusto a aceite de ricino” (213) [“Rivadavia, number sixty five hun-
dred, a mansion in Flores, mamá, a café on San Martín and Corrientes where
sometimes his friends waited for him, where sweet coffee had a slight taste of
castor oil”]. Escape from this city of the protagonists’ childhood turns out to be
impossible: “San Martín, Rivadavia, pero esos nombres eran también imá-
genes de calles y de cosas” (213) [“San Martín, Rivadavia, but these names were
also images of streets and things”]. The constant presence of Buenos Aires in
Luis’s and Laura’s Parisian life exemplifies incompleteness and dislocation,
subverts the measure of distance in time and space in the representation of
chronotopes, and emphasizes the protagonists’ condition of exile.
Likewise, the ambiguous reaction evoked in Luis and Laura by his mother’s
letters from Buenos Aires illustrates the characters’ split identities and nostal-
gia from which they suffer.36 Being “siempre una alteración del tiempo, un
pequeño escándolo inofensivo dentro del orden de cosas” (213) [“always an inter-
ruption in time, a little inoffensive scandal in the order of things”], these writ-
ings both point to and undermine the distance between Paris and Buenos Aires:
“Cada vez que la portera le entregaba un sobre, a Luis le bastaba reconocer la
minúscula cara familiar de José San Martín para comprender que otra vez más
habría de franquear el puente” (213–214; italics added) [“Each time when the
superintendent handed him an envelope, it was sufficient for Luis to have just
a look at the stamp with the familiar portrait of José de San Martín to realize that
once again he would have to cross the bridge”]. The mentioning of the bridge,
associated with the passageway from one dimension to another (Paris/Buenos
Aires, present/past) will later reappear in Cortázar’s Rayuela, as if exemplifying
Morelli’s metapoetical observation that one book is “puente vivo” for the other.
Whereas in this story it evokes the burden of memory, the feeling of guilt that
connects the present and the past, Paris and Buenos Aires; in the novel, the
bridge no longer has any emphatically ethical connotation, but rather obtains
a prominent metaphysical dimension in Oliveira’s discourse.
In both narratives, Rayuela and “La carta de mamá,” the image of the bridge
is associated with communication and alienation. La Maga refers to bridges when
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she talks about Oliveira’s inability to love: the bridge between the present and
the past which the mothers’ letters construct transforms Laura into an
“ajena”/“foreigner” to Luis, who is tormented by his feelings of guilt for his
dead brother. Believing that they make his present life to loose its ground, Luis
prefers immediately to respond to and displace these writings, as if to close the
door to the world of his childhood, which he wants to forget. This does not, how-
ever, succeed, and his intention, as well as his life in Paris (and Paris itself for
him) functions as a mask he deliberately puts on himself in order to conceal
(from himself and others) his attachment to the city of his memories and the
anxieties that they cause. Indeed, in the narrator’s discourse, the distinction
between Luis’s letters, his life and the streets of Paris turns out to be subverted
in the common action of “scratching out” that emphasizes their common arti-
ficiality: “Cada nueva carta insinuaba por un rato (porque después él las borraba
en el acto mismo de contestarlas cariñosamente) que su libertad duramente con-
quistada, esa nueva vida . . . cesaba de justificarse, perdía pie, se borraba como el
fondo de las calles mientras el autobus corría por la rue de Richelieu.” (213–214;
italics added) [“Every new letter reminded him for a moment (precisely for a
moment, because afterwards he scratched them out by the very act of a gentle
response) that his freedom, conquered in such a tough way, that this new life,
cut off by pitiless scissors from the tangled ball which others called his life, was
no longer justified. It was losing sense, its grounds were erasing as asphalt under
the wheels of a bus which was moving along la rue de Richelieu.”]. Though the
letters return Luis to the painful past as “un duro rebote de pelota” (213) [“a hard
bounce of a ball”], his life without them is unbearable: “No las detestaba; si le
hubieran faltado habría sentido caer sobre él la libertad como un peso inso-
portable. Las cartas de mamá le traían un tácito perdón . . . tendían el puente por
donde era posible seguir pasando” (219; italics added) [“He did not hate them;
if he had not received them, he would feel his freedom falling on him like an
unbearable weight. Mamá’s letters were bringing him a salient forgiveness . . .
they were throwing a bridge across which it was possible to continue walking”].37
Likewise, Laura is always waiting for the letters and rereads them many times:
“Las cartas de mamá interesaban siempre a Laura, . . . las releía” (216) [“She was
always interested in letters from mama . . . reread them”]. In this way, the char-
acters’ emotional response to the letters they receive emphasize their existen-
tial displacement in both Paris and Buenos Aires; the latter, which they
deliberately left, dominates their life abroad.
A representation of Paris and Buenos Aires, which questions the presence/
absence dichotomy (and subverts both geographical and temporal distances),
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forms a parallel to the relationship between the protagonists and the dead Nico.38
Both the displacement of the past/Buenos Aires as well as the scratching out
of Nico’s name, whose arrival the mother’s last letter announces, turn out to
be illusions. The nervousness that Luis and Laura experience when his
mother suddenly starts mentioning Nico in her letters, as if he were alive,
emphasizes the characters’ inner split and manifests their life in Paris as a
more apparent then real liberation. Indeed, though tempted to consider the
mother’s mentioning of their late brother Nico’s arrival as a mistake, a mis-
spelling to their cousin’s name “Víctor,” neither Luis nor Laura, from whom at
first he decided to conceal the letter, cannot get rid of their thoughts about his
brother and the pain they evoke. As if displaying that his life is dependent on
the twists and turns of language rather than on logic and rationality, his mother’s
mentioning of Nico makes Luis feel that there is not enough room in the
apartment for two, and converts Laura into an “ajena”/foreign person: “Laura
estaba en París, pero cada carta de mamá la defínía como ajena” (219) [“Laura
was in Paris, but each letter from mamá, defined her as a stranger”].39 The idea
of a linguistic displacement as an escape from the emotional torture of Nico’s
presence is explicitly thematized: “En la agencia . . . releyó la carta, . . . sin
nada extraordinario fuera del párrafo donde se había equivocado de nombre.
Pensó si no podría borrar la palabra, reemplazar Nico por Víctor, sencillamente
reemplazar el error por la verdad, y volver con la carta a Laura para que Laura la
leyera” (216) [“At the advertising bureau . . . he reread the letter, . . . without
noticing anything extraordinary except for the paragraph where she had mixed
up a name. He even thought that it could be possible to erase the word, to change
Nico to Víctor, simply substitute the truth for a mistake, and to come back home
with the letter for Laura to read”].
All attempts to scratch out Nico, however, both from the letter and from
the characters’ memories, turn out to be doomed to failure, for as Luis asserts
with pain: “ ‘Si se pudiera romper y tirar el pasado como el borrador de una carta
o de un libro. Pero ahí queda siempre, manchando la copia en limpio, y yo creo
que eso es el verdadero futuro’ ” (214) [“ ‘If it would be possible to break and
throw away the past like a draft of a letter or a book. But it stays forever, con-
taminates the clean copy, and I believe, it is a true future’ ”.]. Indeed, in spite
of avoiding any mentioning of Nico, whose name has become “[u]n lento ter-
ritorio prohibido” (217) [ “a forbidden territory”], his presence is a constant in
Luis’ mind. This exemplifies Freud’s observation about silence being an efficient
way of preserving active memory. As Bachelard also observes, more telling in
many ways than the dialogue itself, silence allows “an entire past come to dwell
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in a new house” (5).40 The silence that surrounds his name in Paris has an
oxymoronic effect of bringing Nico into presence: “Lo raro era que Laura no
lo nombrara nunca, y que por eso también él lo nombrara, que Nico no fuera
ni siquiera el difunto, ni siquiera el cuñado muerto, el hijo de mamá . . . Laura
seguía sin nombrarlo, y él se plegaba a su silencio por cobardía, sabiendo que
en el fondo ese silencio lo agraviaba por lo que tenía de reproche, de arrepen-
timiento, de algo que empezaba a parecerse a la traición” (221). [“The strange
thing was that Laura never mentioned him, and therefore he also never did.
Nico was not even a deceased, not even a dead brother-in-law, a mamá’s
son. . . . Laura continued not to mention him, and he, Luis, from cowardice,
joined her in this silence, knowing that in the depth of his soul this silence
offended him because it had to do with a reproach, with repentance, with some-
thing that was starting to appear similar to a betrayal”]. As Susana Jakfalvi
observes, “[e]s tan inútil vivir negando la presencia fantasmal de Nico, el Otro,
que la vida de Luis y Laura se desarrolla en función de esa ausencia, que está
presente en todos sus actos, en todas sus intenciones” (38) [“It is so useless to
live negating the ghostly presence of Nico, of the Other, that Luis’s and Laura’s
lives evolve around his absence, an absence that is present in all their acts and
intentions”]. Thus, although Luis tries to apply his rules of symmetry and chess-
playing in order to dismiss Nico, his attempt can only be a pretended success:
“Nico iba a desembarcar en Francia, en París, en una casa donde se
fingía exquisitamente haberlo olvidado, pobrecito” (225) [“he [Nico] would arrive
in France, in Paris, at the house where everybody skillfully pretended to forget
about him, poor thing”].
The futility of their attempts to displace the dead Nico’s presence culmi-
nates in his arrival, at least as perceived by the protagonists. It is often inter-
preted by the critics as a fantastic element in the story.41 As Rodríguez-Luis
observes, “[a]t that moment the hesitation that is the fantastic’s most charac-
teristic feature appears and takes hold of the narrative” (80). I suggest that
Laura’s and Luis’s preparations for Nico’s arrival is a culminating expression of
the inner division that the protagonists experience, caused by the impossibil-
ity of exile from the feelings of guilt which cannot be displaced, in spite of the
attempt to change the territory.42 Moreover, the protagonists’ expectations of
the meeting with Nico, and their discussion of the impressions from it without
mentioning Nico’s name, subverts any distinction between Nico, Luis and
Laura: their aspirations to escape their memories leave the protagonists doomed
to a ‘ghost’ life that of “a memory trace[s]” which carry “sign of something miss-
ing” (Garber 129). Indeed, their presence in Paris is pointing toward the
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absence, their lives turn out to be empty sets, brackets containing an absence.
Ironically, it is Nico’s arrival that breathes life into the couple’s ghost-like
existence: “Quizá no todo estaba perdido, quizá la nueva vida llegara a ser real-
mente otra cosa que ese simulacro de sonrisas y de cine francés” (229) [“Perhaps
not everything was lost, perhaps the new life would indeed become something
else other then this mirage of phantom smiles and French cinema”].
The expressions of the feelings of guilt reach their climax when both Luis and
Laura, independently, come to meet Nico at the train station and try to identify
him among the people who just have arrived in Paris.43 As Luis observes, “Uno
sobre todo se parecía a Nico. . . . Y Laura debía haber pensado lo mismo” (223)
[“One . . . indeed looked like Nico. . . . And Laura was probably thinking the same
thing”]. The conversation between the protagonists after they have come back
from the train station, makes explicit their conscious incorporation of Nico’s pres-
ence in their lives: “—¿ A vos no te parece que está mucho más flaco?—dijo.
Laura hizo un gesto. Un brillo paralelo le bajaba por las mejillas.—Un poco—
dijo—. Uno va cambiando” (237) [“—Do you think that he has become much
thinner?—he asked. Laura made a gesture. Two shiny streams of tears were
running down her cheeks.—A little bit,—she said.—One is changing . . .”].
This act is the culminating expression of the protagonists’ anxiety, a man-
ifestation that their lives are exercises in self-deception, no less illusory then
Nico. The borders between the worlds of the dead and the living turn out to
be subverted in this dialogue, where subjectivity edits and rules experience.
Moreover, after the meeting with ‘dead’ Nico, Luis seems to copy his
brother’s possible actions: “Subió despacio (en realidad siempre subía despacio
para no fatigarse los pulmones y no toser)” (235) [“He slowly climbed up the
stairs (the truth is that he always was going up slowly, not to exhaust his lungs,
and not to cough)”]. A mention of Luis’ possible ill-health establishes an
uncanny parallel with his brother that allows the story to remain enigmatically
open-ended.44 Typically for Cortázar’s short stories, as Osvaldo López Chuhurra
observes, “[l]a dualidad difícilmente se resuelve en la unidad; se cerraría en un
vértice . . . Julio Cortázar no acostumbrado casi nunca colocar punto final”
(215) [“the duality is hardly ever resolved in unity; it closes in a vertex . . . Julio
Cortázar almost never places the final point”]. In this way, a representation of
the geographical Paris/Buenos Aires opposition and the parallels it evokes and
challenges, such as presence/absence and dead/alive dichotomies, turn out to
be illuminating manifestations of the protagonists’ divided identities, which
exercise an imaginary spatial displacement as both an expression and a conse-
quence of the ethical problem.
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Territorial displacement is consistently associated with psychological

division in Cortázar’s stories.45 The overt functioning of displacement as a
dream-mechanism in “Lejana” illustrates Pile’s observation that “Freud’s ideas
help to unpack and to specify the relationships between the individual, the
social and the spatial” (108). Indeed, Cortázar’s view of subjectivity and
spatiality as interrelated and unfixed realms reveal the influence of psycho-
analytical writings on his oeuvra.
Psychoanalytical and phenomenological approaches to displacement
converge in “La puerta condenada,” where the idea of “half-open” and imagi-
nary removal guide the protagonist, probably inspired by H. G. Wells’ “Door
in the Wall.” The phenomenological concept of place-body-self continuity allows
the author to build a crossroad between different cities, times and states of being
in “Cartas de mamá.”
The implicit dialogue between Cortázar’s stories and Bachelard’s
phenomenology allows one to suggest that texts by the Argentine author both
use and deviate from conceptions proposed by the French philosopher and his
followers. Though symbolic functions of the door and the bridge reappear in
Cortázar’s stories, his texts subvert any idea of fixed subjectivity and therefore
any stable relationship between a place and an individual.
Territorial displacement, a trope that emphasizes the characters’ divided
identity, is a recurring motif in the texts analyzed, where the protagonists,
strangers to their own selves, endlessly search for fulfillment and self-definition.
This search has ethical connotations springing either out of dissatisfaction
from the luxurious but empty life in “Lejana,” from tiredness and solitude of the
salesman’s life in “La puerta condenada,” and from the inability to avoid the
feelings of guilt in “Cartas de mamá.” In all the texts, displacement and the idea
of reconciliation turn out to be associated with physical places as starting
points for the imaginary/physical removal such as a bridge in “Lejana,” a door
in “La puerta condenada” and Paris in “Cartas de mamá.” Using the images of
places of transition that have a long literary tradition, Cortázar’s texts make
them acquire a ‘new’ dimension: they emphasize the protagonists’ distance from
themselves, their spiritual and/or territorial exile. Indeed, the dream of integrity
and harmony, which Alina Reyes (“Lejana”), Petrone (“La puerta condenada”)
and Luis and Laura (“Cartas de mamá”) have in common, paradoxically leads
to an opposite effect: by creating an imaginary version of themselves, ‘others’
or their world, the characters only reinforce their feelings of displacement.
Further, the functioning of the bridge, both as an architectural construction that
connects two contrasting parts of the city, and as metaphor of the protagonist’s
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divided identity in “Lejana,” for example, as well as the projection of the

Paris/Buenos Aires opposition on the Luis and Laura/Nico relationship in
“Cartas de mamá,” allows one to see a parallelism between the city (bridge) and
the self (body) that subverts a conventional inside/outside opposition.
Moreover, in none of these stories it is possible to decide which one is the
protagonist’s ‘true’ self. This illustrates their affinity with postmodern anthropo-
logical expression of both epistemological and ontological uncertainty about
human identity. The meeting of Alina with her imaginary self on the bridge,
which separates two parts of the city as contrasting as the society Buenos Aires
girl and the poor Budapest woman, rather emphasizes their spiritual, corporeal and
territorial gaps than brings about their reconciliation. Likewise, Petrone’s life as
a salesman becomes paralyzed by the discovery of the child-presence both out-
side and in himself that, supposedly, would make him leave the hotel. An appar-
ent happy life in Paris, invaded by the Buenos Aires of his mother’s letters and
the protagonists’ silent memories, only emphasizes Luis’s and Laura’s “ghost”-like
existence, which finally makes them almost indistinguishable from dead Nico.
Illustrating the importance of the internal spatial dimension in Cortázar’s
writings, these stories, taken from different books, indicate a consistency of the
movement away from the very dichotomies that they appear to establish within
themselves, such as presence/absence, voice/silence, dead/alive, child/adult, rich/
beggar, etc. At the same time, territorial and/or spiritual displacement, as a man-
ifestation of place-self-writing relationship, characteristically turns out to be an
expression of an existential dilemma in Cortázar’s short stories.
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06.qxd 29/8/07 6:25 PM Page 129
CONCLUSION
With false hope of a firm foundation gone, with the world displaced by worlds
that are but versions, we face the questions how worlds are made, tested, and
known.
Nelson Goodman
Narrative worlds created by Borges and Cortázar, challenge from different, yet
ultimately related, perspectives, all attempts to define place and identity, by
means of dichotomies such as here and there, self and other, and home and
exile. While the works of both authors address a multiplicity of cultures,
languages and territories, their approaches to ‘place’ are not identical. Borges’s
elaboration of “place” suggests imagined settings for mystical experiences and
impossible objects. In his texts, place can be read as a trope that stands for the
human aspiration to bridge the gap between the finite and the infinite. In
contrast, for Cortázar, place is a locality for dwelling and thinking, a starting
point for existential experiences with ethical connotations.
In Borges’s narratives, place is an infinite source of searching, dissemination
and transformation which evokes continuous displacement. A mysterious Aleph
(“El Aleph”), which can be interpreted as a manifestation of the infinite capac-
ity of revelation to acquire new forms, in fact exposes everything and nothing.1
Similarly, the circular ruins (“Las ruinas circulares”), a sacred place chosen by
the magician, leaves unresolved the mystery about the nature of the human self.
Impossible objects such as a book of sand (“El libro de arena”) that supposedly
incorporates the universe in its entirety, and a disk (“El disco”) which stands for
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a totality of the pagan world, are lost at the end of their respective stories.
Moreover, displacement, as both a mechanism of dream and a characteristic of
their manifestation such as the ruined palace “Xanadu” or its poetic equivalent,
the lyric fragment “Kubla Khan” (“El sueño de Coleridge”), indicates a mirror
relationship between inside (mental) and outside (empirical) worlds as well as
between factually existing locations and openly imaginary. The equivalence
between the palace and the poetic image (“El sueño de Coleridge”), the wall and
the books points to their common onthology: fiction. Thus, for Borges, place
turns out to be displaced into a “meta” concept. Beyond the physical and tan-
gible, it is an object of dream, thought and interpretation rather than a mater-
ial locality. By bringing to bear on various philosophical, anthropological and
literary discourses, I have mapped out the dynamic of place and displacement
in these two authors’ narratives, and I have been able to locate several “sities”
of Borges’s writings within Cortázar’s fictional universe.
Borges’s approach to place as a metaphysical and metafictional construct
was influential for Cortázar, particularly as evidenced in the image of Buenos
Aires created in Rayuela. I have demonstrated the significance of Borges’s
Fervor de Buenos Aires in the gestation of “metaphysical-artistic” Buenos Aires
in Rayuela, as well as Cortázar’s swerving from Borges’s conceptions. In his early
poetry, Borges fashions an overtly “metaphysical” Buenos Aires whose repre-
sentation is informed by a fusion of local color and his commitment to philo-
sophical idealism. In Rayuela Cortázar takes metaphysical conceptions akin to
those of Borges as an ingredient of his own literary world imbued with carni-
valesque elements. In Cortázar’s novel both carnivalesque and metaphysical
aspects of the city exemplify the author’s despair in the world he cannot accept
and function as a mask of anxiety. Cortázar’s ludic references to motifs and sym-
bols recurrent in Borges’s works (such as human life determined by literary sce-
narios, Pascal’s notion of the sphere, word-games, the labyrinth, and so on) also
emphasize dialogic relationships between these writers works that both display
Borges’s influence on Cortázar’s narratives, and allow a reader to appreciate
these writers’ unique contributions to literature.
Further, both Borges’s and Cortázar’s texts blur boundaries between overtly
imaginary and recognizable locations. Inspired by such canonical texts as
Appolodorus’s Library, More’s Utopia, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Wells’ The Time
Machine, Borges chooses exotic locations as in “Utopia del hombre que está
cansado” or in “La casa de Asterión” which are gradually transformed to the ter-
rifyingly familiar ones. Cortázar’s narratives incorporate apparently recognizable
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conclusion 131
objects, such as the City in 62: Modelo para armar or the ship in Los Premios. The
capacities and limitations of the characters, however, gradually mutate these sur-
roundings into extraordinary locations that share dystopian dominant. This
vision of utopia/dystopia as no longer “nowhere” and of familiar places as increas-
ingly displaced can be seen as an artistic manifestation of the authors’ common
experience of displacement and emotional exile.2
In Borges’s narratives physical displacement is a point of departure for his
elaboration of his vision of space as a function of time where present, past, and
future coexist; in Cortázar’s texts physical displacement can be read as trope for
psychological self-division; it undermines the inside/outside opposition and intro-
duces an ethical dimension. Both Paris and Buenos Aires, in Rayuela and “Cartas
de mamá,” are associated with the territorial and emotional exile of the protag-
onists. The Budapest bridge is the place for the manifestation of Alina Reyes’s
inner self-division which is never overcome (“Lejana”). And the door in “La puer-
ta condenada” makes it possible for Petrone to witness the splitting of the inner
world of his neighbor, and to manifest his own self-division. Moreover, being
aware of their displacement, Cortázar’s characters search for their own ‘place,’
which is an unreachable, idealized location associated with inner harmony and
the recovery of their lost integrity. Oliveira, for example, is desperately looking
for a center, a mysterious place/object he can hardly define (Rayuela); Alina
dreams about the bridge where she will be able to meet her double (“Lejana”);
Juan idealizes “la ciudad,” which in his imagination is a happy alternative to real
cities such as London, Paris and Vienna (62: Modelo para armar); the passengers
consider the ship Malcolm (Los premios) a place for rest from the everyday prob-
lems they face in Buenos Aires; and Luis and Laura from “Cartas de mamá” des-
perately strive to escape a feeling of guilt. Place and displacement are consistently
connected with the existential/moral search for integrity, truth, “lo abierto”
(Cortázar 61) that makes the ethical quests prominent in his works.
Both Borges’s and Cortázar’s narratives can be productively read in an
implicit dialogue with philosophical and anthropological approaches to place.
A suggested study of Borges’s “El Aleph,” “Las ruinas circulares,” “El disco” and
“El libro de arena,” for example, allows one to discover a new dimension in the
influence of the kabbalistic thought on Borges’s writing, as well as in his insight-
ful interpretation of the Kabbalah, one of the sources of inspiration for his
literary themes. Evoking a vision of place offered by Jewish mystics, these sto-
ries allow the reader to distinguish one of the patterns prominent in Borges’s
narratives: his depiction of place as an artistic elaboration of revelation that
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lacks in single unequivocal meaning and displays infinite capacity for taking
new forms.
An analysis of Borges’s “La casa de Asterion” in light of Foucault’s notion
of heterotopia made it possible to suggest a structure lacking in a center to be
characteristic for such a place, a feature that does not appear in Foucault’s own
analysis. The use of Freud’s original concept of displacement as a heuristic tool
for literary analysis of “El sueño de Coleridge” makes it possible to compare and
contrast the expressed vision of dreams with that offered by the father of psy-
choanalysis. Whereas for Freud, the interpretation of displacement as a mech-
anism of dreams is a tool for understanding the work of the human psychic
apparatus, Borges’s essay presents dreams and their mechanisms as enigmatic,
and resistant to any definitive analysis.
Informed by his readings of Freud, Derrida’s notion of repression as archive
turns out to be compatible with a mirror-relationship between the actions of
displacement as a mental mechanism and as an instrument of political control
in “La muralla y los libros.” In his notion of archive, the French philosopher
maintains the parallel between mental and historical realms, originally intro-
duced by Freud. Borges’s essay can be seen as an extension of this connection,
for it implicitly suggests that the mechanism of dream work has its analogy in
a circular nature of history, whose processes are re-inscription/repetition and
trace, as well as in the perception of the aesthetic phenomenon whose inter-
pretations can never be complete and exhaustive.
In Cortázar’s texts, the notion of place as displacement responds to exis-
tentialist ideas that Borges, who “understands that personality that we praise
so much to be nothing” (Borges qtd. in Monegal 1925, 90), strongly disliked.3
The existentialist notion of exile/displacement as an experience of the return
to a person’s true self is both present in and challenged by Cortázar’s narratives.
Exile, defined by Kierkegaard and Said as an experience of “incompleteness”
and “open-endedness,” for instance, is thematized in Rayuela and “Cartas de
mama.” Said’s concept of the intellectual as traveler, a provisional guest, con-
sistently appears in Cortázar’s narratives, and it is most evidently embodied
in such characters as Persio (Los premios), Oliveira (Rayuela) and Juan (62:
Modelo para armar). According to existentialists, exile brings about reconcili-
ation between a person and his/her ‘true’ self. Cortázar’s narratives, however,
leave the very notion of ‘true’ self open-ended, most prominently in such sto-
ries as “Lejana,” “La puerta condenada,” and “Cartas de mama.” In these texts,
the notion of place as displacement is also introduced by means of subject/object
parallelism, in which both elements display divisions and a desire for integrity
which is never attained. Identity obtains a spatial focus in Cortázar’s narratives,
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conclusion 133
and a geographical dislocation manifests the human self as a “map” with

