p. 196: Paso delMolino:"Alower-to-middle-cla.s.s district outside Montevideo" (Fishburn and Hughes).
Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden p. 210: The Auracan or Pampas tongue:The Pampas Indians were a nomadic peo- ple who inhabited the plains of the Southern Cone at the time of the Conquest; they were overrun by the Araucans, and the languages and cultures merged; today the two names are essentially synonymous (Fishburn and Hughes). English seems not to have taken the name Pampas for anything but the plains of Argentina.
p. 211:Pulperia:A country store or general store, though not the same sort of cor- ner grocery-store-and-bar, the esquinaoralmacen, thatBorgesuses as a setting in thestories that take place in the city. Thepulperiawould have been precisely the sort of frontier general store that one sees in American westerns.
A Biography of TadeoIsidoro Cruz(1829-1874) p. 212:Montoneros: Montoneroswere the men of guerrilla militias (generallygau- chos)that fought in the civil wars following the wars of independence. They tended to rally under the banner of a leader rather than specifically under the banner of a cause; Fishburn and Hughes put it in the following way: "[T]heir allegiance to their leader was personal and direct, and they were largely indifferent to his political leanings."
p. 212:Lavalle:Juan GaloLavalle(1797-1841) was an Argentine hero who fought on the side of the Unitarians, the centralizing Buenos Aires forces, against the Federal- istmontonerosof the outlying provinces and territories, whose most famous leader was Juan ManueldeRosas, the fierce dictator who appears in several of JLB"s stories. The mention here ofLavalleandLopez wouidindeed locate this story in 1829, a few months beforeLavalle wasdefeated by the combined Rosas andLopezforces (Fish-burn and Hughes). One would a.s.sume, then, that the man who fathered TadeoIsidoroCruz was fighting with Rosas" forces themselves.
p. 212:Suarez"cavalry:Probably ManuelIsidoro Suarez(1759-1843), JLB"s mother"s maternal grandfather, who fought on the side of the Unitarians in the period leading up to 1829 (Fishburn and Hughes).Borgesmay have picked up the protago- nist"s name, as well, in part from his forebear.
p. 213: ThirtyChristian men... Sgt. Ma}.EusebiaLaprida... two hundred Indians:Eusebio Laprida (1829-1898) led eighty, not thirty, men against a regular army unit of two hundred soldiers, not Indians, in a combat at the Cardoso Marshes on January 25, not 23,1856 (data, Fishburn and Hughes). The defeat of the Indians took place during a raid in 1879. JLB here may be conflating the famous Thirty-three led by Lavalleja against Montevideo (see note to"Avelino Arredondo"inThe Book of Sand), Laprida"s equally heroic exploit against a larger "official" army unit, and Laprida"s exploit against the Indians two decades later.
p. 214: Manuel Mesa executed in the Plazade laVictoria:Manuel Mesa (1788-1829) fought on the side of Rosas and the Federalists. In 1829 he organized a force ofmon- tonerosand friendly Indians and battledLavalle,losing that engagement. In his retreat, he was met by ManuelIsidoro Suarezand captured.Suarezsent him to Buenos Aires, where he was executed in the Plaza Victoria.
p. 214:The deserterMartin Fierro:As JLB tells the reader in the Afterword to this volume, this story has been a retelling, from the "unexpected" point of view of a sec- ondary character, of the famousgauchoepic poemMartin Fierro, byJose Hernandez.Since this work is a cla.s.sic (orthe cla.s.sic) of nineteenth-century Argentine literature, every reader in the Southern Cone would recognize "what was coming": MartinFierro,the put-upongauchohero, stands his ground against the authorities, and his friend abandons his uniform to stand and fight with him. This changing sides is a re- current motif inBorges;see "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden" in this vol- ume, for instance. It seems to have been more interesting to JLB that one might change sides than that one would exhibit the usual traits of heroism.Borgesis also fond of rewriting cla.s.sics: See "The House ofAsterion," alsoin this volume, and note that the narrator in "The Zahir" retells to himself, more or less as the outline of a storyhe is writing, the story of the gold of theNibelungen.One could expand the list to great length.
