‘The image of a countryless writer is misleading

Borges’s writing was seen for a long time not to be typically South American in its focus on the abstract and illusive elements of the Universe or delving into the nature of the human condition, instead of advocating changes in social conditions or highlighting inequalities between racial groups. This style for a long time gained him much criticism for a rejection of the values and socio-political situation of his homeland in favour of a world of unreality, something which Borges himself has answered with the statement: “I think it is a writer’s duty to be writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty … I am an antagonist of littérature engagée because I think it stands on the hypothesis that a writer can’t write what he wants to” (Di Giovanni, 1973, 59) At first examination Borges’s stories in the collection Ficciones can be perceived as based merely in this wo

It is at this point that the story enters its denouement. When the store owner apologises to Dahlmann for the boys who are harassing him, he addresses him by his name: “Señor Dahlmann, no les haga caso a esos mozos, que están medio alegres”, this does not seem strange to Dahlmann but is the catalyst for the man’s end. The use of his name initiates his sense of honour, he is known to the people here and cannot stand down from the insult of the strangers and becomes like Fierro in El fin, tied to his fate. In a sense Borges is telling of us of his own longing to be like the gauchos of old, steeped in honour who would happily end their lives as long as it was in the respectful death of a duel. Dahlmann confronts the youths and is traded with abuse and then from nowhere he is given a knife by the old gaucho, prostrate on the floor described as “el viejo guacho extático, en el que Dahlmann vio como cifra del Sur (del Sur que era suyo)”. Dahlmann is aided into honour by the symbol of the South, and the South, the old ways of the country decides that he must accept the challenge. Thus he goes into his death knowing that the weapon he wields in his hand is useless and merely an excuse to fight, but realises that this is the way he would want to die and not on a surgical table as he could have or may have. Borges is showing us his admiration for the simplicity of the rules of the gaucho life in El Sur. It is a world to honour and lifestyle of death and the inevitable Fate that murder produces that is described in El fin, but with dignity he respectfully acknowledges the longing a modern intellectual can have to that gaucho lifestyle in El Sur. Clearly there is some nostalgia in Borges’s description of this world, the world of the true Argentinean, he is praising it’s adventure and warning of its danger all at once and thus is sending a direct message to his Latin American audience, to cherish their history and legends of macho cowboys but not to subvert the present and the future in such nostalgia. In this way he can never be seen as countryless, for he clearly reveres the traditions of his nation even if does not always choose to overtly describe them.

rld of unreality, because he the ‘good writer’ is describing powerful ideas of what it is to be human and how one experiences reality, fate and the inner self. These stories are often set in exotic locations as in La lotería de Babilonia and La Biblioteca de Babel or unknown places as in Las ruinas circulares, which add to the experience in the reader of fantasy and a distance from the world which we inhabit. In this essay I want to look at some of the stories from this collection and show that although his stories are clearly based in a world of unreality, he is by no means a countryless writer and has a great relevance to Latin America.

Some topics in this essay:
Martín Fierro, Arabian Nights, El Sur, Fierro El, South American, Latin American, Latin America, Di Giovanni, Buenos Aires, La Biblioteca, el fin, el sur, latin american, stories collection, world unreality, las ruinas, martín fierro, arabian nights, las ruinas circulares, ruinas circulares, fierro trapped fate, trapped fate, copy arabian nights,