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JOS LUIS VENEGAS

ELIOT, BORGES, TRADITION, AND IRONY

IN LA MURALLA Y LOS LIBROS, Jorge Luis Borges comments on Chinese


Emperor Shih Huang Tis decrees to wall his empire in and to burn all the
books predating the time of his rule. In Borgess opinion, the interest in both
acts probably rests on their opposition, on the way they cancel each other out
by constructing and destroying on an enormous scale (Obras completas [OC]
2:13). With its discussion of this enigmatic simultaneity of creation and annihilation, this short note suggests one of Borgess recurrent critical concerns,
namely the dynamics between tradition and innovation. As happened with the
wall and the books, this opposition, for Borges, becomes neutralized, because
he considers every act of individual expression as inevitably adding to an
inescapable, all-encompassing literary tradition. In this respect, Borgess
ideas seem to coincide with T. S. Eliots as articulated in his well-known
essays, Tradition and the Individual Talent and Ulysses, Order and Myth.
Despite their interest, these theoretical similarities between Borges and Eliot
have received little critical attention. The only article that (to my knowledge)
explores them in a systematic way is Nicolas Shumways Eliot, Borges and
Tradition. Shumway contends that there is a real affinity (266) between
their views on the role of tradition in literature, thus presenting Borgess critical opinions as a mere adaptation of Eliots postulates.1 However, on closer
scrutiny, these affinities, far from ultimately suggesting substantial agreement (Shumway 26263), actually expose Borgess ironic rewriting of
Eliots classicism.
While this classicism relied on literary traditionparticularly on myth and
parodyas a paradigmatic and organizing model for the fragmentariness of
the modern world, Borges envisioned such tradition as an infinite regress that
dissolves any source of ultimate literary authority. Along these lines, this article proposes to argue that Borgess views on tradition and the individual talent, although superficially in accordance with Eliots, can in fact be read as
their ironic reversal, because Borges continuously undermined the traditional
foundations that Eliot identified as the cornerstone of Western literature. A
detailed textual analysis of Borgess El Inmortal as an ironic narrative adaptation of Eliots ideas will provide a suitable illustration of the theoretical
arguments discussed in the first part of this article.
The superficial similarities between the literary techniques of Borges and
Eliot can be easily read as epistemological compliance. Indeed, Borges, like
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Eliot, usually deals with the textual legacy of Western literary tradition
through parody (notably parodic allusion). However, textual parody (the imitation of the style, themes, or characters of a previous work), as a hermeneutic practice that marks the intersection of innovation and critique in relation to
the discourse of the past, can never be said to radically depart from that discourse. As Linda Hutcheon puts it, [. . .] through a double process of
installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come
from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference (Politics 93). In other words, whatever difference is
achieved through parody is ultimately reinstated in the heart of similarity, thus
perpetuating the epistemological uniqueness of a given tradition. Whereas
Eliot, as we shall see, advocates this conception of parodic allusion to myth
as a means toward eventual stability,2 Borges seems to expand the ironizing
semantic mechanism at work in parody so as to target the very idea of tradition, thus enacting a metaparodic or metacritical gesture, as it were.3 Therefore, since parody implies expansion and continuation of tradition, we will use
the term irony4 to highlight Borgess epistemological resistance toand
inversion ofEliots classicist idea of parody-as-tradition.
A brief survey of Eliots most relevant criticism suffices to indicate his
classicist emphasis on the paradigmatic value of tradition as fundamental literary meaning. In Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), he asserts
that individual originality depends heavily on what has been inherited from
literary predecessors, to the point of declaring that the past should be
altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past (101).
Hence, literary value derives from the lessons imparted by past poets, a
standpoint that is radicalized by his proposal of an impersonal theory of
poetry (104). Thereby, poetry is an escape from personality (107) and
individual feelings, a move that is underscored by making ultimate appeal to
the ancients. In fact, the endpoint of this continual extinction of personality
demanded by the creative process is made to coincide with Homer. To find a
true poetic voice, Eliot points out, the artist should write with a feeling that
the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of
the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order (100; emphasis added). Although Eliot emphasizes
the commonality of the moderns and the ancients, of tradition and personal
creativity, he ultimately identifies Antiquity and Homer as the source of literary worth.
Eliots classicism is also apparent in his short note on James Joyces
Ulysses titled Ulysses, Order and Myth (1923). Here, Eliot hailed Ulysses
as a paradigmatic reworking of modern materials in keeping with the postulates of tradition. According to Eliot, In using the myth, in manipulating a
continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him (270).

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This procedure prescribed by Eliot is what he termed the mythical