“multiple entryways” (Deleuze et al 12 qtd. in Pile et al 34).
The questioning of a strict opposition between place and displacement in
Borges’s and Cortázar’s most representative texts, it can be further argued, has a
significant bearing on the canon of twentieth century Latin American literature.
Cartographies of dislocation are found in the works of such writers as Severo
Sarduy, Diamela Eltit, Ricardo Piglia and Juan José Saer whose works address the
political and social conflicts of their time.4 Sarduy’s Cobra, Eltit’s Lumpérica,
Piglia’s Respiración artificial, and Saer’s Nadie, nada, nunca are just a few examples
of texts that consistently subvert the place/displacement dichotomy on mutually
connected linguistic, thematic and/or structural levels of literary discourse, and
thus turn out to be marked by Borges’s and Cortázar’s narratives.
At the same time, through finding connections between different literary
traditions, philosophical and anthropological discourses, the present study
shows that their literary works are among the most vivid manifestations of the
strong relations between Argentinian letters and world culture. A further
exemplification of this relationship can be found in Cortázar’s poem ‘The smiler
with the knife under the cloak,’ a playful tribute to “the scandalous outsider,”
“el primer Borges” [“the first Borges”] (La vuelta 1:56). As Cortázar later
recalled, it was inspired by one of Borges’s lectures, which evoked in Cortázar
“una ternura idiota” [“an idiotic tenderness”], particularly when the maestro
demonstrated a parallelism between a line from Geoffrey Chaucer “The smylere
with the knyf under his cloke” and “la metáfora criolla de ‘venirse con el
cuchillo abajo’ el poncho’ ” (La vuelta 1:67) [“a creole metaphor ‘to come with
the knife under the poncho’ ”].5 Drawing on this example of continuity and
overlap between different narrative worlds within the literary universe, Cortázar
refers to Borges as the “smiler,” and creates an image which evokes associations
with both the Argentine Gaucho and Chaucer’s Knight:
‘The smiler with the knife under the cloak’

Justo en mitad de la ensaimada
se plantó y dijo: Babilonia.
Muy pocos entendieron
que quería decir el Río de la Plata.
Cuando se dieron cuenta ya era tarde,
quién ataja a ese potro que galopa
de Patmos a Gotinga a media rienda.
Se empezó a hablar de vikings
en el café Tortoni,
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y eso curó a unos cuantos de Juan Pedro Calou

y enfermó a los más flojos de runa y David Hume
A todo esto él leía
novelas policiales. (La vuelta 1:69; italics added)
[‘The smiler with the knife under the cloak’
Right in the middle of puff-pastry

He stood still and said: Babylon
A very few understood
That he wanted to say: Río de la Plata.
When they realized it, it was already too late
Who would put bridle
On this colt which gallops
From Patmos to Goringa.
He started talking about Vikings
In the café Tortoni,
And that cured some folks from Juan Pedro Calou
And made sick the most weak ones from runes and David Hume
Meanwhile, he was reading detective novels.]
This poem, a ludic acknowledgement of “mucho bien que nos ha hecho su

obra” (La vuelta 1:67) [“a lot of good things which his work has done to us”],
was never sent to Borges. It was published in 1956 in New Delhi described by
Cortázar in a very Borgesean way as “el India, of all places” (La vuelta I: 67).
“Babilonia” is “Río de la Plata” in this ludic assertion of integrity between
Argentinian letters and the world culture, both of which consistently benefit
from an approach to place viewed as a dynamic displacement, as an analysis of
Borges’s and Cortázar’s texts, offered in this book, demonstrates. No doubt is
left that these writers created narrative worlds, foreign to any territorial or cul-
tural limitations, that celebrate fluidity and eclectism while remaining fixed and
pure expressions of their authors’ individual talents.
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TRANSLATIONS
“The Sealed Door”

Petrone liked the hotel “Cervantes” for the same reasons for which others would
dislike it. It was gloomy, quiet, and almost deserted. A chance companion on
the ship recommended it to him, saying that it was located in the center of
Montevideo. Petrone took a single with a bathroom on the second floor, which
overlooked the reception hall. By looking at the key-stand at the entrance, he
realized that the hotel was almost empty. A big copper numeral was attached
to each key, a friendly method used by the management to impede guests from
carrying it in their pockets.
The elevator stopped in front of the reception area, where there was a
counter with daily newspapers and a list of phone numbers; just a few steps from
his room. The hot, almost boiling, running water compensated for the lack
of sun and fresh air. A small window overlooked the roof of the neighboring
cinema; a dove sometimes walked there. The bathroom had a bigger window,
which sadly faced a wall, along with an almost useless small piece of sky. The
furniture was good, there were many drawers, shelves, and, especially rare,
even many hangers.
The manager, turned out to be a tall, thin and completely bald man. He
was wearing glasses with gold frames, and spoke in a loud and clear voice, typ-
ical for Uruguayans. He told Petrone that the second floor was very quiet, and
that in the only occupied room, next to his, was staying a single lady, who was
working somewhere and usually returned to the hotel at nightfall. Petrone ran
into her the following day in the elevator. He recognized her by the number of
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the key, which she was holding in her hand, as if it were a huge gold coin. The
concierge took their keys to hang on the stand, and started talking with the
woman about some letters. Petrone had time to notice that she was still young,
insignificant, and badly dressed, as all local women.
According to his calculations, the contract with the mosaic manufacturers
would take approximately a week. In the afternoon, Petrone hung up his cloth-
ing in the wardrobe, arranged his papers on the table, and after having taken
a bath, went out for a walk in the town-center, until it was time to go to the
office. Negotiations lasted till the end of the day, softened by coffee in “Pocitos”
and dinner in the house of the main partner. It was after 1 a.m. when they
dropped him at the hotel. He was very tired and fell asleep immediately. When
he got up, it was almost 9 a.m., and during those first minutes, when the night
dreams had not left him yet, he thought that in the middle of the night he had
been disturbed by a baby’s cry.
Before going out, he chatted with the concierge, who was speaking with a
German accent. While he was getting information about bus routes and names
of streets, his distracted glance was wondering through the hall, at the end of
which was his room and that of the lady. Between the doors, there was a
pedestal with a pitiful copy of the Venus de Milo. Another door, in the lateral
wall, led to an alcove littered with arm-chairs and newspapers, as everywhere.
When the concierge and Petrone stopped talking, the silence of the hotel
seemed to coagulate, falling like dust over the furniture and onto the floor tiles.
The elevator was rumbling unbearably, with a noise like that of rustling pages
of newspaper or the scratch of matches.
Meetings finished that evening, and Petrone took a walk through the street
18 de Julio before having dinner in one of the cafés on la plaza Independencia.
Everything was going well, and probably he could return to Buenos Aires ear-
lier then he had thought. He bought an Argentine newspaper, a pack of black
cigarettes, and slowly walked towards the hotel. He already had seen the two
films that were playing in the movie theatre next door, and he really did not
want to go any place else. The manager greeted him as he passed, and asked
whether he needed another set of linen. They chatted and smoked for a little
while, and then said good-night to each other.
Before lying down, Petrone arranged his papers that he had used during the
day, and scanned the newspaper without much interest. The silence of the hotel
was almost overwhelming, broken only for a moment by an occasionally passing
tram on Soriano street, to be followed by even more silent intervals. Calmly,
but not without impatience, he threw the newspaper into a trashcan, and
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translations 137
undressed, while looking distracted in the mirror of the wardrobe. It was an old
one that blocked the door to another room. Petrone was surprised that he had
not noticed the door during his first inspection. At first, he had thought that
the building was designed to be a hotel, but then he realized that it was one of
those modest places that had been installed in old apartments or former
family offices. Indeed, in almost all the hotels where he stayed (and he had trave-
led a lot), the rooms had a sealed door, sometimes openly visible, but almost
always screened with a wardrobe, table or coat stand that, as in this case, gave
it a certain ambiguity, a bashful desire to mask its existence, as a woman who
hopes to hide her belly and her breasts with her hands. In any event, the door
was there, jutting out from behind the wardrobe. Once people had entered in
and went out from it, slammed it, closed it, gave it life which still was present
in its wood, so different from that of the walls. Petrone imagined that on the
other side, there was also a wardrobe, and that the woman in the contiguous
room would have similar thoughts about the door.
He was not very tired, but fell asleep with pleasure. He was sleeping for
three or four hours when suddenly a feeling of discomfort woke him up, as if
something had happened, something disturbing and annoying. He turned the
lamp on, saw that it was half past two in the morning, and turned it off again.
At that moment he heard a baby’s cry from the room next to his.
At first, he did not realize what it was. He then almost felt satisfied for a
moment, for it meant that there had been indeed, a baby’s cry which had not
let him rest, the night before. With everything explained, it was easier to go to
sleep again. But then he thought about something else and slowly sat up on the
bed, listening, without turning on the light. There was no deception; the cry
came from there, from the room next to his. A sound came through the sealed
door to the sector of his room that corresponded to his bed’s legs. But it was not
possible that there was a baby in the room next to his; the manager had clear-
ly told him that the lady was staying alone, and that she was spending almost
all day at work. That night she was probably taking care of a relative’s or friend’s
child—Petrone thought for a moment. But what about yesterday night? Now he
was sure that he already had heard a cry, because it was a sound, which was hard
to take for something else. It was rather a series of irregular, very weak moans,
of plaintive sobs followed by whimpering, all this was inconsistent and minimal,
as if a child were very sick. He had to be a creature of several months—newborns
scream louder, with sudden clucks and shortness of breath. For some reason,
Pertrone imagined that it was a boy, weak and sick, with a shriveled face and
quiet movements. This was moaning at night, crying timidly, without calling too
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much attention. If the shut off door were not there, nobody would know about
the child—this cry would not overcome thick walls.
In the morning Petrone thought about it for a little bit, while having
breakfast and smoking. To sleep badly was not convenient for his daily job.
He had woken up twice in the middle of the night; both times because of the
cry. The second time was worse because in addition to the cry, he had heard
a voice of a woman who was trying to calm the child down. The voice was
very low, but its anxious tone gave it a theatrical quality, a whisper which
crossed the door with such a force, as if she were shouting. The child stopped
for a moment, and then an inconsolable anguish replaced the short moan.
And again the woman was whispering incomprehensible words, maternal
magic to pacify her child, tortured by his body and his soul, by his life or by
the fear of death.
“Everything is sweet, but the manager fooled me,” thought Petrone, stepping
out of his room. He was annoyed by lies and did not conceal it. The manager,
nevertheless, was surprised.
—A boy? You probably confused him with something. There are no little
boys on this floor. In the room next to yours, a single lady stays, as I already have
told you.
Petrone hesitated before responding. Either the manager was stupidly lying,
or the hotel’s acoustics were playing an idiotic joke. The manager was looking
a bit askance at him, as if he were also annoyed by the situation. “He probably
thinks that I am too shy and that I am looking for a pretext to demand a trans-
fer to another room”—thought Petrone. It was difficult, and even senseless,
to insist, when everything was denied. He shook his shoulders and asked for a
periodical.
—I was probably dreaming—he said, annoyed by having to say this, or any
other thing.
The cabaret was boring him to death, and his two hosts were not particu-
larly enthusiastic about refreshments, so he easily pleaded fatigue, and left for
his hotel. They decided to sign the contracts the next afternoon; in essence,
he finished the business part of his trip.
It was so quiet in the reception that Petrone found himself going on tiptoe.
There was an afternoon newspaper for him near the bed, and also a letter from
Buenos Aires. He immediately recognized his wife’s handwriting.
Before going to bed, he looked for a while at the wardrobe and the jutted
out part of the door. Probably if he had put his two suitcases on the top of the
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translations 139
wardrobe, thus blocking the door, there would be less noise from the contigu-
ous room. As always, at this time, there was silence. The hotel fell asleep, both
people and things were sleeping. But to ill-humored Petrone, everything seemed
to be the opposite. It appeared to him that everything was awake, eagerly
awake in the middle of the silence. His unexpressed anxiety possibly was trans-
ferring to the house, its people, lying awake, hidden in their rooms. What a pile
of nonsense, indeed.
Petrone was almost not surprised, when a baby’s cry woke him at 3 o’clock
in the morning. Sitting up in his bed, he was asking himself whether it would be
better to call for a night watchman to have a witness that it was impossible to sleep
in this room. A child was crying very softly. His cry was imperceptible, but Petrone
knew that it was there, that it would not stop, and that it would increase again.
Ten or twenty of the slowest seconds passed, then something grunted briefly, and
a hardly perceivable squeak lasted sweetly till it broke into a shrilling cry.
Having lit a cigarette, he asked himself whether he should knock on the
wall politely, so that the woman would calm down her child. And suddenly he
realized that he didn’t believe either in her or in her child—he didn’t believe,
no matter how strange it might seem, that the manager had lied to him. Then
he heard woman’s voice, exhorting a child softly and persistently, drowning his
crying. She was lulling a child to sleep, calming him down, and Petrone imag-
ined her sitting on a bed, or rocking a cradle, or holding a baby in her arms. But
no matter how much he tried, he could not imagine the child, as if the affir-
mation of the manager was stronger than the reality to which he was listening.
Little by little, while time passed and weak moans grew quieter or louder
between woman’s whispers of consolation, Petrone started suspecting that this
was a farce, a stupid and monstrous game without explanation. He remembered
old tales about childless women who secretly played with dolls, an invented
maternity much worse than petting dogs, cats or nephews. The woman was imi-
tating the crying of her frustrated child, trying to calm down the air between
her empty arms, maybe with her face wet from tears, because the crying which
she imitated was probably her real expression, her grotesque pain in the solitude
of a hotel room, protected by indifference and by the dawn.
Having turned on the light, unable to fall asleep again, Petrone asked
himself what to do. His mood had completely deteriorated; it was congested by
this atmosphere, where suddenly everything became tricky, empty, false: a
silence, a crying, a lullaby, the only reality of this hour between night and day
that was deceiving him with an unbearable lie. To knock on the wall seemed
too little for him. He did not wake up completely, though it was impossible to sleep.
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Without realizing it, he found himself slowly moving wardrobe until he uncovered
the dusty and dirty door. Barefoot, in pajamas, he leaned against the door like
a centipede, and bringing his mouth close to the pine slots, he started imitating
imperceptibly, in falsetto, the moan, which was coming from the other room. He
raised his voice, groaned, sobbed. On the other side, everything became a silence
which would last the whole night; but the moment before that Petrone had heard
the shuffling of woman’s slippers, her running across the room, the launch of a short
and dry scream, the beginning of a storm, instantly broken, like a tight rope.
When he passed by the front desk, it was after 10 a.m. Between dreams,
before eight in the morning, he had heard the voices of an employee and the
woman. Somebody was walking in the next room, moving things. He saw a trunk
and two big suitcases near the elevator. The manager was looking perplexed.
—How did you sleep last night?—he asked in a professional tone, barely
concealing his indifference.
Petrone shook his shoulders. He did not want to insist on anything, when there
was only one night left.
—Anyway, now it will be quieter,—said the manager, looking at the suit-
cases. The lady is leaving us at noon.
He waited for a comment, and Petrone cheered him up with a responding
look.
—She was staying here for a while, and now suddenly is leaving. With
women, you never know.
—No,—said Petrone,—You never know with them.
In the street he felt nauseous, but it was not physical. Swallowing a bitter
coffee, he was thinking and thinking about the same thing, forgetting about his
errands, indifferent to the splendid sun. It was his fault that the woman had to
leave, mad from terror, from shame or from anger. She was staying here for a
while . . . She was probably sick, but inoffensive. It was not her, but him, who
had to go from “Cervantes.” He had to talk to her, to apologize, to ask her to
stay, and promise to keep the secret. But having taken a couple of steps in the
direction of the hotel, he stopped in the middle of the road. He was afraid of
erring, of the woman’s unsuspected reactions. It was already time for a meet-
ing with his two business partners, and he did not want them to wait for him.
Well, let her be annoyed. It was nothing more than hysteria, she would find
another hotel to take care of her imaginary son.
But that night, he again did not feel well, and the silence of the room
seemed to him even more dense. When he entered the hotel, he could not resist
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translations 141
looking at the key-stand, and realized that the key for his neighbor’s room was
already taken. He exchanged some words with the employee, who was yawn-
ing, while waiting for a moment to go home, and entered his room with little
hope of sleep. He had the afternoon newspapers, and a new detective novel.
He entertained himself with packing his suitcases and arranging his papers. It
was warm, and he opened wide the little window. The made-up bed seemed to
be uncomfortable and too firm. Finally, he had all the silence necessary for sleep,
and he could not. Tossing in the bed, he felt defeated by this silence regained
in a tricky way, which was returning to him completely and vindictively.
Ironically, he thought that he was missing the child’s cry, that this perfect quiet-
ness would not be sufficient for him to fall asleep and even less for getting up.
He was missing the cry, and when much later, he heard a weak unmistakable
sound behind the sealed door, he realized—through fear, through desire to run
away at night—that he was fine and that the woman did not lie, that she was
right in lulling a child to calm down, so that they would be able to sleep.
“Letters from Mother”
It could very well be called a conditional freedom. Each time when the super-
intendent handed him an envelope, it was sufficient for Luis to have just a look
at the stamp with the familiar portrait of José de San Martín to realize that once
again he would have to cross the bridge. San Martín, Rivadavia, but these
names were also images of streets and things; Rivadavia, number sixty five hun-
dred, a mansion in Flores, mamá, a café on San Martín and Corrientes where
sometimes his friends waited for him, where sweet coffee had a slight taste of
castor oil. With the envelope in his hands, having thanked her, Merci bien,
madame Durand, he went out to the street, but he was already not the same as
he had been on the previous day, or on any other day. Each letter from his mamá
(even before that recent, that ridiculous, absurd error) was immediately chang-
ing Luis’s life, by bringing him back to the past like a hard bounce of a ball. Even
before that, about what he had just read, and what now he would reread in the
bus, half-mad, half-perplexed, without being persuaded . . . mamá’s letters were
always an interruption in time, a little inoffensive scandal in the order of things
which Luis had managed to plan, obtain and cherish, when he had gotten Laura
and Paris. Every new letter reminded him for a moment (precisely for a moment,
because afterwards he scratched them out by the very act of a gentle response)
that his freedom, conquered in such a tough way, that this new life, cut off by
07.qxd 29/8/07 6:26 PM Page 142
pitiless scissors from the tangled ball which others called his life, was no longer
justified. It was losing sense, its grounds were erasing as asphalt under the
wheels of a bus which was moving along la rue de Richelieu. No more was left
than an appearance of freedom, a mirage of life, like a word in brackets,
divorced from the main clause, for which, nevertheless, it almost always
provides support and explanation. And an annoyance, and a desire to respond
immediately, as if to close the door again.
That morning was one of those many mornings when a letter from mamá
had arrived. He talked very little about the past with Laura, and almost never
about the mansion in Flores. It was not that Luis did not like to recall Buenos
Aires. It was more an intent to avoid names (people, avoided already for such
a long time, but names, the true ghosts of enduring persistence). Once he
ventured to say to Laura: “If it would be possible to break and throw away the
past like a draft of a letter or a book. But it stays forever, contaminates the clean
copy, and I believe, it is a true future.” Indeed, why would they not talk about
Buenos Aires, where their family was living, and from where, from time to time,
friends sent them postcards decorated with loving words. And the newspaper
La Nación, with sonnets by ecstatic ladies and already obsolete sensations! From
time to time, there was a crisis in government, an angry colonel, or a magnificent
boxer. Why wouldn’t they talk about Buenos Aires with Laura? But she also did
not touch the past, only by chance in a dialogue, and especially when mamá’s
letters arrived, she would remember something, she would drop a name or an
image, which would fall like coins that are out of circulation, like old things,
worn out in a remote world on the far side of a river.
—Eh oui, fait lourd—said the worker, who was sitting opposite him in the bus.
“If he only knew what is real heat—Luis thought—. If only he could walk on
February afternoon on la avenida de Mayo, on one of the little streets of Liniers.”
Once more he took the letter from the envelope, without illusions. The
paragraph was there, clear enough. It was absurd, but it was there. His first reac-
tion, after surprise, like a blow to the forehead, was, as always, defensive. Laura
should not read this letter from mamá. No matter how ridiculous was the
error; it was a confusion of names (mamá probably wanted to write “Víctor” and
wrote “Nico,” instead). In any event Laura would be sad, and it would be
stupid. From time to time letters get lost; God willing, this would had gone to
the bottom of the sea. Now he had to throw it to the water in the office, and
of course, several days later, Laura would definitely ask: “How strange, there was
no letter from your mother?” She never said tu mamá, probably because she lost
hers when she had been a little girl. Then, he would answer. “It is strange,
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translations 143
indeed. I am going to drop a couple of lines to her today,” and he would send
them, surprised by mamá’s silence. Life would proceed normally: the office, the
cinema at night, Laura, always calm, kind, attentive to his needs. Getting out
of the bus at la Rue de Rennes, he asked himself sincerely (it was not a question,
but how to put it another way) why didn’t he want to show the letter from
mamá to Laura? Not because of her, nor because of what she would feel. It was
not important to him what she would feel, not while she was disguising her feel-
ings. (Was it important to him what she was feeling, while she was disguising
them?). No, it did not matter to him much (Did it matter to him?). The first
truth was important to him, supposing there was a second one behind it; the
most immediate truth, if one may say so, was the face that Laura would make
and her conduct. He was worrying about himself, naturally, about the effect that
Laura’s perception of mamá’s letter would produce on him. Her eyes would come
across the name of Nico, and he knew that her chin would start trembling
lightly, and afterwards she would say: “But how weird . . . What has happened
to your mother?” And all the time he would feel that Laura was restraining her-
self from screaming, or hiding in her hands her face already disfigured by crying,
disfigured by the outline of Nico’s name ready to escape from her lips.
At the advertising bureau, where he worked as a designer, he reread the

