Borges
El sur
Juan Dahlman, the main character of Jorge Luis Borges’ El sur, is a character that lives within fantasy; within the fantasy of literature in general but particularly Argentine literature. (I will come back to the Argentine literature.) He lives surrounded by books. He works as a secretary in a municipal library and, not very surprisingly, reads a lot. Literature is his life, and also his death. But how is it his death? Does he die? The story as a whole plays with the reader’s (Juan’s, the nations, etc.) perception of reality and dream/fantasy/fiction. Is it clear that Juan Dahlman left the hospital after a supposed recovery? Is his thinking clear? Does he live a fantasy? Does it matter? These are questions that arise due to the play with perception: reality and fiction. The play although is to realize that there is no difference. The reality one lives is really a fiction; a constructed reality. They are one and the same; and they are equally as dangerous. It is dangerous if one forgets this; in regards to this Borges writes, “Though blind to guilt, fate can be merciless with the slightest distraction.” The study of language has shown us that meanings, signs, history are a construction and the human community has done the constructing. Lacan told us that we become subjects of language (which is makes up the human community) the minute we are named. In Dahlman’s case, what is he a subject of? He is the subject of the fiction of Argentina. Moreover, he is a subject of Argentine literature.
His Argentinity is produced by the story of his maternal grandfather. The events in his story in turn are the events that helped win and ‘civilize’ the Argentine nation. It marks the suffering and sacrifice that it took to build it. It takes the place of a void that exists in Argentina’s nationness. This void is shown in the first line of the story: “The man that stepped off the boat.” Argentina has no origin. Then we have the presence Martin Fierro. This is a poem sung by a ‘gaucho’. In the process of civilizing the country, along with the natives, this ‘gaucho’ is a figure, mestizo in many cases, which was wiped out, killed, or otherwise made to assimilate to the de new nation. Undoubtedly, this figure is also a part of that void, and it is a part of the new origin. The South, la pampa is a place that is disjointed with the city, which is really the nation. It is this disjoining that the national literature helped create. The ending tells us that the danger in the South is still there, or that it is a creation of Dahlman’s delirium at the hospital or romanticized fiction of his death.
Borges
El sur
Juan Dahlman, the main character of Jorge Luis Borges’ El sur, is a character that lives within fantasy; within the fantasy of literature in general but particularly Argentine literature. (I will come back to the Argentine literature.) He lives surrounded by books. He works as a secretary in a municipal library and, not very surprisingly, reads a lot. Literature is his life, and also his death. But how is it his death? Does he die? The story as a whole plays with the reader’s (Juan’s, the nations, etc.) perception of reality and dream/fantasy/fiction. Is it clear that Juan Dahlman left the hospital after a supposed recovery? Is his thinking clear? Does he live a fantasy? Does it matter? These are questions that arise due to the play with perception: reality and fiction. The play although is to realize that there is no difference. The reality one lives is really a fiction; a constructed reality. They are one and the same; and they are equally as dangerous. It is dangerous if one forgets this; in regards to this Borges writes, “Though blind to guilt, fate can be merciless with the slightest distraction.” The study of language has shown us that meanings, signs, history are a construction and the human community has done the constructing. Lacan told us that we become subjects of language (which is makes up the human community) the minute we are named. In Dahlman’s case, what is he a subject of? He is the subject of the fiction of Argentina. Moreover, he is a subject of Argentine literature.
His Argentinity is produced by the story of his maternal grandfather. The events in his story in turn are the events that helped win and ‘civilize’ the Argentine nation. It marks the suffering and sacrifice that it took to build it. It takes the place of a void that exists in Argentina’s nationness. This void is shown in the first line of the story: “The man that stepped off the boat.” Argentina has no origin. Then we have the presence Martin Fierro. This is a poem sung by a ‘gaucho’. In the process of civilizing the country, along with the natives, this ‘gaucho’ is a figure, mestizo in many cases, which was wiped out, killed, or otherwise made to assimilate to the de new nation. Undoubtedly, this figure is also a part of that void, and it is a part of the new origin. The South, la pampa is a place that is disjointed with the city, which is really the nation. It is this disjoining that the national literature helped create. The ending tells us that the danger in the South is still there, or that it is a creation of Dahlman’s delirium at the hospital or romanticized fiction of his death.
