Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Interim Readings
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Borges: Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote
I'm guess I'm a little bit out of the loop. I got an email informing me that the group will be starting Crime and Punishment on August 30, but I can't seem to locate any additional information. Can you help? Thanks, Jan Littrell
Jan wrote: "I'm guess I'm a little bit out of the loop. I got an email informing me that the group will be starting Crime and Punishment on August 30, but I can't seem to locate any additional information. Can..."Yes, we will be starting Crime and Punishment on August 30.
The short story by Borges is a brief continuation of our interim read until we immerse ourselves in C & P. Thomas will post the reading schedule for it soon.
Jan wrote: "Is there a reading schedule?"Yes. Thomas will be posting it soon.
@Thomas. Your simple post is merely that of an ingenious layman and does not do such a monumental work justice. I only have this to say:The key to the story is in the ending, which is how most stories work. The difference here is that the story is more logically driven than plot driven, and the logic isn't really apparent until the end.
"The key to the story is the ending" is a staggering idea! Think of the profound state of repetition we could create for ourselves by repealing our prohibitions against plagiarism.
I'm not sure what you meant by 'the key to the story is the ending.'What did the ending do to change the concept of the story, or to clarify it?
As I understood it, this was a eulogy of a (fictitious) French poet, effete and precieux, who decided his life's work would be to write Don Quixote. The fact that Cervantes had already written Don Quixote would make this poet's authorship of Don Quixote all the more a supreme work of genius- not to mention, it would confound the philistines who would consider this supreme artistic feat no more than a word for word copying.
But that became clear pretty early in the story. What happened at the end?
Christopher wrote: "I'm not sure what you meant by 'the key to the story is the ending.'What did the ending do to change the concept of the story, or to clarify it?
As I understood it, this was a eulogy of a (ficti..."
Maybe it’s not so much the ending as the almost ending. Specifically, I’m thinking of page 94 where the narrator sings rhapsodies about Menard’s sentence, interpreting it with gusto, and distinguishing it from Cervantes’ sentence. The irony lies in the fact the two sentences are identical in wording.
I had to read the story more than twice to try to figure it out.
It seems to me Borges is making a statement about how we read and attribute meaning to a work of literature. I think he suggests we cannot read any literary work without divorcing it from the reader's context. That is why the same sentence written by Cervantes and understood a certain way by his contemporaries will have a different meaning for an audience reading it in a different time and place.
In other words, we create meaning as we read a text based on the set of lenses with which we view it. The lenses are the historical, cultural, social, economic, etc. etc. conditions of our environment. Meaning is created through our interaction with the text. And since conditions are constantly changing, the “meaning” of a text never stays the same. Therefore, it is never the same text even though the words may not change.
It sounds like post modernism.
If this is what he is proposing, I don't have a problem with it as long as whatever meaning we attribute to the work can be grounded in the actual words of the text.
I would also add that how we interpret a literary work will vary not only according to the cultural, social, historical, etc. environment. It may also vary within the same individual depending on his/her experiences at the time he/she reads the work.
I can read the same novel at different times in my life and get something new out of it each time because I may not be the same person that I was the last time I read it.
I'm not real confident on this one, but I thought he seemed to suggest that Cervantes' version was an inevitable product of its time and was thus ordinary. What made Menard's version extraordinary was not the experience of reading it at different times, but writing it in a different time, even if it was a word for word copy, as revealed in the comparison near the end.I think the logic behind the story turns the tables on the idea that a reader will get different meanings from the same story when reading it at different times in their life by varying when it was written instead of when it was read:
If the meaning of something is given by the times in which it is created, then creating the same thing in a different time will give it different meaning; in this case a more profound one.
Almost in the way Oscar Wilde, or at least his character Cyrill "re-wrote" Shakespeare's sonnets.Which makes me wonder, would this story "work" if the French decadent had sought to write Shakespeare's sonnets instead of Don Quixote?
But then it occurs to me, Menand realized that he would not finish his project in his lifetime, and that it was destined to be completely misunderstood, which made it a little "Quixotic."