letter, one of so many others written by his mamá, without noticing anything
extraordinary except for the paragraph where she had mixed up a name. He
even thought that it could be possible to erase the word, to change Nico to
Víctor, simply substitute the truth for a mistake, and to come back home with
the letter for Laura to read. She was always interested in letters from mamá,
though in an indefinite manner they were not addressed to her. Mamá wrote to
him; at the end, sometimes in the middle of the letter, she sent warm regards
to Laura. Never mind, Laura read them with the same interest, deciphering
some words twisted by mother’s rheumatism and myopia. “I take Saridon, and
the doctor prescribed me a bit of salicylic acid.” Mamá’s letters stayed at his
working table for two or three days at a time. Luis had wanted to throw them
away after responding, but Laura reread them; women like to reread letters, to
examine them again and again, as if they find another meaning each time when
they return to them. Her letters were short, home news, with one or two ref-
erences to national affairs (but these things, already known from the telegrams
from Le Monde, were no longer of interest). It even seemed that they were one
and the same letter, simple and mediocre, without anything interesting. The
best was that mamá never gave way to the grief which the absence of her son
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and daughter-in-law could cause, nor to the pain—“so many screams and tears
at the beginning—of Nico’s death. Never, in the two years which they had spent
already in Paris, had mother mentioned Nico in her letters. She was like Laura,
who also never talked about him. They never mentioned his name, although
two years had passed since Nico’s death. A sudden reference of his name, in the
middle of the letter, was almost a scandal: the very fact of Nico’s name unex-
pected appeared in one line, with the capital and trembling ‘N,’ and a bended
‘o.’ But it was worse, because the name was placed in an absurd and incom-
prehensible phrase, in something which could not be anything else but an
announcement of senility. All at once, mamá had lost the notion of time, she
was imagining that . . . This paragraph appeared after a brief acknowledge-
ment of Laura’s letter. A period marked by the weak blue ink bought in the local
store, and a point-blank statement: “This morning Nico has asked about you.”
The rest followed as usual: her health, a cousin Matilde had fallen and dislo-
cated her collar-bone, the dogs were well. But Nico has been asking about them.
Of course, it was easy to change Nico to Víctor, who was, no doubt, the one
who had asked about them. Cousin Víctor, who is always very attentive. Víctor
has two more letters then Nico, but with an eraser and skill, one may change
these names. This morning, Víctor has asked about them. It was very natural
that Víctor came over to visit mamá, and asked about relatives in Paris.
When he came home for lunch, the letter was intact in his pocket. He was
still inclined not to tell anything to Laura, who was waiting for him with a
friendly smile on her face, a bit blurred since leaving Buenos Aires; as if the grey
air of Paris had taken its color and clarity. They had been living in Paris already
for two years, having left Buenos Aires as soon as two months after Nico’s
death, but in reality Luis had been considered absent from the day of his mar-
riage to Laura. One afternoon, after talking with Nico, who was already sick, Luis
had sworn to escape from Argentina, from the Flores mansion, from mamá and
dogs, and from his brother (who was already sick). In those months, everything
was rotating around him like figures in a dance: Nico, Laura, mamá, dogs, the
garden. His oath was a brutal gesture similar to breaking a bottle into smithereens
in the middle of a dance floor. Everything had been brutal in those days: his mar-
riage, their departure with neither explanations nor concern for mamá, a forget-
fulness of all social duties and of friends who were half surprised, half disenchanted.
Nothing was important to him, not even Laura’s attempts to protest. Mamá was
left alone in the mansion with the dogs, bottles of medicine, and Nico’s clothes,
which were still hanging in the closet. Let her stay, let everybody go to hell. Mamá
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had seemed to understand, she was already not crying for Nico any longer, and
was walking as before in the house, with the cold and resolved resignation of the
old for death. But Luis did not want to remember what had happened during the
night of departure: suitcases, a cab at the door, the house where he spent his
childhood, the garden where he and Nico had played at war, two dogs, lazy and
stupid. Now he was almost ready to forget about all this. He was going to the
agency, was drawing posters, was coming back to eat, was drinking a cup of cof-
fee which Laura served him with smile. They were going often to the cinema,
to the forests, were becoming more and more familiar with Paris. They were for-
tunate, life was surprisingly easy, a manageable job, a nice apartment, excellent
movies. Then letters from mamá started arriving.
He did not hate them; if he had not received them, he would feel his free-
dom falling on him like an unbearable weight. Mamá’s letters were bringing him
a salient forgiveness (although there was nothing for which to ask forgiveness),
they were throwing a bridge across which it was possible to continue walking.
Each one was calming him down or was making him worry about his mamá’s
health, reminding him about family concerns, about the permanence of a
familiar order. Sometimes he hated this order, and he hated it because of Laura,
because Laura was in Paris, but each letter from mamá, defined her as a stranger,
as an accomplice of that order which he had rejected one night in the garden,
after having heard once again Nico’s damped, almost humble cough.
No, he would not show her the letter. It was not noble to substitute one name
for another, but it was unbearable to let Laura read this phrase. Mamá’s grotesque
mistake, her silly accidental awkwardness—he was seeing her struggling with the
old pen, with a sliding paper and insufficient sight—, it would grow in Laura like
a responsive seed. It was better to throw the letter away (he threw it away that very
afternoon), and at night to go to the cinema with Laura, and to forget as soon as
possible that Víctor had asked about them. Even though it had been Víctor, a well-
brought up cousin, he would forget that he had asked about them.
Diabolic, cunning, licking his lips, Tom was waiting for Jerry to fall into his
trap. Jerry escaped and innumerable catastrophes fell on Tom. During inter-
mission Luis bought ice-cream, and they ate it while watching distractedly color-
ful announcements. When the film started, Laura sank further into her chair
and took away her hand from Luis’s arm. He again felt that she was far away;
who knows whether what they were watching together was the same thing for
both, though afterwards they commented on films on the street or in bed. Luis
asked himself (it was not a question, but how to put it another way), whether
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Nico and Laura had been as distant in the movie theatre, when Nico had courted
her, and they had been going out together. Probably they had known all of the
movie theatres of Flores, the whole stupid embankment of Lavalle street, a lion,
an athlete who struck the gong, subtitles in Spanish by Carmen de Pinillos, the
characters of that film had been as fictitious as the relationship itself . . . Thus,
when Jerry had escaped from Tom and an hour of Barbara Stanwyck or Tyrone
Power had started, Nico’s hand would slowly touch Laura’s hip (poor Nico, so
timid, so chaste), and both would feel ashamed of God only knew what. It was
clear to Luis that they were not guilty of anything definitive; although he did
not have the most delicious proof, but such a rapid disappearance of Laura’s
attachment to Nico had been sufficient for him to see that this engagement was
a simple simulacrum of a union, determined by vicinity and the same cultural
and social circles which formed the salt of Flores. It was sufficient to come one
evening to the same ballroom which Nico had frequented, and he had intro-
duced Laura to Luis. Perhaps for that reason, for the easiness of the beginning,
the rest had been unexpectedly difficult and bitter. But he did not want to recall
it now; the comedy was finished with the bland ruin of Nico, his melancholic
refuge in death from tuberculosis. The strange thing was that Laura never
mentioned him, and therefore he also never did. Nico was not even a deceased,
not even a dead brother-in-law, a mamá’s son. At first, this had brought him
relief after a confused exchange of reproaches, mamá’s crying and screams, the
stupid intervention of uncle Emilio and of cousin Víctor (Víctor has asked about
you this morning), a hastened marriage without any ceremony—a call for a taxi
and three minutes in front of a functionary with dandruff on his lapels. Having
found a refuge in a hotel in Adrogué, far from mamá and from all infuriated
kinsfolk, Luis had been grateful to Laura who never had make a reference to
the poor puppet who so vaguely had been transformed from a boyfriend to a
brother-in-law. But now, divided by ocean, two years after his death, Laura con-
tinued not to mention him, and he, Luis, from cowardice, joined her in this
silence, knowing that in the depth of his soul this silence offended him because
it had to do with a reproach, with repentance, with something that was start-
ing to appear similar to a betrayal. More than once he had explicitly mentioned
Nico, but he understood that this was not counted, because Laura’s response
was only to change the topic of conversation. Slowly a forbidden territory had
been forming step by step in their language, isolating them from Nico, wrap-
ping his name and his memory in stained and sticky cotton. And from the other
side mother was doing the same, as if in an inexplicable plot with them, she was
keeping silent. In each letter she was talking about dogs, Matilde, Víctor,
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aspirin, the payment of her pension. Luis had been hoping that mamá would hint
to her son at least once that it was time to ally with her in front of Laura, to oblige
Laura gently to accept Nico’s posthumous existence. Not because it was nec-
essary: to whom was Nico that important either alive or dead? But the toler-
ance of memory about him in the pantheon of the past would be a dark,
irrefutable proof that Laura had forgotten about him completely and forever.
The nightmare caused by the mention of his name would dissipate into a feel-
ing as weak and inane as when he was alive. But Laura continued to silence his
name, precisely when it would be natural to pronounce it, and Luis was again
feeling Nico’s presence in the garden at Flores, was hearing his discreet cough,
which prepared the best possible imaginable present for their wedding, his death
during the honeymoon of the one who had been his bride and the one who had
been his brother.
A week later, Laura was surprised that mother’s letter had not arrived. They
went over all the possible hypotheses, and Luis wrote her that same afternoon.
A response did not worry him too much, but he would like (he thought about it
while he was getting down the stairs in the mornings) for the superintendent to
give him the letter personally instead of bringing it to the third floor. After
approximately two weeks (15 days), he recognized a familiar envelope, the face
of Admiral Brown and a view of the Iguazú waterfall. He held on to the enve-
lope until he went out to the street and responded to Laura’s farewell from
the window. It seemed ridiculous to him to have to turn around the corner
before he could open the envelope. Bobby had escaped to the street, and in sev-
eral days he had started itching, infected by the mange from another dog. Mamá
was going to see a veterinarian, Uncle Emilio’s friend, because it was not accept-
able for Bobby to spread the pestilence to Blackie. Uncle Emilio was thinking that
she should bath them in acaroina, but she was already too old for this, and for her
it would be better if a veterinarian would prescribe some powder against insects
or something to mix in the dogs’ food. A lady in the neighboring house had a
mangy cat, and who knows, may be cats can infect dogs, though it would be across
a chicken wire fence that divided the houses. But why would they be interested
in this old lady’s talk, though Luis always had been very gentle with dogs, and as
a child had even slept with one at the foot of his bed, in contrast with Nico, who
had never liked them much. A lady in the house next to theirs advised to dust
them with DDT, because even if there was no itching, dogs get infected with all
kinds of mange while they are walking on the streets; in the corner of Bacacay
stopped a circus with rare animals, and there are plenty of microbes in the air, and
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so on. Mamá was overwhelmed by fear, and she was writing either about a dress-
maker’s son who scalded his arm with boiling milk, or about itchy Bobby.
Afterwards, there was something similar to a little blue star (the tip of the
pen had probably caught on the paper and mother began an annoyed grumble)
and then some melancholic thoughts about how lonely she would feel when
Nico also would go to Europe, as it seemed to her, but this was the destiny of
the old; children are swallows who leave the nest one day, and one should resign
oneself to this, while strengths last. The lady next door. . . .
Somebody pushed Luis, and with a Marseilles accent reminded him rapidly
about the rules of behavior on the streets. He vaguely realized that he was hin-
dering the movement of people who were entering the narrow subway corri-
dor. The rest of the day was equally foggy, he called Laura to say that he would
not come back for lunch, spent two hours on a bench at the square rereading
mamá’s letter, asking himself what should he do with this insanity. To talk to
Laura, before anything else. Why (it was not a question, but how to put it
another way) to continue hiding what was happening from Laura? He could not
pretend already that this letter was lost as the other one. Already he could not
believe indeed that mamá had mistakenly written Nico instead of Víctor, and
that she was suffering so much that she had gone insane. No doubt, the cause
of these letters is Laura, that was what was happened to Laura. Not even this:
that what had happened from the day of their wedding, the honeymoon in
Adrogué, the nights when they had desperately loved each other in the ship
which was bringing them to France. That was all Laura, everything would be
Laura now, when Nico wanted to come to Europe in mamá’s delirium.
Accomplices as never before, mamá started talking to Laura about Nico,
informing her that Nico was going to come to Europe, and she wrote it in that
way, knowing well that Laura would understand that he would arrive in France,
in Paris, at the house where everybody skillfully pretended to forget about him,
poor thing.
Luis did two things: he wrote to Uncle Emilio, indicating the symptoms
which worried him and asking him to visit mamá immediately to personally
ascertain her condition and to take any necessary measures. He then drank two
glasses of cognac one after another, and walked home in order to think about
what he should say to Laura, because he finally needed to talk to her, to keep
her posted. Moving from one street to another, he felt how difficult it was for
him to think about the present, about what should happen in half an hour.
Mamá’s letter placed him, drowned him, in the reality of these two years of his
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life in Paris, in a lie of a traded peace, in the happiness in the eyes of outsiders,
maintained by entertainment and performances, by a forced pact of silence,
where both of them became more and more distant, as usually happens in a neg-
ative pact. Yes, mamá, yes, poor itchy Bobby, mamá. Poor Bobby, poor Luis,
what a strong itch, mamá. A dance in the club at Flores, mamá, I went because
he insisted, I imagine that he wanted to boast of his conquest. Poor Nico, mamá,
with that dry cough, in which nobody believed yet, in that suit with stripes, his
hair shined with briolin, his silk ties, so crisp and neat. A short talk, you feel
liked, . . . How not to invite your brother’s fiancé for a dance. Oh, to say fiancé
is too much. Luis, I suppose I can call you Luis, can’t I? But yes, I am surprised
that Nico did not bring you home yet, mother is going to like you very much.
Our Nico is so awkward, he did not even talk to your father. Timid, yes, always
the same. As I am. Why do you laugh, you do not believe me, do you? But I am
not as I seem to be . . . It’s warm in here isn’t it? Indeed, you have to come,
mamá would be pleased. The three of us live together with our dogs. Hey
Nico, it is shame to hide all this from us, you rascal. We are like that between
us, Laura, we say everything to each other. With your permission, I would dance
this tango with mademoiselle.
Such a small thing, so easy, and he (Nico) is so shiny with his silk tie. She
had broken up with Nico by mistake, because of the blindness, because his slip-
pery brother had been able to win in a moment, to turn her head without any
real effort. Nico does not play tennis, when would he play, please, if you can-
not tear him away from chess or stamps. Quiet, such a poor thing, Nico was left
behind, lost in the corner of the patio, calming himself down with cough syrup
and a bitter mate. The moment when he fell ill, poor thing, and was prescribed
rest, coincided with dancing in the gym and in the fencing hall “Villa de
Parque.” One would not lose such things, especially when Edgardo Donato was
going to play . . . To mamá, it seemed very good that he would take Laura for
a walk; she liked her as her own daughter from the moment they had brought
her home. Listen, mamá, the boy is very weak, and he might get upset if some-
body told him about it. Sick people may imagine whatever; he might think that
I am flirting with Laura. It would be better if he didn’t not know that we were
going to gym. But I did not say this to mamá, nobody at home knew that we
were going out together. Naturally, till sick Nico would feel better, poor thing.
And thus, dances, two or three, Nico’s X-rays, afterwards short Ramos’s auto,
the evening party in Beba’s house, wine glasses, a ride in the car till the bridge
across the river, a moon, this moon as an upstairs window of the hotel, and
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Laura resisting, a bit drunk, skillful hands, kisses, suffocated screams, a blanket
of vicuna wool, return in silence and a smile of forgiveness.
The smile was almost the same when Laura opened the door. There was
baked meat, salad, flan. At ten o’clock their neighbors, who were their canasta
partners, came over. Very late, after having prepared to go to bed, Luis took out
the letter and put it on the lighted table.
—I did not talk earlier with you about this, because I did not want to upset
you. It seems to me that mamá . . .
He laid down on his back and waited. Laura put the letter back in the enve-
lope and turned off the light. He felt her near him, not exactly near, but he
could hear her breath near his ear.
—Do you understand?—said Luis, restraining his voice.
—Yes. Don’t you think that she confused the name?
It could be that. Pawn two, king four. Pawn two, king four. Excellent.
—Most probably she wanted to write Víctor.—he said, thrusting nails into
the palm of his hand.
Knight two, king four, bishop.
They pretended to sleep.
Laura agreed that Uncle Emilio should be the only person told about this;
and days passed without any further discussion. Each time when he came home,
Luis waited for an unusual phrase or gesture, a breach in this perfectly kept quiet-
ness and silence. They went to the cinema as always, were making love as
always. For Luis, there was no more mystery in Laura, except for her humble res-
ignation with this life, in which nothing had been realized from what they had
been dreaming about two years ago. Now he knew her very well, and when he
compared them, he had to admit that Laura was similar to Nico, to those who
stay behind and only act by inertia, though she sometimes used her almost ter-
rible will in not doing anything indeed, in not living for anything. She would
have found much more common understanding with Nico than with him. Both
Luis and Laura had understood that from the day of their wedding, from the first
steps which followed the bland acquiescence of their honeymoon and desire.
Now Laura again had nightmares. She dreamt often, but nightmares could be
recognized immediately. Luis recognized them among many other movements
of her body, confused words and the short screams of a suffocated animal.
Everything had already started on the ship, when they were still talking about
Nico, because he had just died and they had boarded just a few weeks afterwards.
One night, after thinking about Nico, when there was already insinuated a tacit
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silence that would be installed afterwards between them, Laura had a nightmare.
It repeated from time to time, and it was always the same: Laura was waking him
up with a hoarse moan, a sharp convulsion in her legs, and suddenly a scream
which was a complete negation, a rejection with the hand, with her whole body
and voice, of something terrible that was enveloping her in her dream like a huge
piece of sticky material. He was shaking her, calming her down, bringing her
water which she was drinking while sobbing, hounded by the other side of her
life. Then she was saying that she did not remember anything, it was something
horrible that could not be explained. She was falling asleep taking her secret with
her, because Luis knew that she knew that she had just faced somebody who had
entered her sleep, God knows under which horrifying mask; and whose knees
Laura would hug in an attack of fear, or probably of barren love. It was always
the same, he was bringing her a glass of water, waiting in silence until she would
again rest her head on the pillow. Perhaps once, fear would be stronger than pride,
if there was pride. Perhaps then he would be able to enter the battle from his side.
Perhaps not everything was lost, perhaps the new life would indeed become
something else other then this mirage of phantom smiles and French cinema.
In front of the drawing table, surrounded by strangers, Luis was recalling
a sense of symmetry and was trying to reestablish that order which he liked to
follow in life. Given that Laura did not touch the topic, waiting with an appar-
ent indifference for Uncle Emilio’s response, it was up to him to communicate
with mamá. He responded to the letter, limiting himself to short news of the
last weeks, and left for postscript a rectifying phrase: “So, Víctor talks about
coming to Europe. Everybody likes to travel; it should be tourist agency pro-
paganda. Tell him to write to us; we can send him all the necessary informa-
tion. Tell him also that he can count on our hospitality.”
Uncle Emilio’s response came with the return mail. It was dry, corre-
sponding to a close relative, resenting them for what, during the time of mourn-
ing for Nico, had qualified as unqualifiable. Without openly expressing his
indignation, Uncle Emilio had shown his feelings in a subtle manner, as in sim-
ilar cases, when he hadn’t come to say good-bye to his nephew, and had for-
gotten his birthday for two consecutive years. Now he limited himself to
fulfilling his duty of mamá’s brother-in-law, and was reporting bare results.
Mamá was doing well, but almost did not talk. That could be understood, tak-
ing into account her multiple afflictions of the last years. One could notice that
she was feeling very lonely in the house at Flores; it is logical because no
mother who had lived all her life with her two sons could feel happy alone in
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a huge mansion, filled with memories. As for the phrases in question, Uncle
Emilio had proceeded with the tact which this delicate issue required, he was
lamenting to tell them that he could not clarify the situation. Mamá had
not being inclined to talk and even had received him in the front hall-way,
something she had never done before to her brother-in-law. To his hint about
a therapeutic treatment, she had responded that, apart from rheumatism, she
was feeling very well, though these days it was very tiring for her to iron so many
shirts. Uncle Emilio was interested in asking about what shirts she was talking
about, but she just shook her head and offered him sherry and Bagley biscuits.
Mamá did not give them a lot of time to discuss Uncle Emilio’s letter and
its obvious inefficiency. Four days later, a certified letter came, though mamá
knew perfectly well that there was no need to certify letters which went by air
to Paris. Laura called Luis and asked him to come home as soon as possible. Half
an hour later, he found her breathing heavily, lost in contemplation of some
yellow flowers on the table. The letter was lying at the mantelpiece, and after
reading it, Luis put it back there. He sat near Laura and waited. She shook her
shoulders.
—Mother has lost her mind—she said.
Luis lit a cigarette. The smoke brought tears to his eyes. He understood that the
game was continuing and that it was his turn to make the next move. Three
or probably four players were participated in this match. Now he was sure that
mamá was also standing at the edge of the board. Luis was sinking deeper and
deeper into the armchair, and he covered his face with a useless mask of hands.
He heard Laura’s crying, and downstairs, the children of the superintendent
were rushing up and down.
The night brings solutions, et cetera. It brought them a heavy and mute sleep,
after their bodies had met in the monotonous battle which neither desired.
Once again a silent agreement gained power: in the morning they would talk
about the weather, the crime at Saint-Cloud, or about James Dean. The letter
continued to rest on the mantelpiece, and while drinking tea, they could not see
it. But Luis knew that when he would come back from work, he would not find
it there. Laura was brushing away all the traces with cold and persistent effort.
One day, another day, one more day. In the evening they laughed loudly at their
neighbors’ stories and Fernandel’s program. They decided to go to the theatre per-
formance, and to spend the end of the week in Fontainebleau.
Unnecessary facts were accumulating on his drawing table, everything
was coinciding with mamá’s letter. The ship, indeed, was coming to La Havre
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on Friday the 17th in the morning, and a special train was arriving at Saint
Lazare at 11:45 a.m. On Thursday they saw a theatre performance, and had a
great time. Two nights before Laura had had another nightmare, but he did not
move to bring her water, and was waiting, turning his back to her till she
would calm down by herself. Then Laura had fallen asleep, and during the
following day, she cut and sewed a summer dress. They talked about buying an
electric sewing machine, when they finished paying for the refrigerator. Luis
found the letter from mamá in the drawer of the night table and took it to the
office. He called the steamship line, though he was sure that mamá had given
him precise information. It was the only certain thing, because it was impos-
sible even to think about the rest. And this imbecile, Uncle Emilio. It would
be better to write to Matilde. In spite of them having been distant, Matilde
would understand the urgent necessity to intervene, to protect his mamá. But,
indeed (it was not a question, but how to put it another way), was it necessary
to protect mamá, specifically mamá?
For a moment he thought about calling her, but he remembered sherry and
Bagley biscuits, and shook his shoulders. There was also no time to write to
Matilde, though in reality there was time, but probably it was preferable to wait
until Friday, the 17th, before . . . The cognac already was no longer helping him
not to think, or at least to think without fear. Each time he was recalling with
more and more clarity, the last weeks in Buenos Aires, after Nico’s funeral.
What he had understood before as a pain turned out to be something else now,
something where there was a lack of confidence, malicious distrust as the bared
teeth of a predatory animal who feels that everybody wants to get rid of him,
and throw him somewhere far from home. Indeed, only now did he start see-
ing his mamá’s true face. Now he was seeing her as she had been during those
days when all the family had been visiting her, extending their sympathy in con-
nection with Nico’s death, spending evenings with her. He and Laura were also
coming from Adrogué to spend time with her. There stayed just for a bit,
because soon after they had arrived, uncle Emilio or Víctor or Matilde imme-
diately appeared, with the same cold rejection of the family, indignant with
what had happened, with Adrogué, because they were happy, while Nico, poor
thing, while Nico . . . They would never suspect how everybody had collabo-
rated to put them on the first available ship, how they joined together to buy
tickets, and how they had put them gently on the deck, showered with gifts and
the wavings of farewell handkerchiefs.
Clearly, his duty as a son obliged him to immediately write to Matilde. He
was still capable of thinking about things before his fourth cognac. By the fifth
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one he was thinking about them again, and was laughing (he was crossing Paris
by foot to be alone and to clear up his mind), he was laughing at his son’s debt,
as if children had obligations, as if these obligations could be as those of a fourth
grader, sacred obligations before a sacred mademoiselle from the filthy fourth
grade. Because his son’s debt was not to immediately write to Matilde. Why to
pretend (this was not a question but how to put it another way) that mamá had
lost her mind? The only thing which could be done is not to do anything, let
the days pass, except Friday. When he said good-bye to Laura, telling her that
he would not come back for lunch because he had urgent posters to deal with,
he was so sure of the rest that he could almost add: “If you want, let’s go
together.” He found a refuge in a café at the station, less for hiding rather than
in order to have a little advantage of seeing while remaining invisible. At 11:35
a.m., he recognized Laura by her blue skirt, followed her at a distance, saw her
looking at a time table, asking something of an employee, buying a ticket at the
platform, entering the platform where people, with the look of those who
were waiting, already were gathering. Standing behind a truck full of boxes of
fruit, he was watching Laura, who seemed to doubt whether to stay at the
entrance to the platform or move forward. He watched her without any surprise,
as if she were an insect whose behavior could be interesting. The train arrived
almost immediately, and Laura mixed with people who came close to the win-
dows of the coaches, looking for their friends and relatives among the screams
and hands which were sticking out as if they were drowning inside. He went
around the truck and entered the platform between boxes of fruit and spots of
grease. From where he was staying, he would see the passengers going out, he
could again see Laura, her face relieved, because why wouldn’t Laura’s face be
relieved? (It was not a question, but how to put it another way). And then, giv-
ing himself the luxury of staying on the platform, after the last passengers and
porters would pass, he would go down the square, full of sunshine, to drink
cognac at the corner café. And the same afternoon he would write to his
mamá without a minor reference to a funny episode (but it was not funny) and
then he would have courage and would talk to Laura (but he would not have
courage and would not talk to Laura). At any event, cognac, this without any
doubt, and let everything else go to hell. To see a bunch of people hugging each
other, with screams and tears, the unleashed kinsfolk, a cheap eroticism, as a
fair’s merry-go-round flooding the platform between piled up suitcases and
packages; and finally, finally, such a long time since we’ve seen each other, how
tanned you are, Ivette, but yes, the sun was wonderful, daughter. Inasmuch as
he was looking for similarities, for the fun of allying with stupidity, two of the
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man who passed should be Argentineans by their hair style, their jackets, their
expressions of satisfaction which hid their agitation at entering Paris. One of
them indeed looked like Nico, if, of course, you were looking for similarities.
The other did not, as in reality the first one did not either. His neck, for
instance, looked much fatter, and his waist looked much broader then Nico’s.
But with the intention to find similarities just for fun, that other, who had
passed and approached the exit with only one suitcase in his left hand, as well
as Nico, was left-handed, with a round-shouldered back and the same shoulder-
line. And Laura was probably thinking the same thing, because she was fol-
lowing him, watching him with the facial expression which Luis knew so well,
for that was Laura’s face when she was waking up with nightmares, and was lying
in bed with her eyes fixed in the air, watching, now he knew it, one who was
moving away, turning his back on her, consumed by revenge without name,
which made her scream and fight in her sleep.
But no matter how they would look for similarities, naturally, the man was
a stranger, they saw him from the front when he put his suitcase on the floor
in order to look for a ticket to pass it to the employee at the exit from the
platform. Laura was the first to leave the station; he allowed her to gain her dis-
tance and to get lost at the bus stop. He entered the coffee shop at the corner,
and threw himself on the chair. Later, he did not remember whether he was ask-
ing for something to drink, if that which had burned his mouth, was the
bitterness of cheap cognac. He worked the whole afternoon on posters, with-
out taking any rest. Sometimes he thought that he had to write to mamá, but
he left it alone till the end of the working day. He was walking home. When
he came, he found the superintendent in the front hall and talked to her for a
while. He would prefer to talk to the superintendent or his neighbors, but every-
body was entering their apartments; the dinner hour was approaching. He
slowly climbed up the stairs (the truth is that he always was going up slowly,
not to exhaust his lungs, and not to cough), and as he reached the third floor,
he leaned to the door, before ringing the bell, in order to rest, and as if listen-
ing to what was happening inside the apartment. Then he gave two short
rings, as always.
—Ah, it’s you—said Laura, offering him a cold cheek. I already started ask-
ing myself whether you’d need to stay longer. The meat, probably, is already
overcooked.
It was not overcooked, but it did not have any taste at all. If at this moment
he would be able to ask Laura why she had come to the station, the coffee would
recover its taste, or a cigarette. But Laura had not left the house during the whole
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day, she told him, as if she needed to lie or to wait till he would make a funny
comment about the date and of mamá’s lamentable manias. Stirring his coffee,
with his elbows on the table cloth, he once more allowed a moment to pass.
Laura’s lie was not important anymore, one more among so many kisses belong-
ing to someone else, so many silences where everything was Nico, where there
was nothing in her or in him that was not Nico. Why (it was not a question, but
how to put it another way) not to put a third knife, fork and spoon on the table?
Why not go away, not close a fist and smash with it this sad and suffering face
that a cigarette’s smoke was deforming, that was going and coming back between
waters, that seemed to be filling up step by step with hatred, as if it were mamá’s
own face? Perhaps he was waiting in another room, or perhaps he was, as Luis,
waiting while leaning at the door, or he had been already settled, where he always
was an owner, in the white territory of sheets, where he was coming so often in
Laura’s dreams. There he would wait, lying on his back, also smoking a cigarette,
coughing a bit, with a smile on the clown’s face, as was his face during his last
days, when there was not a drop of healthy blood in his vessels.
Luis passed to another room, went to his working table, turned on the lamp.
He did not need to reread mamá’s letter in order to respond to it, as he had to
do. He started writing, dear mamá. He wrote: dear mamá. He threw the paper
and wrote: mamá. He felt that his home was a fist that was squeezing him.
Everything was tighter, more and more suffocating. The apartment was good
for two; he was thinking exactly about two. When he lifted his eyes (after
finishing writing: mamá), Laura was standing at the door, watching him. Luis
put his pen aside.
—Do you think that he has become much thinner?—he asked
Laura made a gesture. Two shiny streams of tears were running down her
cheeks.
—A little bit,—she said.—One is changing . . .
Prologue to “Letters from Mother” 1