method, consisting in a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape
and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is
contemporary history (270). It is the conceptual structures of mythof
Homeric myth in the case of Joyces narrativethat constitute the ultimate
framework for literary significance. For Eliot, the Homeric (parodic) subtext
in Ulysses is the perfect exemplification of the classicism he demands from
literary creation, since this reliance on the lessons of antiquity is the only way
to make the modern world possible for art (271). Although fragmentary, the
postGreat War world of Eliot and Joyce could gain stability by parodic association with the order of myth. An ultimate source of meaning is, therefore,
endorsed.
Borges also delved into the problems that devolve from the interaction
between literary heritage and individual expression in El escritor argentino y
la tradicin (1932),5 an essay that recalls Eliots Tradition and the Individual Talent in its main points. Even though Borges, like Eliot, posited an
unavoidable link between tradition and individual expression, he went against
the grain of a unified literary tradition as advocated by Eliot. Instead, Borges
bastardizes that tradition from the ex-centric point of view of the Argentine
writer. Despite the fact that Borges affirms that the tradition of this writer is
toda la cultura occidental (OC 1:272), he abandons any pretence of literary
purity. And he does so not only by assuming a marginal position in relation to
such culture but also by relativizing the question of tradition as a matter of
arbitrariness. According to Borges, what an Argentine writer produces is to be
considered a part of Argentine tradition irrespective of what the past prefigured: Todo lo que hagamos con felicidad los escritores argentinos
pertenecer a la tradicin argentina (OC 1:273). With this assertion, Borges
leads us to think that tradition does not conform to a cause-and-effect logic.
For Borges, it is the effect rather than the cause that retrospectively leads to
an interpretation of the latter as such; whatever individual Argentine writers
composenot what the past determineswill configure Argentine tradition.
In Kafka y sus precursores, a recasting of his ideas on influence, authorship, and tradition, Borges recycles this argument to further destabilize the
invariable influence of tradition on artistic creation defended by Eliot. Borges
maintains that Kafkas writing creates its own literary antecedents and not the
other way around. Echoing T. S. Eliot with an ironic intent, Borges writes that
the hecho es que cada escritor crea a sus precursores. Su labor modifica
nuestra concepcin del pasado, como ha de modificar el futuro (OC 2:90).
This last sentence, to which a footnote citing T. S. Eliots Points of View
(1941) is appended, conforms to the British writers critical views, but its contextual significance reverses them. The reference is to pages 25 to 26, which
correspond to Eliots Tradition and the Individual Talent, precisely to the
part where he claims that no poet has complete meaning alone. His signifi-

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cance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and
artists (Points of View 25). Nevertheless, Borges dislocates the direction of
influence posited by Eliot as he makes the emergence of a literary lineage contingent on individual talent. Therefore, according to Borges, influence
responds to a backward-forward dynamic instead of depending on the canonical authority of the dead poets.
Perhaps the best fictional expression of Borgess critical assessment of the
interrelation between individual talent as authority and the legacy of the past
is found in Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote. Pierre Menards attempt to
rewrite El Quijote verbatim can be read as a reductio ad absurdum of the
inescapability of tradition. Such inescapability is rendered as the misterioso
deber de reconstruir literarlmente su [Cervantess] obra espontnea (OC 1:
448), binding Menard to a preceding work that, ironically, is the fruit of
chance (Cervantes, Menard affirms, did not reject la colaboracin del azar
(OC 1:448). However, irony does not stop here. Through the exaggerated
positing of the all-encompassing influence of past literature, Pierre Menard
emerges as an irreducible vindication of individual talent and of authorship,
precisely by conspicuously drawing attention to their silencing by tradition.
Menards (re)writing of Cervantess novel forcefully undermines the very idea
of tradition as meaning-production, as a horizon that is truly in motion, that
evolves from the interaction of past and present. Thus, tradition emerges as a
mere hermeneutical, albeit inescapable, mirage. The only possibility (for
Menard as well as for Borges) to resist it and assert literary individuality is by
effecting its (ironic) inversion: to ascertain the traces of individuality in
Menards work would need a second Pierre Menard invirtiendo el trabajo del
anterior (OC 1:450). Borges, following Menards practice of propagating
ideas que eran el estricto reverso de las preferidas por l (OC 1:449),
enforces the backward-forward dynamics of the interaction between individual writers and tradition. This ironic attitude turns against tradition its impersonalizing power by calling into question its foundational stability and its
potential as a productive source of literary meaning.
Borges, then, acknowledges the inescapability of tradition, like Eliot does.
But instead of concluding that individual talent is merely a reorganizer of previous materials given by that self-perpetuating tradition (one of the functions
of parody and parodic allusion), he seems to reclaim the originality of an individual authorial voice as perceived in the very act of ironically decentering
such a tradition. In this regard, Lucille Kerr argues that the effacement of the
author understood as a single and stable source of literary meaning that the
acceptance of tradition involves (as is the case in Pierre Menard), is not at
odds with the revitalization of the author as a critical concept. Kerr points out
that attesting to the death of the author that Roland Barthes programmatically announced in his well-known essay6 does not necessarily involve the
authors utter loss of authority and interpretative privilege. As she puts it,

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even in texts that foster [the authors] disappearance or death, the figure of
the author may also be reclaimed (25). Borges regains this authorial figure
through the corrosive irony that undermines the cornerstones of the very tradition that traps and neutralizes individual talent. This irony can actually surface precisely through the deferral of unified authority as symbolized by
Homer (as we will see presently). Thereby, authority is reclaimed by turning
the tables and identifying the impersonal author (Homer) with tradition, not
with individual talent.
Along the same lines, Borgess ironic rewriting of Eliots classicism also targets his impersonal theory of poetry (Tradition 104). In La postulacin de
la realidad, Borges returns to the problem of tradition and the individual talent
(authorship), in this case under the guise of the classical versus romantic
dichotomy. Echoing T. S. Eliots impersonal theory, Borges explains that
para el concepto clsico, la pluralidad de los hombres y de los tiempos es accesoria, la literatura es siempre una sola (OC 1:219). The notion of personality,
he goes on to argue, is completely alien to this understanding of literature. This
suppression of personality ties in with the tenets of philosophical idealism as
formulated, notably, by George Berkeley and David Hume. According to idealism, individualitythe Cartesian cogitois just an illusion that arises from the
combination of a certain array of perceptions. These perceptions become organized in strings of causes and effects owing to their contiguity in time and
space, not to the intellectual powers of a pre-existing cogito. These ideas are
Borgess central concern in a variety of essays, poems and short stories.7 In one
of these texts, La encrucijada de Berkeley, he claims that the implication of
the idealist dissolution of the I for the arts is inconsequential because the
artists conviction that he is working with individual experiences is neutralized
through the acts of creation and reception. Both processes extend these experiences to the commonality of humankind, turning them into archetypical lore,
into tradition (Inquisiciones 93). This classicist annihilation of personality is,
indeed, another aspect that superficially brings Borges and Eliot together,
although this association is never devoid of irony.
A closer look at the Borgesian notions of personality and their interaction
with literary creation will reveal these ironic and destabilizing implications.
For Eliot, Homer and the Homeric texts were the ultimate source of literary
value in Western literature, and the impersonal revitalization of myth, the prescriptive avenue to literary creation. The ironic reversal of this order of things
on Borgess part comes when he extends his idealistic considerations to the
very source of traditional literary worth according to Eliot, namely Homer and
his legacy. In El hacedor, Borges tells the story of a common man who creates out of his personal experiences of love and hatred. This man turns out to
be Homer, whose personality and individual feelings end up becoming archetypical by resonando cncavamente en la memoria humana (OC 2:160).
Another conspicuous aspect of this two-page biography that tends to dissolve

