The Gold of the Tigers: Selected Later Poems by Jorge Luis Borges; Alastair Reid; The Book of

Sand by Jorge Luis Borges; Norman Thomas di Giovanni

Review by: Ned Davison
Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 7, No. 13 (Fall - Winter, 1978), pp. 96-98
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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96 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

fusive idea inherent in his vision of reality." (p. 70) Thus a key component of
Cort?zar's novelistic
craftsmanship is once again identified and then related to
the original notion of the quest: the combination of anaphora and other forms of
repetition with the frequent omission from the text of words or phrases which
the reader has been led to anticipate is seen as another expression of the
fundamental impulse to transcend a bipolar world view. Nor does Brody fail to
note that anaphora and ellipsis represent essentially poetic modes of writing.
The importance of this latter observation should not be lost on readers of
Rayuela, which on first impression may seem far removed from anything
resembling poetry. Only when an intelligent and sensitive meditation upon the
novel's verbal reality sufficiently raises the critical consciousness of us all can
we appreciate the presence of rhythm, sound, and extra-logical associations
proper to the poetic art. Only then can we begin to place Cort?zar's
achievement in the context of a modern literature which has blurred the frontier
separating narrative fiction from poetry. Brody has undeniably brought us
quite far in this direction. In so doing he adds a final perceptive reflection to an
exercise in literary criticism that artfully maps the difficult terrain of Julio
Cort?zar's major work.

Brooklyn College (CUNY) EUGENE L. MORETTA

The Gold ofthe Tigers: Selected Later Poems, by Jorge Luis Borges.
Translated by Alastair Reid. A bilingual edition. E. P. Dutton; 95 pp. $8.95
cloth, $3.95 paper.

The Book of Sand, by Jorge Luis Borges. Translated by Norman Thomas di

Giovanni. E. P. Dutton; 125 pp. $7.95 cloth.

These new works of Borges come to us much as the visit of an old friend
who brings with his presence a face and conversation well known; and yet there
are new features, insights and wisdom that add a measure to our own life and
bring new delights and meditation. Borges is an old friend to many readers.
Considered the finest living writer in the Spanish language by many and by
some as one of the great writers of twentieth-century occidental literature,
his reputation is well served by these new additions to the growing body of his
work now available to English readers. And we are fortunate indeed to have
fine translations through which we may come to know this extraordinary artist.
The first volume, a selection of rather recent poetry, may be surprising in
the directness and somewhat confessional tone of several of the poems. But the

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 Reviews 97

temptation to read them as direct autobiography must be resisted. The touch of

self pity in "The Suicide" should not be taken as such but as a declaration of the
illusory nature of all reality outside the individual spirit.

The Suicide
Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
I will die and, with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions.
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one.

Other poems, touching the subject of blindness, are sentimental in a

way that is uncommon in Borges, and he himself comments on them:
"Going over the proofs of this book, I notice with some distaste that
blindness plays a mournful role, which it does not play inmy life. Blindness is a
confinement, but it is also a liberation, a solitude propitious to invention, a key
and an algebra, (p. 10)"
As in most of the earlier poetry of Borges these selections sustain the
highest level of craftsmanship. The expression is direct, the vocabulary simple
and straightforward, the rhythms clear and exquisitely paced; it is poetry in
which the trivial is excluded without harshness, and in which sentiment and
thought are inseparable. Borges' genius has always been the ability to endow
thought with deep and resonant feeling and to elevate feeling and perception to
the status of being, to make of them the foundation of reality.
Although reading poetry in translation (as Miguel de Cervantes observed
about all translation) is like viewing a tapestry from the back, Alastair Reid
has managed beautifully to carry over into English most of the subtle shades
and nuances of the originals. As is almost always the case, a translation of a
poem tends to sound slightly more rhetorical or "literary" than its source.
Nonetheless, Reid is to be congratulated for providing the English reader with
such worthy poems.
The second volume, The Book of Sand (also translated excellently by
Norman Thomas de Giovanni, Borges' constant companion from 1968 to
1972) will likely seem more familiar to devotees of Borges. They are squarely
within the tradition of his most famous fictions, as he himself suggests:"At my

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98 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

age (I was born in 1899), I cannot promise-I cannot even promise myself
more than these few variations on favorite themes. As everyone knows, this is
the classic recourse of irreparable monotony, (p. 7)" However, the familiar
themes are much like the familiar brush strokes and designs of our favorite
painters, as Borges once again reasserts his view of the fundamental unity of his
notion of reality. The individual perceiving being persists as the center of the
universe, and Borges continues to elaborate on his metaphor that reality is each
man's life, whose common characteristics are inherent in the species.
In the volume of poems he commented on his method, which applies
equally as well here to his stories: "the process is more or less unvarying. I
begin with the glimpse of a form, a kind of remote island, which will eventually
be a story or a poem. I see the end and I see the beginning, but not what is in
between. That is gradually revealed to me, when the stars or chance are propi
tious. More than once, I have to retrace my steps by way of the shadows. I try to
interfere as little as possible in the evolution of the work. (p. 9)"
The stories that follow explore themes, as Borges has observed, already
familiar to us. In "The Other," the opening story, the thematic tradition of the
dual personality or "double" (Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Dostoevski's
counterparts, Poe's William Wilson, etc.) is revived in this elaboration of one
of Borges' most famous one-page pieces "The Other Borges." "The
Congress/' one of the most ambitious, and singled out by Borges to be a
favorite, resists paraphrase or summary and must be read in its entirety. "The
Sect of the Thirty" combines the narrative style of "The Sect of the Phoenix,"
one of his classic pieces, and the theme of the early essay "Three Versions of
Judas."

The reader already familiar with Borges will not have to be encouraged to
read these and the other works of the collection. It is enough to say that they are
worthy of him. Characteristically, the reader's life and perceptions (Borges
would claim these are synonymous) will inevitably be altered. "I write for
myself and my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time. (p.8)". If Borges'
readers are his friends, and I can scarcely believe otherwise, his many, many
friends owe him one more debt of gratitude for the beauty and wisdom this
humble man has offered them over his long and thoughtful life.

University of Utah NED DAVISON

The Brazilian Novel (Luso-Brazilian Literary Studies 1). Edited by Heitor

Martins. Indiana University, Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Bloomington, 1976: 76 pages.

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