Discussion - Week Ten - Borges - The Shape of the Sword

[Jim]

This discussion covers the story, The Shape of the Sword


A weary traveler hears a story of bravery and cowardice, told by a mysterious foreigner on a dark and stormy night.

This reads like a fairly conventional mystery/horror short - possibly the least Borgesian of his works.

[Bill]

It is very difficult to find something intelligent to say about the story, except as a work of craftsmanship. And in that regard...I'm not sure there's such a shock. There's no OMG when you discover the truth.

So I don't know about this one at all.

[Jim]

Bill wrote: "It is very difficult to find something intelligent to say about the story, except as a work of craftsmanship. And in that regard...I'm not sure there's such a shock. There's no OMG when you discove..."

Exactly, but since it's Borges, what are we missing?

[Zadignose]

I likes it.

Okay, well it's interesting in the way that it posits that one man is all men. Though it concludes with the the "revelation" that the man who is telling the story is really Moon himself, it at least leaves us room to ponder whether there is any literal truth in the claim that he is also the hero who was betrayed, who is also the "dummy" shot in the square.

There is also a bizarre psychological projection and guilt-proofing trickery at play when he suggests that the hero himself felt guilty for the fink's cowardice. By suggesting that the man whom he betrayed felt a share of his guilt, then he also allows himself to feel a share of the pride of the hero. We, as readers and spectators are also invited to feel both the pride and the shame of the two-faced protagonist, though we did not participate.

Or something.

[Bill]

Jim,

Maybe just that Borges isn't always Borges. I've been reading this

Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

In it, Borges -- who is extremely nice and likes the interviewer -- winds up arguing with him about "The Form of the Sword". Borges says it's one of the stories he likes least because it's a trick. The interviewer thinks he underrates it, tries to suggest more that more is there than the plot, but Borges cuts him off (which is unlike Borges generally).

Borges says, "...when I wrote that story I was quite young and then I believed in cleverness, and now I think that cleverness is a hindrance. I don’t think a writer should be clever, or clever in a mechanical way, no?"

(Of course, the answer is not if you can do more than that, but all of us who write play with the cards we're dealt, right? :-))

[Jim]

Bill wrote: "Borges says, "...when I wrote that story I was quite young and then I believed in cleverness, and now I think that cleverness is a hindrance. I don’t think a writer should be clever, or clever in a mechanical way, no? ..."

So then yes, sometimes Borges isn't always Borges. Some of the stories in A Universal History of Iniquity are similarly not always Borges.

[Jim]

Zadignose wrote: "There is also a bizarre psychological projection and guilt-proofing trickery at play when he suggests that the hero himself felt guilty for the fink's cowardice. By suggesting that the man whom he betrayed felt a share of his guilt, then he also allows himself to feel a share of the pride of the hero. We, as readers and spectators are also invited to feel both the pride and the shame of the two-faced protagonist, though we did not participate..."

Yep, I definitely liked this aspect of the story.

[Zadignose]

Coming back to this, just for fun (and because we breezed through it with little to say), it may be contrary of me, but if we compare The Shape of the Sword to The Circular Ruins, we will discover that the big ending is integral to Sword but not to Ruins, which is perhaps why I more readily accepted it in the simpler Sword.

That is to say, I can and did imagine a version of Ruins which would end ambiguously, leaving unanswered the question of whether the narrator was himself a dream or illusionary being. This would have worked well, and would have been internally consistent as well as consistent with Borges's general strategy. Could you, however, imagine a version of Sword without the twist? If the story simply ended "that guy was such a coward, the bastard," it would fail entirely as a story.

So, okay, Borges rejected his own story for the very fact that it was a story driven by its conclusion, and was thus committed to its own cleverness. I can understand that. It's not where he ultimately wanted to be as an author. Nonetheless the story did have a few admirable ideas, and had its own integrity which made it a fine story within the medium of short stories in general, even if it's not quite in line with the rest of the author's oeuvre.
--------------------------------
One additional point: The title is strange. It's not really about the shape of a sword at all. The only peculiarly shaped thing is the scar. At least if I remember correctly from a few weeks ago. "The Shape of the Sword" sounds like a mystery title, for a story in which a mystery's solution pivots on the shape of a sword somehow. But that's certainly deceptive here.

[Jim]

Zadignose wrote: "One additional point: The title is strange. It's not really about the shape of a sword at all. The only peculiarly shaped thing is the scar...."

He accounts for the title just before the final reveal:

From one of the general's suits of armor, I seized a scimitar, and with that steel crescent left a flourish on his face forever - a half-moon of blood.


And yes, without the twist it wouldn't be much of a story, especially since the scar is mentioned so prominently in the opening sentence (Chekhov's scar?).

[Zadignose]

Hmmm... although I read that line... and am now rereading it, it seems strange. I'm still not sure how a scimitar leaves a uniquely shaped scar, or how the sword is particularly notable for its shape. It seems the "flourish" should contribute more significantly to the shape of the scar... and perhaps "the shape of the scar" would be more apt? But that's a relatively small issue, I guess.