Emma Zunz p. 215:Bage:A city in southern Rio Grande doSulprovince, in Brazil.
p.215: Gualeguay: "A rural town and department in the province ofEntre Rios"(Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 215:La.n.u.s:"A town and middle-cla.s.s district in Greater Buenos Aires, south- west of the city" (Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 217:Almagro:A lower-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood near the center of Buenos Aires.
p. 217:CalleLiniers:As the story says, a street in theAlmagroneighborhood.
p. 217:Paseo de]ulio:Now theAvenidaAlem.This street runs parallel with the waterfront; at the time of this story it was lined with tenement houses and houses of ill repute.
p. 218:A westbound Lacroze: The Lacroze Tramway Line served the northwestern area of Buenos Aires at the time; today the city has an extensive subway system.
p. 218:Warnes: A street in central Buenos Aires near the commercial district of VillaCrespo,where the mill is apparently located.
The Other Death p. 223:Gualeguaychu:"A town on the river of the same name in the province ofEntre Rios,opposite the town of FrayBentos,with which there is considerable inter- change" (Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 223:Masoller: Masoller, in northern Uruguay, was the site of a decisive battle on September i, 1904, between therebel forces ofAparicio Saravia(see below) and the National Army; Saravia was defeated and mortally wounded (Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 223:The banners ofAparicioSaravia:AparicioSaravia (1856-1904) was a Uruguayan landowner andcaudillowho led the successful Blanco (White party) re- volt against the dictatorship of IdiarteBorda(theColorados,or Red party). Even in victory, however, Saravia had to continue to fight against the central government, since Borda"s successor, Batlle, refused to allow Saravia"s party to form part of the new government. It is the years of this latter revolt that are the time of "The Other Death." See also, for a longer explanation of the political situation of the time, the story"Avelino Arredondo"inThe Book of Sand.
p. 223: Rio Negro orPaysandu:RioNegro is the name of a department in western Uruguay on the river of the same name, just opposite the Argentine province ofEntreRios. Paysanduis a department in Uruguay bordering Rio Negro.
Once again JLB is signaling the relative "wildness" of Uruguay is comparison with Argentina, which was not touched by these civil wars at the time.
p. 223:Gualeguay: See note to p. 215 above. Note the distinction between "Gualeguay" and"Gualeguaychu"(see note to p. 223 above).
p. 223:nancay:"A tributary of the Uruguay River that flows through the rich agri- cultural lands of southernEntre Riosprovince" (Fishburn and Hughes).
p. 224: Men whose throats were slashed through to the spine:This is another in- stance in which JLB doc.u.ments the (to us today) barbaric custom by the armies of theSouth American wars of independence (and other, lesser combats as well) of slitting defeated troops" throats. In other places, he notes offhandedly that "no prisoners were taken,"
which does not mean that all the defeated troops were allowed to return to their bivouacs. In this case, a rare case,Borgesactually "editorializes" a bit: "a civil war that struck me as more some outlaw"s dream than the collision of two armies."
p. 224: Ilkscas, Tupambae, Masoller:All these are the sites of battles in northern and central Uruguay fought in 1904 between Saravia"s forces and the National Army of Uruguay.
p. 224: White ribbon:Because the troops were often irregulars, or recruited from thegauchosor farmhands of the Argentine, and therefore lacking standardized uni- forms, the only way to tell friend from enemy was by these ribbons, white in the case of theBlancos,red in the case of theColorados.Here the white ribbon worn by the character marks him as a follower of Saravia, the leader of the Whites. (See notespas- sim about the significance of these parties.) p. 224: Zumacos:The name by which regulars in the Uruguayan National Army were known.
p.225: Artiguismo: That is, in accord with the life and views ofJose Gervasio Arti- gas(1764-1850), a Uruguayan hero who fought against both the Spaniards and the nascent Argentines to forge a separate nation out of what had just been theBandaOriental, or east bank of the Plate. The argument was that Uruguay had its own "spirit," its own "sense of place," which the effete Argentines of Buenos Aires, who only romanticized thegauchobut had none of their own, could never truly understand or live.
p. 225: Red infantry:The Reds, orColorados,were the forces of the official na- tional government of Uruguay, in contradistinction to theBlancos,or Whites, of Saravia"s forces; the Reds therefore had generally better weapons and equipment, and better-trained military officers on the whole, than the irregular and largelygauchoWhites.