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Homers individuality is the total absence of names and dates, thus implying
that it is his literary legacy, not his personality, that provides the Maker with
an identity.8 With this critical move, Borges extends the principles of Eliots
impersonal theory of poetry to the very foundation of Western tradition
Homerthus reformulating the idealist disruption of cause-and-effect logic in
a literary guise. By disseminating Homers individuality, Borges dismantles
Eliots hierarchical arrangement, which envisions Antiquity and Homer as the
stable cause of Western literary tradition. Borges is, in a sense, deconstructing
Eliots theory through the deferral of its cornerstone. Indeed, once the corrosive effects of impersonality and idealism are shown to be applicable to the
whole paradigm of what Eliot calls Western tradition, the binary tradition
vs. individual talent is rendered inoperative because its legitimizing origin
(Antiquity as ciphered in Homer) is deferred. Whereas Eliots theoretical
scheme implied the firm grounding of tradition on Antiquity, Borges undermines such grounding with precisely the same arguments Eliot uses to sustain
it: the impersonality of the poet and the inescapable scope of tradition, which
refuses to acknowledge autonomous literary individualities. Instead of positing a hierarchical relationship between tradition and personal artistic creation,
Borges suggests a specular reflection between botha backward-forward
dynamicthrough his portrayal of Homer, the source of tradition, as an
impersonal hacedor. As Dominique Jullien has aptly put it, the Argentine
writers arguments link man and author in an endless, mirror-like conversion pattern (137). This dislocation of the cause-and-effect relationship
between tradition and individual talent is what triggers Borgess ironic reversal of Eliots ideas, which always rely on the endorsement of a dependable tradition as the cause of the creative process.
Borgess treatment of Homers legacy also conforms to this ironic dissemination of origins through idealistic impersonality. In Las versiones
homricas, Borges addresses the question of Homeric translations, arguing
that el concepto de texto definitivo corresponde a la religin o al cansancio (OC 1:239; emphasis in original).9 He goes on to point out that, given
the difficulty of determining what derives from Homer as author and what
pertains to language as a system, the notion of an authored original
becomes obsolete, thus allowing la posibilidad de tantas versiones, todas
sinceras, genuinas y divergentes (OC 1:240). Therefore, the translations
stand on an equal footing with the Homeric prototext in comprising the substance of what we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Again, we are faced
with the same reciprocal, backward-forward dynamic between tradition and
innovationbetween the original and its translations, in this casethat
ironically disjoints the causal direction of literary influence posited by
Eliot. Indeed, with the deconstruction of authorial and textual origins in El
hacedor and Las versiones homricas, Borges thwarts the underpinnings
of Eliots tradition.

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Contrary to Eliots stable classicist order, Borgess stance on the problematic relationship between innovation and tradition exposes a playfully decentralized approach that resolves nothing. An illustrative fictionalization of
Borgess ideas is found in El Inmortal, a short story published in El Aleph
(1949) that also problematizes Homers individuality and literary heritage. In
this sense, El Inmortal can be regarded as a narrative response to the
polemics between tradition and personal expression, in general, and to the
implications of Eliots literary prescriptions, in particular. Just as Borgess critical essays distort and deconstruct Eliots well-arranged classicist system, El
Inmortal poses an ironic questioning of the possibilities of the mythical
method in literature.10 By extension, Borgess story enters into an intertextual dialogue not only with the work that inspired T. S. Eliots method (James
Joyces Ulysses), but also with Eliots own artistic elaboration of this method,
The Waste Land. These literary links will reveal a multilayered ironic structure
suggested by the narrative and themes of El Inmortal, which show how, by
manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity
(Eliot, Ulysses 270), the mythical method can actually dissolve an aprioristic tradition in the labyrinths of destabilizing disorder.
The story follows the convention of the found manuscript, which in Hispanic letters can be traced back to Cervantess El Quijote. The central narrative is thus deferred through the mediation of a frame that tells about antiquarian Joseph Cartaphiluss encounter with the Princess of Lucinge. She
buys from him a copy of Homers Iliad in six volumes, the last of which contains the manuscript. This structure of deferral is further emphasized by the
fact that the found manuscript is written in English, but the transcription
offered in El Inmortal is in Spanish. The linguistic situation is complicated
by the clarification that the original est escrito en ingls y abunda en latinismos (OC 1:533). This subtle mention of the Latinisms calls attention to
the fact that the English original is actually a translation from Latin. Therefore, not only the structure, but also the linguistic texture of the narration,
imply a deferral of ultimate meanings and cast an ironic light on concepts
such as original.
Another detail that adds to this process of deferral is that the Iliad where
the manuscript is found is not Homers Greek original, but Popes English
translation. This reference to a Homeric translation points in the same direction as the structure of the found manuscript and its linguistic idiosyncrasies. Conjuring up the main arguments in Las versiones homricas, this
allusion to Popes rendering of Homer elicits a reconsideration of concepts
such as authorship, tradition, and original. Therefore, both the narrative frame
of El Inmortal and the physical frame of its manuscripta Homeric translationsuggest an infinite regress that is reiterated by the main thematic
points developed in the story and that contradicts the stable parallels
demanded by the mythical method.