Perfect timing. I read a large chunk of Borges' oeuvre, including The Garden of Forking Paths collection, several months ago.I read this story partially as Borges' reflection on himself and his contemporaries. He (in a fictitious setting) comments on the factual reductionism and dramatic worldview difference needed to reiterate this masterpiece and follows with the idea that to recreate something outside of one's era is to divorce oneself from every established literary/cultural urge: "Historical truth, for Menard, is not 'what happened'; it is what we believe happened." Borges' fictional character, by at last proceeding in a vein that produces the same work without divorcing himself from his current reality, is expected to be making a deeper statement, as he is knowledgeable in a modern consciousness divorced from romanticism; a sort of post-fact commentary on history.
This I would parallel to the reception Borges' own work received. Looking back on some of his earlier collections, mainly A Universal History of Iniquity (and many later collections), Borges exhaustively revises existing literary fiction, myths and folk tales into what he terms the baroque: "the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources." The existing postmodern criticism surrounding this fixed his work in a modern consciousness: a new commentary on the bandit, the pirate, the thug, the courtier. But many of these stories, while injected with modern commentary, stay true to their themes of adventure, exile, romanticism, etc. Regardless of this, the bulk of commentary that established them as modern examples hyper-focused on the modern consciousness of Borges' commentary (with little emphasis on his preference for Kipling, etc.).
When I read this story, I'm remind of how easy it is to create an intertextual meaning that inflates the original work. I think this one of Borges' points.
Nell wrote: "Perfect timing. I read a large chunk of Borges' oeuvre, including The Garden of Forking Paths collection, several months ago.I read this story partially as Borges' reflection on himself and his c..."
Not sure I totally understood (in fact, rather certain I do not [g]), but thx for those delightful insights.
This is going to be a strange analogy, but somehow I see a parallel with the trouble I'm having figuring out how to share my story of seeing (trying to see?) solar eclipse totality. May have to reread what you wrote as I continue drafts and rewrites.
Tamara wrote: "Maybe it’s not so much the ending as the almost ending. Specifically, I’m thinking of page 94 where the narrator sings rhapsodies about Menard’s sentence, interpreting it with gusto, and distinguishing it from Cervantes’ sentence. The irony lies in the fact the two sentences are identical in wording. ."I think that's where the ending begins, and where the story starts to make sense for me. The story begins by presenting what purports to be a catalogue of Menard's "visible" works, most of which concern efforts to create a universal language or a universally understood system of symbols. It isn't clear at all what any of this means in the beginning, but I think it is revealed in the last line of the story: "Every man should be capable of all ideas..." A universal language, universal thoughts.
On another level, the story is more simply about reading and writing, both of which require a mutually understood language, though not necessarily a universal one. The problem of mutual understanding is complicated further by the introduction of time, or history. Menard's achievement is astonishing (his word) because he is able to transcend history -- he writes the "original" Quixote from his own time and place.
Borges brilliantly chooses a passage from DQ as an "example" that expresses this precisely: "truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time..." Menard's project was to somehow reveal truth outside of time, which is more or less what a universal language would be. It's an absurdity, of course... there is no human understanding that can be understood outside of time (except mathematics or symbolic logic.) Maybe this is why Menard chose the text Don Quixote in the first place?
Tamara wrote: "I would also add that how we interpret a literary work will vary not only according to the cultural, social, historical, etc. environment. It may also vary within the same individual depending on his/her experiences at the time he/she reads the work.."If the meaning of a literary work can vary according to cultural, social, or historical environments, is it fair to say that the work has no specific meaning?
Thomas wrote: "....is it fair to say that the work has no specific meaning? .."No. And with that, I'd better go and get some sleep.
But in the meantime, your specific meaning of "specific meaning"?
It seemed to me to be a satire of esoteric literary criticism, and this seemed to me to be superfluous, since such criticism is pretty much self-satirizing.
Thomas wrote: "If the meaning of a literary work can vary according to cultural, social, or historical environments, is it fair to say that the work has no specific meaning?"Do you mean fixed or authoritative meaning? A kind of 'right' meaning? If so, then I would say no, I would agree with Tamara's point about interpretation being inflected and conditioned by a reader's historicised positioning.
