∞本文翻译自lithub.com
2016年 4 月 2 日
博尔赫斯从塞万提斯那儿学到什么？
有关语言，及虚构与现实之间的一线之隔
2016年 4 月 2 日
By Ilan Stavans and William P. Childers
博尔赫斯将堂·吉诃德重塑为一篇俏皮的小说，使我们今天的阅读充满了惊喜与出乎意料。横跨不同文学种类，纵贯几十年，他富于变化的深刻思考为读者开辟了新的道路。接下来的对话发生在2016年1月。
以下两位作者之间：
美国加马萨诸塞州安默斯特学院拉丁美洲及拉丁美洲文化教授（刘易斯-西布林名誉教授），《吉诃德：其小说以及世界》一书作者，非盈利独立出版机构“不安分的书”（Restless Books）出版社社长，依兰·斯塔文斯（Ilan Stavans）。
依兰·斯塔文斯Ilan Stavans
以及纽约城市大学布鲁克林学院西班牙语副教授，《跨国界的塞万提斯》一书作者，威廉·奇尔德斯（Willian P.Childers）。
威廉·奇尔德斯Willian P.Childers
∞
♫奇尔德斯：
塞万提斯小说中的人物很快地进入到了流行文化当中。然而在文学圈子中，如果要释放他作品所有的潜能的话，它们必须跳脱出欧洲的现实主义。胡安·蒙塔尔沃对此作了尝试；他给《被塞万提斯遗忘的章节》（Chapters That Cervantes Forgot，1895）一书写的序言正是一份宣布厄瓜多尔从西班牙文化独立出来的声明。不过他笔下的讽刺太局限于十九世纪厄瓜多尔本土的情况。是博尔赫斯真正打开了一种属于拉丁美洲的解读。
♫斯塔文斯：
博尔赫斯不仅仅是一个忠实的读者，而且是一个有热情的读者。在与诺曼·托马斯·蒂·乔凡尼合作的于1970年《纽约客》杂志刊登的《一篇自传性质的短文》中，他描述了年少时期阅读《堂·吉诃德》的情形，最初读的是英译版，日后当他读到西班牙语原版的时候，他感觉到当时读的英文版真是一个很差劲的翻译。
The New Yorker, 1970 9 19
他写了《〈吉诃德〉的作者皮埃尔·梅纳尔》这篇文章，可以说是他最富影响力的故事了——我认为我并没有夸张！——可能甚至可以说是二十世纪最重要的一篇故事。之后他又写了一篇名为《吉诃德的部分魔术》收录在《探讨别集》当中。他为之写了几首诗歌。另外，他也写了两篇教学文章，分别是关于小说的第一句句子以及小说的最后一章节的作用的。
♫奇尔德斯：
“皮埃尔·梅纳尔”是博尔赫斯最早有关塞万提斯的作品之一。它被解读为一种后现代主义的宣言——比如说，在约翰·巴思1967年的《枯竭的文学》一文中就有这样的解读。现代的个人主义把原创性看得过分重要。通过创造一个对新文本没有任何贡献，而只是把自己的名字写在已有的文本之下的一个写作者的形象，如文中的梅纳尔，是一种对“作者”这一概念的嘲讽。
♫斯塔文斯：
在别处，我也曾考虑过是否梅纳尔就仅仅只是一个剽窃者而已。博尔赫斯故事当中的叙述者从梅纳尔的成就中给他制造了一条名誉的绶带，如果扯去这条绶带，他仅仅是一个二流的抄袭者而已。我是半开玩笑地在说。假如我将一篇卡夫卡写的不为许多人知晓的寓言故事拿来，在我的名下发表，会怎样呢？
♫奇尔德斯：
另外一种思考梅纳尔的文章的方式是将它看作由西班牙语翻译成西班牙语，就像乔治娜·多比克·布莱克提出的那样（Cervantes 31[2011]：27-49）。
梅纳尔成为这样了一个形象，引出了当“一模一样”的文本出现在另一个文化轨迹当中会发生的情况；实际上意味着每一次读或重读一个文本时，像赫拉克利特说的那样，你无法将同一个文本两次灌输到同一个头脑当中去。
♫斯塔文斯：
加之，你不可能真的在两个阶段都是同一个自己。
♫奇尔德斯：
故事中的叙事者主张道，你前面称之为”意义的绶带“的东西让梅纳尔的文本比塞万提斯的更丰富，是由于情境的重构——它是在二十世纪“被写出的”。这是在幽默地讽刺对于学究式装模作样地“寻找”文章意义，而不是承认意义总是在阅读的时候被赋予的那种行为。可是皮埃尔·梅纳尔，或者说博尔赫斯，可以选择重复写任何文章，为什么非得是吉诃德呢？
♫斯塔文斯：
答案很简单：吉诃德是核心——更好的说法是，威廉·加斯称之为“核心中的核心”的西班牙文明的核心。在博尔赫斯的观点中，其他所有的作品都离清楚地叙述我们——西班牙的孩子们（los hijos de España）——是什么还差太远。
博尔赫斯选择了塞万提斯的小说这一事实还可以从另一个角度来看。这个选择当中暗含了拉丁美洲是由多个欧洲殖民地组成的。文化（至少高雅文化）是从旧世界那儿来的。这种文化输入不仅被合理化了，而且也透过一种新的视角加以回收了。一个生活在布宜诺斯艾利斯，“世界的尽头”的阿根廷人，能够通过皮埃尔·梅纳尔的笔名重新书写那神圣不可侵犯的，证明了西班牙语言实存的作品，。更好的说法是，；而为许多其他的分散的中心所代替。在我看来，这是《吉诃德：其小说以及世界》书中阐述的梅纳尔主义（Menardismo）这个意识形态所含的意义：西班牙变成了一个泉源，灌溉它的前哨地区。原创性，在新的世界，是基于将欧洲的审美观倒置，刷新它们，制造比原作更新颖的克隆。就把这称为原住者的反击吧！