p. 225:Viva Urquiza!:Justo Jose Urquiza(1801-1870) was president of the Argen- tinian Confederation between 1854 and 1860. Prior to that, he had fought with the Federalists under Rosas (the provincial forces) against the Unitarians (the Buenos Aires-based centralizing forces), but in 1845 he broke with Rosas (whom JLB always excoriates as a vicious dictator) and eventually saw Buenos Aires province and the other provinces of the Argentinian Confederation brought together into the modern nation of Argentina, though under the presidency ofBartolomeMitre.
p. 225: Cagancha or IndiaMuerta:The perplexity here derives from the fact that while the battle at Masoller, in whichDamiantook part, occurred in 1904, the cryViva Urquiza! would have been heard at the Battle of Cagancha (1839) or IndiaMuerta(1845), where Urquiza"s rebel Federalist forces fought the Unitarians. At Ca- gancha, Urquiza was defeated by the Unitarians; at IndiaMuertahe defeated them. This story may also, thus, have certain subterranean connections with "The Theolo- gians," in its examination of the possibilities of repeating or circular, or at leastnondiscrete,time.
p. 227: He "marked" no one:He left his mark on no man in a knife fight; in a fight, when the slight might, even by the standards of the day, be deemed too inconsequen- tial to kill a man for, or if the other man refused to fight, the winner would leave his mark, a scar, that would settle the score.
Averroes"Search p.239: "The seven sleepers of Ephesus": This is a very peculiar story to put in the minds of these Islamic luminaries, for the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus is a Christian story, told by Gregory of Tours. Clearly the breadth of culture of these gentlemen is great, but it is difficult (at least for this translator) to see the relationship of this particular tale (unlike the other "stories," such as the children playing or "repre- senting" life and the "if it had been a snake it would have bitten him" story told by abu-al-Hasan) toAverroes"quest.
TheZahir p.243: CalkAraoz:Fishburn and Hughes tell us that in the 19305,Calle Araozwas "a street of small houses inhabited by the impoverished middle cla.s.s"; it is near the penitentiary LasHeras.
p. 244:On the corner of Chile and Tacuari: A corner in the BarrioSur, orsouthern part of Buenos Aires, as the story says; it is some ten blocks from the PlazaConst.i.tu- cionand its great station.p.244:Truco:A card game indigenous, apparently, to Argentina and played very often in these establishments.Borgeswas fascinated by this game and devoted an essay and two or three poems to it, along with references, such as this one, scattered through- out hisuvre.The phrase "to my misfortune" indicates the inexorability of the attrac- tion that the game held for him; the narrator could apparently simply not avoid goinghitothe bar. Truco"s nature, for JLB, is that combination of fate and chance that seems to rule over human life as well as over games: an infinitude of possibilities within a lim- ited number of cards, the limitations of the rules. See"Truco"inBorges: AReader.
p. 244:LaConcepcion:A large church in the BarrioSur,near the PlazaConst.i.tucion.
p. 244:The chamfered curb in darkness: Here JLB"s reference is to anochava-that is, a "corner with the corner cut off" to form a three-sided, almost round curb, and a somewhat wider eight-sided rather than four-sided intersection, as the four corners of the intersection would all be chamfered in that way. This reference adds to the "old-fashioned"
atmosphere of the story, because chamfered corners were common on streets traveled by large horse-drawn wagons, which would need extra s.p.a.ce to turn the corners so that their wheels would not ride up onto the sidewalks.
p. 245: /went neither to the Basilica delPilarthat morning nor to the cemetery:That is, the narrator did not go to Teodelina"s funeral. The Basilica delPilaris one of the most impressive churches in central Buenos Aires, near theRecoletacemetery where TeodelinaVilarwould surely have been buried.
p. 248:"She"s been put into Bosch": Bosch was "a well-known private clinic fre- quented by theportenoelite" (Fishburn and Hughes).
The Writing of the G.o.d p. 253: /saw the origins told by the Book of the People. I saw... the dogs that tore at their faces: Here the priest is remembering the story of the creation of the world told in the Popul Vuh, the Mayan sacred text. The standard modern translation is by Den- nis Tedlock:Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster Touchstone, 1985). For this part of the genesis story,cf. pp.84-85.
