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Kiet Nguyen – IHRTLUHC

Professor A. Nottingham-Martin

Freshman Studies FRST 101

Collected Fictions: The Dagger, Death and the Quest for Idealism

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer and poet renowned for the intricate

allegories and allusions in his works, behind which lie profound and thought-provoking

messages that have continued to posthumously have a tremendously positive effect on

Spanish and world literature. Thus, his talented use of familiar images in different stories to

allude to certain common ideas, idealism for example, is astonishingly beautiful. In his most

famous book, Collected Fictions, the beauty shines through in two of Borges’ seemingly

unrelated stories, The South and The Mirror and the Mask, both of which contain the image

of the dagger toward the end. According to Borges, idealism is costly in that should one want

to obtain it, he does so at the expense of his death – an idea embodied within the dagger in

the two stories.

In The South, the dagger represents the protagonist’s ideal death in place of a

mundane one. The South from Borges’ collection Artifices (1944) tells the story of Juan

Dahlmann, who, as evident in the first paragraph of the story, leads a colorless life but aspires

to live romantically: “In the contrary pulls from his two lineages, Juan Dahlmann (perhaps

impelled by his Germanic blood) chose that of his romantic ancestor, or that of a romantic

death.” (Borges 174) His choice of lineage is in a way a compensation for his dull life which

is characterized by words and phrases in the next sentence, most notably “the passing years, a

certain lack of spiritedness, and solitude.” (Borges 174) Thus, it is no stretch to say that

Dahlmann’s trip to the South after his stay at the sanatorium is all in his head, and merely a

way to idealize and bestow more meaning upon his humdrum existence which has culminated
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in a commonplace death. Now and then, there are tinges of details supporting that idea, such

as Dahlmann’s “illusory” contact with the cat, his feeling “as though he were two men at

once: the man gliding along through the autumn day and the geography of his native land,

and the other man, imprisoned in a sanatorium and subjected to methodical attentions.”

(Borges 176-177), and the store owner’s “resemblance to one of the employees at the

sanatorium” (Borges 178). Indeed, his journey to the South is Dahlmann’s last pursuit of the

ideal death which he aspires to have when reality chooses not to go his way. Eventually, the

dagger appears when Dahlmann is piqued by the men at the store into a bar fight. He

acknowledges that “in his clumsy hand the weapon would serve less to defend him than to

justify the other man's killing him” (Borges 179) since he has never used it as a weapon

before. Nevertheless, facing death, Dahlmann feels “no fear” and that “had he been able to

choose or dream his death that night, this is the death he would have dreamed or chosen”.

This line of thought from Dahlmann is sheer evidence that this is the death he idealizes. The

story ends in the last sentence, when there is a shift from the past tense to the present tense,

signaling that Juan Dahlmann has attained idealism. And although Borges does not explicitly

describe Dahlmann’s death, one is to infer that the dagger kills Juan Dahlmann after the story

ends.

Likewise, the dagger in The Mirror and the Mask embodies the idea of beauty that is

so ideal as to become blasphemous and costly. The Mirror and the Mask, taken from Borges’

The Book of Sand (1975), starts out having the King ask the bard Olan to celebrate the

kingdom’s victory by means of poetry: “The brightest deeds lose their luster if they are not

minted in words. I desire you to sing my victory and my praises.” (Borges 451) Like Juan

Dahlmann in The South, this is the King and the poet’s quest for idealism: the King wants his

victory in the battle to be recorded in its immaculate form, and feels that no other could

accomplish the task better than his poet. Upon hearing Olan sing the first eulogy, the King is
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only mildly pleased because the bard uses familiar and common, albeit masterful, various

literary devices. He then says “All that is well, and yet nothing has happened” (Borges 452)

as if to underscore that in Olan’s first epic, imitation and ostentation have overshadowed the

truth. They thus continue their pursuit of idealism: after a year working on the second

panegyric, Olan comes back to present to the King the poem, whose verses “were not a

description of the battle, they were the battle.” (Borges 452) It forms a “warlike chaos of the

lines” and does not follow conventional grammatical structures. The poem intrigues the King,

who says that “this poem surpasses all that has gone before, and obliterates it. It holds one in