♫奇尔德斯：
“之前的中心不复存在”——这里提到叶芝挺适当的，一个爱尔兰诗人，也是在边缘地区写作，启示性地宣布了殖民主义的终结。但是如何将阿根廷背景挪用到这里呢？梅纳尔主义之前是什么状态呢？
♫斯塔文斯：
保罗格·鲁萨克，一个土生土长的法国人，曾是在博尔赫斯之前众多的阿根廷国立图书馆馆长之一，富于表现力也好争辩地书写了有关塞万提斯和堂·吉诃德的内容。他是一个不留情面的批评家。他的看法是，塞万提斯的风格是笨拙的——不用说，他的看法是对的。
格鲁萨克也参与了和马塞利诺·梅嫩德斯·佩拉约关于阿韦亚内达的吉诃德的辩论。鲁文·达里奥，所谓现代主义运动（新艺术运动）的领袖，将《人马兽的对谈》（Coloquio de los Centauros）（《世俗的圣歌及其他的诗》Prosas profanes y otro poemas，1896）题献给了他。博尔赫斯经常引用格鲁萨克，包括在他的文章《吉诃德的部分魔术》当中也有。
接着是莱奥波尔多 ·卢贡内斯，另一个现代主义者，在他的著作《传奇小说作家》（Romancero，1924）当中，援引了吉诃德，提倡道“艺术不是将事物本身呈现，而是将它们呈现为它们应有的样子。” （el arte no presenta las cosas como son， sino como debrieran ser，）
在博尔赫斯在布宜诺斯艾利斯遇到的非阿根廷裔的朋友中，有一位来自多米尼加共和国名叫佩德罗·恩里克斯·乌雷尼亚的随笔作家，和一位博学多才的墨西哥人阿方索·雷耶斯（此人说，法国人格鲁萨克教了他如何用西班牙语写作，这个叙述在“皮埃尔·梅纳尔”中有切实的反响）。雷耶斯也写过关于吉诃德的文章。虽说如此，这些都不足以构成梅纳尔主义这种世界观，严格来说它是由博尔赫斯创造的。
♫奇尔德斯：
“皮埃尔·梅纳尔”不是一时的。博尔赫斯终生都在阅读塞万提斯，且他的反思跨越各种文体：随笔，演讲，小说，诗歌，访谈，回忆录……他是第一个对于叙事当中的元小说特点产生严肃兴趣的人。
《吉诃德的部分魔术》采用塞万提斯写作技巧当中被忽略的方面来构建了后现代主义关于主观性，语言，以及世界困境的框架：
“为什么当我们知道堂吉诃德是吉诃德的读者，哈姆雷特是哈姆雷特戏剧的观众以后会忧虑不安呢？我相信我找到了答案：那些倒转暗示着如果一个故事中的角色能够成为读者或者观众的话，那么我们作为他们的读者或观众，将可能是虚构出来的。“
虚构与现实是可以互相转换的；这两者除其表象以外的实存都不能被证明。
♫斯塔文斯：
我觉得博尔赫斯在他的散文中不仅用到了吉诃德且用到了哈姆雷特来阐明他的观点是一项很细腻的举措。，创作于1599年至1602年中的某个阶段，几乎恰好是一个同时代的作品。（塞万提斯小说的第一部分在1605年出现。）两者之间有许多共同之处，元小说式的处理手段仅体现于一个方面。
在我看来，那位诗人，塞万提斯，还有蒙田邀请我们去了解“内省”——作为一种生活策略的个人主义，梦想的达成，思想与情绪的碰撞——这些都是作为现代性定义的要素。博尔赫斯，一个铁杆读者，也将哈姆雷特和吉诃德看作人类只不过是更大的宇宙叙事当中的角色而已的证据。
♫奇尔德斯：
正是。言论并不是从一个自发的、奇迹般地将自己放入语言中的自主意图里产生的。语言和那支撑它的神秘结构使主观性得以存在。博尔赫斯发现这些二十世纪后叶的思想在塞万提斯那儿已经在运作了。
♫斯塔文斯：
博尔赫斯最精彩却没怎么经人探索的一个部分是他的谈话录。当他的视力日渐衰退（这是一种先天性疾病），他就依赖别人的帮助。这些帮助包括用对话的方式将自己的思想表述出来。
♫奇尔德斯：
据泰德·莱昂记录，博尔赫斯进行了几百次访谈，他将访谈的形式转化成了一种演绎性的文学体裁，这种体裁充满了讽刺和幽默（《拉美文学评论》 Latin American Literary Review 22[1994]：74-89）。
他经常会回到吉诃德的讨论中，通常会反复提及三个要点：（1）那些特定的人物经历并不重要，它们只不过是让我们了解角色的途径而已；（2）塞万提斯谦逊的风格促进了读者与主角的情绪上的联系；以及（3）在第二部分当中，那些读过第一部分故事的角色成了吉诃德的同僚，使这本书立于现实主义和奇幻之间。博尔赫斯本人更喜欢书的第二部分。
♫斯塔文斯：