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This focus on mediating structures heralds the problematization of


autonomous personality, one of the main thematic threads of El Inmortal.
The composite character of Homer and the Homeric texts permeates the narrative at various levels. The narrator of the story, Marco Flaminio Rufo (a Spanish rendering of the Latin original Marcus Flaminius Rufus) is presented as
an avatar of Homer, and his story, as recounted in the manuscript, is presented
as a little Odyssey, which associates him with Ulysses, too. Nevertheless, rather
than coming home to the City of the Immortals, Rufos arrival, ironically,
becomes the point of departure for his aimless wanderings around the globe
and across the centuries. After drinking from the river running by the City of
the Immortals, whose waters provide eternal life, Rufo also becomes a paradigmatic reincarnation of the Wandering Jew. This analogy is strengthened in
the postscript to the story by fictional critic Nahum Cordoveros attribution of
the manuscript to the antiquarian Joseph Cartaphilus, who merges with
Flaminio RufoHomer. Significantly, Joseph Cartaphilus was the original
name of the Wandering Jew.11 This juxtaposition of the myth of Ulyssean
homecoming and the legend of the everlasting journey defers a stable endpoint
or centre, just as Homers personality and his literary legacy are disseminated
in El hacedor and Las versiones homricas. This ironic coupling is further
suggested by the first words Rufo pronounces after becoming an immortal and
being damned to the archetypical torture of the Wandering Jew: Los ricos teucros de Zelea que beben el agua negra del Esepo (OC 1:535). As the narrator
himself specifies later in the story, these Greek words (offered in their Spanish
translation) are homricas y pueden buscarse en el fin del catlogo de las
naves in the Iliad (OC 1:543). Therefore, Rufo, by virtue of the immortal
waters, becomes Homer and also a wanderer like the legendary Jew.
Homer is also presented in the story as a troglodyte, a member of the tribe
of immortals who live in the desolate desert (a sort of waste land) that surrounds the city. He becomes Rufos loyal companion as well. Homer, like his
fellow immortals, has reverted to a state of mute quietism, the ultimate stage of
ascetic intellectualism. Ironically, Rufo interprets this quietism as a sign of savagery and sets out to teach Homer a few words, including the name he gives
him, Argos, which is also the name of Ulyssess dog in the Odyssey.
Arguably, this pedagogical relationship between Rufo and Homer reproduces
the multidirectional, backward-forward movement of literary influence that
Borges suggested in his critical writings, particularly in El escritor argentino
y la tradicin and Kafka y sus precursores. Marcos Aguinis has commented on the reversal of roles that their relationship enacts, noticing how Rufo,
after becoming a son-figure upon his birth to immortality, assumes the role of
the father by teaching words to Homer, the traditional literary patriarch (32).
This linguistic dependence of Homer on his predecessor, which reverses the
reliability of antiquity postulated by the mythical method, is reinforced by his
confession that what he knows about the Odyssey is less than what the poorest

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rhapsodist would (OC 1:540). Also, in the relation of the events of RufoHomers life, Homer the author is turned into Homer the reader because the
narrator is said to copy in the thirteenth century the adventures of Sinbad,
another Ulysses, and to discover after many centuries, en un reino boreal y un
idioma brbaro, las formas de su Iliada (OC 1:543). This role-swap renders
the figure of Homer as a void to be filled, as an author that comes into being
by virtue of what his predecessors (or translators) make of him. Similarly, his
silence enters into a destabilizing dialogue with the traditional perception of his
immortality as the foundational voice of Western literature. In this regard,
Borgess ironical reaction to the possibilities of using Homers legacy as the
basis of a creative method (i.e. that Eliots mythical method) becomes apparent when we read statements that claim the best part of a poets work is that in
which dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously
(Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent 100) in light of Homers portrayal in El Inmortal. Here, Homers immortality, far from being the vigorous
inspiration of new literary creation, is equated with decadence and silence.
This abrogation of a fixed authorial figure is also brought out by the fluctuations in the narrators own identity. Immortality, for Marco Flaminio Rufo,
means not only becoming Homer and the Wandering Jew, but everybody,
since memory and forgetfulness, along with historical change, interact in the
configuration of an endless multiplicity of identities. As he confesses, Nadie
es alguien, un solo hombre inmortal es todos los hombres. Como Cornelio
Agrippa, soy dios, soy hroe, soy filsofo, soy demonio y soy mundo, lo cual
es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy (OC 1:541). Nadie (Greek
Outis), the name Ulysses assumes when confronted by Polyphemus in the
Odyssey, instead of designating the Homeric archetype, is here invoked to
suggest the dissemination of identity: in this case, Homers. Homers immortality, Borges seems to suggest, far from providing a cornerstone for the monuments of a stable tradition, triggers a specular labyrinth of echoes without an
identifiable source. And, as the narrator argues, no hay cosa que no est
como perdida entre infatigables espejos (OC 1:542).
These considerations of authority, identity, and tradition as mirages are
reformulated through the narrators presentation of the religious ideas of
metempsychosis and individual salvation:
Israelitas, cristianos y musulmanes profesan la inmortalidad, pero la veneracin que tributan al primer siglo prueba que slo creen en l, ya que
destinan todos los dems, en nmero infinito, a premiarlo o a castigarlo.
Ms razonable me parece la rueda de ciertas religiones del Indostan; en
esa rueda, que no tiene principio ni fin, cada vida es efecto de la anterior
y engendra la siguiente, pero ninguna determina el conjunto. (OC 1:540)
The implications of these religious notions are relevant for the critical debate
between Eliot and Borges. To be sure, it can be argued that just as both indi-