by Jorge Luis Borges
Around 1947 I was an editor of a virtually unknown magazine published by Sarah

de Ortiz Basualdo. One afternoon as often happened, a tall young man handed
us a manuscript. I do not remember his face; blindness is an accomplice of for-
getfulness. He said he had brought a fantastic tale to show me. I asked him to
come back in ten days, but before ten days were up, he was back. I told him that
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translations 157
I had two pieces of news for him. First, that his manuscript was at the printer’s;
second, that my sister Norah, who liked it very much, would illustrate it. This
story, now justly famous, was entitled “House Taken Over.” Years later, in Paris,
Julio Cortázar reminded me of this old episode and confessed that it had been the
first time that he had seen his work in print. I was honored to learn this.
I know very little about contemporary literature. I believe that we can know
about the past in a symbolic mode, and that we can imagine the future, accord-
ing to our fears and hopes; but in the present, there are too many things for us
to decipher. Future generations will know what we do not know, and will
study pages which deserve re-reading. Schopenhauer advised that to avoid
being trapped in the hands of chance, one should read books which were writ-
ten a hundred years ago. I have not always been true to this cautious dictum;
I read Secret Weapons with a special pleasure and have selected this story.
A fantastic story, according to Wells, should admit of only one fantastic ele-
ment in order for the readers’ imagination to easily accept it. This prudence
belongs to the skeptical nineteenth century, not to the age that dreamed up the-
ories of the universe or Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. In “Letters from
Mother,” the trivial, the necessarily trivial, resides in the title, in the protago-
nists’ conduct, and in the continuous mentioning of cigarette brands and sub-
way stations. The miraculous requires such details.
Another virtue of this fine story is that supernatural is not stated, but
rather insinuated, making it all the more powerful, as in Lugones’s tale “Ysur.”2
The possibility is left open that everything is a guilt-inspired hallucination.
Someone who seemed innocent comes back with a vengeance.
Julio Cortázar has been condemned or approved for his political views.
Ethics aside, I believe most people’s opinions are superficial and ephemeral.
Buenos Aires October 29, 1983

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NOTES
Introduction
1. See, also, Borges’s prologue to Cortázar’s “Cartas de mamá.” All translations in this book,
unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
2. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on numerous occasions expressed the admiration for
Borges’s works and considered them as inspirational for their own writings. See, for exam-
ple, Foucault’s The Order of Things, and Derrida’s Dissemination.
3. For other comparative studies of Borges’s and Cortázar’s works see Carter Wheelock’s
“Borges, Cortazar and the Aesthetic of the Vacant Mind,” Peter Ronai’s “Reading Jorge
Luis Borges in the Manner of Julio Cortázar,” Eduardo González’s “Hacia Cortázar, a Partir
de Borges,” Sonia Thon’s “El ritmo en la prosa de Borges and Cortázar,” Policarpo Varon’s
“Borges y Cortázar,” Regina Harrison’s “Mythopoesis: The Monster in the Labyrinth
According to Supervielle, Gide, Borges, and Cortázar,” Manuel Alcides Jofré’s “Teoría y
práctica de la superrealidad en la literatura latinoamericana: Borges, Cortázar y Neruda,”
and Daniel Mesa Gancedo’s “De la casa (tomada) al café (Tortoni): Historia de los dos que
se entendieron: Borges y Cortázar.”
4. In the West, the closest concept to contemporary ‘place’ among earlier terms is the bibli-
cal Hebrew makom, which has a connotation of “hiding place” or a “resting place” in the
Book of Job (16:18). In Genesis (22:3, 28:11, 28:15, 28:19) place is associated with revela-
tion and with the divine. Makom refers to a place where God might be worshipped. A rab-
binical commentary on Genesis exclaims, “Why is God called place? Because He is the place
of the world, while the world is not His place” (Sambursky, 15).
Aristotle’s conception of place is based on his ideas of relation, delimitation and regula-
tion: “Place is a space in which the body is placed” (Physics 53). Whereas for Aristotle, place
serves as the condition of all existing things, for Immanuel Kant, place is essential for the for-
mation of human knowledge about this world and for the description of epistemological systems.
Place is a category associated both with the scope of knowledge and the “positions” which the
parts occupy relatively to one another. Kant’s notion of “architectonic” which is a “system of
the places of knowing” (653) emphasizes the relationship between place, epistemology and order.
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In a similar fashion, Foucault discusses “the trajectory of meaning” (196) and the posi-
tion of the subject within the space of knowledge. In Archaeology of Knowledge, for exam-
ple, he points out that “knowledge . . . is also the space in which the subject may take up
a position and speak of the objects with which he deals in his discourse” (238). Martin
Heidegger considers place in its existential connection with “dwelling” and “thinking”
(148). From his ontological perspective the notion of building is close to that of thinking.
Place is unseparable from the authenticity of dwelling. “Being” must be placed and place’s
existence is due to being, for when ontology is able to take meaning into Being, space is then
filled with meaning, i.e., it becomes place (204). Place is “next to none” (84). The “primal
gathering principle” or event (Ereignis) is the original understanding of place, clearing,
abode, home, whole, or totality, worlded earth, ground—all of which mean fundamentally
the same. For Gaston Bachelard, human perception of place is influenced by imagination
and memory; a human being “experiences the house in its reality and its virtuality, by means
of thoughts and dream” (8). Though he discusses the symbolism of such locations as house,
its parts and physical objects which usually are places for others, for instance, chests, draw-
ers and wardrobes in connection with self-development; he fails to recognize the difference
between space and place. In his topoanalysis place is seen as an extension of human exis-
tence, and is treated as a homogeneous part of human life. Similarly, for Henri Lefebvre
places indicate “relationship of local to global” (288). He distinguishes between the trivi-
alized spaces of everyday life and special symbolic ones which can be “desirable” or “unde-
sirable,” benevolent or malevolent. Postmodern philosophers emphasize the contrast
between anthropological place of modernity based on place-identity-relations continuum
and “non-place” of contemporaneity, which is equivalent to “passage” (de Certeau 156). Non-
places undermine the concept of integration and fixation and create solitude and similitude;
they lead to the coexistence of worlds and their archetype appears to be a travel space (Augé
85). A similar distinction is maintained in contemporary architecture. As Mies van der Rohe
(1947) points out, place-identity-form unity is characteristic for modernist buildings. This
relationship, however, is challenged by postmodern structures. By becoming a “zone” of rad-
ical indeterminacy (McHale 44), postmodern place questions the inside/outside opposition
and loses the senses of “stability” and “limit” (de Certeau 117).
5. Juri M. Lotman’s and Boris A. Uspenskij’s The Semiotics of Russian Culture emphasizes the
distinction between fixed and mobile spaces, between passable places and closed boundaries.
It shows how the fixed elements in a literary text form the cosmogonic, geographic and social
structure, the so-called “field” of the hero.
6. Displacement, whose history as a concept is more recent then that of place, implies the act
of displacing and the state of being displaced. Being a physical action and its result, dis-
placement is associated with “the loss of particular places” (35), “dislocation,” “replacing” or
“removal” (Casey 161). Moreover, displacement, an essential element of any system of knowl-
edge, is inevitable in any attempt to describe and understand the physics of place. According
to Joseph Fell, for example, metaphysics is “dis-placement” for it regards the ground or place
as to be “supplied” or “made present by ontotheological inquiry,” and it does so because “it
has forgotten that the ground/place already is the place in which the beings about whose ground
metaphysics inquires have already been identified as the beings they are” (204).
Displacement becomes an essential concept for existentialism and psychoanalysis, as
Soren Kierkegaard’s and Sigmund Freud’s treatments of this phenomenon demonstrate.
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notes 161
Kiekegaard associates displacement with “no placement,” an experience of exile and of