Borges
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?
Borges
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?
El Sur
Seamless Subsubsubjectivity
Quixote Voyage life southdeath, boat, cabs, train, steps, errante two men at once hybrid criollo doublings/splittings two lineages, two deaths, dreams and fantasies/reality Catriel fighting for both sides, the passion – time scarlet past and the present pink memory youth/age future/past.. solitude, county/city solitude North South history repetition and more repetition Derrida summer after summer. . . , certainty becomes unfixed and SOMETHING HAPPENS! And again! Choices are made to live….even in possible death – Quixote Eternity/Instant/mortality/immortality READING AND WRITING …..CREATING . . . . .
And Martín Fierro? The knife fighting gaucho a past lived with passion in face of the reality, not the abstraction of (physical) death
Arabian Nights (with pages missing!) tales ending only to begin again- fate – Dahlman subject of his fate. He takes the stairs, and something brushes his forehead! Bat/death AWAKE! Flavour of all things monstrous Eight days also eight hundred years, like old man outside time. Cab- A Room that Was not His Own. Cell Well cave. Virginia Wolf. The body. Death is not abstract but always part of our present. Dahl = valley?
Symmetries and anachronisms of reality. Cab – City and house public/private memory yellow light interior courtyards.
Cab- South = older and stabler world almost secret courtyard, the familiar old in the unfamiliar new
Café illusory contact with cat pane of glass transparencies and reflections. Time in Successiveness/The Eternity of The Instant. Magical Arabian Nights challenge to evil to the torment of the spirit/body
Train and the wonder of Being, Scherazade’s superfluous miracles. Wondrous fact of Being! Allowed himself Simply to Live!
The body and memory bouillon
Two Men at Once! Voyage/Imprisonment. Spirit/body. World/Nostalgic Literary Knowledge!
Rushing train White to Yellow to Red Sun. The plains and time transfigure the train/life. All Vast and Intimate – Secret Perfect/Hostile solitude. Accepting the different station, the uncanny curve in life’s trajectory to the
Unfamiliar
The Subject accepts the adventure Walking slowly inhaling with the grave happiness the smell of clover.
RED passion of past sorry architecture Paul et Virginie naturaleza/sociedad, The doubling of the owner, unfamiliar/familiar back to sanitorium To Add Yet Another Event to That Day = Subject
Youth/Age THE GAUCHO/HISTORY POLISHED AS A STONE BY WATER BY A SAYING BY GENERATIONS OF HUMANKIND OUTSIDE TIME IN A SORT OF ETERNITY
Darkness smells sounds Something brushes his face bread/life – past, indigenous youth labourer/present criollo writer
Arabian Nights to block out reality They are feeling their oats and He Is Named
No longer an accidental face
Insults as though he were far away from life? Exaggeration of drunkenness fierce and mocking
SOMETHING UNFORSEEABLE HAPPENS – The South decides he must accept the challenge – instinct and action life not allowed LIFE NOT ALLOWED IN SANITORIUM
ENOUGH STALLING! ENGAGE!
No hope, no fear creating his fate – rejecting One death unaware in the sanatorium in favour of life and choice with death as part of life CATRIEL/FIERRO THE ROMANTIC DEATH/The WRITER In A Room of his own creation CREATING . . .
El Sur
Seamless Subsubsubjectivity
Quixote Voyage life southdeath, boat, cabs, train, steps, errante two men at once hybrid criollo doublings/splittings two lineages, two deaths, dreams and fantasies/reality Catriel fighting for both sides, the passion – time scarlet past and the present pink memory youth/age future/past.. solitude, county/city solitude North South history repetition and more repetition Derrida summer after summer. . . , certainty becomes unfixed and SOMETHING HAPPENS! And again! Choices are made to live….even in possible death – Quixote Eternity/Instant/mortality/immortality READING AND WRITING …..CREATING . . . . .