thrall, it thrills, it dazzles.” (Borges 453) However, the poem still has not attained the summit

of idealism, so the King requests the bard Olan take one more year to continue his work. The

bard comes back for the third and last time to read his poem, which consists of one single line

but tremendously astounds the King when read to him. The astonished King tells Olan that

even though he has witnessed many grandeur marvels, “they do not compare with [Olan’s]

poem, which somehow contains them all” (Borges 454), suggesting that the one-line poem is

indeed the peak of idealism. Whereas the King has given the poet a silver mirror and a golden

mask as gifts, this time Olan receives a dagger. Once again, similar to The South, the dagger

appears just when idealism is attained. Here, it foreshadows the bard’s demise and the King’s

downfall: the poet eventually “killed himself when he left the palace”, and the King becomes

“a beggar who wanders the roads of Ireland, which once was his kingdom.” (Borges 454)

Both The South and The Mirror and the Mask offer seemingly opposite viewpoints on

idealism which nonetheless agree with and compliment each other. The two daggers are quite

different from each other in that Borges portrays idealism to be good in one story and bad in

another. In The South, Juan Dahlmann uses idealism to cope with his mundane death and live

his life romantically like he has always aspired to do. Idealism gives Dahlmann’s life much

more meaning than if he decided to succumb to the harshness of reality: “dying in a knife
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fight under the open sky, grappling with his adversary, would have been a liberation, a joy,

and a fiesta.” (Borges 179) Therefore, the dagger serves as a liberating tool for Dahlmann – a

treasure at the end of his quest for idealism. On the other hand, in the form of a one-line

poem, idealism is portrayed as a sin in The Mirror and the Mask. It proves itself blasphemous

and results in Olan’s death and the King’s tremendous loss: “The sin of having known

Beauty, which is a gift forbidden mankind. Now we must atone for it.” (Borges 454) In their

case, the dagger represents the bad consequences that come with idealism. As can be seen

through Borges’ brilliant writing, the dagger, or idealism, is neither good or bad in and of

itself. However, it is apparent in those two stories of Borges’ that whatever the consequences

of idealism can be, the quest for idealism is still very worthwhile. In The South, Juan

Dahlmann is finally set free after his journey to the South seeking the ideal death; and in The

Mirror and the Mask, the reward from the pursuit of idealism is indeed the knowledge of true

Beauty. All in all, The South and The Mirror and the Mask provide distinct but

complimentary perspectives on idealism which to help shape the perfect picture of idealism.

The dagger in The South and The Mirror and the Mask from Jorge Luis Borges’

ingenious Collected Fictions serves as his platform to convey the idea that idealism is

difficult to obtain, and those who want it achieve it at a horrendous expense. Throughout both

of the stories, Borges gradually unleashes the details that allude to the quest for idealism of

the main characters and concludes with the image of the dagger, associated with death.

Borges had written these two stories separately decades apart, but when read in light of each

other, Borges’ profound message on the dagger, or idealism, is shaped and sent to the world:

idealism is not always good, nor is it intrinsically bad; but to obtain it is almost an impossible

task. But then again, the pursuit of the dagger may just turn out very rewarding.

Works Cited
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Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. Penguin.

Paper in a nutshell

1) Before starting my paper, I was puzzled by this aspect of the work:

The South and The Mirror and the Mask are two of my favorite stories in Collected Fictions.

When I read them carefully, I noticed that they both contain the image of the dagger

associated with death and allude to idealism. It intrigued me a lot.

2) Through re-reading and analyzing the work, I formulated this precise question that

readers may have about the work:

What is the meaning behind the image of the dagger in Borges’ stories, specifically in The

South and in The Mirror and the Mask?

3) After reading my paper, readers will understand something new about this

question/problem/issue, namely:

Those who have not acknowledged the similarities between the two stories will learn The

dagger is a symbol for idealism at the expense of demise.

4) As a result of reading, discussing, and writing about this work, my thinking has

changed or developed in the following way:

I learned how to pinpoint a common theme between two seemingly unrelated stories by

looking at the characteristics they share, and doing so helps me a lot in understanding both of

the works better.