A text of Borges is always hard to approach. And this is not an exemption. This story has so many elements that make hard to select some of them to talk about. I will try. I think that one of the main points in the story is the reference to The Arabian Nights. This book, which was found almost by chance in an old bookstore of Buenos Aires, it is one of the main characters of the story. It was precisely the hurry about reading this book the responsible of the accident that Juan has in the stairs. The abstraction of being reading this book took him to the hospital’s experience. This experience is linked to the dreams –or nightmares- about the images of the stories of this book. We can thin here in a process of “getting into” the story that is reading, or in the opposite way, how what he/we read(s) gets into out mind.

Other aspect of the story that for me is very interesting is the relation between Juan (the grandson) and Johannes (the grandfather). At the beginning of the story says that Johannes died in a very “romantic” way but we never know how it was. The constantly use of the last name instead of his first name make the illusion that we are not sure who is the story about. Only at the end of the story the name of “Juan” is said and we know that we are talking about the grandson and not the grandfather. Anyway, during the story there are many references to the physical similarities of both characters (especially about the bear). And again, we don’t know if Juan dies or not. We assume he did because of his conditions. But in a Borges`s story there is never a close ending.

Finally, I would like to refer to the doubt about if the “last part” of the story is a dream or not. I think that one of the clues for this point is this sentence: “Mañana me despertaré en la estancia, pensaba, y era como si a un tiempo fuera dos hombres: el que avanzaba por el día otoñal y por la geografía de la patria, y el otro, encarcelado en un sanatorio y sujeto a metódicas servidumbres”. After that, he goes back to talk again about a dream: “Alguna vez durmió y en sus sueños estaba el ímpetu del tren”, and then, I think we get lost about the “reality” of the story. And I think this is precisely one of the reasons that make this story so interesting. It is hard to define what we are talking about.

I have a last question. Why “El Sur” with capital letter?