Discussion - Week Fifteen - Borges - The End

[Jim]

This discussion covers the story, The End


Important! Be sure to read the end note for this story re: Martín Fierro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Pfr...

[Whitney]

The only thing my copy has is a brief footnote (two or three sentences) about how 'The End' give an account of the subsequent meeting of the two men from the end of Martin Fiero. Is that the same as the end note you're referencing?

I feel like I would need to do a lot of studying of Martin Fierro and its place in Argentine culture to fully appreciate the significance of Borges' addition. I'd love to hear the opinion of Anyone with more appreciation of the poem.

Some other questions:

What is the purpose of having an essentially impotent person as the sole witness to the final encounter?

Is the last line a deliberate reference to Camus, given that both stories involve a relationship between killing and alienation?

[Jim]

Whitney wrote: "The only thing my copy has is a brief footnote (two or three sentences) about how 'The End' give an account of the subsequent meeting of the two men from the end of Martin Fiero. Is that the same a..."


Here is the lengthy end note in the Penguin edition of Fictions:

“It’d been longer than seven years that I’d gone without seeing my children. I found them that day, and I wouldn’t have it so’s I looked to them like a man on his way to a knife fight”: It is not these words that need noting, but an “intertextual event.” It is about here that the Argentine reader will probably realize what this story is about: it is a retelling of the end of José Hernandez’ famous tale Martin Fierro. As Fierro is a knife fighter, and as a black man figures in the poem, and as there is a famous song contest, the reader will put two and two together, no doubt, even before Martin Fierro’s name is mentioned a few lines farther on. This is the way Fishburn and Hughes state the situation: “The episode eluded to in ‘The End’ is the payada, or song contest between Martin Fierro and el moreno [“the black man”] who was the brother of the murdered negro. In the contest the gauchos discuss metaphysical themes, but towards the end el moreno reveals his identity, and his desire for revenge is made clear. In keeping with the more conciliatory tone of pt. 2 [of Hernenadez’ original poem] a fight is prevented between the two contestants, each going his own way. ‘The End’ is a gloss on this episode, the fight that might have taken place.” By this late in the volume, JLB’s Preface to the stories, hinting at the coexistence of a “famous book” in this story, may have dimmed in the reader’s memory, but for the Latin American reader, the creeping familiarity of the events, like the echoes of Shakespeare in the Assassination of Kilpatrick in “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” should come into the foreground in this section of the story, and the reader, like Ryan in that other story, make the “connection.”


[Note: “Fishburn and Hughes” refers to A Dictionary of Borges by Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Highes (London: Dickworth, 1990)]

[Zadignose]

Hmmm. Well, I think I'm doomed to respond to this as one who didn't have the context to understand the reference. I took the story for what it was and what it contained.

My larger context was, perhaps, just the sensibility inherent to "westerns," or stories of a revenge ending in showdown.

But anyhow, I also found the most peculiar element of the story was the role of the... witness? I'm not sure what else to call him. It was interesting that, as witness, he seems to be sort of the point-of-view through which the story is narrated, but that point-of-view is challenged.

The approach of the stranger (Fierro) across the almost abstracted plain seems to come to us as Recabarren sees it. But then, even in the first paragraph, with reference to the cowbell at the end of his bed, the narrator tells us "He shook it once or twice." In this little imprecision, the narrator puts a little distance between us and Recabarren. Of course, for story-telling purposes, we don't need to know or care whether he rings the bell once or twice. But then, more significantly, "A boy with Indian-like features (Recabarren's son, perhaps) opened the door a crack." Now, Recabarren, who frames the story of the conflict, whose perception and knowledge limits what we can see and hear of the conflict, is further separated from the narrator. Were he to narrate, of course he would know whether the person at the door were his own son...

Maybe.

But then, Recabarren seems almost unknown to himself, and perhaps even somewhat aware of his own nature as peripheral to the real story. In the moment of his awakening, he almost discovers his own existence... and for us, his existence didn't matter much beyond the fact that he existed on the day of the big showdown (i.e. within the narrative frame of this very limited story).

There are elements of the story which Recabarren doesn't directly witness (including the final knife thrust) which are yet described to us. We even get a bit of Fierro's point of view, in his suddenly becoming aware of the hatred of the black man (which Recabarren might have supposed or inferred, but certainly couldn't witness). So Recabarren only vaguely defines or frames our view on the scene.

But the scene itself is vary facile, and cliche. If there's interest within the work, it comes through interaction of witness, narrator, and reader with respect to a dramatic but partially obscured event.

And then, also, it appears as quite bizarre to imagine that Recabbaren can really follow what is going on at all. Hearing sounds and words through the walls, witnessing only what he can see out of a narrow window, even limited in his ability to sit up and look around, he's fundamentally challenged as a narrator.

To some extent, the whole story could be a sort of joke on the role of a minor character. He became paralyzed right after the singing contest... presumably because he wasn't important anymore... he only comes to be important again when there's more for him to witness, when the protagonists act.

P.S. now I'm wondering what I read or where I read it, about the moment of waking in the morning being the time in which a person discovers or defines himself... was it something we already read by Borges? Did St. Augustine touch on this? Pliny the Elder? Hmmmm... Ironic that I can't remember what I've read about the role of memory in identity...