What interested me about this story is that it assumes that it's the position of the author which liberates meaning - modern critical theory inclines to it being the autonomy of the reader. In this case, any reader coming to Quixote in Menard's lifetime would imbue it with the historical weight his 're-writing' gives it - without going to the trouble of copying it out!
Christopher wrote: "would this story "work" if the French decadent had sought to write Shakespeare's sonnets instead of Don Quixote?"I thought there was something about Borges' position as an Argentinian writer responding in a post-colonial way to a Spanish literary tradition/canon - but don't know enough about this, and anyway isn't Menard French? This might be a dead-end thought from me!
Roman Clodia wrote: "What interested me about this story is that it assumes that it's the position of the author which liberates meaning - modern critical theory inclines to it being the autonomy of the reader...."Thank you! That's the position I was coming to in a very convoluted way. But you summed it up and put if far more eloquently than I did.
In addition to what Roman said above, this may be a good time to bring up the intentional fallacy. The author's intention in writing a work has little to no bearing on how readers interpret it. The author may have intended something specific in writing the work, but readers may get something completely different out of it. Authors frequently comment on being surprised by how readers interpret their work.
Once the work is out there, it no longer "belongs" to the author in the sense that all interpretations grounded in the text are valid whether or not they were intended by the author.
Tamara wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "What interested me about this story is that it assumes that it's the position of the author which liberates meaning - modern critical theory inclines to it being the autonomy o..."Yes, but isn't Borges' point that this sort of importance that "modern criticism" lays upon the reader goes to far?
It seems to me that this is exactly what he's satirizing. Menard is simply reading Don Quixote, and yet he thinks he's re-writing it, or is in fact the actual author of a more profound, more ironic masterpiece. Cervantes who?
Lily wrote: "Thomas wrote: ".But in the meantime, your specific meaning of "specific meaning"? "A fixed meaning, as Roman suggests. A fixed meaning, to use Wilde's example, would signify only the boy actor Willie Hughes as "W.H." and no other possibility.
The alternative would be "W.H." as a "meme" (to use David's term from the Wilde discussion.) In that case "W.H." could mean almost anybody.
Tamara wrote: "the intentional fallacy... The author's intention in writing a work has little to no bearing on how readers interpret it. The author may have intended something specific in writing the work, but readers may get something completely different out of it. Authors frequently comment on being surprised by how readers interpret their work. "Can we draw this out a little? What I wonder is... why is this not ineffectual writing? If what the author intended to communicate is not communicated and the reader interprets it in a way that is conditioned by the reader's and not the writer's circumstances, what is the point of the author writing in the first place?
Thomas wrote: "...what is the point of the author writing in the first place?.."In his essay, Why I Write,, George Orwell says there are four motives for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.
I like what he says in the essay, but I think I prefer Flannery O'Connor's statement: "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."
Thomas wrote: "What I wonder is... why is this not ineffectual writing?"Perhaps another way to think of it is as rich, dense, complex, complicated, multidimensional, multivocal, sometimes contradictory writing?
Lily wrote: "This is going to be a strange analogy, but somehow I see a parallel with the trouble I'm having figuring out how to share my story of seeing (trying to see?) solar eclipse totality."I'm intrigued by your comment. Do you mean perceiving the eclipse in a different way than Cooper?
Whose Don Quixote would we prefer to read, and why?
Tamara wrote: "I like what he says in the essay, but I think I prefer Flannery O'Connor's statement: 'I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.'"O'Connor reigns queen of the succinct quote.
I'd think this statement is somewhat conditional to the author's process. Borges was an overzealous craftsman, refusing to publish fully original work that he didn't think was good early in his career, so intentional meaning often strikes me as more likely. Compare that with early collections from postmodernists like Kurt Vonnegut (in his Harper days), who started by leaving a lot up to process. Of course, there's only so much we can gather from authors' descriptions of their patterns, and a lot of gray areas. I'd agree that interpretation shouldn't have to side with the author if it can be substantiated, but I wouldn't completely divorce the author's place in writing the work - I can use a tire for a different purpose than outfitting my car without denying the tire had another use. Perhaps a bad metaphor, but all that to say I can try to engage with the writer's perspective without holding their interpretation as the only valid interpretation.