And Martín Fierro? The knife fighting gaucho a past lived with passion in face of the reality, not the abstraction of (physical) death
Arabian Nights (with pages missing!) tales ending only to begin again- fate – Dahlman subject of his fate. He takes the stairs, and something brushes his forehead! Bat/death AWAKE! Flavour of all things monstrous Eight days also eight hundred years, like old man outside time. Cab- A Room that Was not His Own. Cell Well cave. Virginia Wolf. The body. Death is not abstract but always part of our present. Dahl = valley?
Symmetries and anachronisms of reality. Cab – City and house public/private memory yellow light interior courtyards.
Cab- South = older and stabler world almost secret courtyard, the familiar old in the unfamiliar new
Café illusory contact with cat pane of glass transparencies and reflections. Time in Successiveness/The Eternity of The Instant. Magical Arabian Nights challenge to evil to the torment of the spirit/body
Train and the wonder of Being, Scherazade’s superfluous miracles. Wondrous fact of Being! Allowed himself Simply to Live!
The body and memory bouillon
Two Men at Once! Voyage/Imprisonment. Spirit/body. World/Nostalgic Literary Knowledge!
Rushing train White to Yellow to Red Sun. The plains and time transfigure the train/life. All Vast and Intimate – Secret Perfect/Hostile solitude. Accepting the different station, the uncanny curve in life’s trajectory to the
Unfamiliar
The Subject accepts the adventure Walking slowly inhaling with the grave happiness the smell of clover.
RED passion of past sorry architecture Paul et Virginie naturaleza/sociedad, The doubling of the owner, unfamiliar/familiar back to sanitorium To Add Yet Another Event to That Day = Subject
Youth/Age THE GAUCHO/HISTORY POLISHED AS A STONE BY WATER BY A SAYING BY GENERATIONS OF HUMANKIND OUTSIDE TIME IN A SORT OF ETERNITY
Darkness smells sounds Something brushes his face bread/life – past, indigenous youth labourer/present criollo writer
Arabian Nights to block out reality They are feeling their oats and He Is Named
No longer an accidental face
Insults as though he were far away from life? Exaggeration of drunkenness fierce and mocking
SOMETHING UNFORSEEABLE HAPPENS – The South decides he must accept the challenge – instinct and action life not allowed LIFE NOT ALLOWED IN SANITORIUM
ENOUGH STALLING! ENGAGE!
No hope, no fear creating his fate – rejecting One death unaware in the sanatorium in favour of life and choice with death as part of life CATRIEL/FIERRO THE ROMANTIC DEATH/The WRITER In A Room of his own creation CREATING . . .
El Sur
«A la realidad le gustan las simetrías y los leves anacronismos.»
Borges always overwhelms me a little. The thing is that his tales are so full of symbolism, intertextuality and every other kind of outside reference that every written line flows with meaning and reading possibilities. The South is no exception. Where to focus? What to write about? Did I actually get this story?
Anyway, let’s begin to approach the story through the aspect that I found most captivating: The constant play between two different realities and two different times, all interlaced by similar events that add symmetry and a sense of parallel universe to the narration. In both realities the ‘beginning of the end’ starts with Juan Dahlmann trying to read The Arabian Nights followed by something hitting his head, in one case it’s the jamb of a window on the other it’s tiny bread balls which create a series of consequences that finally lead to his death; a humiliating one in the hospital due to a septicemia and a romantic one in a man to man duel that reminds us of his Argentinian grandfather’s death.
Before his accident and that the back and forward between reality at the hospital and reality at the South started, it seems like Dahlmann already lived two different experiences of life; his everyday as a librarian and a different one through his books.
Juan Dahlmann is a character that lives a life of dualities. His from German decent but deeply identifies himself as Argentinian, even though his lifestyle resembles more that of a German evangelical pastor like his paternal grandfather than the lifestyle of a true Argentinian gaucho like his mother’s side grandfather, a person he profoundly admires. It is funny that Dahlmann considers the south and that kind of lifestyle an ideal when a common aspiration in Latin America is to leave that behind and move to the North, the North is usually the ideal.