“open-endedness” and “incompleteness” (Palmer 39). Exile exemplifies the external rela-
tionship between a human being and the surrounding world, as well as the inner connec-
tion between a person and his/her self. As Kierkegaard observes: “Most men live in relation
to their self as if they were constantly out, never at home” (in Palmer 67). His notion of
home is both associated with a particular territory and it is a metaphor for human self. This
experience of displacement, however, is a force which returns human beings to them-
selves, to their true place, to their freedom. According to Kierkegaard, a spiritual diaspora,
the displacement which a person can experience in his home is often expressed in an artistic
creation.
Likewise, in his Being and Time, Heidegger breaks with his own earliest conception of
place as place of dwelling, of familiarity and residing and suggests that un-homeness which
evokes ontological anxiety is the goal for which human beings should strive to trespass “the
limits of the familiar.” Displacement is also a desirable state in his An Introduction to Metaphysics,
where the creative person is described as one who “must risk dispersion, in-stability, disorder,
mischief” (123). Thus, the only notion of the true place is that of displacement.
Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s ideas about the connection between intellectual exile
and creativity have been further developed by Edward Said in his lecture called
“Intellectual Exile: Expatriates and Marginals.” In this text, Said affirms that to be out of
place, to be displaced, is the right place for the modern intellectual, who is a person of
movement and search: “The exilic intellectual does not respond to the logic of the con-
ventional but to the audacity of daring, and to representing change, to moving on, not
standing still” (63).
Existential displacement multiplies into textual ones, “literary open-endedness and
incompleteness” (Houe 362), cultural displacement, for “thought and language displace real-
ity or are displacements of reality” (359), and artistic one where place is an “irrecuperable
displacement” (81); “the Open” is a “place of conflict” (Heidegger 81).
Freud introduces the concept of displacement and “de-centering” in his investiga-
tion of dreaming. Insisting on the mutual dependence between displacement and imag-
ination, he considers the latter to be “nothing less than the essential portion of the
dream-work” (121). The displacement/imagination relationship implies “de-centering”
for “the dream is, as it were, differently centered from the dream-thoughts—its content
has different elements as its central point” (305). Freud’s treatment of displacement and
“de-centering’’ has been both used and “displaced” by the deconstructionists. For Derrida,
displacement involves the idea of “de-centering” and “exile” of the traditional approaches
to the meaning and selfhood. Though displacement does not have the special status of
terms such as différrance, supplement, spacing, and dissémination in Derrida’s texts, in his
Positions which develops “a general strategy of deconstruction,” displacement is mainly
associated with “dissemination” which generates an unpredictable turbulence of signifiers.
Emphasizing the importance of displacement in post-structuralist theory, Mark Krupnick
points out the determinant importance of displacement in its various connotations for
post-structuralist theory which manifests “a decisive shift in humanity’s understanding of
itself” (4).
Postmodern anthropologists regard displacement as a common practice in contem-
porary society, and analyze its challenge to the traditional differentiation between self and
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other. As Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg point out, the modern concepts of nations and
cultures appear to be undermined by the displacement which involves “the undoing of one
particular old certainty—the notion that there is an immutable link between cultures, peo-
ples, or identities and specific places” (1).
7. In his conversation with André Camp, Borges explicitly separates his passion for philosophy
from his personal beliefs: “I am fond of circular form. That does not mean that I believe in
circular time, in the hypothesis of Pythagoras, Hume, Nietzsche, or many others. The
stoics also held that history repeats itself in exactly the same fashion. I do nothing but take
advantage, to the best of my ability, of the literary possibilities of this hypothesis Nietzsche
thought he had invented” (qtd. in Kristal 143).
8. As Goodman observes, “We cannot test a version by comparing it with a world undescribed,
undepicted, unperceived” (4).
9. In his book Crítica y Ficción, Ricardo Piglia characterizes Borges’s texts as “una micro-
scopía de las grandes tradiciones” (83). In a similar fashion, in his book Out of context,
Daniel Balderston perceptively observes that “Borges plays in his fictions with narrowly
constricted space and time yet suggests that even there (as in Aleph) there are infinite
possibilities” (138).
Chapter 1
1. For the most complete discussions of the kabbalistic elements in Borges’s fiction, see Jaime
Alazraki’s “Borges and the Kabbalah,” Saúl Sosnowsky’s Borges y la cabala and Edna
Aizenberg’s The Aleph Weaver. The importance of the Kabbalah in Borges’s fiction has been
also discussed by in such works as “Una vindicación de la cábala” by Marcos R. Barnatán,
“Borges, el Aleph y la Kábala” by Mario Satz, “Borges, Cabbala and ‘Creative Misreading’ ”
by Evelyn Fishburn, and most recently in “Two Borges Essay Manuscripts in the University
of Virginia Collection: ‘La cábala’ and ‘Flaubert’ ” by Donald L. Shaw.
2. In Genesis (see, particularly, 22:3, 28:11, 28:19), place, makom, is a locale where God
might be worshipped. In post biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, place became a theological
synonym for God, as expressed in the Talmudic sayings “He is a place of his world,” and
“His world is His place” (Jammer 26).
3. All references are to Andrew Hurley’s translation of “El Aleph” as it appears in Borges.
Collected Fiction (New York: Penguin, 1998), pp. 274–286.
4. Bakhtin defined the chronotope as follows: “We will give the name chronotope
(literally, “time-space”) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships
that are artistically expressed in literature” (84).
5. Drawing on striking similarities between the settings in Evaristo Carriego’s sonnet “Como en
los buenos tiempos” [“As in good times”] and “The Aleph,” which in the later one has iron-
ic connotations, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni’s suggests that Borges’s work as a biographer
influenced his own creation. He considers Carriego’s text to be “a prime source for ‘The
Aleph’ ” (108), and notices similarities between the settings and the narrator’s engagement
with paying homage to his diseased beloved in both works, albeit ironized in the last one.
6. Charles Mears, the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Finest Story in the World,” a
story which Borges creatively translated into Spanish (see Kristal 34–35), can be seen as
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notes 163
a possible source of inspiration for Borges’s Daneri. Both characters “suffered from aspira-
tions,” which have been “all literary” (294).
7. In my analysis, I will refer to another edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, where the quote used
by Borges appears on p. 643.
8. For a recent, illuminating discussion of Borges’s vision of quotations as an artistic encounter,
a literary theme, and an incessant source for literary creation, see Lisa Block de Behar’s
Borges. The Passion of an Endless Quotation. My detailed analysis of this insightful book has
been published in Semiotica 3(2006), pp. 345–355.
9. Admiring Schopenhauer’s book Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Borges points out: “Creo
que es el que ha dado, de algún modo, digamos, la cifra, la clave para entender el mundo”
(qtd. in Balderstón et al. 294). [“I believe that it is he who gave, in a certain way, let’s say,
the key for understanding the world”].
10. According to Humberto Nunez-Faraco, this episode echoes a passage from Luke (4–5): “And
the devil taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the
world in a moment of time.”
11. Borges and Derrida similarly use the foreign words “el aleph” and “pharmakon,” respectively,
the ambivalent meanings of which become organizing principles of “El Aleph” and
Dissemination.
12. This episode can also be interpreted as a ludic allusion to Dante’s “Paradiso,” where the
pilgrim is exposed to a reality he cannot express: “In that heaven which partakes most of
His light/I have been, and have beheld such things as who/ Comes down thence has no wit
nor power to write” (4–6).
13. According to Sharon Lynn Sieber, “El Aleph” is one of the most “compelling examples”
(200) of the structure of simultaneity in modern fiction.
14. Following on Estela Canto’s observation that a kaleidoscope is a source of inspiration for
Borges’s story, Heather Dubnick persuasively argues that the story exemplifies a “new modern
consiousness” that Charles Baudelaire in his “The Painter of Modern Life” compares
“ ‘to a mirror as vast as a crowd’ that reflects upon everything within its sight’ ” (138).
15. I will quote from James E. Irby’s English translation of “Las ruinas circulares” as it appears
in Labyrinths (New York: A New Directions Book, 1964), pp. 45–51.
16. Daniel Mesa Gancedo perceptively notices that the topos of an attempt to create human being
in dream has been also of interest for Cortázar. It is a leitmotif of his story “Bruja” [“A Witch”].
17. The magician’s reaction on the insomnia echoes Caliban’s despair in Shakespeare’s The Tempest
when he says: “ . . . when I wak’d/I cry’d to dream again” (3.2.24–25). The dream-desert-
labyrinth pattern is consistent in Borges’s fiction. See, for example “El milagro secreto.”
18. “The Doctrine of Cycles,” trans. Esther Allen, in Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot
Weinberger, trans. Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger (New York:
Penguin, 1999), pp. 115–123.
19. “Circular Time,” trans. Esther Allen, in Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger,
trans. Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger (New York: Penguin, 1999),
pp. 225–229.
20. The metaphoric image of dream as “la materia incoherente” echoes Prospero’s lines
in Shakespeare’s The Tempest when he says “. . . We are such stuff/As dreams are made on”
(Act IV, scene1).
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21. This appearance of the God of Fire as a reflection of the magician’s dream echoes Luther’s
words quoted by Nietzsche in his description of the condition of God: “God himself can-
not exist without the wise man” (The Gay Science 191).
22. Such critics as Stephen E. Soud and Ivan Almeida associate the functioning of “ruinas” with
a metaphor for the fragmented literary presence of “intertextuality” in this story.
23. Oscar Hahn and Soud extensively and thoughtfully discuss the presence of the golem ele-
ment in this story. Borges himself accepts the golem-oriented interpretations of his story (see
Cortínez (ed.), Borges the Poet).
24. “The Disk,” trans. Andrew Hurley in Borges, Collected Fictions. (New York: Penguin, 1998),
pp. 477–480.
25. In Antiguas literaturas germánicas and Literaturas germánicas medievales, Borges et al. refer to
Odin, a mythical pagan Scandinavian god who has a gift of prophecy, as one of the main
figures in medieval Germanic literatures.
26. This almost naturalistic scene of Isern’s death evokes Jacob Grimm’s observation about The
Volsunga Saga: “La saga de los antepasados de Sigurd . . . se caracteriza por una barbarie
que es índice de su mucha antiguedad” (qtd. in Borges et al. LGM. 182–183) [“The saga of
the ancestors of Sigurd . . . is characterized by the barbarity which is a sign of its antiquity”]
The death of “Isern” can be also interpreted along the lines of the Old English Riddle #58
from the Exeter Book, which Borges admired. According to L. Blakeley, the phrase “isernes
dael” in this riddle signifies “much iron,” this meaning is both present and ironized in the
Borges’s story, where one blow of the axe takes Isern’s life. As this scholar of Old English
further explains, there are two forms of the word “iren” and “isern.” While the first one,
she suggests, is more typical for poetry, and can be found, for instance, in Beowulf; “Isern”
is more colloquial, it appears four times in the Exeter book, and it is a form that is usually
used in West-Saxon dialect, that is in standard Old English. I think this is why Borges prefers
to use “Isern” in the story, where realistic setting and the narrator’s colloquial style domi-
nate. Also, one may notice that the king introduces himself as “a king of Secgens,” which
is defined as “an unknown Germanic tribe” in the Cambridge Old English Reader. The word
“Secgens” turns out to be almost a homophone of the old English verb “secgan” which is
“secgen” in its present tense in the first, second and third person plural. This verb means
“to say” or “to tell,” the word “saga” is most probably derived from it. “The king of
Secgens,” therefore I suggest, can be interpreted in as a ruler, or leader of storytellers.
27. The marking of the place where an object fell is a recurrent motif in German folklore (see,
Antti Aarne’s. The Types of the Folktale (Helsinki: Tampere, 1964), p. 385.
28. “The Book of Sand,” trans. Andrew Hurley, in Borges, Collected Fictions (New York:
Penguin, 1998), pp. 480–484.
29. An indirect quotation of this image, “que tejer una cuerda de arena” (Obras 1:452) [“than weav-
ing a rope of sand” (47)], and a synonymous expression of an impossible object “que amonedar
el viento sin cara” [“coining the faceless wind” (47)] also appear in “Las ruinas circulares.”
30. In his conversation with Antonio Carrizo, Borges refers to the history of the title of the story
and the book and points out that he was primarily influenced by Las montañas del oro and
wanted to call his text El libro del arena [The Book of the Sand], but “después me dí cuento
que era absurdo y que tenía que ser El libro de arena . . . un libro imposible, porque se
disgrega” (47) [“afterwards I realized it was absurd and that it had to be The Book of
Sand . . . an impossible book which disintegrates”].
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notes 165
31. For example, the narrator of Snorri Sturluson’s creation says: “Then Hogni sailed after him
all the way to Orkney” (121).
Chapter 2
1. Julio Cortázar. Hopscotch, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Random House, 1966).
2. For a detailed discussion of the novel’s structure, see Alazraki’s essay “Rayuela: Estructura.”
3. In his conversation with Prego, Cortázar tells that for several years before he has started writ-
ing the novel, he has identified himself with Oliveira: “. . . cuando me puse a escribir
Rayuela había acumulado varios años de Oliveira, de haber enfocado la realidad como
Oliveira la enfoca. Eso se va explicitando después a lo largo del libro, pero ya estaba en mí
cuando empecé a escribirlo” (Prego 143) [“When I have started writing Hopscotch, I have
already accumulated several years of Oliveira, of his perception of reality. This becomes
explicit in course of the book, but it was in me already when I’ve started to write”].
Oliveira and Cortázar appear to share anxiety caused by the prospering of distorted
Peronist values and the limiting nationalistic vision of the country dominant in the cul-
tural discourse of the time. In Rayuela the allusion to this situation can be found in the
narrator’s description of Oliveira’s vision of his city, its past and its present: “. . . Oliveira
no tenía más que remedar, con una sonrisa agria, las decantadas frases y los ritmos lujosos
del ayer, los modos áulicos de decir y de callar. En Buenos Aires, capital del miedo, volvía
a sentirse rodeado por ese discreto allanamiento de artistas que se da en llamar buen sen-
tido y, por encima, esa afirmación de suficiencia que engolaba las voces de los jóvenes y
los viejos, su aceptación de lo inmediato como lo verdadero” (75: 496) [“all that Oliveira
had to do was put on a wry smile and imitate the exaggerated phrases and the luxurious
rhythms of yesterday, the auclic ways of speaking and keeping still. In Buenos Aires, the
capital of fear, he felt himself surrounded once again by that discreet smoothing of edges
that likes to go by the name of good sense and, on top of it all, that affirmation of sufficien-
cy which lumps together the voices of young and old, its acceptance of the immediate as
the true” (388)]. In his conversation with Luis Harss, Cortázar refers to his youth experi-
ence in Argentina, a combination of anxiety and disappointment which motivated his
immigration: “La gente soñaba con París y Londres. Buenos Aires era una especie de cas-
tigo. Vivir allí era estar encarcelado.” (257). [“People were dreaming of Paris and London.
Buenos Aires was a kind of punishment. To live there was as to be imprisoned”].
Considering Cortázar as both most Argentinean writer and intellectual exile who resides
in Paris from 1951, Harss observes that it has been too late for the writer to disengage from
“los vínculos con su país, que lo ha perseguido con todos sus fantasmas al exilio” (257) [“the
bonds with his country, which followed him with all the phantoms of exile”]. Cortázar’s
Buenos Aires in Rayuela, the novel written in Paris, vividly exemplifies this critic’s per-
ceptive observation.
4. Cortázar, for example, expresses his sympathy with existentialism in his Teoría del túnel (see,
for instance, pp.115–125), which in Saul Yurkievich’s opinion “constituye el pretexto de
la práctica novelesca de Cortázar” (29) [“constitutes a pretext for the novelistic practice of
Cortázar”]. In this essay he develops his theory of the novel applied later in his own works,
and particularly in Rayuela [Hopscotch]. He also published in 1948 a review of Leon Chestov’s
book Kierkegaard y la filosofía existencial.
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5. Cortázar refers on various occasions to the works of Balzac and Dostoevsky, which con-
tributed to his formation as a reader and a writer. An explicit reference to Le Pére Goriot
appears in Teoría del túnel (50). He also wrote an essay “Del sentimiento de no estar del todo”
[“On Feeling Not All There”] included in La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos, where he also
mentions Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (39). In Rayuela itself, he mentions Eugene Rastignac as
an archetypical dramatic character (297).
6. Similarly to Balzac, who has been considered as “[a]nother writer of the romantic genera-
tion” (Auerbach 468), Cortázar also states that he belongs to the romantic tradition in the
conversation with Prego, where he defines “Romanticismo” as “la ruptura” [“a break”] with
the previous literature: “A lo largo del siglo XIX la llegada del Romanticismo significa la liq-
uidación del período neoclásico anterior” (147) [“During the 19th century, the arrival of
Romanticism signifies a liquidation of the previous neoclassical period”].
7. The French writer Paul Claudel describes a typical room in Paris as “a sort of geometrical
site, a conventional hole, which we furnish with pictures, objects and wardrobes within
wardrobe” (qtd. in Bachelard 27).
8. In his analysis of the influence of Balzac on Dostoevsky, Leonid Grossman mentions
that Dostoevsky’s first published work was his translation of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet
(see pp. 21). Bakhtin also mentions Balzac’s influence on Dostoevsky in Problems of
Dostoevsky’s Poetics (see, for instance, p. 34).
9. Cortázar’s familiarity with Bachelard’s works becomes evident, for instance, in his conver-
sation with Garfield (94).
10. The desire to find the center, in contrast to the postmodernist “awareness of the absence of
centers” (MacHale 46), echoes an epistemological quest considered by Brian MacHale as a
dominant feature of modernism, whose representatives are preoccupied with the following
questions: “How can I interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am I in it?” (9).
11. An ideal city as the way of liberation in Rayuela [Hopscotch] is an embryonic image of the
city in 62: Modelo para armar [62: A Model Kit].
12. Traveler, Horacio’s friend and double who appears in the second part of the novel makes a
similar statement about Horacio’s ambitions when he describes his Doppelgänger in a
following way: “Una especie de cátaro existencial, un puro. O César o nada, esa clase de tajos
radicales” (278) [“A kind of existential puritan, a purist. Caesar or nothing, that kind of
radical demand” (340)]. Traveler’s comment can be considered as an example of mise-
en-abyme, abundant in the novel.
13. The city-woman image is maintained also in the second part of the novel where Traveler
accuses Oliveira of “su manía de encontrarlo todo mal en Buenos Aires, de tratar a la
ciudad de puta encorsetada” (190; italics added) [“his mania for finding everything wrong with
Buenos Aires, for treating the city like a tightly girdled whore” (228; italics added)].
14. As Jones points out, “Both heavenly city and earthly city are united in the figure of La Maga,
who is related to Babylon through a series of references . . . suggesting that the sensual life
must be an essential part of the new Jerusalem” (230).
15. Marcelo Alberto Villanueva emphasizes the symbolic importance of the metaphysical
rivers and the water associated with the origin of reality in mythical thinking: “Ya en los
mitos de Sumeria se encuentra la idea del diluvio universal como aquel en que se reitera que
la diosa de las aguas fue primordialmente el origen de toda realidad. También la Biblia afir-
ma que antes de la creación de los animales y las plantas ya ‘el Espíritu de dios se movía sobre
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la faz de las aguas’ ” (44–45) [“The idea of the universal deluge can be found already in myths
of Sumeria, where the godess of water was the primarily the origin of reality. Also, the Bible
affirms that before the creation of animals and plants already ‘the spirit of god moved above
the face of the water’ ”]. See, for example, Genesis 1:2.
16. In his conversation with Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann, Cortázar mentions a multilevel
importance of the symbol of mandala for his writting of Rayuela which originally he wanted
to call Mandala: “Cuando pensé el libro estaba obsesionado con la idea del mandala, en parte
porque había estado leyendo muchas obras de antropología y sobre todo de religión tibetana.
Además había visitado la India, donde pude ver cantidad de mandalas indios y japoneses”
(266) [“When I thought about the book, I was obsessed with the idea of the mandala,
partially because I was reading many book on anthropogy and Tibetan religion. Also, I was
visiting India, where I could see a lot of Indian and Japanese mandalas.”]
17. In addition of having the philistine reasoning of “the people with strong nerves,” Gregorivious
displays striking similarities with Dostoesvsky’s character Svidrigailov from Crime and
Punishment. Both characters, for instance, are engaged with the activity of spying. Whereas
Svidrigailov listens in to the conversation between Raskolnikov and Sonia, Gregorivious
follows Horacio on the streets, and La Maga calls him “Espía” (112) “[s]py” (127).
18. Mentioning just some of the possibilities, one may suggest that The Underground Man could
prefigure Kafka’s anonymous protagonist in The Castle, the “absurd man” in Albert Camus’s
Myth of Sisyphus, and Hermann Hesse’s “outsider” (Steppenwolf).
19. As Daniel López Salort perceptively observes, a motif of a search with no particular purpose is
also vividly present in Buddhism and ancient Chinese poetry. He gives and example of T’sen
T’sang classical poem “Hsin-Hsin-Ming” (606 AD) [“Verses on the Faith Mind”]. For a
recent comprehensive exploration of an impact of Buddhist philosophy on Borges’s and
Cortázar’s fiction, see Chien-Yi Tu’s Borges, Cortázar and el Budhismo (Borges, Cortázar and
Buddhism).
20. Oliveira’s meditations about the endless search can be considered an example of the inter-
nal dialogization defined by Bakhtin as an opposite to the external, marked dialogue. In the
internal dialogization “The word lives, as it were on the boundary between its own context
and another, alien, context” (284).
21. As Lotman points out, “The city is a complex semiotic mechanism, a culture-generator, but
it carries out this function only because it is a melting-pot of texts and codes, belonging to
all kinds of languages and levels.” (194).
22. One of the critics who considers Morelli to be Cortázar’s “alter-ego” is Fernando Alegria,
who refers to “La posición Cortázar- Morelli” [“a position Cortázar-Morelli”] in Rayuela (92).
23. Hector Castellano-Giron analyses Galdos’s ‘presence’ in Rayuela and suggests an interest-
ing reading of the chapter 34 in light of Galdos’s Lo prohibido.
24. I use the term “overt metafictional” as defined by Linda Hutcheon in Narcissistic Narrative.
The Metafictional Paradox, where she points out that “[o]vert forms of narcissism are present
in texts in which the self-consciousness and self-reflection are clearly evident, usually
explicitly thematized or even allegorized within the ‘fiction’ ” (23).
25. “Break of the Day,” trans. Stephen Kessler, in Borges, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander
Coleman (New York:Viking, 1999), pp. 23–24.
26. “Patio.” trans. Robert Fitzgerald, in Borges, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, p. 15.
27. “Unknown Street.” trans. Alexander Coleman, in Borges, Selected Poems, p. 11.
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28. Oliveira’s return to Buenos Aires can be interpreted in a way similar to Borges’s approach
to Wakefield, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthrone’s Twice Told Tales where “la honda
trivilidad del protagonista . . . contrasta con la magnitud de su perdición” (Obras 2:55) [“the
protagonist’s profound triviality, [which] contrasts with the magnitude of his
perdition” (Selected Non-Fictions 223)].
29. I also follow Hutcheon in her use of the concept of parody. She adopts the definition orig-
inally proposed by Russian formalists, which in her opinion is particularly applicable to
metafiction: “Parodic art both is a deviation from the norm and includes that norm with-
in itself as background material” (50).
30. “The Fearful Sphere of Pascal,” trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Borges, Labyrinths, pp. 189–193.
31. The references to encyclopedias appear in several Borges’s texts. A paradigmatic example
of Argentineans involved in study of the encyclopedia may be found in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius.”
32. Borges in his conversations with Grau, for instance, discusses the importance of Piranesi’s works
for his own texts and recalls his first acquaintance with Piranesi’s engravings and drawings:
“Yo conocí a Piranesi através de Thomas de Quincey. Es muy curiosa la descripción de las
Carceri . . . Yo tengo en casa un grabado de Piranesi, “Avanzo del Tempio del Dio Canopo,”
y otro de un discípulo suyo.” (150) [“I became familiar with Piranesi through Thomas de
Quincey. A description of the Carceri is very curious . . . I have at home a print of Piranesi’s
“Avanzo del Tempio del Dio Canopo” and another one by his student.”]
33. All references are to James E. Irby’s translation of “El inmortal” as it appears in Labyrinths,
pp. 105–119.
34. Some carnivalesque features already appear in the first part of the novel (e.g. doubles),
however they culminate and obtain metafictional significance in Buenos Aires.
35. Numerous critics such as Boldy (see p. 85) and Villanueva (see p. 44) analyze the plank
episode as a metaphorical representation of the Buenos-Aires/Paris dychotomy and as a
metaphysical exercise. In her reading of the novel as utopian space, Ana María Amar
Sanchez suggests that the failure to cross, the impossibility of crossing, also reminds us that
“ there is no way across, that there is no between to stand on” (32). I suggest a metafiction-
al reading of this episode.
36. As defined by Bakhtin, “Eccentricity is a special category of the carnival sense of the world
organically connected with the category of familiar contact; it permits—in concretely sen-
suous form—the latent sides of human nature to reveal and express themselves” (Problems
of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 123).
37. In contrast to Dostoevsky’s doubles, whose representation according to Bakhtin “always pre-
served alongside the tragic element an element of the comic as well” (117), in Cortázar’s dou-
bles the comic aspect is dominant.
38. Some examples of doubles in Dostoevsky’s works include for Raskolnikov Svidrigailov,
Luzhin, and Lebeziatnikov; for Ivan Karamazov—Smerdyakov, the devil, Rakitin. Oliveira’s
in Cortázar’s Rayuela also has two doubles with opposite functions: Grigorovius and Traveler.
39. Sonya, for instance is an embodiment of compassion in Crime and Punishment. When she
first hears about Raskolnikov’s crime, Sonya experiences her “first passionate and poignant
impulse of sympathy” (“pity” is the most appropriate word for the Russian “sostradanie” (348;
italics added)).
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notes 169
40. This ‘poem’ can also be considered an example of carnivalesque profanation.