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vidual salvation and reincarnation presuppose immortality, Eliot and Borges


agree on the inescapability of tradition. In both cases, the difference is one of
emphasis. Eliot, like the Israelites, Christians, and Moslems, endows a foundational originAntiquity or Homerwith special value, thus making the
course of subsequent literature dependent on it.12 Eliots own religious convictions seem to support this equation. His views on literature largely match
his religious beliefs, as he often openly expressed how ethics should guide
criticism. In Religion and Literature (1934), he declared that literary criticism
should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological
standpoint, adding that the greatness of literature cannot be determined
solely by literary standards (Points of View 145). Ethical and mythical models work along the same lines in Eliots poetics, as they seem to be interchangeable as dogmatic touchstones for literary worth. As Timothy Materer
has put it, the terms Tradition and the Individual, or Classic and Romantic, are drastically narrowed down when they are transformed, in After
Strange Gods, into Orthodoxy and Heresy (58). By contrast, Borges
upholds a literary metempsychosis of sorts by acknowledging the influence of
predecessors but also by rejecting any linear or hierarchical ordering in favor
of a constant recycling of tradition. Borges was not so explicit as to his religious principles, but his aesthetics in general, and El Inmortal in particular,
have been related to Gnosticism.13 Jorge Ayora has pointed out that the Gnostic idea of circular time, whereby man is condemned to be reborn in an incessant cycle of reincarnations, is central to the characterization of the narrator
(595). He goes on to say that nothing in Borges accepts the linearity of time
[of Christianity], nor its optimistic outlook, nor its finiteness. His anguish and
revolt before the omnipresent power of time echoes very clearly, on the other
hand, the Gnostic anguish (595).
The specularity of the narrators personality finds a corollary not only in these
religious notions but also in the allusive texture of the story, which also undermines Eliots classicist dogmatism. Instead of expanding Western tradition, this
allusive texture short-circuits it. As noted above, although Eliot embraces parodic (mythical) allusion to past texts as a meaning-producing mechanism, Borges
uses the same allusive technique precisely to show the arbitrariness of the claims
of Western tradition as the only legitimate horizon of literary (knowledge) production. Radical exteriority from such a frame of reference is implied by ironic
labyrinthine decentering stemming from allusion. This labyrinthine system of
literary references in El Inmortal is suggested by the dream that Rufo has right
after he envisions the towers of the City of the Immortals:
Insoportablemente so con un exiguo y ntido laberinto: en el centro
haba un cntaro; mis manos casi lo tocaban, mis ojos lo vean, pero tan
intrincadas y perplejas eran las curvas que yo saba que iba a morir antes
de alcanzarlo. (OC 1:535)

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Michael Evans, in a perceptive article that traces the sources of the intertextual references in El Inmortal,14 has related the decentered textual universe
that this dream suggests to the evanescent figure of Homer: Homer is the
name which stands for the source of all writing: a source which, like the water
jar in Rufuss dream, remains eternally out of reach (280). Homer, like his
Odyssey, is constantly evoked by the allusive tissue of El Inmortal, as noted
above. Nevertheless, the text, precisely through these allusions to the Homeric epicsas demanded by the mythical methodand to their author, frustrates any claims to originality or to the centrality of any sort of meaning.15
This ironic dissemination of a source through the very act of allusion is
prefigured by the theme and technique of an early piece by Borges that
becomes relevant for our concerns because it includes an explicit reference to
Joyces Ulysses and to its Homeric parallels as allusive technique, which lies
at the core of Eliots mythical method. El acercamiento a Almotsim consists of a review of an imaginary book, Mir Bahadur Als The Approach to AlMutasim. The plot summary provided in Borgess note underscores the infinite regress triggered by this game of allusions to an imaginary source
because it recounts the quest of a young law student from Bombay who
embarks on a journey to find Almotsim, a man from whom intellectual clarity irradiates to humanity as a whole. The narrative finishes just as the protagonist is about to see Almotsims face. The short commentary that follows
this summary dismisses the kind of literary scholarship devoted to the hunt for
sources, which appears to contradict the thematic and structural configuration
suggested for The Approach.16 That contradiction is clarified if we understand
Borgess game of allusions as a disseminating mechanism rather than a procedure to reconstruct a literary source from an assortment of dispersed references. It is in this context that we need to understand his disapproval of the
search for Homeric parallels in Joyces Ulysses: Los repetidos pero insignificantes contactos del Ulises de Joyce con la Odisea homrica siguen
escuchandonunca sabr porqula atolondrada admiracin de la crtica
(OC 1:41718; emphasis added). The order and myth that Eliot praised in
Ulysses, Borges dubs as insignificant. Allusion for Eliot means method; for
Borges, displacement.
Exploring Eliots and Borgess respective appraisals of Joyces novel in
greater detail can actually sharpen our understanding of their conflicting
views on literature. Indeed, their respective reactions to Ulysses correlate their
diverging uses of allusion as well as their treatment of the symbol of the city
in El Inmortal and The Waste Land. As Baudelaire claimed in The Painter
of Modern life, modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is
one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable (100). This
description of modernity is also suitable for Ulysses, which, as Borges said,
was archetypically encapsulated in the transient minutiae the history of
humanity.17 T. S. Eliot and Borges were selective in their readings of Joyces