It is also very interesting that the copy of The Arabian Nights he so eagerly wants to read is a German translation done by the orientalist Gustav Weil, a detail that is thrown into the story in a rather ‘matter of factly’ way but helps reinforce the perception that Dahlmann is more influenced by his German heritage than he realizes or than he likes to admit. Also, that Borges chooses The Arabian Nights is of course no accident. Sherezade the main character of the book resorts to the telling of stories in order to entertain the prince and save her life; she changes her destiny through these stories much like Dalhmann changes his when he finds refuge from reality in his self-made tale of the south.
The South seems like a story of a man who lives a life of dissonance between his self-acknowledged identity and the way in which he actually experiences life, a dissonance that can only be restored through the dream of an honorable Argentinian death in The South.
Impressions on “The South” by Borges
In the story The South by Jorge Luis Borges, the protagonist, Juan Dahlmann, is brought to believe, by the play of his subconcious, that he dies a glorious death in a knife fight under the open southern sky, while he, in fact, dies of a sad death in a cold northern sanatorium.
Although the reader is not told explicitely that the death happens in the sanatorium, many hints point in that direction. First, the paragragh in which the accident in the stairway is described starts with : «fate can be merciless with the slightest distractions». This detail foreshadows the fatality of the injury he got from his distraction. Then, it is mentioned that it is like he was two men : one thinking of the geography of his native land, one imprisoned in the sanatorium. The train car in which he was travelling was not the same as the one he embarked on and he suspected he was not only travelling in the South but into the past as well : reseeing his past is an experience lived by a dying person (according to general belief). Later, in the bar, Dalhman thinks the owner resembles an employee from the sanatorium and the storekeeper knew his name ; at this point, elements of the reality enter the man’s dream or hallucinations. Finally, he thought that, that first night in the hospital, dying in a knife night would have been «a liberation, a joy and a fiesta» ; confirming that this death was in fact not real.
The title of the story, The South, brings attention to its opposite, the North. In the story, views of the South and the North conflict one another. The North is described, through its representation by the sanatorium, as ‘hell’, a merciless and rude place («he was strapped with metal bands to a table, he was blinded and dizzied with bright lights»), a place where «eight days passed like eight hundreds». There, «Dahlmann hated every inch of himself ; he hated his identity». On the other side, the South, «the more stable world», is a place where he aspires to return, his house waiting for him ; it is a splendid place with an open sky. (It can be noted as well that the East is not described positively as it is the cause of Dahlmann’s trouble. It is because of the excitement brought by the Arabian Nights that he injured himself. Also, his imaginary murderer has the features of an Indian man.)
Dahlmann, ‘cold’ to his German lineage, chooses a romantic death, one close to his Argentine lineage, the southern one.