The Wait p. 267:Plaza del Once: p.r.o.nouncedohn-say,notwunce. This is actually"Plaza Once," but the h.o.m.onymy of the English and Spanish words makes it advisable, the translator thinks, to modify the name slightly in order to alert the English reader to the Spanish ("eleven"), rather than the English ("onetime" or "past"), sense of the word. Plaza Once is one of Buenos Aires" oldest squares, "a.s.sociated in Borges"s memory with horse-drawn carts" (Fishburn and Hughes), though later simply a mod- ern square.
TheAleph p. 275:Quilines:A district in southern Buenos Aires; "at one time favoured for weekend villas, particularly by the British, Quilmes has since become unfashionable, a heavily industrialised area, known mainly for Quilmes Beer, the largest brewing com- pany in the world" (Fishburn and Hughes). Thus JLB is evoking a world of privilege and luxe.
p. 276:JuanCrisostomo LaflnurLibrary:This library is named after JLB"s great-uncle (1797-1824), who occupied the chair of philosophy at theColegio de la Uniondel Suduntil,underattack for teaching materialism, he was forced into exile.
p. 278:"The most elevated heights ofFlores":Here Daneri"s absurdity reaches "new heights," for though the neighborhood ofFloreshad been very much in vogue among the affluent of Buenos Aires society during the nineteenth century, it was only about a hundred feet above sea level. Moreover, it had lost much of its exclusiveness, and therefore glamour, by the time of this story, since in the yellow fever epidemic of 1871 people fled "central"
Buenos Aires for the "outlying" neighborhood.
p.283:Chacarita:One of the two enormous cemeteries in Buenos Aires; the other isRecoleta.A modern guidebook*
has this to say about the cemeteries of Buenos Aires:
Life and Death inRecoleta & Chacarita Death is an equalizer, except in Buenos Aires. When the arteries harden after de- cades of dining atAu Bec Finand finishing up with coffee and dessert atLa BielaorCafe de la Paix,the wealthy and powerful of Buenos Aires move ceremoniously across the street toRecoletaCemetery, joining their forefathers in a place they have visited religiously all their lives-----According to Argentine novelistTomasEloy Martinez,Argentines are "cadaver cultists" who honor their most revered national figures not on the date of their birth but of their death.... Nowhere is this obsession with mortality and corruption more evident than inRecoleta,where generations of the elite repose in the grandeur of ostentatious mau- soleums. It is a common saying and only a slight exaggeration that "it is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than to be buried inRecoleta."Traditionally, money is not enough: you must have a surname like Anch.o.r.ena,Alvear, Aramburu,Avellaneda,Mitre,Martinez de Hoz,orSarmiento....
Although more democratic in conception,Chacaritahas many tombs which match the finest inRecoleta.One of the most visited belongs to Carlos Gardel, the famous tango singer. (*Argentina, Uruguaye-Paraguay,Wayne Bernhardsonand Maria Ma.s.solo, Hawthorne, Vic, Australia; Berkeley, CA, USA; and London, UK: Lonely Planet Publications [Travel Survival Kit], 1992)
p. 285: Compendia of Dr. AcevedoDiaz:Eduardo Acevedo Diaz(1882-1959) won thePremio Nacionalfor his novel CanchaLarga;JLB"sentry that year,The Garden of Forking Paths, won second prize.
p. 285: Pedro HenriquezUrena:HenriquezUrena(1884-1946), originally from the Dominican Republic, lived for years inBuenos Aires and was an early contributor toSur,the magazine that Victoria Ocampo founded and that JLB a.s.siduously worked on. It was through HenriquezUrena,who had lived for a time in Mexico City, that JLB met another close friend, the Mexican humanist Alfonso Reyes. HenriquezUrenaand JLB collaborated on theAntologia de la literatura argentina(1937).