我很喜爱对话的形式。我从博尔赫斯身上学到许多。他与朋友以及陌生人对话，在公众场合或是私下里都有。他的记忆好得令人惊讶，这使他能够引述大段地如弥尔顿或者是何塞·埃尔南德斯等作者。他的一些最有见地的论点都是从这些面对面的沟通中发展出来的，这让我想到了探戈。在与安东尼奥·卡里索还有理查德·伯金的谈话当中，他说到了吉诃德 。
♫奇尔德斯：
塞万提斯的成就，对于博尔赫斯而言是在于他用字句创造了一个个体的人格，高于生活的，存在于语言之外的，超越对他的表现的一个人格。这种对真实的凌驾于虚构的之上的本体论特权的颠覆挑战了所有的“现实”。塞万提斯的杰作成为了对博尔赫斯自身在文学上理论的完美诠释。
♫斯塔文斯：
对于我来说，吉诃德不仅仅只是由语言文字产生的奇迹般的创造，优秀的两个部分，它也是一部在许多地方前后风格不一致，且结构过于片段化的作品。
顺便提一下，。，。我集中关注他后期的一些戏剧，尤其是《哈姆雷特》，《李尔王》，以及《暴风雨》。这个诗人曾一度被认为是个天才，几乎是自然中生出的怪杰，有着超自然的天赋。我们的这种看法后来改变了。他也和其他各种人有过合作。《第一对开本》正是合作的成果。某种程度来说，他的作品在原创性上与钦定本（或称国王詹姆斯译本）有共同之处。
（比如《哈姆雷特》，尽管天晓得也有诽谤它的人），而一些其他的则稍逊色（《两位贵族亲戚》、《辛白林》等等）。与他自己的水平相比虽然逊色，但和其他甚至本·琼森这样的作家相比还是属于优秀的。
♫奇尔德斯：
博尔赫斯对吉诃德的挪用标志了拉丁美洲文学与欧洲文学上关联的前后两阶段。它平衡了那种在西班牙1898年失去了余下殖民地之后强烈地将塞万提斯作为西班牙的典型的解读。乌纳穆诺将吉诃德看作代表西班牙在历史中悲喜剧的一个角色。
奥特加·伊·加塞特的《关于吉诃德的反思》（Meditations on Quixote，1914）开启了西班牙关于塞万提斯哲学思考的斯文传统。他们将西班牙最闻名的作家当作民族的丰碑，是一种对拉丁美洲高度现代主义影响的反馈，这是一个鲁文·达里奥（尼加拉瓜诗人）在西班牙被广泛模仿的时期。堂吉诃德是西班牙民族对抗殖民地区推翻长达四个世纪的文化帝国主义的行动的防御堡垒。
♫斯塔文斯：
达里奥用庆典作为灵感。在1892年，美西战争打响之前几年，他写了一篇诽谤哥伦布的文章。在1905年，他发表了《我们堂吉诃德先生的祈祷》（Letanía de nuestro señor Don Quijote）以庆祝塞万提斯小说的四百周年纪念。达里奥将堂吉诃德形容为一个被敬仰的宗教形象，但也同时是个无法从多重险境中将现代性救赎出来的形象。
♫奇尔德斯：
尽管乌纳穆诺和达里奥将吉诃德用于不同的目的，他们都把将吉诃德作为一个圣人这一表达视为半嘲讽式的。博尔赫斯则密切留意了他作为一个脆弱的人类的形象——阿隆索·吉哈诺（堂吉诃德本名），米格尔·德·塞万提斯——在骑士这个神话人物下隐藏的根本。这一对比在他的诗歌中最为明显。其中他把它用作反思生活的平庸和想象力的力量。
我数来有六首短诗：
在《另一个，同一个》（1964）当中的《读者》和《一个乌尔维纳的士兵》，在《深沉的玫瑰》（1975）中的《米格尔·德·塞万提斯》、《阿隆索·吉哈诺的梦》，以及《见证人》，还有《夜晚的故事》中的《我连尘埃都不是》。
在《梦虎》（1960）当中有两篇散文，与卡夫卡的寓言相似，叫作《塞万提斯和堂·吉诃德的寓言》和《一个问题》（这个”问题“指如果吉诃德真的在他的境遇中杀死了一个人的话他会如何反应？——将小说的无关轻重与死亡的不可避免性对立起来。）
♫斯塔文斯：
在我个人藏书中有一本收集所有博尔赫斯关于吉诃德的作品的小书。我最喜欢它的点在于它支离破碎的（不连贯的）本性。这一性质不用说，正是博尔赫斯于文学最经久不衰的贡献。
有一个很少被认可的特质是他对于说明性和指导性文字的热情。他给，给日耳曼、英国、以及美国文学，给神秘主义还有其他很多东西都写了介绍。他也编辑了阿根廷文学选集（与佩德罗·恩里克斯·乌雷尼亚一起），写了想象中的物种、奇幻小说等等（和比奥伊·卡萨雷斯还有西尔维娜·奥坎波夫妇一起）。
根据主题来讲，他有一整册书都致力于写但丁的《神曲》（《有关但丁的随笔九篇》, 1982）。我还拥有他的两卷关于《高乔人诗歌》的概要（也是与比奥伊·卡萨雷斯合作的）。
《高乔人诗歌》Poesía Gauchesca，1955
而我拥有的有关吉诃德的卷册是在他去世后，在他的遗孀玛丽亚·儿玉的主持下完成的。我想说的在于博尔赫斯并没有系统地研究塞万提斯的小说，而是在需要灵感时不时地回到其中去寻找。
♫奇尔德斯：
最近，我在网上找到了一个修复版的1968年博尔赫斯在德克萨斯州大学奥斯汀分校的关于堂·吉诃德的演讲。
♫
他非常地受欢迎。大家对他报以热烈的掌声。
♫斯塔文斯：
他在1961年（与贝克特一起）曾获得了福门托尔文学奖。随之而来的是世界各地的出版社致力于翻译他的作品。（此奖项也被称为国际出版人奖）他成为全球瞩目的明星是从六十年代开始的。他是在1961年首次去到德克萨斯州，这也是他首次去美国，尽管你刚刚提到的演讲是在1968年的一趟访问。