41. These Oliveira’s thoughts can also be considered a parodic echo of José Hernández’s famous
work Martín Fierro which has two parts “La ida” [“The Departure of Martin Fierro”] and
“La vuelta” [“The Return of Martin Fierro”].
42. The original being “There’s no place like home” from the conclusion of the film “The Wizard
of Oz,” which Cortázar admired.
43. Oliveira’s isolation in the fictional universe of Rayuela makes it echo the abstract—alien
world of Greek romances, described by Bakhtin as one of the major sources for the creation
of the European novel. As the Russian critic points out in his essay “Forms of Time and
Chronotope in the Novel,” “[i]n it everything is foreign, including the heroes’ home-
land. . . . There is no implied native, ordinary, familiar world” (101). Like Oliveira, the char-
acter of the Greek romance is “passive and unchanging.” Privacy and isolation are the essential
features of the human image, and “a man can only function as an isolated and private
individual deprived of any organic connection with his country, his city, his own social
group, his clan, even his family” (Bakhtin 108).
44. Oliveira’s (constant) no-placement allows Nieves Soriano Nieto to compare and contrast
him with Homer’s Ulysses from Odyssey.
45. This particular characteristic of uncertainty in Cortázar’s opinion makes Rayuela “un libro
muy argentino” (in Bermejo 62) [“a very Argentine book”].
46. Darlene Emily Hicks considers Traveler to be a physical being who embodies “The prob-
lem of alienation, the alienation of Horacio from Argentina” (64).
47. Emphasizing the recurrent motif of the “hombre en tránsito” [“a person in transit”] in
Cortázar’s works, Matamoro draws parallels between Oliveira, Johnny Carter (El perseguidor)
and Martini (La isla a mediodía) and concludes: “Para ellos el exilio es la forma natural de
vida” (39) [“For them exile is a natural form of life”].
48. Cortázar explains the symbol of “Rayuela” in his conversation with Yurkievich: “adopté la
rayuela como símbolo de una tentativa metafísica, como búsqueda mística que supone una
iniciación y una prueba, porque hay que avanzar con la piedrita de casilla en casilla y existe
la posibilidad de fracasar, de no llegar nunca al cielo” (60) [“I adopted hopscotch as a sym-
bol of metaphysical intent, as a mystical search which presupposes initiation and test
because you have to go ahead with a little stone from one box to another and there is a pos-
sibility to fail, to never reach the sky.”]
49. The ambiguity of Rayuela’s ending is also in vein with the carnival sense of the world creat-
ed in the text, which is “hostile to any sort of conclusive conclusion” and where “all endings
are merely new beginnings” (Problems of Dostoevky’s Poetics 165).
50. Alonso suggests the “Open” work strategies are common for Cortázar’s texts: “[t]he move-
ment encompassed by Cortázar’s oeuvre is neither an epiphany nor a solution, but rather
a gesture toward an uncomfortable and unsettled ‘between’ ” (14).
Chapter 3
1. All references are to Andrew Hurley’s translation of “Utopía de un hombre que está
cansado” as it appears in Collected Fictions, pp. 460–466.
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2. The title of the story and its tone allude to the presence of Quevedo’s poetic world in Borges’s
text, particularly Quevedo’s sonnet “Represéntase la brevedad de lo que se vive y cuán nada
parece lo que se vivió” where the lyric voice characterizes himself in a following way: “soy
un fue, y un será, y un es cansado” (11) [“I am one who was, who will be, and who is tired”].
For the detailed analysis of Quevedo’s influence on Borges, see Giuseppe Bellini’s Quevedo
y la poesia hispanoamericana del siglo XX: Vallejo, Carrera Andrade, Paz, Neruda, Borges and
Christopher Maurer’s “The Poet’s Poets: Borges and Quevedo.”
3. Quevedo translates page and a half of More’s book and quotes it in his political work
“Carta a Luis XIII” (1635).
4. Eudoro Acevedo’s self-introduction and his last name which is that of Borges’s mother
alludes to the fictional presence of the writer in the text.
5. “The Postulation of Reality,” trans. Esther Allen, in Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot
Weinberger, pp. 59–65.
6. One of the most evident ambiguities of More’s Utopia appears in the chapter “Their Gold
and Silver, and How They Keep It” where the reader learns that utopians “hold gold and
silver up to scorn in every way” (More 44), but at the same time they recognize the value
of gold because it is used for the employment of mercenaries to wage their expansionist war.
7. An identification of the religious writing with the fantastic fiction produces comic effect
of “transposition” (Bergson 136).
8. The peculiarity of Yahoos, their insensivity to pain and pleasure are also addressed in
Borges’s story “El informe del Dr. Brodie” which enters in an explicit dialogue with Swift’s
canonical text.
9. A description of Someone’s death where history and fiction intertwine evokes Borges’s cri-
tique of violence brought by WWII. In his essay “Anotación al 23 de Agosto de 1944,”
Borges’s emphasizes the brutality of Nazism by referring to it as “una irrealidad,” [“unreal-
ity”] that is fiction and by describing it as “una imposibilidad mental y moral.” (Obras 2:106)
[“mentally and morally impossible” (Selected Non-Fictions 211].
10. Someone’s words and suicide also echo the Utopian’s approach to death suggested in More’s
pioneer book: “the Utopians believe that a man whose life has become torture to himself
will be—and should be glad to die” (More 65).
11. All references are to Alastair Reid’s translation as it appears in Borges a Reader (New York:
Dutton, 1981), pp. 163–165.
12. An overlap between the past and the future can also be noticed in More’s text. The land
of future, he describes, for instance, “had previously been called Abraxa” that “connotes mys-
tical antiquity” (34). In his convincing interpretation of More’s book, Arthur Morgan sug-
gests that a description of the life and social system in Utopia very closely corresponds to
Ancient Peru: “There is a strong evidence that several Portuguese voyages, both before and
after Columbus, reached the east coast of South America in time to have met the condi-
tions required by More’s narrative. . . . This narrative seems the more probably as factual
account in the light of what we now know of the first acquaintance of Europeans with the
Inca Empire.” (230–231).
13. Borges’s allegory of the imperial map in “Del rigor en la ciencia” (El Hacedor) [“On
Exactitude in Science” (The Maker)] produces similar effect.
14. These lines suggest a pun based on the beginning of Esteban Echeverría’s “La cautiva”: “. . . El
desierto inconmensurable, abierto/y misterioso a sus pies/se extiende” (43) [“The Captive”]
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notes 171
[“At their feet unmeasurable, open, and mysterious, stretches the Desert” (3)]. Someone’s ref-
erence to the ruins of Bahía Blanca located in Brasil also manifests mise-en-abyme relation-
ship between the narrative levels of discourse and the characters in this story (Obras 3:54).
15. Julio Cortázar, 62: A Model Kit, trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Random House, 1972.
16. I will refer to the City using capital letter as the narrator does at the beginning of the novel.
He switches to the low case letter, however, to emphasize the City’s ‘habitual’ nature.
17. Malva E. Filer convincingly argues that the City exemplifies a poetic search for place that
is at the core of Cortázar’s ouevra: “La búsqueda de palabras espacio y el diseño de territo-
rios poéticos da impulso a toda su obra [de Cortázar], en verso y en prosa, y cristaliza
emblemáticamente en la ciudad, el espacio mágico” (49) [“The search for the words, space
and design of poetic territories gives impulse to all of his [Cortázar’s] works in verse and
prose, and crystalizes in an emblematic way in the city, the magic space”].
18. As the author himself points out this novel has been inspired by the Chapter 62 of Rayuela.
It seems interesting to mention whether it is just a curious coincidence or not, that Freud
uses as an example the number 62 in his essay “The Uncanny” when he speaks of the invol-
untary repetition that renders uncanny and seemingly inescapable what might otherwise look
like innocent chance. He shows the number 62 recurring close together on addresses, hotel
rooms, railway compartments, and how a person will be “tempted to ascribe a secret mean-
ing to this obstinate recurrence.” (43). A comparable atmosphere might be said to pervade
Cortázar’s novel, yet he never made such reference in any of his statements about the book.
19. I coincide with Kerr’s approach to the characters in this novel as both “controversial
concept” and “conventional category” (“Betwixt Reading and Repetition (apropos of
Cortázar’s 62: A Model Kit)” 94).
20. See, for example, More’s Utopia or Lord Bacon’s New Atlantis among many others.
21. For Cortázar’s explanation of the meaning of “paredros” see his conversation with Garfield
(122–123).
22. In his conversation with Ernesto González Bermejo, Cortázar refers to his personal vision
of “la Ciudad” as different from the derived from a novelistic convention: “[e]sa ciudad
existe en mí y a su manera: hace ya muchos años que empecé a soñar con ella, a conocerla
paulatinamente tal como se describe en “62”; entre mis papeles guardo un plano de la
ciudad, al que fui agregando detalles, plazas, el canal del norte, a medida que mis sueños
me iban internando en ella” (70–71) [“[t]his city exists in me in a particular way: many
years ago I have started dreaming with it and familiarize myself with it gradually”]. The city
in the novel, however, appears to escape any plan or map.
23. This approach to language as a challenge to epistemology can be a result at least of double
influence. It can be inspired by Zen Buddhism which has been an object of his interest recur-
rently mentioned in Rayuela and Nabokov’s Pale Fire which has been among Cortázar’s read-
ings at time he was writing 62: Modelo para armar. As described by Roland Barthes, who also
felt an affinity with Zen’s intuition of something beyond connotation, beyond the codes, and
beyond what Barthes calls ‘the vicious infinity of language’, “All of Zen . . . is no more than
a panic suspension of language, the blank which erases in us the reign of the Codes, the breach
of the internal recitation which constitutes our person” (74–745). Similar idea is vividly pre-
sent in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, a text of absolute epistemological uncertainty. Cortázar
extensively refers to this Nabokov’s work as one of the sources of inspiration for his own novel
in his essay “La muñeca rota” [“The Broken Doll”].
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24. Vague characters and a recurrent difficulty in defying the narrative voice are other mani-
festations of the resistance to the idea of the “determinate knowledge” of the object which
culminates in the image of the City.
25. The City’s metapoetical functions may be regarded as an illustration of the parralel between
the works of architect and writer Cortázar draws in his essay “Notas sobre la novela
contemporanea” [“Notes about a contemporary novel”]: “El novelista se plantea su labor en
términos architectónicos. Procede análogamente al architecto que logra un orden estético equi-
librando la función directo del edificio . . . con la belleza formal que la contiene porque si la
iglesia es árida . . . Así también hay libros que se caen de las manos” (144) [“The novelist plans
his/her work in architectonic terms. He/She proceeds like an architect who achieves aesthetic
order by balancing the direct function of the building . . . with formal beauty, because if there
is a church which is too arid . . . there are also books which fall from hands”].
26. Similar metapoetical thoughts are most vividly presented in Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius” (Ficciones) whose origin is due to Encyclopedia and a mirror.
27. Alazraki also emphasizes the prominence of the visual aspects of the City, an open-ended
literary construct, “espacio que corporiza un mundo público y convencionalizado, un mundo
que se impone no tanto por su verdad, como por la dureza de su visibilidad” (236) [“a space
which shapes the public and conventional world, a world which dominates not so much by
its verisimilitude, but rather by the prominence of its visibility”].
28. On numerous occasions Cortázar has referred to the image of the City as a “pesadilla”
[“nightmare”] (Prego 80) and “infierno” [“hell”] (Garfield 25).
29. Using Reyner Banham’s term, the city can be identified with an “autopia” that is a utopia
whose value lies “in the lines of connection between its disparate elements and where the
vision of the whole adheres in the physical reality of the connections themselves” (qtd. in
Siebers 28). The concept of autopia can be considered parallel to the notion of language
as a network which “defines a field across which textual activity occurs” (Wiseman 303).
30. On Cortázar’s globe-trotting experience as a translator, see his essay, accompanied by
details from Paul Delvaux’s eerie nocturnal cityscapes, “Noches en los ministerios de
Europa,” (La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos I, 113–119) (“Nights in Europe’s Ministries,”
Around the Day in Eighty Worlds).
31. It is interesting to mention essential overlap between Foucault’s notion of heterotopia and
Marin’s approach to the Utopia as “always a synthesis, a reconciling synthesis” (“Frontiers
of Utopia: Past and Present” 413).
32. Pointing to the disturbing function of city as any heterotopia, Andrew Bush considers
Cortázar’s novel to be “a tale of discovery in which an apparently ficticious world, la ciudad,
invades, reforms, and disintegrates quotidian reality” (132).
33. In a sense the City is a door, which as heterotopia, “always presuppose[s] a system of opening
and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable” (26). In some sense, the
functioning of the city is similar to the door as described by Bachelard as “the Half-open”
which is “the very origin of a daydream that accumulates desires and temptations” (222).
34. The motif of the mirror is also one of the most prominent in Nabokov’s fiction that
Cortázar admired. See, for instance, Invitation to a Beheading or Pale Fire among many other
examples.
35. All references are to James E. Irby’s translation of “La casa de Asterión” as it appears in Borges,
Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1964), pp. 138–141.
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36. See, for example, “El jardin de los senderos que bifurcan” (“The garden of forking paths”
and “Biblioteca de Babel” (“The Library of Babel”).
37. Foucault’s description of the double appears to be compatible with that which emerges in
Asterion’s mind: “the Other that is not only a brother but a twin, born, not of man, nor in
man, but beside him and at the same time in an identical newness, in an unavoidable dual-
ity” (The Order of Things 326).
38. This is different from the conventional interpretation of the outside/inside dichotomy as
one which “forms a dialectic division” (Bachelard 211).
39. Marta Spagnuolo suggests Hernández’s “Martin Fierro” as another source of inspiration for
Borges’s story. She discusses literary and psychological parallelisms between the two texts;
and finds affinities between Asterion and Fierro’s oldest son.
40. According to Foucault, the idea of combining elements pertaining to different times, epochs
and one may continue texts, as well as contradictory attitudes “belongs to our modernity.” (26).
41. Julio Cortázar. The Winners, trans. Elaine Kerrigan, London: Allison and Busby, 1986.
42. Reminding one of Borges’s “Lotería en Babylonia” (“The Lottery in Babylon”), the novel
starts with the image of chaos.
43. Felipe Trejo’s hesitation in his relationship with Raúl as well as the fact that he has
been raped by the sailor, exemplify the novel’s affinity with Melville’s sea-narratives such
as White -Jacket; or the World in a Man-of-War and Billy Budd where ship opens the spatial
condition of possibility defined by engaging in homosexual practices.
44. The co-presence of narration of events and the sections which reflect Persio’s meditations
illustrate Cortázar’s vision of the novel as a hybrid genre developed in his essays written prior
to his novel such as “Notas sobre la novela contemporánea” (“Notes about contemporary
novel”) and “Situación de la novela” where he defines a novel as “la simbiosis de los modos
enunciativos y poéticos del idioma.” (Obra crítica 2:143) [“a symbiosis of the enunciative
and poetic modes of the language.”].
45. On multiple occasions Borges refers to this Schopenhauer’s creation. See, for example,
“Nueva refutación del tiempo” (Otras inquisiciones) “New Refutation of Time,” “El budismo”
(Siete noches) “Buddhism” and “Historia de la eternidad” (Historia de la eternidad) (“A
History of Eternity”) among many others. In his recent article “De Borges a Shopenhauer,”
Ivan Almeida suggests an illuminating analysis of Borges’s perceptions of this German
philosopher, and offers insights into the writer’s creative interpretations of Schopenhauer’s
ideas, vividly present in the former’s oeuvre.
46. The topos of the interchangeability and fluid nature of human identity appears in numer-
ous Borges’s stories. See, for example, “La lotería en Babilonia” (“The Lottery in Babylon”)
and “Historia del traidor y del heroe” (“The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero”).
47. The parallelism between human life and the game of chess is recurrent in Borges’s fiction
such as “El milagro secreto” (“The Secret Miracle”), the poem “Ajedrez” (“Chess”) among
many others.
Chapter 4
1. Carlos Cortínez et al. Con Borges (texto y persona). (Buenos Aires: Torres Aguero Editor,
1988).
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2. Various critics have pointed out the importance of these texts as “a necessary complement
to the stories of Ficciones and El Aleph” (Irby 10) and as “fundamental reading for the full
understanding of his creative work” (Rodriguéz-Monegal 345).
3. Derrida’s notion of archive can be contrasted with the one offered by Michel Foucault in
his Archaeology of Knowledge, which associated archive with systematization and order:
“we have in the density of discursive practices, systems that establish statements as events . . .
and things. . . . They are all these systems of statements (whether events or things) that I
propose to call archive” (128).
4. “Coleridge’s Dream” trans. Eliot Weinberger, in Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, pp. 369–373.
5. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud distinguishes two major mechanisms of dream-work:
“condensation” and “displacement” (278).
6. Sylvia Molloy also points out Freud’s and Borges’s common interest in “the uncanny as an
organizing principle” (78).
7. In his essay “Valéry como símbolo” he refers to “la era melancólica del nazismo y del
materialismo dialéctico, de los augures de la secta de Freud y de los comerciantes del sur-
réalisme” (Obras 2:65) [“a melancholic era of nazism and dialectical materialism, of augurs
from Freud’s sect and merchants of surréalisme” (198)].
8. In a sense, Borges is also a follower of Schopenhauer’s and Jung’s approaches to dream-
creativity. Both Schopenhauer’s statement that “everyone, while he dreams, is a Shakespeare”
and Jung’s metaphor that dream is “a theatre, in which the dreamer is a scene, player,
prompter, director, author, audience, and critic” are adopted by Borges, who directly and
implicitly refers to these philosophers in his conversation with Ernesto Sábato. Whereas
Jung’s metaphor, without mentioning the name of the philosopher appears internalized in
Borges’s discourse (see 141), he comments about Schopenhauer: “escribió que la vida y los
sueños eran hojas de un mismo libro, y que leerlas en orden es vivir, y hojearlas, soñar” (141)
[“he wrote that life and dreams are pages of the same book, and to read them in order is to
live and to leaf through them is to dream”]. Freud also mentions Schopenhauer on numer-
ous occasions in The Interpretation of Dreams (see, for instance, pp. 293, 503), and appears
to be influenced by his philosophy.
9. A motif of music as the highest art form explicitly appears in “La muralla y los libros” [“The
Wall and the Books”].
10. A very similar place to the palace “Xanadu” discussed in “El sueño de Coleridge” [“Coleridge’s
Dream”] appears in Borges’s later text, “Parábola del Palacio” [“Parable of th Palace”],
where a striking similarity between a palace and a poem both gives and takes the poet’s life:
“Aquel día el Emperador Amarillo mostró su palacio al poeta. Fueron dejando atrás, el
largo desfile, las primeras terrazas occidentales que, como gradas de casi inabarcable
anfiteatro, declinan hacia un paraiso o jardín cuoys espejos de metal y cuyos intrincados
cercos de enebro prefiguraban ya el laberinto” (Obras 2:179) [“That day the Yellow Emperor
showed his palace to the poet. Little by little, step by step, they left behind, in long pro-
cession, the first westward-facing terraces which, like the jagged hemicycles of an almost
unbounded amphitheatre, stepped down into a paradise, a garden whose metal mirrors and
intertwined hedges of juniper were a prefiguration of the labyrinth” (Collected Fictions
317)]. The Emperor appears to be stricken by the similarities between the palace and a poem,
“El texto se ha perdido; hay quien entiende que constaba de un verso; otros de una sola
palabra. Lo cierto, lo increible, es que en el poema estaba entero y minucioso el palacio
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enorme” (Obras 2:179) [“The text has been lost; there are those who believe that it con-
sisted of but a single line; others, of a single word. What we know—however incredible it
may be—is that within the poem lay the entire enormous palace.” (Collected Fictions 318)].
Being afraid that the poem would replace the building, he orders to kill the poet killed:
“Emperador exclamó: “ ‘¡Me has arrebatado el palacio!’, y la espada de hierro del verdugo
segó la vida del poeta” (Obras 2:180) [“ ‘You have stolen my palace!’ [the emperor] cried,
and the executioner’s iron scythe mowed down the poet’s life” (Collected Fictions 318)].
11. Freud’s use of continuous displacement as a narrative strategy appears to be influenced by
Immanuel Kant’s idea about orientation and a parallel he draws between mind and terri-
tory. In his essay “¿Qué significa orientarse en el pensamiento?” Kant observes that “sólo
me oriento geográficamente gracias a un principio de diferenciación subjetivo” (qtd. in
Almeida 10) [“I can orient myself geographically thanks to the principle of subjective dif-
ferentiation” (318)]. The German philosopher associates orientation with an inference
which indicates rather then demonstrates. As Almeida explains in his perceptive article
“Conjeturas y mapas Kant, Pierce, Borges y las geografías del pensamiento,” to orient one-
self, for Kant, does not necessarily imply that one will come to know the unknown place.
Kant’s idea was familiar to Freud, and possibly explains his choice of displacement as an orga-
nizing principle of the discourse in The Interpretation of Dreams. Displacement is also a com-
mon narrative strategy in rabbinical interpretations of the secret kabbalistic books. This
allows one to suggest a double influence of both Kantian though and rabbinical practices
on Freud’s use of displacement as an organizing principle of his discourse.
12. In her illuminating essay, “The model of Midrash and Borges’s Interpretive Tales and Essays,”
Myrna Solotorevsky considers “El sueño de Coleridge” an “exegetical writing” in which
“various interpretations are incidentally pitted against each other” (256). In my reading,
I try to show that they are not “incidentally pitted,” but rather form a spiritual/intellectual
voyage related to the places where the dreams happened.
13. Another allusion to this Hinduistic belief appears in “El enigma de Edward Fitzgerald.”
14. Borges expresses his admiration for Buddhism, in his lecture on “El budismo,” which he
closes in the following way: “Para mí el budismo no es una pieza de museo: es un camino
de salvación” (Obras 3:254) [“Buddhism is not a museum piece; it is a path to salvation”
(Seven Nights 75)].
15. References to Plato are recurrent in Borges’s works. In his essay “El ruiseñor de Keats” he
refers to the distinction Coleridge drew between “aristotélicos and platónicos,” In “Historia
de eternidad” Borges talks about “inmóvil y terrrible museo de los arquetipos platónicos,”
the vision which radically changes as he confesses in a prologue to the 1953 edition of the
Complete Works: “No sé cómo pude comparar a “inmoviles piezas del museo” las formas de
Platón y cómo no sentí leyendo a Escoto Erígena y a Schopenhauer, que éstas son vivas,
poderosas y orgánicas” (qtd. Balderstón et al 261). Both the idea and the concept of arche-
type are recurrent in Borges’s essays and fiction. See, for instance, “La esfera de Pascal” (Otras
Inquisiciones) and “El inmortal” (El Aleph), among many others.
16. “The Wall and the Books,” trans. James E. Irby in Borges, Labyrinths, pp. 180–183.
17. Borges translated and admired Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China.” In the prologue to his
translation of the collection of Kafka’s stories under the title La metamorfosis, Borges
observes: “En el más memorable de todos ellos [cuentos]—La edificación de la muralla china,
1919—, el infinito es multiple: para detener el curso de ejércitos infinitamente lejanos, un
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emperador infinitamente remoto en el tiempo y en el espacio ordena que infinitas genera-