NotestoThe Maker,pp. 289-328
Foreword.
p. 291:LeopoldoLugones:Lugones (1874-1938) was probably Argentina"s leading poet in the second to fourth decades of this century; he was influenced by Spanishmodernismoand by the French Symbolists. To a degree he represented to the young Turks of Argentine poetry theancien regime;therefore he was often attacked, and often tastelessly so. Early on, JLB joined in these gibes at Lugones, though clearlyBorgesalso recognized Lugones" skills and talents as a poet. Rodriguez Monegal (pp. 197-198) speculates that JLB had mixed feelings about Lugones, especially in his per- son, but suggests that respect for Lugones as a poet no doubt prevailed, especially as JLB matured. Monegal quotesBorges(quoted byFernandezMoreno) as follows: Lu- gones was "a solitary and dogmatic man, a man who did not open up easily.... Con- versation was difficult with him because he [would] bring everything to a close with a phrase which was literally a period.... Then you had to begin again, to find another subject.... And that subject was also dissolved with a period.... His kind of conver- sation was brilliant but tiresome. And many times his a.s.sertions had nothing to do with what he really believed; he just had to say something extraordinary.... What he wanted was to control the conversation. Everything he said was final. And... we had a great respect for him."(FernandezMoreno [1967], pp. 10-11, in Rodriguez Monegal, p. 197; ellipses in Rodriguez Monegal.) Another problem with Lugones was his partial- ity to military governments, hisproto-and then unfeigned fascism; obviously this did not endear him to many, more liberal, thinkers. In this introduction JLB seems to rec- ognize that while he and his friends were experimenting with a "new" poetics in the first decades of the century, Lugones kept on his amiable way, and to admit that later he, JLB, had put aside some of the more shocking and radical of his notions of poetry in favor of a cleaner, less "poetic" poetry, which Lugones would probably have recog- nized as much closer to his own. So the "son" comes to see that he has come to resem- ble the resented "father" (no Freudian implications intended; genetics only; no political implications intended, either;Borgeshated military governments and hated fascism and n.a.z.ism).
p. 292: The Maker:The Spanish t.i.tle of this "heterogeneous" volume of prose and poetry (only the prose is included in this volume) isEl hacedor,andhacedoris a troublesome word for a translator into English. JLB seems to be thinking of the Greek wordpoeta,which means "maker," since a "true and literal" translation ofpoetainto Spanish would indeed behacedor.Yethacedoris in this translator"s view, and in the view of all those native speakers he has consulted, a most uncommon word. It is not used in Spanish for "poet" but instead makes one think of someone who makes things with his hands, a kind of artisan, perhaps, or perhaps evena linkerer.The English wordmaker is perhaps strange too, yet it exists; however, it is used in English (in such phrases as "he went to meet his Maker" and the brand name Maker"s Mark) in a way that dissuades one from seizing upon it immediately as the "perfect" translation forhacedor.
(The Spanish wordhacedorwould never be used for "G.o.d," for instance.) Eliot Weinberger has suggested to this translator, quite rightly, perhaps, that JLB had in mind the Scots wordmakir, which means "poet." But there are other cases: Eliot"s dedication ofThe Waste Land to Ezra Pound, taken from Dante-il miglior fabbro,wherefabbrohas exactly the same range ashacedor.Several considerations seem to militate in favor of the translation "artificer": first, the sense of someone"s making something with his hands, or perhaps "sculptor," for one of JLB"s favorite metaphors for poetry was at one time sculpture; second, the fact that the second "volume" in the volumeFictions is clearly t.i.tled Artifices-, third, the overlap between art and craft or ar-tisanry that is implied in the word, as in the first story in this volume. But a transla-tional decision of this kind is never easy and perhaps never "done"; one wishes one could call the volumeII fabbro,orPoeta, orleave itEl hacedor.The previous English translation of this volume in fact opted for Dreamtigers. Yet sometimes a translator is spared this anguish (if he or she finds the key to the puzzle in time to forestall it); in this case there is an easy solution. I quote from Emir Rodriguez Monegal"sJorge LuisBorges:A Literary Biography,p. 438:"Borges wa.s.sixty when the ninth volume of his complete works came out-----For the new book he had thought up the t.i.tle in En- glish:The Maker, and had translated it into Spanish asEl hacedor,but when the book came out in the United States the American translator preferred to avoid the theologi- cal implications and used instead the tide of one of the pieces:Dreamtigers"Anaso atranslation problem becomes a problemcreated in the first place by a translation! (Thanks to Eliot Weinberger for coming across this referencein time and bringing it to my attention.)