♫奇尔德斯：
他在那次演讲首要的主题是大家与堂吉诃德建立起的友谊。他解决了“部分的魔术”这个问题：虚构的角色其实和我们一样真实，我们也和它们有着同样的虚构程度。但迷人之处在于他以一种很亲密的方式说出了它，近乎诗歌的感觉。一个一反常态地多愁善感的博尔赫斯在讨论角色的死亡的时候，在某刻与作者的意见达成了统一。当故事的叙述者以平静的口吻讲出：“他放弃了灵魂。我是要说，他死了。“
博尔赫斯表示塞万提斯不能够找到能够充分表现堂吉诃德死时的悲恸的表达方式，所以他在知道读者能理解到华丽的词藻不能够填充这份空洞的情况下，采用了一句粗笨的句子。他以一种动人的姿态结束了他的演讲，说道：“堂吉诃德……是令人产生喜悦的。我总是认为我生命中非常高兴的事件之一是我认识了堂吉诃德。”
当被问到能否读一件他自己的作品时，他背诵了他的一首名叫《给一个乌尔维纳的士兵》的十四行诗。
♫斯塔文斯：
在博尔赫斯的诗中，塞万提斯于他的军旅生涯中在广袤的西班牙土地上寻找他生命的意义，偶然地发现了书中的主角。我强调“偶然地”，是因为塞万提斯没有意识到他自己的发现，也与这个发现不相称。（“indigno”，即无用，是博尔赫斯说到这点时最喜欢的词之一。）这个，像你知道的那样，是评判吉诃德时的主旋律。比方说米格尔·德·乌纳穆诺也相信塞万提斯配不上他的成就。
博尔赫斯那魔术师般的风格，像一种文学上的妥瑞氏综合征，仰赖于不计其数的，有时是虚假的引用。他经常向前人致敬，并且在这个过程中重塑了传统。所以我认为2011年儿玉叫停《诗人（博尔赫斯）：复刻》一书的出版一事是非常古怪的，。她给出的理由是：知识产权应受到保护。
El Hacedor (de Borges) Remake，2011
By Agustin Fernandez Mallo
♫奇尔德斯：
这是多么讽刺啊，“皮埃尔·梅纳尔”的作者的遗孀竟然如此顽强地要保护他的知识产权！就像他（博尔赫斯）在《博尔赫斯与我》当中写到的那样：
“不需花费力气就可以承认他（博尔赫斯）写出了几页有价值的东西，但是那几页东西救不了我，可能是因为所有好的东西并不属于任何人，而是属于语言，属于传统。”
他对塞万提斯也是这个看法。
♫斯塔文斯：
这句话的最后一部分对我来说是种真言：我们所做的事实上并不属于我们，而是更大的东西的一部分，是那包罗万象的，我们称为文化的一部分。我很高兴你提到了版权的问题。“拥有一个想法，一个设计，几个段落”是一个比较奇怪的概念。版权是一个较新的术语，是启蒙运动的一个副产品。在美国，它是在18世纪末期成为一个法律概念的，是一种促进科学和艺术发展的手段，保证了个人是他们知识和创造努力成果的拥有者。
我将博尔赫斯看作一个文艺复兴式的人物：是一个热爱知识，对占有知识没有兴趣的形象。在一个理想的世界中，任何人都可以不用取得同意就引用他的话。我对我自己的作品也持同样态度：我的文字只是在从头脑中转达到纸上的过程中是我的；之后，它们就不属于任何人，而属于传统。
What Borges Learned From Cervantes
On language，and the thin line
between fiction and reality
Borges reinvented Don Quixote as a playful novel, full of surprises and unexpected anticipations of the way we read today. Across genres and over decades, his varied meditations opened new paths for readers. The following conversation took place during January 2016 between Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, author of Quixote: The Novel and the World (2015), and publisher of Restless Books, and William P. Childers, Associate Professor of Spanish at Brooklyn College and author of Transnational Cervantes (2006).