ciones levanten infinitamente un muro infinito que dé la vuelta de su imperio infinito”
(Obras 4: 98) [“In the most memorable of them all—‘The Great Wall of China’ (1919)—
the infinite is manifold: to halt the progress of infinitely distant armies, an emperor who is
infinitely remote in time and space orders that infinite generations infinitely erect an
infinite wall around his infinite empire” (Selected Non-Fictions 502)].
18. The hope for, immortality and fear of, immortality as preoccupations of human beings is
a recurrent topos in Borges’s fiction. See, for example, “El inmortal,” “Notas,” and “La bib-
lioteca de Babel.”
19. The Emperor’s aspirations do not by chance happen in China. They may be considered an
illustration of Michel Foucault’s observation that China is “a vast reservoir of utopias. . . . a
ceremonial space overburdened with complex figures, with tangled paths, strange places,
secret passages, and unexpected communications” (XIX).
20. Unlike Derrida who is interested in archive and repression as syntactic phenomena, Borges
emphasizes its semantic aspect of destruction and the imposed new order.
21. Derrida’s concept of différance unites in itself semantic and spatial dimensions: he defines
it as “a play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which
elements are related to each other” (27).
22. In his historically-oriented reading of the essay as, possibly, “americanista,” Balderston
suggests that Shih Huang Ti’s thoughts about his two activities are also for Borges “una med-
itación sobre dos actividades . . . de los dos Perón: ‘la rigurosa abolición de la historia, es decir
del pasado’ y la construcción de una muralla para mantener alejados a ‘los bárbaros’ (¿o para
no dejarlos escapar?)” (6) [“a meditation about two activities . . . of the Perons: ‘the aboli-
tion of history, that is to say of the past,’ and the construction of a wall in order to main-
tain distance from ‘barbarians’ (or in order to not allow them to escape?)”]. Similarly, Edwin
Williamson in his most recent biography of Borges interprets this essay as a “veiled attack”
on Peronists “xenophobic cultural policy” (313).
23. The Emperor’s actions can be used as an exemplification of Freud’s observation that “in the
history of the human species something happened similar to the events in the life of the
individual” (Moses and Monotheism 101).
24. This can be viewed as an extension of the parallelism, originally introduced by Freud and
maintained by Derrida, between repression as a mental mechanism and repression in a
historical sense as “something past, vanished, and overcome in the life of the people”
(Moses and Monotheistic Religion 170).
25. All references are to Hurley’s translation of “Deutsches Requiem” as it appears in Collected
Fictions, 229–235.
26. All references are to Alastair Reid’s translation “El pudor de la historia” as it appears in Borges
a Reader (New York: Dutton, 1981), 246–248.
27. As Jaen T. Didier notices, “[l]a paradoja, con su combinación de términos a primera vista con-
tradictorios, sirve de vehículo ideal para producir el efecto inquietante . . . la paradoja sirve para
la expresión de la ironía circunstancial” (105–106) [“a paradox, with its combination of terms
from the first glance, serves as an ideal device for an expression of circumstantial irony”].
28. Among several studies on Kafka’s presence in Borges’s aestheic world, one may distinguish
Ben Belitt’s “The Enigmatic Predicament: Some Parables of Borges and Kafka” and more
recent David Krenz’s Metaphors for/in Infinity: the Parables of Kafka, Borges and Calvino.
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notes 177
29. Both Borges’s and Kafka’s texts also suggest a relationship between repetition, repression, mem-
ory and archive, as originally suggested by Freud. Whereas in Borges’s text this relationship
can be seen through the mutually annihilating acts of the destruction of the books and
construction of the wall, the very structure of the wall in Kafka’s story evokes Freud’s repre-
sentation of memory as thread with breaches. As René Major perceptively observes, “[s]ince
Freud, memory is represented through the differences of breaches ‘frayages’ ” (298). This drive
for non-reconciliation is also another manifestation of the possible confluence between
deconstructionist thought and Kabbalist tradition, the latter no doubt familiar to Kafka. As
Krenz observes, “The dynamic, ever precarious tension between essentially irreconcilable
opposites was always at heart of the Jewish tradition and is still a source of its enduring
vitality” (110).
30. This symbolic parallelism between the building of the wall and the approach to the
aesthetic phenomenon can also be regarded as an extension of Kant’s use of the notion of
“architectonic” for the description of the epistemological system and his recognition of the
determinant importance of “the form” for the positionality of the parts of knowledge.
31. In many of his stories, Borges uses a similar device when he combines almost documentary
introductory paragraphs with overtly fictional development. In “El jardín de los senderos
que se bifurcan” [“The Garden of Forking Paths”], for example, a detective like metaphys-
ical story has a realistic frame.
Chapter 5
1. All references are to Paul Blackburn’s translation of “Lejana” as it appears in End of the Game
and Other Stories. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967) pp. 274–286.
2. All references are to my translation of “La puerta condenada” as it appears in Appendix,
pp. 135–141.
3. All references are to my translation of “Cartas de mamá” as it appears in Appendix, pp. 141–156.
4. In his letter to Yurkievich, for example, he praises Los fundadores de la nueva poesía lati-
noamericana with a reference to Bachelard’s works: “. . . los análisis de poemas me parecieron
muy reveladores . . ., y conociéndome como me conocés no te asombrará mi alegría al ver
con qué frecuencia y eficacia te basás en la línea Bachelard o Eliade para mirar el fondo del
pozo.” (Cartas 3:1473) [“the analysis of the poems seem to me very revealing . . ., and
knowing me as you know, you would not be surprised by my enthusiasm, which springs from
the fact that your thoughts, at their basis, are frequently and effectively in line with
Bachelard and Eliade, when you look at the heart of the matter”].
5. Most prominent artistic examples influenced by this vision can be found in surrealist art
which considers the inner, subjective space, and where place obtains a life of its own. For
an illuminating discussion of the influence of the surrealist concept of place on Cortázar’s
works, see Marta Morello-Frosch’s “Espacios públicos y discurso clandestino en los cuentos
de Julio Cortázar.”
6. “Some Aspects of the Short Story.” Trans. Aden W. Hayes. The New Short Story Theories
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 245–255.
7. Metapoetical references to a bridge are recurrent in Cortázar’s works. Alazraki also points
out the metapoetical importance of the bridge in this story, which is also compatible with
Morelli’s mentioning of the bridge in Rayuela when he discusses the creation of a new novel.
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8. As Sara Castro-Klaren points out, “La conciliación de los opuestos es un tema constante
en Cortázar.” (38) [“The conciliation of the opposites is a constant theme in Cortázar”].
Referring to Rayuela, La vuelta, and Ultimo round, she emphasizes that an annihilation of
the dichotomy “sujeto-objeto” [subject-object] is among the central preoccupations in his
works. A parallelism between the notions of (the compound nature) of the self and city in
“Lejana” can be another example which illustrates this observation.
9. In tune with Lacan’s ideas, Irving Howe asserts in his essay “The Self in Literature” that
“the self implies multiplicity” (249).
10. An explicit identification of the bridge with the self occurs in Libro de Manuel: “Porque un
puente aunque se tenga el deseo de tenderlo y toda obra sea un puente hacia y desde algo,
no es verdaderamente puente mientras los hombres no lo crucen. Un puente es un hom-
bre cruzando un puente, che” (27) [“Because a bridge, even if you have the desire to build
one and if all works are bridges to and from something, is not really a bridge until people
cross it.” A bridge is a person crossing it, che (22–23)].
11. As Kerr suggests, there are a number of beliefs and superstitions attached to bridges (and
specifically the center as the meeting place of two or more people) which might offer cul-
tural explanations, and should be considered among sources of inspiration, for the use of
images associated with the bridge in this story. E. and M. A. Radford in the article “Bridges”
(Encyclopedia of Superstitions, ed. and rev. Christina Hole), point out that bridges are “obvi-
ous symbols of transition,” and that “from very early times they have been associated in men’s
minds with the passage of souls to the next world, and therefore with death” (67). The idea
of “the Devil’s Bridge” involves the devil as the builder of a bridge, who is repaid for his work
with the soul of the first person to cross it after completion. In many countries these old super-
stitions still hold and they always involve the themes of the devil and death: “One
well-known tradition says that if two people part on, or under, a bridge, they will never meet
again” (68). This, may explain what happens to Alina and the old woman in “Lejana” (147).
12. Drawing a parallel between the notions of the divided self and body, Lacan points out that
a “fragmented body usually . . . manifests itself in dreams when the movement of the
analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive disintegration in the individual” (4).
13. Cortázar points out that “en ‘Lejana’ . . . el sueño o el deseo usurpa a la vigilia” (Garfield
84) “in [“ ‘The Distances’ . . . a dream or desire usurps wakefulness”].
14. In his En busca del unicornio, Alazraki regards this meeting as a neofantastic resolution of
the confrontation between Alina’s true self and her false self. In his Lacanian interpreta-
tion, Alina sees her acts as those of the false I (see “Lejana,” pp. 181–200). I suggest it re-
mains impossible to decide between Alina’s true/false selves.
15. Visualizing Alina’s scream, Mercedes Blanco compares it to “the famous painting by Edvard
Munch, The Scream, a reproduction of which illustrates Cortázar’s essay on the fantastic.” (245).
16. Other examples of the transmigration of souls can be found in “Axolotl” (Final del juego)
where the narrator and the plant exchange selves, and “La noche boca arriba” (“The Night
Face Up”) (Final del juego) where a fusion between the 20th century protagonist and a
pre-Columbian Indian is dramatized.
17. According to Julio Rodríguez-Luis, this story is “an allegory of the search for the authentic
self” (68).
18. Wheelock perceptively characterizes this final act as that of “solipsism,” which he defines
as “a notion that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and states” (9).
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19. In his study of a relationship between psychoanalysis and geography, Pile emphasizes
the importance of the link between “the body, the constitutive ambivalence of self, and the
construction of (deeply-felt) emotional geographies” (89).
20. In his work Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, Freud discusses “the representation
through the opposite” (56) as a mechanism of wit.
21. As Cortázar tells Garfield, this interest in the magic of words has been evoked by “las expe-
riencias surrealistas” [“surrealist experiences”] and “algunos textos sobre la cábala” (91)
[“some texts about Kabbalah”].
22. An impossibility to distinguish between a ‘true’ self and a ‘false’ one is one of the leitmotifs
in Anton Chekhov’s and Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, admired by Cortázar.
23. As Claudio Cifuentes Aldunate points out, in Cortázar’s “relatos funadamentales . . . se
puede leer el problema aquí-allá correspondiendo a Europa, Latinoamérica o viceversa” (170)
[“major stories, one may read the problem “here-there” that corresponds to Europe, Latin
America and vice verse”].
24. David Lagmanovich in his pionerring book Estudios sobre los cuentos de Julio Cortázar.
(Barcelona: Ediciones Hispam, 1975) considers the beggar to be Alina’s “doppelganger,”
“un ‘otro’ que es bastante más que un eco o una suerte de emanación pasiva, en la medida
en que no solo duplica, sino . . . también frustra o invierte los actos del ‘yo’ ” (12) [“the ‘other’
who is rather an echo or a destiny of passive emanation in such a measure which not only
duplicates, but . . . also frustrates and inverts the acts (actions) of the ‘I’ ”]. Referring to the
process of the creation of “Lejana” in his conversation with González Bermejo, Cortázar
points out that “[e]l tema del doble aparece . . . con toda su fuerza en ese cuento” [the theme
of the double appears . . . in all its strength in this story], but not as a result of
literary influence: “No creo que se trate de una influencia literaria. Cuando yo escribí ese
cuento . . . ‘Lejana,’ estoy absolutamente seguro . . . esa noción de doble no era, en
absoluto, una contaminación literaria. Era una vivencia” (Bermejo 26) [“I do not believe
that the matter is one of literary influence. When I wrote this story . . . ‘Lejana,’ I am
absolutely sure . . . this notion of the double was not a literary contamination at all. It was
a life experience”].
25. Two classic texts which use a door as a symbol are H.G. Wells’ “The Door in the Wall”
(1946) and William Wymark Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902).
26. In his conversation with Prego, Cortázar also recalls his memories about his creation of this
story in the hotel Cervantes: “Yo quería que en el cuento quedara la atmósfera del hotel
Cervantes, porque tipificaba un poco muchas cosas para mí. Había el personaje del Gerente,
la estatua esa que hay (o habíá) en el hall, una réplica de la Venus, y el clima general del
hotel. Esa fue la vez que estuve más tiempo en Montevideo” (107) [“I wanted that the atmos-
phere of the hotel “Cervantes” would leave its mark on the story, because it typified a lot
of things for me. There was the character of the manager, the statue which is (or was) in
the hall, a replica of the Venus de Milo, and the general climate of the hotel. This was from
the time when I stayed for a while in Montevideo”].
27. Ilan Stavans draws a parallel between the images of the door and the bridge, suggesting that
in “La puerta condenada” the door “es un puente incomunicado, un vaso comunicante ais-
lado” (87) [“is a bridge which is impossible to communicate, an isolated communicating glass”].
28. The character of Petrone is among the most interesting for Cortázar in the story: “En ese
cuento hay una cosa que a mí me gusta y es que creo que acerté con el personaje, porque
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hice un hombre muy pied-a-terre, es un hombre de negocios que está en sus cosas, que vino
a terminar unos contratos, no es ningún imaginativo en especial. Y entonces a él la cosa
le cae con mucha más violencia, porque sale completamente de su orbita. Él no se imagina
jamás nada extraño hasta la ultima frase del cuento, en la que él tampoco dice nada pero
es posible imaginar lo que pensó. Supongo que él también huyó” (116) [“In this story there
is one thing which I like, and this, I believe, is what I have stated with the character,
because I created a very down-to-earth man, a businessman who deals with his things, who
came to finish contracts. There is nothing especially imaginative about him. And then the
thing falls on him with much violence, because it is absolutely out of his orbit. He does
not imagine anything strange till the last phrase of the story, where he also does not say
anything, but is possible to imagine what he is thinking. I suppose that he also ran away.”].
29. According to Rodríguez-Luis’ reading of this text, there are similarities between Cortazar’s “The
Sealed Door” and Borges’s “There are More Things.” In both these stories, in his opinion, “the
affirmation of the supernatural causes fear” (79).
30. For Cortázar, the wardrobe has a crucial significance for writing a story, as he describes in his
conversation with Prego: “Y fue entonces que me empezó a obsesionar un poco ese armario,
que estaba colocado en una posición artificial en la pieza. . . . Entonces, como no tenía nada
que hacer, lo saqué cinco centímetros para ver que pasaba y vi que el armario estaba puesto
ahí porque condenaba una puerta que daba a la habitación de al lado. . . . De golpe miré el
armario, miré la puerta y el cuento me cayó . . . así.” (112) [“And it was then that the
wardrobe, which had been located in a strange position in the room, started to obsess me”.
Because I did not have anything better to do, I moved it five centimeters forward so that
I could pass behind it, and I then saw that the wardrobe was there to block the door away
to the other room . . . Suddenly I looked at the wardrobe, I looked at the door, and the story
came to me”].
31. According to Marta Morello-Frosch, “la ubicación espacial . . . es agente que sobredetermina
el destino de los personajes” (76) [“the spatial location . . . is an agent which overdetermines
the destiny of the characters”].
32. For this interpretation, see, for instance, Rodríguez-Luis’ The Contemporary Practice of the
Fantastic.
33. According to Hernández del Castillo, the story also utilizes the house as “a symbol of the womb
or the mother”; the hotel is described as “sombrío, tranquilo, casi desierto,” [“gloomy, quiet, almost
deserted”] and its atmosphere is characterized by “la falta de sol y air” [the lack of sun and aire].
She finds it similar to the mansion in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
34. According to Prieto, this story along with “La salud de los enfermos” (“The Health of the
Sick”), “La señorita Cora” (“Nurse Cora”) contain “the most fully developed portraits of
mothers [Cortázar] ever drew” (49).
35. Garfield points to “[t]he relationship between false and visible reality and its actual hidden
meanings” in “Cartas de mamá” (49).
36. In her psychoanalytical reading of the story, Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz insists on autobio-
graphical connotations of the character of mamá and interprets her as “the betrayed
Eurydice safeguarding Cortázar’s Argentineness and the focus of his creative writing” (125).
She focuses her analysis on female characters.
37. The image of the bridge as a connection between territories and people or the impossibil-
ity of this connection, is a recurrent motif in Cortázar’s fiction. It appears, for instance,
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notes 181
in Rayuela, where one of the metaphorical functions of the bridge is the impossibility of
reconciliation between Oliviera-La Maga-Paris.
38. In both “Cartas de mamá” and Rayuela the dichotomy Paris/Buenos Aires and the blurring
of the boundaries between these places emphasize the characters’ existential alienation, in the
earlier story (“Cartas de mamá”), the blurring of the boundaries between these two cities brings
past and present to a single contradictory moment and is connected with a fantastic motif.
39. The word “ajena,” foreigner, in “Cartas de mamá,” as the word “lejana” in the story “Lejana,”
far away, in the story of that name, are metaphorically used to refer to both physical and
psychological displacement.
40. As Sosnowski points out, “el nombre ‘Nico’ era el túnel, la palabra mágica, a través de la cual
se manifestó lo que no tenía razón (ital) de ser” (Sosnowski 25–26) [“the name ‘Nico’ era a tun-
nel, the magic word, by means of which something which did not have sense to be was displayed”].
41. For Cortázar himself, the fantástic resides on “the real.” He defines “lo fantástico como nos-
talgia” [“the fantastic as nostalgia”], and continues “ [t]oda suspension of disbelief obra como
tregua en el seco, implacable asedio que el determinismo hace al hombre” (Ultimo 1, 79)
[“All suspension of belief operates as a truce from the harsh, implacable siege that deter-
minism wages on man” (166)] As Cortázar asserts, “es necesario que lo excepcional pase a
ser también la regla sin desplazar las estructuras ordinarias entre las cuales se ha insertado”
(80) [“the extraordinary must become the rule without displacing the ordinary structures
in which it is inserted” (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds, 166–167)].
42. Cortázar’s text is in tune with Camus’ “une morale dy bonheur” developed in Létat de
Siégeit, where the protagonist cannot escape from accountability despite the flight from guilt.
43. The presence of two brothers and a woman, and the Judaeo-Christian motif of guilt makes
the situation described in the story echo that of Cain and Abel.
44. Kerr interprets this connection as “the latent doubling process” (219) which “is not visi-
ble on the narrative level of the text” (126).
45. In addition to the texts analyzed, a similar connection between physical displacement and
psychological division can be found in such stories as “House Taken Over,” “The Gates of
Heaven,” and “Continuity of Parks.”
Conclusion
1. Heidegger characterizes biblical Aleph, a possible source of inspiration for Borges’s story, as
“the locus of an original disclosure of the ‘world’ ” (95).
2. It can be further suggested that this condition is caused by the dominance of superficial
values under Perón’s regime which Cortázar observed from Paris and Borges faced in Buenos
Aires. For a detailed description of humiliations Borges suffered under Peron’s power, see
Rodriguez Monegal’s Jorge Luis Borges. A Literary Biography and Edwin Williamson’s Borges.
A Life. For Cortázar’s vision of Peron’s Argentine, see his conversations with Luis Harss.
3. In his conversation with Richard Burgin, for instance, Borges refers to existentialism as a “pathe-
tic philosophy” (107) and confesses that he has always “felt repelled by [Kierkegaard]” (108).
4. For a perceptive survey on the influence of Borges’s and Cortázar’s works on Latin American
Modernist and postmodern fiction see Raymond Williams recent article “From modernismo to
the postmodern: the Twentieth-century Desire to be Modern and Spanish American Fiction.”
08.qxd 29/8/07 6:28 PM Page 182
5. Borges mentions this line also in his essay “De las allegorías and las novelas” [“From Allegories
to Novels”] (Otras Inquisiciones), where he omits the last “e” in “smylere.” Cortázar’s refer-
ence to this line which according to Borges initiates novelistic genre is also significant, given
Cortázar’s admiration for novels.
Translations
1. According to Roberto Alifano, “Prólogo a “Cartas de mamá’ ” was first published in Anthology
of Stories, illustrated by Argentine artists. He compiled it together with Borges in 1983.
2. Leopoldo Lugones’s story “Ysur,” translated by Gregory Woodruff, was published in the
Oxford Anthology of Short Stories, ed. Roberto González Echevarría (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
09.qxd 29/8/07 6:29 PM Page 183
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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End of the Game and other stories. Translated by Paul Blackburn. New York: Random House, 1967.
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Libro de Manuel. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamerica, 1973.
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The Winners. Translated by Elaine Kerrigan. London: Allison and Busby, 1986.
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INDEX
Alazraki, Jaime, xi-xii, 184, 189, 191, Balzac, Honoré de, 32. Works: Pére
162n.1, 165n.2, 172n.27, 177n.7, Goriot 34–37, 166n.5; Eugénie
178n.14 Grandet 166 n.5, 166 n.8
aleph, the letter of the Hebrew Barranechea, Ana Maria, 8, 9,
alphabet, 2, 7, 8, 9, 163n.11 12, 33
Almeida, Ivan, ix, xiii, 164n.22, Beecher Stowe, Harriet. Work: Uncle
173n.45, 175n.11, 189 Tom’s Cabin, 44
Alonso, Carlos, xiii, 189, 169n.50 Bellini, Giuseppe, 170 n. 2
Amar Sánchez, Ana María, Benjamin, Walter, 34
168n.35 Bergson, Henri. Work: “Laughter” 8,
Apollodorus, 82. Work: The Library, 45, 170, 185
82, 195 Boldy, Steven, 38, 47, 168n. 35, 190
Borges, Jorge Luis: on Cortázar xi,
Bacon, Francis. Work: New Atlantis, 156–157
171n.20 Borges’s works:
Bachelard, Gaston, 2–4, 7, 10, 11, 13, “El Aleph” xv, 1–10, 24, 26, 48, 63,
34, 35, 108, 114, 117, 118, 120–123, 82, 129, 131, 162n.1, 162n.3,
160n.4, 166n.7, 166n.9, 172n.33, 162 n.5, 163n.13, 174n.2,
173n.38, 177n.4 175n.15, 181n.1, 183
Bakhtin, Mikhail, xiv. Works: “The Aleph.” See “El Aleph”
The Dialogic Imagination 102, 103, “Anotación al 23 de agosto de
104, 162n.4, 167n.20, 168n.36, 1944” (“A Comment on August
168n.37, 169n.43; Problems of 23, 1944”) 170n.9
Dostoevsky’s Poetics 47–52, 54, Antiguas literaturas germánicas,
166n.8 164n.25
Balderston, Daniel, 162n.9, 163n.9, “Amanecer”, 43
175n.15 “La biblioteca de Babel” (“The
Banham, Reyner, 172n.29 library of Babel”), 176n.18
10.qxd 29/8/07 6:30 PM Page 200
Borges’s works: (Continued) “The Immortal.” See “El inmortal”