On a surface level, I disagree with the premise of this story, in that I think modern reincarnations of old works have a tendency to heighten the status of the urtexts. But it probably would have been difficult to write a satire about ridiculously inflated literary adulation without positing it this way.
Thomas wrote: "It's an absurdity, of course... there is no human understanding that can be understood outside of time (except mathematics or symbolic logic.) This, of course, is a thorny question. "There is no human understanding that can be understood outside of time."
Well, is the 'historicity' of all knowledge itself a perspective of our time, and thus historical, and thus subject to be 'not true' at some future time? Or is it the unique 'trans-historical' insight granted to our unique post-historical time?
However you care to answer that, it is notable that Menard's work is all also somewhat effete and "Alexandrian," consisting of commentaries and centos of other, classic, authors, and not particularly original. A literal translation of a literal translation of Suarez's preface to a work of Aristotle's (although the fictional narrator insists this is not really one of Menard's works).
Christopher wrote: "Well, is the 'historicity' of all knowledge itself a perspective of our time, and thus historical, and thus subject to be 'not true' at some future time? Or is it the unique 'trans-historical' insight granted to our unique post-historical time?"This puts me in mind of the different flavors between the look and feel of movies made in the early days of flim, vs. a remake of movie decades later, especially SF. 1938 King Kong vs. 2005 King Kong, or 1930's Serials of Flash "Buster Crab" Gordon vs. 1980 Flash "Savior of the Universe" Gordon.
It also reminds me of the 1998 "copy" they tied to make of Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho.
Although this version is in color, features a different cast, and is set in 1998, it is closer to a shot-for-shot remake than most remakes, often copying Hitchcock's camera movements and editing, and Joseph Stefano's script is mostly carried over. Bernard Herrmann's musical score is reused as well, though with a new arrangement by Danny Elfman and recorded in stereo. Some changes are introduced to account for advances in technology since the original film and to make the content more explicit. Murder sequences are also intercut with surreal dream images. The film received negative reviews and was both a commercial and critical failure.
And, it just occurred to me, wasn't one of Menard's works a compilation, in chronological order, of the philosophical responses to Zeno's paradox of the tortoise and Achilles? Now is that project meant to be trans-historical, or historicist?
The story also makes me doubt:Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
Colton, Charles Caleb (1824). Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think (8 ed.). New York: S. Marks. #217, p. 114.
David wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Well, is the 'historicity' of all knowledge itself a perspective of our time, and thus historical, and thus subject to be 'not true' at some future time? Or is it the unique 'tr..."Now, you see, the reason the critics panned the shot-for-shot, keep the script remake of Psycho, is that, to be truly authentic and sincere, it should have been shot in black and white, and set in 1960.
Christopher wrote: "David wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Well, is the 'historicity' of all knowledge itself a perspective of our time, and thus historical, and thus subject to be 'not true' at some future time? Or is it ..."Would we have not panned it or possibly liked it as much as the original, if the original had not been made?
I remember a story on NPR- several years ago now, about a Japanese group which was dedicated to performing Beatles songs EXACTLY as they sound on record.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
This may not even be the story I heard, because if it wasn't "The Parrots," it was "The Silver Beats."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
eta: (excerpt)
One wonders why tribute bands are such a big deal here. Many Japanese will offer the conventional wisdom that they are a nation of expert imitators who excel at reverse-engineering cars, electronics and pop music.
But some Japanese say the cover bands are more than just clones. They say the imitation is done in a tradition that focuses on craftsmanship and attention to detail. It takes a keen eye for fashion and style, and a knack for assimilating cultural imports. It's really just taking something you love and making it yours.
Christopher wrote: "This, of course, is a thorny question. "There is no human understanding that can be understood outside of time.""Perhaps we could rename this discussion "Reign of Thorns."