William P. Childers: Cervantes’s characters entered popular culture right away. In literary circles, though, to unleash its full potential his book had to escape association with European realism. Juan Montalvo tried; his prologue to Chapters That Cervantes Forgot (1895) is a declaration of cultural independence from Spain. But his satire is too tied to local circumstances in 19th-century Ecuador. It was Borges who opened the way to a truly autonomous Latin American reading.
Ilan Stavans: Borges wasn’t only a devoted reader but also a passionate one. In “An Autobiographical Essay,” published in the New Yorker in 1970, in collaboration with Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, he describes the way he read Don Quixote at an early age, first in English, and when he came across it in the Spanish original, it felt to him like a bad translation. He wrote “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (1939), arguably his most influential story and—I don’t believe I’m over-inflating it!—perhaps the most important one of the entire 20th century. He also has the essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote,” included in Other Inquisitions (1952). There are several poems he wrote about it. Plus, he wrote a pedagogical piece on how the novel’s first sentence functions and another one on the last chapter.
WC: “Pierre Menard” is one of Borges’s first texts on Cervantes. It came to be read as a manifesto of postmodernism—for example, in John Barth’s 1967 essay “The Literature of Exhaustion.” Modern individualism overrates originality. Inventing a writer who contributes nothing to the text except putting his own name to it, as Menard does, makes a mockery of the concept of authorship.
IS: Elsewhere, I’ve wondered if Menard is nothing but a plagiarist. The narrator in Borges’s story builds a belt of meaning around his achievement. Stripped of that belt, he is nothing but a second-rate copyist. I’m being facetious but only partially. What if I took a parable by say Kafka, one of the least known, and published it under my name?