Dreamtigers p. 294: t.i.tle:The t.i.tle of this story appears in italics because JLB used the English nonce word in the Spanish original.
p. 294: That spotted "tiger":While there are many indigenous words for the preda- tory cats of South America-puma, jaguar, etc.-that have been adopted into Span- ish, Peninsular Spanish called these cats tigers. (One should recall that Columbus simply had no words for the myriad new things in this New World, so if an indigenous word did not "catch on" immediately, one was left with a European word for the thing: hence "Indians"!) Here, then, JLB is comparing the so-called tiger of the Southern Cone with its Asian counterpart, always a more intriguing animal for him.Cf.,for in- stance, "Blue Tigers" in the volume t.i.tledShakespeare"s Memory.
Toenails p.296:Recoleta:The "necropolis" near the center of Buenos Aires, where the elite ofPortenosociety buries its dead.See also note to "The Aleph" inTheAleph.
Covered Mirrors p. 297:Federalists/Unitarians: The Federalists were those nineteenth-century con- servatives who favored a federal (i.e., decentralized) plan of government for Argentina, with the provinces having great autonomy and an equal say in the government; the Federalists were also "Argentine," as opposed to the internationalist, Europe-looking Unitarians, and their leaders tended to be populistcaudillos,their fighters in the civil wars to begauchos.The Unitarians, on the other hand, were a Buenos Aires-based party that was in favor of a centralizing, liberal government; they tended to be "free- thinkers," rather than Catholics perse,intellectuals, internationalists, and Europophile in outlook Unitarians deplored the barbarity of thegauchoethos, and especially senti- mentalizing that way of life; they were urban to a fault.
This old "discord between their lineages," asBorgesputs it in this story, is the discord of Argentina, never truly over- come in the Argentina that JLB lived in.
p. 297:Balvanera: One can a.s.sume that at the time"Borges"had this experience, Balvanera was a neighborhood of "genteel poverty" much as one might envision it from the description of "Julia," but in the story "The Dead Man," in The Aleph, Bal- vanera is the neighborhood that the "sad sort of hoodlum"Benjamin Otaloracomes from, and it is described as a district on the outskirts of the Buenos Aires of 1891 (which does not, emphatically, mean that it would be on the outskirts of the Buenos Aires of 1927, the time of the beginning of "Covered Mirrors"), a neighborhood of "cart drivers and leather braiders." Thus Balvanera is a.s.sociated not so much withgauchosand cattle (though the Federalist connection hints at such a connotation) as with the stockyards and their industries, thesecondary (and romantically inferior) spin-offs of the pampas life. Balvanera here, like Julia"s family itself, is the decayed shadow of itself and the life it once represented.
p. 297:Blank wall of the railway yard...ParqueCentenario:The railway ran (and runs) through Balvanera from the Plaza del Once station westward, out toward the outskirts of Buenos Aires.Sarmientoruns westward, too, but slightly north of the rail- way line, and running slightly northwest. It meets theParque Centenarioabout a mile and a half from the station.
The Mountebank p. 301:ChacoRiver:In theLitoralregion of northern Argentina, an area known for cattle raising and forestry.
Delia Elena San Marco p. 303:Plaza del Once (p.r.o.nouncedohn-say,notwunce). This is actually usually given as Plaza Once, but the h.o.m.onymy of the English and Spanish words makes it advisable, I think, to modify the name slightly so as to alert the English reader to the Spanish ("eleven"), rather than English ("onetime" or "past"), sense of the word. JLB himself uses "Plaza del Once" from time to time, as in theObras completas,vol. II, p.428, in the story"La senoramayor," in Informe de Brodie("The Elderly Lady," inBrodie"s Report, p. 375). Plaza Once is one of Buenos Aires" oldest squares, "a.s.sociated in Borges"s memory with horse-drawn carts" (Fishburn and Hughes), though later simply a modern square, and now the site of Buenos Aires" main train station for west- bound railways.