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book, highlighting only those aspects that fitted their respective literary programs. On a superficial level, T. S. Eliots intention in his already-discussed
Ulysses, Order and Myth is to refute Richard Aldingtons assessment of
Joyces novel as an invitation to chaos (Ulysses, Order and Myth 269).
His real agenda, however, seems to be to offer a normative interpretation of
Joyces chaotic narrative by selectively reading its eternal side as a paradigm of classicist order. In this respect, A. Walton Litz maintained that Eliot
was troubled from the start by the threat which Joyces diverse and rambunctious prose might pose to the classicist (14), adding that, like a devoted but
somewhat timid child, Eliot was trying to process Joyces novel into a congenial world of authority and tradition (15).
The multifaceted nature of Ulysses is resistant to this sort of reductive valuation, though, thus leaving room for a wider spectrum of critical responses.
Borgess critique is also symptomatic of his own literary and philosophical
outlook. Even though Borgess writings on Joyce tend to be ambiguous,18 it
can be safely stated that he, like Eliot, read Ulysses according to his own aesthetics. A few selected references to these writings will prove the point. His
literary interaction with Ulysses began three years after the publication of the
novel, in 1925, with a commendatory article, El Ulises de Joyce (Inquisiciones 2025), accompanied by a translation of the last page of the work.
More critical was a short biographical sketch about Joyce published in El
Hogar in 1937, where Borges argues that ms que la obra de un solo hombre, el Ulises parece la labor de muchas generaciones. A primera vista es
catico; el libro expositivo de GilbertJames Joyces Ulysses, 1930
declara sus estrictas y ocultas leyes (OC 4:251). Four years later, in a short
opinion piece published in Sur on the occasion of Joyces death, Borges
referred to his novel as indescifrablemente catica (Pginas de Jorge Luis
Borges 168). In this short note, he also dismissed the Homeric parallels that
Stuart Gilbert made the object of his study and Eliot took as the foundation
of his mythical method, referring to them as tics voluntarios. Similarly, for
Borges, the revered severa construccin y la disciplina clsica de la obra
(168) was simply insignificante.
The labyrinthine chaosmos of ocultas leyes that Borges highlighted in
Ulysses is actually what he considered to be the perfect expression for the
descendant of the novel form. In Vindicacin de Bouvard et Pcuchet,
Borges recognizes in Ulysses the death of the novel as genre: no es el Ulises, con sus planos y horarios y precisiones, la esplendida agona de un
gnero? (OC 1:262). Again, he coincides with T. S. Eliot, who saw in Ulysses
the beginning of a new genre as well. The novel, he argued, ended with
Flaubert and with James (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270), and Joyce inaugurated a more ambitious and orderly form with his book. However, instead
of the order, Borges focuses on the chaotic features of Ulysses to typify this
new form. In El arte narrativo y la magia, the Argentine writer argues that

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novelistic narrative should reproduce the chancy disorder of life through a


contrived set of correspondences, presenting chaos under the guise of order
and determinism as coincidence. This arrangement would emphasize the
interrelation of the transient, the fleeting, the contingent of experience, irrespective of an overarching organizing model. According to Borges, la ilustracin ms cabal de un orbe autnomo de corroboraciones, de presagios, de
monumentos, es el predestinado Ulises de Joyce (OC 1:222). Therefore,
although Eliot selected the eternal side of Joyces work to legitimize his classicist program and its distillation in the mythical method, Borges focused on
the chaotic interrelation of the fleeting as an illustration of his idea of order as
a decentered structure, of literature as a labyrinth.
Baudelaires definition of modernity applies not only to Joyces Ulysses,
but also to the city as a locus where historical heritage and the turmoil of
everyday life coexist. As such, Eliots and Borgess artistic appraisals of the
city are bound to reiterate their diverging views on tradition. Arguably, in El
Inmortal, Borgess response to Joyce, and, by extension, to tradition (Homer)
and innovation, order and chaos, is ciphered in the irony surrounding the symbolic significance of the City of the Immortals, a significance that runs
counter to the implications of the Unreal City in Eliots The Waste Land.
Critical studies bringing these two texts together have focused on their similarities rather than their differences. Ronald Christ sees The Waste Land as
providing not only an analogous form but parallel content as well. In a word,
both The Waste Land and El Inmortal are centos which come to pretty much
the same conclusion (214), namely fragmentation. He goes on to offer a list
of parallels that is expanded and complemented by Joseph Rosenblums study
of the themes and symbols common to both texts. Rosenblum does not problematize the relationship between them either, presenting it as a matter of
dependence or influence (183, 186). Departing from these superficial similarities, it can be argued that El Inmortal casts an uncanny, ironic light on The
Waste Land as well as on the critical program that it epitomizes. One of the
parallels that Christ points out is that both texts employ literary allusion as
matter and method (215). As with their critical views, the most evident points
of contact between Eliot and Borges in these texts are those that generate the
strongest ironic effect. Indeed, the allusive methods of Eliots poem and
Borgess short story, though superficially similar, are indicative of these
authors conflicting views on tradition.
The connection of these allusive methods to the central symbol of the city
in both texts is one way to articulate that tension. The city in The Waste Land
is the material representation of Eliots negative conception of contemporary
life. London is presented as an Unreal City (l.60, l.207) that evokes Dantes
Inferno. Also, it merges with urban centers past and present to conjure up
the idea of chaos, destruction, fragmentation and sterility that runs throughout
the poem:

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What is the city over the mountains


Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal. (ll. 37277)
The modern city is, thus, associated with the threat of disorder. The poets
reaction to this bleak scenery is ciphered by his rhetorical question Shall I set
my lands in order? (l. 426). And the answer is, we might venture, yes. To
undertake this enterprise, he is only left with These fragments I have shored
against my ruins (l. 431). Those fragments, fragments from a better past, correspond, in literary terms, to the lessons of the dead poets and tradition, which
are the only adequate means to buttress the chaos that the city and modern life
represent. In this context, Desmond Harding has characterized the modernist,
post-Great War, industrial city as a menacing force beyond the capacity of
human experience to control or even sometimes comprehend (13), offering
Eliots poem as a paradigmatic negative response to this modernity. Therefore,
for Eliot, the threat of the modernist city elicits a similar response as the disruptive, unruly aspects of Joyces prose in Ulysses that he blatantly strove to
fit into an organized, mythical pattern.
It is in this light that we have to read the notes appended to The Waste
Land. These scholarly notes detailing the literary sources of several lines scattered throughout the poem can be regarded as stemming from Eliots compulsion to order what he called the immense panorama of futility and anarchy
which is contemporary history (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270). This
acknowledgement of the material borrowed from past poets can be read as an
act of control aimed to arrest the fragmentation of the broken images that
compose the poem. Thus, disorder is presented just to be re-inscribed into an
authoritative frame that signifies order. Eliots allusive method is, then,
designed to underwrite his sense of tradition as firm grounding. Within this
context, the metaphor of the modern city as chaos gains special significance
when contrasted with the image of the monument that Eliot used to refer to
the dead poets configuring tradition. In his own words, the existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves (Tradition and the Individual
Talent 101).
Interestingly, Ronald Bush has pointed out that Ulysses, Order and Myth,
often invoked to identify the techniques lying behind the construction of The
Waste Land, belongs to the period when Eliot was reshaping, not composing,
his poem (71),19 when he was adding, among other things, the notes. Eliot
wrote the first version of the poem while suffering from severe bouts of
depression and anxiety, completing its last two sections in a sanatorium at
Lausanne (Bush 70). When he recovered, he was horrified at what he charac-