WC: Another way of thinking about Menard’s text is as a translation from Spanish into Spanish, as Georgina Dopico Black has proposed (Cervantes 31 [2011]: 27-49). Menard becomes a figure for what happens when the “same” text appears in another cultural locus; which really means every time it is (re)read, since, à la Heraclitus, you cannot immerse a text twice into the same mind.
IS: Plus, you can’t really be yourself twice.
WC: The narrator argues that what you call his “belt of meaning” makes Menard’s text richer than Cervantes’s, because of the recontextualization—it was “written” in the 20th century. This is a hilarious send-up to the scholarly pretense of “finding” meaning in a text, rather than admitting it is always bestowed in the act of reading. Yet Pierre Menard (Borges) could have chosen any work to repeat. Why Quixote?
IS: The answer is simple: El Quijote is at the heart—of better, what William H. Gass called “the heart of the heart”—of Hispanic civilization. In Borges’s view, no other work comes even close to articulating what we, los hijos de España, are about. The fact that Borges chooses Cervantes’s novel ought to be seen from another perspective, too. Latin America, the choice implies, was made of a series of European colonies. Culture (high culture, at least) was an import from the Old World. That import, the story suggests, has been not only appropriated but also recycled through a new prism. That an Argentine, one living in Buenos Aires, that is, “at the end of the world,” is able to rewrite, through the pseudonym of Pierre Menard, the sacrosanct oeuvre that justifies the existence of the Spanish language, means that the geopolitics have shifted from the center to the periphery. Or better, that the center no longer holds; it has been replaced by a plethora of other decentralized centers. This is, in my view, what the ideology of Menardismo, as described in Quixote: The Novel and the World, is about: the displacement of Spain as the fountainhead whose water irrigated its outposts. Originality, in the New World, is based on turning European aesthetics upside down, refreshing them, making clones based on it that are more original than the original. Call it the revenge of the natives!
WC: “The center cannot hold”—appropriately Yeats comes into play here, an Irish poet also writing from the periphery, apocalyptically announcing the end of colonialism. But what of the Argentinian background to this appropriation? What antecedents are there to Menardismo?
IS: Paul Groussac, a French native who was one of Borges’s predecessors as director of Argentina’s National Library, wrote eloquently, as well as polemically, on Cervantes and Don Quixote. He was a merciless critic. In his view, Cervantes’s style was clumsy—and, needless to say, he was right. Groussac also engaged in a polemic with Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo on the Quijote of Avellaneda. Rubén Darío, the leader of the co-called Modernista movement, dedicated “Coloquio de los Centauros” (Prosas profanes y otros poemas, 1896) to him. Borges frequently quotes Groussac, including in the essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote.” Then there is Leopoldo Lugones, another Modernista, who in his book Romancero (1924), invoking El Quijote, suggested that “el arte no presenta las cosas como son, sino como debieran ser,” art doesn’t present things as they are but as they should be. And, among Borges’s non-Argentine friends, whom he meets in Buenos Aires, are the Dominican essayist Pedro Henríquez-Ureña and the Mexican polymath Alfonso Reyes (who said that Groussac, French, taught him how to write in Spanish, a statement with tangible echoes in “Pierre Menard”), also wrote about El Quijote. Nevertheless, none of these references amounts to much when it comes to the weltanschauung of Menardismo, which is strictly Borges’s creation.
WC: “Pierre Menard” was no one-off. Borges read Cervantes all his life, and his reflections cut across genres: essays, lectures, fiction, poetry, interviews, memoir… He was the first to take a serious interest in the metafictional aspect of the narrative. “Partial Magic in the Quixote” uses that neglected dimension of Cervantes’s technique to frame the postmodernist dilemma concerning the relationship between subjectivity, language, and the world: “Why does it disquiet us to know that Don Quixote is the reader of the Quixote, and Hamlet is a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the answer: those inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious.” Fiction and reality are interchangeable; neither can be shown to be more than a representation.
IS: I find it exquisite that Borges, in his essay, used El Quijote as well as Hamlet to make his case. Shakespeare’s play, composed sometime between 1599 and 1602, is almost an exact contemporary. (The First Part of Cervantes’s novel appeared in 1605.) There is much in common between them, the metafictional device being only one aspect. In my view, The Bard, Cervantes, and Montaigne invited us to see introspection—individualism as a life strategy, the reach of our dreams, the clash between thought and emotion—as the defining factor of modernity. Borges, the inveterate reader, also sees Hamlet and El Quijote as evidence that we, humans, are mere characters in a larger, inscrutable cosmic narrative.