“The Book of Sand.” See “El libro El jardín de los senderos que se
de arena” bifurcan (The Garden of Forking
“La cábala” (“The Kabbalah”), 1, 29 Paths), 173n.36
“Calle desconocida” (“Unknown “The Kabbalah.” See “La cábala”
street”), 43 “Lewis Carroll Obras
“La casa de Asterión” (“The House Completas” 17
of Asterion”), xv, 61, 80–83, 87 “El libro de arena” (“The Book of
“A Comment on August 23, 1944.” Sand”), 1, 2, 24–29, 129, 131,
See “Anotación al 23 de agosto 164n.30
de 1944” “La lotería en Babilonia” (“The
“Deutsches Requiem,” 152 Lottery in Babylon”), 173n.46
“El disco” (“The Disk”), xv, 1, 2, Literaturas Germánicas medievales
20–24, 29, 131 22, 23, 164n.25
“The Disk.” See “The Disk” “El milagro secreto” (“The Secret
“La doctrina de los ciclos” (“The Miracle”), 163n.17, 174n.47
Doctrine of Cycles”), 13, 15 “La muralla y los libros” (“The
“El enigma de Edward Fitzgerald,” Wall and the Books”), xv, 89,
175n.13 90, 95–100, 103–105, 132,
“La esfera de Pascal” (“The 174n.9
Fearful Sphere of Pascal”), 45, “Nathaniel Hawthrone” 168n.28
175n.15 “New Refutation of Time.”
“On Exactitude in Science.” See “ (“Nueva refutación del
Del rigor en la ciencia” tiempo”), 173n.45
Fervor de Buenos Aires, 33, 43, 45, “Un Patio” 43
56, 130 “El primer Wells” (“The First
“The First Wells.” See “El primer Wells), xiv
Wells” “El pudor de la historia” (“The
“The House of Asterion.” See Modesty of History”), 99,
“La casa de Asterión” 176n.26
“Historia de la eternidad” (“A “Un resumen de las doctrinas de
History of Eternity”), 173n.45, Einstein” (“A Summary of
175n.15 Einstein’s Doctrines”), 24
“Historia del traidor y del heroe” “Del rigor en la ciencia” (“On
(“The Theme of the Traitor and Exactitude in Science”), 170n.13
the Hero”), 173n.46 “Las ruinas circulares” (“The
“El informe del Dr. Brodie” Circular Ruins”), xv, 1, 2,
(“Brodie’s Report”)?? 170n.8, 11–19, 24, 129, 131, 163n.15,
174n.7 164n.29
“El inmortal” (“The Immortal”), “El ruiseñor de Keats” (English??),
48, 168n.15, 168n.33, 175n.15 175n.15
10.qxd 29/8/07 6:30 PM Page 201
index 201
“El sueño de Coleridge” “Around the Day in Eighty

(“Coleridge’s dream”), xv, Worlds”, 172n.30, 181n.41
68–69, 89, 91–95, 104, 130, “Casa tomada” (“A House
132, 174n.4, 174n.10, 175n.12, Taken Over”), xi, 157
175n.15 Cartas, 177n.4
“The Theme of the Traitor and “Cartas de mamá” (“Letters
the Hero” See “Historia del from Mother”), xvi, 108,
traidor y del heroe” 119–125, 126, 180n.35,
“El tiempo circular” (“The Circular 181n.38, 181n.39, 182n.1;
Time”), 14 my translation of this story
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” 141–156; Borges’s prologue
168n.31, 172n.26 156–157
“Utopia del hombre que está “Continuidad de los parques”
cansado” (“A Weary Man’s (“Continuity of Parks”),
Utopia”), xv, 61, 64–72, 281n.41
87, 130 “La isla a mediodía” 169n.47
“Valéry como símbolo” (“Valery “La puerta condenada” (“The
as a symbol”), 174n.7 Sealed Door”), xvi, 107, 109,
The Bible, 25, 26, 28, 29, 114–119, 126, 131, 132,
167n.15, 195 177n.2, 179n.27; my
Brant, Herbert J., 27, 190 translation of this story
Bermejo, Ernesto González, 135–141.
58, 169n.45, 171n.22, “Lejana” (“The Distances”), 8,
179n.24, 184 281n.36
Booth, Wayne C., 5, 185 Libro de Manuel (A Manual for
Manuel), 178n.10
Carroll, Lewis, 17 62: Modelo para armar (62: A
Casey, Edward, 33, 57, 108, 160n.6, 185 Model Kit), 73–80, 88, 87,
Castellano-Girón, Hernán, 167n.23 131, 166n.11, 171n.23
Cassirer, Ernst, 21 “La muñeca rota,” 171n.23
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 133 “La noche boca arriba” (“The
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 28 Night Face Up”), 178n.16
Coleman, Alexander, 165n.25, “Notas sobre la novela
167n.26, 167n.27 contemporánea”, 172n.25,
Conrad, Joseph 84; Work: The Nigger 173n.44
of the Narcissus 84, 195 “El otro cielo” (“The Gates of
Cortázar, Julio on Borges: xii Heaven”), 181n.45
Works: “El perseguidor” (“The
“Algunos aspectos del cuento” Pursuer”), 169n.47
(“Some Aspects of the Short Los Premios (The Winners), xv,
Story”), 109 61, 83–89, 99, 129–136, 195
10.qxd 29/8/07 6:30 PM Page 202
Works: (Continued) Eltit, Diamela 133. Work:

Rayuela (Hopscotch), 31–56, 59, Lúmperica 133
79, 121, 130, 131, 132, Ezquerro, Milagros, 40
165n.3, 167n.22, 167n.16,
166n.5, 169n.45, 169n.43, fantastic, xii-xiii, 24, 43, 47,
168n.38, 169n.48, 171n.18, 62, 66, 94, 113, 117, 118, 124,
177n.7, 178n.8, 181n,37 157, 170n.6, 179n.15, 181n. 38,
“Del sentimiento de lo 181n.41
fantástico” (“On the sense of psychological fantastic, xiii
the fantastic”), 178 Filer, Malva, 171n.17, 191
“Teoría del túnel” xiv, 165n.4, Foucault, Michel, xiv, 80, 159n.1,
166n.5 160n.4, 173n.40. Works: The Order
Ultimo Round, 76 of Things 62, 72, 79; “Of Other
La vuelta al día en ochenta Spaces” 62–63, 71, 79, 82, 83,
mundos, 118, 133–134, 84, 87; Archaeology of Knowledge
166n.5, 172n.30, 178n.8 174n.3
Franco, Jean, xiii
Dali, Salvador, 86 Freud, Sigmund, 90, 177n.29.
Davies, Laurence, 62, 190 Works: “Inhibition, Symptoms
De Certeau, Michel, 160n.4 and Anxiety” 97; The Interpretation
Derrida, Jacques, xiii, xiv, 3, 102, 104, of Dreams 90, 91–96, 161n.6, 174n.5,
105, 132, 176; Works: Dissemination 174n.8, 175n.11; Moses and
(“Plato’s Pharmacy”), 8, 163n.11, Monotheistic Religion 176n.24; “The
161n.6, 159n.2; Archive Fever 90, 96, Uncanny” 171n.18; “Wit and Its
98, 99, 174n.3, 176n.20; “Freud and Relation to the Unconscious”
the Scene of Writing” 100; Positions 179n.20
176n.21, 185 Frye, Northop, 5, 23, 41, 67, 68,
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 31, 32, 35, 53. 105, 120, 186
Works: Crime and Punishment 34, Fuentes, Carlos, xiii, 57
167n.17, 168n.39; Notes from the
Underground 39–41 Galdos, Benito Pérez. Works: Lo
Dyson, Ann, 67, 190 prohibido 167n.23
Dystopia, xv, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, Garfield, Evelyn Picone, xii, 43, 58,
67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 80, 114, 166n.9, 171n.21, 172n.28,
87, 88, 131 178n.13, 179n.21, 180n.35,
185, 191
Eco, Umberto, 58, 195 Gold, Barbara, 81, 82, 191
Echeverría, Esteban. Work: Goloboff, Gerardo Mario, 191
“La cautiva” (“The Captive”) González, Eduardo, 191
170n.14 González Echevarría, Roberto,
Eleazar, Rabbi, 25 xvi, 8, 182, 191
10.qxd 29/8/07 6:30 PM Page 203
index 203
Goodman, Nelson, 42, 129, Kerrigan, Elaine, 173n.41

162n.8, 186 Kessler, Stephen, 167n.25
Grau, Cristina, 81, 168n.32 Kierkegaard, Soren, 33, 58, 132,
161n.6, 165n.4, 181n.3
Heidegger, Martin 1. Works: Being and Kristal, Efrain, ix, xv, 162n.6, 162n.7
Time 161n.6, 187; An Introduction to Kronik, John, ix
Metaphysics 33, 181n.1; “Building,
Dwelling, Thinking” 110. Lacan, Jacques, 93, 95, 108, 117,
Hernández, José, 169n.41, 173n.39, 195 178n.9, 178n.12, 178n.14
Hernández del Castillo, Ana María, Larway, David, 44
117, 180n.33, 191 Larsen, Neil, xiii
Hernández, Ana María, 191 Leddy, Annette Cecile, 72, 192
Hicks, Darlene Emily, 169n.46 Lefebvre, Henri, 108, 160n.4
Hinduism 94 Leibniz, Gottfried, 11
Homer, Odyssey, 169n.44 Levi-Strauss, Claude. Work: The Raw
Heterotopia xv, 61–63, 64, 70, 71, 73, and the Cooked 83
79–80, 82, 83, 88, 132, 172n.31, Levine, Suzanne Jill, ix, 163n.18
172n.32, 172n.33 Lindstrom, Noami, 3, 20, 192
Hume, David 28, 94, 134, 162n.7 Ludmer, Josefina, xiii
Hurley, Andrew, 162n.3, 164n.24,
164n.28, 169n.1, 176n.25, 183 Nabokov, Vladimir, 61, 76. Work: Pale
Hutcheon, Linda, 41, 46, 167n.24, Fire 171n.23, 172 n.34
168n.29
Marin, Louis, 74, 172n.31
James, Henry, Work: The Sense of the Matamoro, Blas, 57, 169n.47, 192
Past 69, 196 McHale, Brian, 76, 79, 160n.4
Jammer, Max, 159n.4 Melville, Herman, Work: White-Jacket;
Jung, Carl 35, 174n.8 or The World in a Man-of-War, 84,
Jofré, Manuel Alcides, 159n.3 173n.43
Jones, Julie, 38, 166n.14 Michelet, Jules, 36
Jewish mysticism 1, 9 Montaigne, Michel, 89
More, Thomas, 63, 164, 88. Work:
Kafka, Franz, viii, 90, 100–105, Utopia 64–65, 71–73, 130, 170n.3,
167n.18, 175n.17, 176n.28, 170n.6, 170n.10, 170n.12, 171n.20
177n.29 Morris, Brian, ix
Work: “The Great Wall of China” Morris, David, 66
100–105
Ker, William Paton, 22 O’Sullivan, Gerry, 26
Kerr, Lucille, xiii, 171n.19, 178n.11, Orkneys, 28
181n.44, 192 Ortega, José, 115
Kerrigan, Antony, 168n.30 Orwell, George, 40
10.qxd 29/8/07 6:30 PM Page 204
pain, 58, 59, 60, 88, 141, 163, 169, 184 Shaw, Donald, 15, 162n.1
parody, 41, 46, 59, 168n.29 Sommer, Doris, xiii
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 47, 48, 49, Soriano Nieves, Nieto, 169n.44-
168n.32 Spinoza, Baruch, 6, 7
Pellon, Gustavo, xiii Stevenson, Robert, 28
Perón, Juan, 63, 165n.3, 176n.22, Sturluson, Snorri, 165n.31
181n.2 Swift, Jonathan, 63, 64, 66, 88, 130,
Prego, Omar, xii, 36, 40, 42, 79,84, 170n.8, Work: Gulliver’s Travels
165n.3, 166n.6, 172n.28, 179n.26, 66–67, 71, 72
180n.30
Prieto, René, xiii, 180n.34 Thackerey, William, 67
Pile, Steve, 108, 117, 133, 179 Torah, 25
Thon, Sonia, 159n.3
Quevedo de, Francisco, 64, 170n.2–3
Quincey de, Thomas 168n.32 utopia xv, 61–83, 87, 88, 130, 131,
170n.6, 170n.12
Rabelais, François, 39
Ronai, Peter, 159n.3 Varon, Policarpo, 159n.3
repression, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, Villanueva, Marcelo Alberto, 166n.15,
104–105, 132, 176n.20, 176n.24, 168 n.35
177n.29
revelation, xv, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7–8, 10, 17, Walker, Janet, 35
101, 129, 131, 159n.4 Weiss, Jason, 73
Wells, H.G., 68–69, 71, 157.
Saer, Juan José, xiii, 133 Work: The Time Machine 101,
Said, Edward, 33, 57, 132, 161n.6 106–108, 130; “The Door in
Sambursky, Samuel, 159n.4 the Wall” 72–73, 114,
Sarduy, Severo, 133. Work: Cobra 133 115–116, 126
Second World War, 66 Wheelock, Carter, 159n.3,
Shakespeare, William, 174n.8 Works: 178n.18
Hamlet 7; The Tempest 163n.17,
163n.20 Yurkievich, Saul, xii, 76, 165n.4,
Seibers, Tobin 63. Work: Heterotopia: 169n,48, 177n.4
Postmodern Utopia and the Body
Politics 63, 66, 172n.29 Zampaglione, Hector, 38
Sharkley, Emmett Joseph, 56 Zohar, 1
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Nataly Tcherepashenets, Place and Displace in The Narrative World of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar

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Nataly Tcherepashenets, Place and Displace in The Narrative World of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar

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Place and Displacement

in the Narrative Worlds

Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G. Paulson

Place and Displacement

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce the following:

© 2008 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

All rights reserved.

In memory of my grandparents and

Chapter 1. Place in Borges’s Stories and the Irony of Revelation 1

Chapter 2. Place as Displacement in Cortázar’s Hopscotch 31

viii place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

Chapter 3. Fictional and ‘Real’ Places: Convergences

Chapter 4. Displacement, Dreams and Archive in Borges’s Essays 89

Chapter 5. Displacement and the Divided Self in Cortázar’s Stories 107

x place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

xii place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

psychological fantastic, based on the intention to reduce the distance between

xiv place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

The metaphors of place and displacement couch Borges’s and Cortazar’s

xvi place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

perspectives as they subvert the subject/object dichotomy, Chapter 5 explores

People are delighted with irrationalism . . . ; but for the

2 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

setting which incorporates a false modality of the divine, a modality which is

Familiar Places, Hidden Challenges: Revelation

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 3

4 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 5

He visto, como el griego, las urbes de los hombres,

6 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 7

In his seminal lecture “Baruj Spinoza,” Borges creatively re-elaborates Spinoza’s

8 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

The ‘revelation’ in the house on Garay Street can be seen as a comic

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 9

10 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 11

Dreaming in Circles, Facing the Ruins:

12 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 13

14 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 15

16 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 17

18 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 19

20 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

The Illusion of Power: the Magic Disc,

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 21

22 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 23

24 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

The Infinite Book: Fear and Longing

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 25

26 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 27

28 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place in borges’s stories & the irony of revelation 29

in Scandinavian medieval literature, Borges points out: “La repetición de situa-

Borges’s approach to place as a metaphysical and metafictional construct was

32 place & displacement in the worlds of borges & cortázar

place as displacement in cortázar ’ s HOPSCOTCH 33