Borges, between History and Eternity

by Hernan Diaz

Overview

That Borges is one of the key figures in 20th-century literature is beyond debate. The reasons behind this claim, however, are a matter of contention. In Latin America he is read as someone who reorganized the canon, questioned literary hierarchies, and redefined the role of marginal literatures. On the other hand, in the rest of the world, most readers (and dictionaries) tend to identify the adjective "Borgesian" with intricate metaphysical puzzles and labyrinthine speculations of universal reach, completely detached from particular traditions. One reading is context-saturated, while the other is context-deprived. Oddly enough, these "institutional" and "transcendental" approaches have not been pitched against each other in a critical way. Borges, between History and Eternity brings these perspectives together by considering key aspects of Borges's work-the reciprocal determinations of politics, philosophy and literature; the simultaneously confining and emancipating nature of language; and the incipient program for a literature of the Americas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441197795
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/02/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	672,963
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Hernan Diaz is Managing Editor of Revista Hispánica Moderna and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, USA. Formerly he has been a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the State University of New York (Albany), USA.

Table of Contents

Foreword
South, North, Beyond
 
I. POLITICAL THEOLOGY
Introduction
1. God and Country
2. When Fiction Lives in Fiction
 
II. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction
1. Edgar Allan Poe (On Murder Considered as Metaphysics)
2. Walt Whitman, an American, a Kosmos
 
Afterword
El vaivén
 
Note on the Translations
Abbreviation of Borges's Titles
Works Cited
Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

In this reworking of the literary legacy of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, Díaz, Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, navigates two conflicting views of his subject: the position that frames Borges as "a writer utterly detached from reality, dealing in abstractions, literary puzzles, and unsolvable philosophical riddles," and the one that frames him as "an overtly political writer." Díaz favors a chiasmic approach. That is, he argues that there's much historical engagement in Borges's mysticism and much mysticism in his historical engagement. Díaz also analyses how two American writers, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, figure into Borges's opus, which mingles the symbolist strain of Poe with Whitman's humanist poetics. The book contends, further, that North American writers like Pynchon and Barth "got their own canon back, filtered through and transformed by Borges," and that one logical step for scholars to take would be to investigate Borges's influence in the United States, particularly on science fiction. The arena of Borges criticism is a crowded firmament and some of its stars are very dim indeed; by mediating two hardline critical positions, Díaz's book adds to the luster and depth of the field. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A splendid book. Intelligent, illuminating, original, worthy of its ambitious subject. I have read it with increasing pleasure, and finished it feeling I now had a better understanding of Borges's seemingly simple and apparent, but in fact deeply mysterious intelligence.
Publishers Weekly

Just when all seemed lost, Borges, Between History and Eternity proves there's still life in the Borges studies galaxy. Life of the best kind, which in the world of literary criticism means precision, intellectual agility, microscopically close reading and, above all, the will to go against the grain of the most respected conventional wisdom. To dismantle the old dilemma of Borges studies-Borges, universal or local? Metaphysical or down-to-earth? Abstract or political?-Hernán Díaz exhumes a critical dagger that in his hands shines as though drawn for the first time: the chiasmus. Which is to say the swinging operation that requires crossing and interchanging the terms of an opposition that once seemed ironclad. Thus Díaz finds the Borges most engaged with history in his most conceptual texts, and the most conceptual Borges in those fictions most deeply rooted in national identity. History and eternity, as Díaz sees them in Borges, are no longer antithetical terms: they are poles linked by a healthy and diabolic reciprocal equivalence that can't help but disquiet us. To take a writer about whom we thought we knew everything and render him disquieting-what more can we ask from a book of criticism?
Bulletin of Spanish Studies

The arena of Borges criticism is a crowded firmament and some of its stars are very dim indeed; by mediating two hardline critical positions, Díaz's book adds to the luster and depth of the field.
Choice (J.S. Bottaro, Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York)

From the Publisher

Just when all seemed lost, Borges, between History and Eternity proves there's still life in the Borges studies galaxy. Life of the best kind, which in the world of literary criticism means precision, intellectual agility, microscopically close reading and, above all, the will to go against the grain of the most respected conventional wisdom. To dismantle the old dilemma of Borges studies--Borges, universal or local? Metaphysical or down-to-earth? Abstract or political?--Hernán Díaz exhumes a critical dagger that in his hands shines as though drawn for the first time: the chiasmus. Which is to say the swinging operation that requires crossing and interchanging the terms of an opposition that once seemed ironclad. Thus Díaz finds the Borges most engaged with history in his most conceptual texts, and the most conceptual Borges in those fictions most deeply rooted in national identity. History and eternity, as Díaz sees them in Borges, are no longer antithetical terms: they are poles linked by a healthy and diabolic reciprocal equivalence that can't help but disquiet us. To take a writer about whom we thought we knew everything and render him disquieting--what more can we ask from a book of criticism?

Alan Pauls

A splendid book. Intelligent, illuminating, original, worthy of its ambitious subject. I have read it with increasing pleasure, and finished it feeling I now had a better understanding of Borges's seemingly simple and apparent but in fact deeply mysterious intelligence.

Alberto Manguel