WC: Exactly. Speech is not produced by an autonomous, freely self-determining intention that magically inserts itself into language. Language and the mythic structures that undergird it give rise to subjectivity. Borges’s found these late-20th century ideas already operative in Cervantes.
IS: One of the most delicious facets of Borges not often explored are his interviews. As he became increasingly blind (it was a congenital condition), he depended on others for help. That included using conversations to get his ideas out.
WC: As Ted Lyon noted, Borges gave hundreds of interviews, converting the practice into a performative literary genre full of irony and humor (Latin American Literary Review 22 [1994]: 74-89). He frequently returns to Quixote, usually repeating three points: 1) the specific adventures don’t matter, they are just a way to get to know the character; 2) Cervantes’s modest style facilitates emotional connection with the protagonist; and 3) in Part Two, characters who have read Part One become Quixote’s accomplices, positioning that book—which Borges prefers over Part One—at the in-between of realism and the fantastic.
IS: I love the format of the conversation. I have learned from Borges. He conversed with friends and strangers alike, in public and private. He had a portentous memory, which enabled him to quote at length from say John Milton and José Hernández. Some of his most insightful arguments are developed in this tete-a-tetes, reminding me of tangos. In his conversation with Antonio Carrizo and Richard Burgin, he talked about El Quijote.
WC: Cervantes’s achievement, for Borges, was to have created, out of words, an individual personality, larger-than-life and existing beyond language, beyond the representation used to convey awareness of him. This overturning of the ontological privilege of the real over the fictive challenges all “realities.” Cervantes’s masterpiece became the perfect illustration of Borges’s own theory of literature.
IS: For me El Quijote isn’t only the miraculous creation, out of words, of a magnificent pair; it is also a book at times inconsistent in style and overly episodic in structure. The same might be said about Shakespeare, by the way. This semester I’m teaching a course in the Hampshire County Jail, in Northampton, Massachusetts, called “Shakespeare in Prison.” I’m focusing on some later plays, especially Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. There used to be a time when The Bard was seen as a genius, almost a freak of nature, whose talent was supernatural, that is, beyond this world. Our opinion has changed. His plays react to specific political, social, economic, and military events of the time. He also collaborated with an assortment of others. And the First Folio was a collective endeavor. In some way, his oeuvre shares some element, in terms of originality, with the King James Bible. All this to say that some Shakespearean plays are superb (Hamlet, for instance, although heaven knows it has its detractors) and others (Two Noble Kinsmen, Cymbeline, etc.) are of inferior quality. Inferior in him might be superior when compared even to Ben Jonson.
WC: Borges’s appropriation of Quixote marks a before and after in literary relations between Latin America and Europe. It provides the counterweight to strong readings of Cervantes as quintessentially Spanish appearing after the loss of Spain’s remaining colonies in 1898. Unamuno made Quixote a figure for Spain’s tragicomic role in history. Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Quixote (1914) initiated a Spanish intellectual tradition of philosophical reflection on Cervantes. Their reclaiming Spain’s most renowned writer as a national monument is a reaction to the impact of Latin American high Modernism, when Rubén Darío was so imitated in Spain. Don Quixote was their nationalist bulwark against the reversal of four centuries of cultural imperialism.
IS: Darío used anniversaries as inspiration. In 1892, a few years before the Spanish-American War, he wrote a diatribe about Christopher Columbus. And in 1905, he published “Letanía de nuestro señor Don Quijote,” to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Cervantes’s novel. Darío describes Don Quixote as a religious figure to be admired yet one incapable of redeeming modernity from its multiple perils.
WC: Though each puts him to different use, Unamuno and Darío share a half-ironic presentation of Quixote as a saint. Borges kept in view the frail human person—Alonso Quijano, Miguel de Cervantes—underlying the mythic figure of the knight. This contrast is most evident in his poetry, where he uses it to meditate on the banality of life and the power of imagination. I’ve counted six short poems: “Readers” and “A Soldier of Urbina” in The Self and the Other (1964), “Miguel de Cervantes,” “Alonso Quijano Dreams,” and “The Witness” in The Unending Rose (1975), and “I Am Not Even Dust” in The History of the Night (1977). In Dreamtigers (1960) there are two prose pieces, similar to Kafka’s fables, called “Parable of Cervantes and Don Quixote” and “A Problem.” (The ‘problem’—how would Quixote react if he actually killed someone in one of his encounters?—pits the inconsequentiality of fiction against the ineluctability of death.)