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terized as a sprawling, chaotic poem (Eliot qtd. in Bush 70). Therefore, the
notes comply with a strategy to regain control over personal and literary turmoil, eventually leading to the re-inscription of order, authority, and tradition.
They are a critical move to turn ruins into monuments.
Eliots process of allusive reconstruction through his references to the original sources is countered by Borgess ironic endless mirror images of a nonexistent model. Borgess practice of allusion, like his treatment of Homer and
his foundational legacy, deconstructs any sort of original source rather than its
reinscription. Thus, the postscript to El Inmortal distorts the contours of the
notes in The Waste Land and sets up a mise en abme through the ironic implications of fictional critic Nahum Cordoveros study on El Inmortal, A Coat
of Many Colours (OC 1:544). Cordovero categorizes El Inmortal as a centn, comparing it to Eliots poems, and drawing the readers attention to the
borrowings from previous sources embedded in the story. His already-discussed attribution of the manuscript to the antiquarian Joseph Cartaphilus
strengthens the connections between him and Flaminio RufoHomerthe
Wandering Jew. However, instead of reestablishing order with his identification of sources and his proof of authority, Cordovero becomes one more mirror reflection of an unreachable original image, Homer. As Christ has
observed, both the title, A Coat of Many Colours, and the authors name,
Nahum Cordovero, [. . .] disclose an artifice within artifice which is the hallmark of Borges (212). Indeed, Cordoveros Jewish name relates him to
Joseph Cartaphilus, and, by extension, to Homer, to the Wandering Jew and,
ultimately, to No one. Similarly, the title of his book is reminiscent of the
biblical Joseph and his coat of many colors. This coat is, etymologically, a
cento, which is Latin for patchwork quilt. This etymology ironically relates
Cordoveros study to its subject matter in a specular fashion. This specular
relationship is also noticed in the merger of author, critic, and character
through the identification of Cordovero with Cartaphilus-Rufo-Homer, which
provides a fictional example of the idealistic implications of El hacedor.
Therefore, whereas Eliots notes restore canonical authorship, Borgess postscript fictionalizes and ultimately dissolves it through an endless succession
of mirror reflections.
As in The Waste Land, the elaboration of the motif of the city in El Inmortal proves a valid illustration of Borgess allusive method and its relation to
tradition and literary creation. Flaminio Rufo describes the entrance to the
City of the Immortals as a dark labyrinth consisting of an indefinite number
of geometrically regular chambers with doors endlessly leading from chamber to chamber. When he eventually emerges from this symmetrically
arranged chaos, Rufo encounters a fascinating city of enorme antigedad
that strikes him as interminable, atroz and complejamente insensat[a].
Accordingly, the Roman official describes the city and its buildings in the following terms: Un laberinto es una casa labrada para confundir a los hombres;

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su arquitectura, prodiga en simetras, est subordinada a este fin. En el palacio que imperfectamente explor, la arquitectura careca de fin (OC 1:537).
In Rufos references to the city and its entrance, emphasis is placed on the
coexistence of order and chaos, which brings to mind the literary consequences of Borgess own allusive method. Both Borgesian allusion and
labyrinths annihilate ultimate order, precisely through their infinite projection
in a regressive structure.
Furthermore, the city arguably becomes a symbolic projection of Joyces
Ulysses as selectively read by Borges. Ulysses, as presented in El arte narrativo y la magia, is, like the City of El Inmortals, a labyrinth of symmetries that
lacks any finality. Moreover, Rufo argues that un caos de palabras heterogneasterms reminiscent of Borgess opinion about Ulyssescan be an
approximate image to describe the city. The order within chaos seen in the city
is also invoked by Borges when, in an interview with Roberto Alifano, he was
asked whether he thought that Joyce used Homeric symbolism to provide an
integral vision of human experience. To this question, Borges answered that
esa visin no alcanza a ser integral. Al cabo de la lectura de Ulysses el lector
tiene la sensacin de caos. Sin embargo, la obra abunda en simetras y ese caos
es ms bien un cosmos, pero un cosmos secreto (114). This link is strengthened by the fact that the city that Rufo sees is merely a replica of the original
City of El Inmortals, just as Ulysses is founded on Homers poem. In this sense,
the construction of the City parallels the narrative composition of Ulysses, as
they both produce ordered chaos from fragments of a previous model.
The immortals, we are told, with las reliquias de su ruina [of the original
City] erigieron, en el mismo lugar, la desatinada ciudad que yo recorr: una
suerte de parodia o reverso [. . .] (OC 1:540). This inverted parody stands not
only for Ulysses as interpreted by Borges, but also for Borgess own allusive
method as well as for his critical take on tradition. Although the city and
Ulysses are, for T. S. Eliot, potentially subversive realities controlled through
a (mythical) method designed to reinstate order, for Borges, they represent
paradigms of infinite regress, of chaos under the guise of order. From the ruins
of the past, Eliot chooses to reerect monuments that conform to (or transform
through parody) the lessons of antiquity, leading back to Homer. Borges, on
the other hand, disseminates Homers authority and turns those ruins into
labyrinths where no center is to be found by frustrating any stable reconstruction from the ruins revealed through irony (Booth 240). Meaning, for
Eliot, can be reconstructed; for Borges, it is infinitely deferred. Along these
lines, the themes and structure of El Inmortal pose an ironic reinterpretation
of Eliots postulates, showing how manipulating a continuous parallel
between contemporaneity and antiquity (Ulysses, Order and Myth 270),
the order prescribed by the mythical method can actually result in uncontrollable chaos and in the dissolution of the authority of an aprioristic tradition.
Although both Eliot and Borges construct their arguments through allusion