Borges – “The South”
Borges’ story “The South” is difficult to understand upon first glance. After reading it, I honestly did not grasp its meaning or the message it was attempting to transmit. I needed to read it a second time in order to pick up on more details, but I also needed to inquire more about the author and the cultural context in which this story was written. Borges is an Argentinian writer and given that Juan, the protagonist, is also an Argentinian national (born and raised in Buenos Aires, although a man of German descent), there seems to be an important reflection about Argentinian culture and identity. Furthermore, I believe Borges was inspired to write this story after his near death experience. It seems that something from his personal experience triggered in him a need to tell this story. The story begins with Juan rushing home to open and read his copy of Arabian Nights when he suffers a head injury. His experience in the hospital is described as a very negative experience, even comparing it to hell. Nurses are strapping him to the bed and shaving his head. Juan did not want to die this way and in the process, travels in his mind to the south of Argentina (in the countryside). This moment of travel in the story is very significant; Juan is drawn to the countryside for a reason that is not immediately clear to the reader. Is there something special in the south that Juan must experience before death? There is a sharp contrast in setting between the scene described in the hospital (hell) and the scene described in the countryside (peace and tranquility, heaven-like). This symbolic contrast emphasizes Juan’s deep affinity to the countryside as opposed to the city. When in the countryside, Juan goes to a bar where he meets two gauchos. I had no idea what this was, but Wikipedia tells me that they are a very important symbol of Argentinian nationalism and culture. Juan gets into a fight with one of them and after being challenged to a “knife dual” outside, he accepts the challenge despite knowing that he will not be able to survive. But death here is defined as liberation. For Juan, “this is the death he would have dreamed or chosen”. Although I am not familiar with Argentinian culture, it appears to me that Juan’s praiseful representation of the south and his pejorative depiction of the city is not at all what one would expect. It is generally Buenos Aires that is considered as being an emblem of Argentinian culture and the south as being uncivilized (this makes me think of Williams’ “Culture is Ordinary”). Only Buenos Aires seems to be associated with Argentinian culture, but as Juan’s journey illustrates, culture is ordinary. Death ironically liberates him from a culturally constructed identity. Although gauchos were once viewed negatively, they are regarded very highly in Argentinian culture today (googling “gauchos” tells me this). The fact that Juan must symbolically retreat where the gauchos are as a way to liberate himself suggests that one must recognize his or her past/origins to move forward in the present and construct a culturally stable identity. Perhaps it is in the countryside where lie the origins of Juan’s true identity and not between the pages of the Arabian Nights.
Borges – “The South”
Borges’ story “The South” is difficult to understand upon first glance. After reading it, I honestly did not grasp its meaning or the message it was attempting to transmit. I needed to read it a second time in order to pick up on more details, but I also needed to inquire more about the author and the cultural context in which this story was written. Borges is an Argentinian writer and given that Juan, the protagonist, is also an Argentinian national (born and raised in Buenos Aires, although a man of German descent), there seems to be an important reflection about Argentinian culture and identity. Furthermore, I believe Borges was inspired to write this story after his near death experience. It seems that something from his personal experience triggered in him a need to tell this story. The story begins with Juan rushing home to open and read his copy of Arabian Nights when he suffers a head injury. His experience in the hospital is described as a very negative experience, even comparing it to hell. Nurses are strapping him to the bed and shaving his head. Juan did not want to die this way and in the process, travels in his mind to the south of Argentina (in the countryside). This moment of travel in the story is very significant; Juan is drawn to the countryside for a reason that is not immediately clear to the reader. Is there something special in the south that Juan must experience before death? There is a sharp contrast in setting between the scene described in the hospital (hell) and the scene described in the countryside (peace and tranquility, heaven-like). This symbolic contrast emphasizes Juan’s deep affinity to the countryside as opposed to the city. When in the countryside, Juan goes to a bar where he meets two gauchos. I had no idea what this was, but Wikipedia tells me that they are a very important symbol of Argentinian nationalism and culture. Juan gets into a fight with one of them and after being challenged to a “knife dual” outside, he accepts the challenge despite knowing that he will not be able to survive. But death here is defined as liberation. For Juan, “this is the death he would have dreamed or chosen”. Although I am not familiar with Argentinian culture, it appears to me that Juan’s praiseful representation of the south and his pejorative depiction of the city is not at all what one would expect. It is generally Buenos Aires that is considered as being an emblem of Argentinian culture and the south as being uncivilized (this makes me think of Williams’ “Culture is Ordinary”). Only Buenos Aires seems to be associated with Argentinian culture, but as Juan’s journey illustrates, culture is ordinary. Death ironically liberates him from a culturally constructed identity. Although gauchos were once viewed negatively, they are regarded very highly in Argentinian culture today (googling “gauchos” tells me this). The fact that Juan must symbolically retreat where the gauchos are as a way to liberate himself suggests that one must recognize his or her past/origins to move forward in the present and construct a culturally stable identity. Perhaps it is in the countryside where lie the origins of Juan’s true identity and not between the pages of the Arabian Nights.