Heh, interesting concept of Chekhov's scar!

[Mala]

Jim wrote:"So then yes, sometimes Borges isn't always Borges. Some of the stories in A Universal History of Iniquity are similarly not always Borges."

A Universal History of Iniquity (1935): Are the stories really that simple!
Think again!
BORGES:
"I began writing that series of stories about hoodlums of Buenos Aires: Those are straightforward stories. There is nothing of the essay about them or even of poetry. The story is told in a straightforward way, and those stories are in a sense sad, perhaps horrible. They are always understated. They are told by people who are also hoodlums, and you can hardly understand them. They may be tragedies, but tragedy is not felt by them. They merely tell the story, and the reader is, I suppose, made to feel that the story goes deeper than the story itself. Nothing is said of the sentiments of the characters—I got that out of the Old Norse saga—the idea that one should know a character by his words and by his deeds, but that one shouldn't get inside his skull and say what he was thinking.

INTERVIEWER:
So they are nonpsychological rather than impersonal?

BORGES:
Yes, but there is a hidden psychology behind the story because, if not, the characters would be mere puppets."

[Jim]

Mala wrote: "Jim wrote:"So then yes, sometimes Borges isn't always Borges. Some of the stories in A Universal History of Iniquity are similarly not always Borges."

A Universal History of Iniquity (1935): Are t..."

And like the Norse sagas, the psychology resides in the mind of the reader, not the character.

[Mala]

Z wrote:"that it posits that one man is all men."

This is such a great quote:"Whatsoever one man does, it is as though all men did it. That is why it is not unfair that a single act of disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; that is why it is not unfair that a single Jew's crucifixion should be enough to save it. Schopenhauer may have been right—I am other men, any man is all men, Shakespeare is somehow the wretched John Vincent Moon."

I liked this story far more than The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero.

[Mala]

Z wrote:"the big ending is integral to Sword but not to Ruins."

From Borges' Paris Review Interview:
"the surprise ending. I don't like that trick, do you? Oh, it's all right in theory; in practice, that's something else. You can read them only once if there is just the surprise. You remember what Pope said: “the art of sinking.” Now in the detective story, that's different. The surprise is there, too, but there are also the characters; the scene or the landscape to satisfy us."

Also this:



Borges quote from This Craft of Verse:
"Of course, in my stories ... there are true circumstances, but somehow I have felt that those circumstances should always be told with a certain amount of untruth. There is no satisfaction telling a story as it actually happened. We have to change things, even if we think them insignificant; if we don't, we should think of ourselves not as artists but perhaps as mere journalists or historians."

[Zadignose]

Mala wrote: "the surprise ending. I don't like that trick, do you? Oh, it's all right in theory; in practice, that's something else. You can read them only once if there is just the surprise. You remember what Pope said: “the art of sinking.” Now in the detective story, that's different. The surprise is there, too, but there are also the characters; the scene or the landscape to satisfy us."

He's right about this. But this illustrates a significant dilemma, which is especially present in the short story form. The temptation to go for the big payoff is ever-present, and it's virtually a built in genre expectation. Meanwhile, the form offers little time in which to develop nuance. But perhaps that's another strength of Borges's stories, and perhaps a reason for their obsession with infinite subdivision and multi-faceted interpretation. By forming a story into a kind of coiled spring, a very short piece can contain a maximum density of interest. The interest doesn't have to come only from the sudden 'pop' of the spring at the end.

A meditation of sorts: A work can achieve both profundity and impact. Also, if the first thing we detect or respond to is the impact, then the "profundity" can come from retroactively tracing the causes from their effect, and appreciating the previously undetected coiling of the spring which is revealed only by the way it uncoils.

The empty story is the one in which the payoff renders everything that came before it facile.

[Mala]

Z wrote:"A meditation of sorts: A work can achieve both profundity and impact. Also, if the first thing we detect or respond to is the impact, then the "profundity" can come from retroactively tracing the causes from their effect, and appreciating the previously undetected coiling of the spring which is revealed only by the way it uncoils."

Very true,that. Esp. in terms of the Borges stories which always read better a second or third time around. If you don't mind,do you teach,Z?
You sound like a professor.

[Zadignose]

I teach English as a Foreign Language in Korea. Nothing literary or theoretical. That comes from being a blabbermouth... heh.

[Jim]

Zadignose wrote: "I teach English as a Foreign Language in Korea. Nothing literary or theoretical. That comes from being a blabbermouth... heh."

a "thinking" blabbermouth, if you don't mind me saying so...

Nice image, "The empty story is the one in which the payoff renders everything that came before it facile."

[Whitney]

Zadignose wrote: "The empty story is the one in which the payoff renders everything that came before it facile..."

Yes, well said. Someone in another group compared this kind of ending to a professor standing up right before the end of an exam and changing the equation on the board, saying that it is actually 5X and not 5Y that was intended.