IS: In my personal library there is a small book collecting all of Borges’s pieces on El Quijote. What I like most about it is its broken (e.g., fragmented) nature, which, needless to say, is Borges’s most lasting contribution to literature. One of the qualities seldom acknowledged is his passion for manuals and how-to volumes. He wrote introductions to Buddhism, to Germanic, British, and American literature, to mysticism, and so on. He also edited anthologies of Argentine literature (with Henríquez-Ureña), imaginary beings, fantastic literature (with Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo), etc. Thematically, he devoted an entire book to Dante’s Divine Comedy (Nueve ensayos dantescos, 1982). And I have his two-volume compendium (again with Bioy Casares) of Poesía Gauchesca (1955). Yet the volume I have on El Quijote was done after his death under the auspices of his widow María Kodama. My point is that Borges didn’t set out to study Cervantes’s novel in a systematic way. Instead, he returned to it in search of inspiration whenever he needed.
WC: Recently, I found online a recovered lecture Borges gave on Don Quixote at University of Texas in Austin in 1968. He was wildly popular. They gave him a tremendous ovation.
IS: He had received (along with Samuel Beckett) the Formentor Prize in 1961. It came along with a commitment by publishers worldwide to translate his oeuvre. (The prize was also known as the International Publisher’s Prize.) His ascent to global stardom thus takes place from the sixties onward. He first set foot in Texas, and in the United States, in 1961, though the lecture you’re referring to dates to another trip in 1968.
WC: His primary theme on this occasion was our friendship with Don Quixote. He addressed the issues of “Partial Magic”: fictional characters are just as real as we are, and we are just as fictional. But it’s charming that he does this an intimate way, closer to the feeling of the poems. An uncharacteristically sentimental Borges arrives at a moment of convergence with the author when discussing the character’s death. Where the narrator flatly states, “he gave up the ghost. I mean to say, that he died,” Borges argues Cervantes could not find adequate expression of his grief at the death of Don Quixote, so he resorted to a clumsy sentence, knowing the reader would understand no eloquence could fill that void. He ends the lecture with a moving gesture of his own, paralleling the one attributed to Cervantes: “Don Quixote… is essentially a cause of joy. I always think that one of the quite happy things that have occurred to me in my life, is having become acquainted with Don Quixote.” When asked to read something of his own after the lecture, he recited the sonnet, “To a Soldier of Urbina.”
IS: In Borges’s poem, Cervantes, trumpeting his military career, wanders through the landscapes of Spain looking for something to justify his life and accidentally stumbles upon the eternal couple that are the novel’s protagonists. I italicized the word because Cervantes is unaware and unworthy (“indigno,” a favorite Borges expression) of his own discovery. This, as you know, is a leitmotif in the critique of El Quijote. Miguel de Unamuno, for instance, also believed Cervantes to be unworthy of his achievement. Borges’s trickster style, a kind of “literary” Tourette syndrome, depends on countless, sometimes bogus quotations. He is constantly paying tribute to an ancestor, and, along the way, reconfiguring traditions. I find it bizarre, therefore, that in 2011, Kodama stopped the publication of El hacedor (de Borges), a remake by Agustín Fernández Mallo published by Alfaguara in Spain, that used—abused even—Borges’s quotations to create a postmodern collage. Her argument: intellectual copyright needs to be protected.
WC: How ironic that the “Pierre Menard” author’s widow should protect his copyright so tenaciously! As he wrote in “Borges and I,” “It is no effort for me to confess that he [Borges] has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition.” He made sure that was true of Cervantes.
IS: The last segment of that sentence is a kind of mantra for me: what we do isn’t really ours but rather, it is part of the larger, all-encompassing stream we call culture. I’m glad you mentioned copyright. It is a rather peculiar concept: owning an idea, a design, a set of paragraphs. A byproduct of the Enlightenment, copyright is a rather recent term. In the United States, it came into being as a legal concept in the late 18th century, as a way to promote progress in science and the arts by making sure individuals were the proprietors of their own intellectual and creative efforts. I see Borges as a Renaissance man: a figure in love with knowledge, disinterested in owning it as such. In an ideal world, anyone should be able to quote him without even requesting permission. I feel the same way about my own work: my words are mine only while they transition from my mind to the page; afterward, they belong to no one but to tradition.
原文链接：
https://lithub.com/what-borges-learned-from-cervantes/
题图：博尔赫斯和Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth
德克萨斯州大学斯汀分校，1982
By Larry Murphey
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