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and their critical positions might deceitfully suggest real affinities


(Shumway 266), the intonations of their theories and creative procedures have
been shown to be conflicting. Indeed, it might well be that, after all, la historia universal es la historia de la diversa entonacin de algunas metforas
(Borges, OC 2:16).
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

1. More adequate seem Waismans conclusions about Eliots and Borgess use of Dantes
Divine Comedy as a subtext. While Eliots references to Dante in The Waste Land reinforce
Western canonical traditions, Borges, in his short stories (e.g. El Aleph), displaces one of
the fathers of the Western canon [Dante] onto the shores of the Ro de la Plata (148).
2. Hutcheon actually refers to Eliots historical sense (Theory 2, 4), as well as to the classicist stance of Greek, Latin, and Renaissance writers in order to illustrate the concept of parody. In
her own words, this positive method of dealing with the past [parody or parodic allusion] recalls
in many ways the classical and Renaissance attitude to their classical patrimony (Theory 4).
3. For Hutcheon, the interrelation between irony and parody responds to a model where the
former is inscribed within the latter, although by no means in an exclusive fashion. Irony is a figure of speech that effects a semantic inversion of the literal meaning of a given statement. This
disruptive semantic inversion enacted through irony (what Hutcheon calls its edge) is what
gives parody its critical dimension (Ironys Edge 4, 3756; Theory 6, 52). However, this edge is
not restrictively circumscribed within the realm of parody. Irony, Hutcheon argues, involves a
division or contrast of meanings [semantic dimension], and also a questioning, a judging [pragmatic dimension] (Theory 53). The semantic inversion that irony effects can resist reinscription
(through the furthering of a given tradition) when its questioning targets the very idea of tradition as an exclusive and ultimately stable source of (literary) meaning.
4. According to Booths terminology, Borgesian irony would be unstable, since no stable
reconstruction can be made out of the ruins revealed through irony (240).
5 That Borges was acquainted with T. S. Eliots work is a well documented fact. He published a short biographical piece on T. S. Eliot in 1937, detailing all his works to that date (OC 4:
29596), and a review of F. O. Mathiessens study on Eliot (The Achievement of T. S. Eliot) (OC
4:21314). In this last text, he refers to Eliots poetry as a universo limitado, arbitrario, pero singularmente intenso (214). For an exhaustive catalogue of Borgess references to Eliot in his
work, see Balderston 48.
6. The Death of the Author in Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977) 14248.
7. See La nadera de la personalidad and La encrucijada de Berkeley in Inquisiciones
(1925); Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius in Ficciones (1944); or Nueva refutacin del tiempo, in
Otras inquisiciones (1952).
8. Borgess essays on Shakespeare, notably De alguien a nadie and Everything and Nothing, also display a similar take on the issues of personality and authorship. Shakespeare, who,
like Homer, is another canonical Maker, is shown as an everyman whose personality becomes
fragmented through his literary activity.
9. The process of rewriting and simulation triggered by translation is another theoretical
aspect that attracted Borgess critical attention and that has an important bearing on his ideas on
innovation and tradition. See Waisman for a thorough treatment of this issue.
10. Other Borgesian fictions display the same ironic approach to Eliots mythical proposal.
Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, for instance, has been said to derive its ironic power from
the way it lambastes what T. S. Eliot called the mythical method in the Joycean modernist
novel (Salgado 73).
11. See Jullien 13739.
12. Similarly, in La eternidad y T. S. Eliot, Borges explicitly relates the Christian idea of a
foundational moment (the birth of the Holy Trinity) that pervades and predetermines all eternity
to Eliots notions of artistic creation discussed in Tradition and the Individual Talent. Borges

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argues that in its attempt to reconcile progress and the legacy of the past by making recourse to
the idea of a stable tradition, this theory ha requisado una Eternidad, pero de carcter esttico
(Textos recobrados 50).
13. For Borgess listing of his own readings on Gnosticism, see Borges at Eighty 94. In the
same interview, he also says: I am not a Catholic. I cannot believe in theology. I cannot believe
in the idea of punishment or reward (93).
14. See also Christ 192228 for an exhaustive analysis of these references.
15. This textual practice had a notable impact in the formulation of poststructuralist thought.
Derrida and Foucault, among others, drew on Borgess fiction to articulate their theoretical points.
See Rodrguez Monegal for a comparative study of Derridas philosophy and Borgess fiction.
Wicks studies the similarities between Foucault and Borges.
16. In this commentary, where Eliot is also mentioned, Borges interestingly suggests a theory
of metempsychosis by the cabbalist Isaac Luria as a likely source for The Approach.
17. In a poem titled James Joyce, Borges writes, obviously evoking Bloomsday: En un da
del hombre estn los das / del tiempo, desde aquel inconcebible / da inicial del tiempo [. . .]
Entre el alba y la noche est la historia / universal (OC 2:361).
18. Borgess writings on Joyce and his work have provided the topic for a few studies. See
Levine, Rice, Salgado, and Waisman 157201.
19. For a discussion of the editorial history of these notes, see Sultan 16167.
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