A Dialog Between Dead Men p. 304:Quiroga: Like many of the pieces in this volume ("The Captive,""MartinFierro""Everything and Nothing"),"A Dialog Between Dead Men" sets up a "dialog" with others...o...b..rges"writings, especially a famous poem called "General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a Carriage" ("El general Quirogava en coche al muere[sic,for"a sumuerte, a la muerte,"etc.]"). There the reader will find the scene that is not de- scribed but only alluded to here, the murder of General Quiroga by a sword-wielding gang of hors.e.m.e.n under the leadership of the Reinafe brothers. Some biographical in- formation is essential here:Juan FacundoQuiroga (1793-1835) was a Federalistcau- dillo(which means that he was on the side of Rosas [see below]), and was, like Rosas, a leader feared by all and hated by his opponents; he was known for his violence, cru- elty, and ruthlessness and made sure that his name was feared by slitting the throats of the prisoners that his forces captured and of the wounded in the battles that he fought. So great was his charisma, and so ruthless his personality, that his supposed ally in the fight against the Unitarians, Juan ManueldeRosas, began to resent (and perhaps suspect) him. As Quiroga was leaving a meeting with Rosas in 1835, he was ambushed by the Reinafe gang, and he and his companions were brutally murdered, their bodies hacked to pieces; it was widely believed (though stubbornly denied by Rosas) that Rosas had ordered the a.s.sa.s.sination.
p. 304: Rosas:Juan ManueldeRosas (1793-1877) was the dictator of Argentina for eighteen years, from 1835 to 1852.
His dictatorship was marked by terror and persecu- tion, and he is for JLB one of the most hated figures in Argentine history; JLB"s fore- bears, Unitarians, suffered the outrages of Rosas and his followers. Early in his career Rosas was a Federalist (later the distinction became meaningless, as Rosas did more than anyone to unify Argentina, though most say he did so for all the wrong reasons),a caudillowhose followers were gangs ofgauchosand his own private vigilante force, the so-calledmazorca(see the story "PedroSalvadores"inIn Praise of Darkness). He methodically persecuted, tortured, and killed off his opponents both outsideand in- side his party, until he at last reigned supreme over the entire country. See the poem "Rosas" in JLB"s early volume of poetryFervordeBuenos Aires.
p.305:"Chacabuco andjunin andPalma RedondoandCaseros":Battles in the wars of independence of the countries of the Southern Cone.
The Yellow Rosep. 310:Porpora de" giardin, pompa de" prato, I Gemma d primavera, occhio d"aprile... : These lines are from a poem, L"Adone,written byMarino(1569-1625) himself (III:i58,11.1-2).
Martin Fierro p. 312:ItuzaingoorAyacucho:Battles (1827 and 1824 respectively) in the wars of independence against Spain.
p. 312: Peaches... a young boy... the heads of Unitarians, their beards b.l.o.o.d.y:Thisterrible image captures the cruelty and horror of the civil war that racked Argentina in the early nineteenth century, and the brutality with which the Federalists, when theywere in power under Rosas, persecuted and terrorized the Unitarians. In other storiesthe translator has noted that slitting throats was the preferred method of dispatchingcaptured opponents and the wounded of battles; here the opponents are decapitated.Making this all the more horrific is the fact that it was JLB"s maternal grandfather,IsidoroAcevedo, who as a child witnessed this scene. InJLB: Selected Poems 1923-1967 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p. 316, the editor quotesBorges(without further ci- tation): "One day, at the age of nine or ten, he[IsidoroAcevedo] walked by the Plata Market. It was in the time of Rosas. Twogauchoteamsters were hawking peaches. He lifted the canvas covering the fruit, and there were the decapitated heads of Unitari- ans, with blood-stained beards and wide-open eyes. He ran home, climbed up into the grapevine growing in the back patio, and it was only later that night that he could bring himself to tell what he had seen in the morning. In time, he was to see many things during the civil wars, but none ever left so deep an impression on him."
p. 312: A man who knew all the words ... metaphors of metal... the shapes of its moon:This is probablyLeopoldo Lugones.See the note, above, to the foreword toThe Maker, p. 291.
Paradiso,x.x.xI, 108 p. 316: "My Lord Jesus Christ, ... isthis, indeed, Thy likeness in such fashion wrought?":Borgesis translating Dante, Paradiso,x.x.xI: 108-109; in English, the lines read as given. Quoted fromThe PortableDante,ed.PaoloMilano, Paradiso, trans. Lau- rence Binyon (1869-1943) (New York: Penguin, 1975 [orig. copyright, 1947]), p. 532.