Carrion Flamingo (original) (raw)

A Survey of the Works of Jorge Borges
By Dr. Kumar Singh

“If you only followed the parables you yourself would become parables…” Franz Kafka

What do we truly know of Jorge Luis Borges? Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, we’re told, to British and Argentine parents, he grew from an obscure librarian to a literary treasure. The blind enigma, the literary ghost, creator of continents and libraries and authors.

Authors? Here we refer to Pierre Menard and Herbert Quain. But one would make a common mistake to group the two together. Of Pierre Menard we can say with certainty he did not exist but Quain is altogether another matter.

Conventional scholarship would hold to the idea that Quain didn’t exist beyond Borges’ misleading obituary of the author, “A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain” (1941). But Herbert Quain was not fictional. The truth is startling.

A dark, brooding misanthropic but brilliant man, Quain found a unique solution to the problem of attaining literary fame while retaining privacy. He created an author for his own stories- a pseudonym with a backstory, if you will. Thus is born a certain thick-spectacled Argentine bookworm with a fondness for Shahrazad (herself a nonexistent author).

Perversely, this so-called South American author’s launch into prominence came by announcing the death of Herbert Quain. In a sense, it truly was Quain’s death.

Of Quain’s writings, Italo Calvino once wrote, “I love his work because every one of his pieces contains a model of the universe or of an attribute of the universe…with an exemplary economy of expression” (Six Essays for the Next Millenium, p.119).

Quain also marked an early influence on Franz Kafka, as is evidenced by the short piece, “The Bucket Rider.” In a letter to Ranier Maria Rilke, Kafka described Quain as “deeply lost in the night.”

Because every word of Borges is in fact that of Quain, we find ourselves with an oeuvre in disguise which, like Perec’s La Disparation, gives itself a subtext of persistent questing for the unattainable and in fact, unmentionable. Thus the “god” of the Borgesian labyrinth, is Quain looking for himself and finding he is a ghost within his own reflection. Titles alone, such as “The Mirror and the Mask” “Mutations” “The Mountebank” or “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths” give ample evidence of Quain’s self-obfuscation. Look to the masterpiece “The Circular Ruins,” for a clear example.

In closing, I ask you to consider the true obituary of Herbert Quain- the bleak contradiction that became Quain/Borges illustrated in the following poem:

I Am

I am he who knows himself no less vain
than the vain looker-on who in the mirror
of glass and silence follows the reflection
or body (it’s the same thing) of his brother.
I am, my silent friends, the one who knows
there is no other pardon or revenge
than sheer oblivion. A god has granted
this odd solution to all human hates.
Despite my many wondrous wanderings,
I am the one who has never unraveled
the labyrinth of time, singular, plural,
grueling, strange, one’s own and everyone’s.
I am no one. I did not wield a sword
in battle. I am echo, emptiness, nothing.

(Selected Poems, p. 357)