However you care to answer that, it is notable that Menard's work is all also somewhat effete and "Alexandrian," consisting of commentaries and centos of other, classic, authors, and not particularly original.
It appears that Menard was mostly concerned with finding ideal equivalencies in language. The works cited include topics like universal vocabularies, metrical transpositions, etc. Descartes, Leibniz, Wilkins, and Lull all pursued this sort of thing in an effort to make language more like mathematics. It sounds to me like squaring the circle, or removing historical context from a literary work; it's an irresistible problem but an impossible task.
David wrote: "This puts me in mind of the different flavors between the look and feel of movies made in the early days of flim, vs. a remake of movie decades later, especially SF. 1938 King Kong vs. 2005 King Kong, or 1930's Serials of Flash "Buster Crab" Gordon vs. 1980 Flash "Savior of the Universe" Gordon."But curiously, no one has yet attempted a remake of the quadratic formula. (Wait! Don't steal my idea!)
Thomas wrote: "But curiously, no one has yet attempted a remake of the quadratic formula."Perhaps that is due to a difference between something discovered vs. something created/invented?
David wrote: "Perhaps that is due to a difference between something discovered vs. something created/invented?" Some might argue that there is no such thing as creation/invention. These are simply things awaiting discovery.
Tamara wrote: "Some might argue that there is no such thing as creation/invention. These are simply things awaiting discovery."And you said you did not do philosophy!
I can see how certain physical things like a location or a star is discovered and how an abstract like mathematics is not created or invented, but discovered. However, I can't quite wrap my head around not creating but discovering like a novel. Does this lead us into Borges' Library of Babel?
https://qz.com/446122/jorge-luis-borg...
I'm not sure I can express this properly, but here goes:As I understand it, creation/invention is making/constructing something that is new and that didn't exist before.
What I'm suggesting is that whenever we make something, we are using tools and elements that already exist. Instead of "creating" a thing, what we are doing instead is discovering ways of combining those pre-existing elements in new and exciting ways.
For example, some of Picasso's paintings were heavily influenced by African art as well as a whole lot of other factors. Did he "create" his paintings or did he discover ways of combining and transforming existing elements in new and exciting ways? And how can it be "creation" if those elements were already there?
I am not in any way shape or form diminishing the genius that is Picasso. I am suggesting that what we call "creation" in a work of art might possibly be the discovery of unique and surprising ways of transforming/combining/expressing something that is already out there but doing it in such a way that we see it in a new and refreshing light.
Take, for example, Don Quixote. The idea that humans strive for the unattainable has probably existed since the beginning of time. Could we argue that Cervantes did not "create" Don Quixote, per se? What he did was to discover a brilliant way of articulating and giving expression to something that was already in existence, i.e. our desire to touch the stars.
Isn't that why there is always something new and yet strangely familiar in brilliant works of art? They discover a new path to take us to a place we recognize. They resonate with something we already know, something that already exists. Is that discovery or creation?
I don't know if I'm making any sense here. I'm still grappling with this idea. It may be that I am just quibbling with semantics.
As I said, I don't (can't?) "do" philosophy.
Tamara wrote: "I don't know if I'm making any sense here. I'm still grappling with this idea. It may be that I am just quibbling with semantics."Maybe Flannery O'Connor should have prepended his thought with: I sometimes still don't know what to think when I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.
I think you mean something like Borges' LIbrary of Babel, of which there is an attempt at a virtual representation of online. From the about page:
The Library of Babel. . .If completed, it would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, including lower case letters, space, comma, and period. Thus, it would contain every book that ever has been written, and every book that ever could be - including every play, every song, every scientific paper, every legal decision, every constitution, every piece of scripture, and so on. At present it contains all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 104677 books. . .
. . .Every possible permutation of letters is accessible at this very moment in one of the library's books, only awaiting its discovery.
https://libraryofbabel.info/About.html
I wonder how far this deterministic view could be taken in abolishing copyright and patent law?
David wrote: "I wonder how far this deterministic view could be taken in abolishing copyright and patent law?"Obviously, I haven't thought that far ahead :)
Tamara wrote: "What I'm suggesting is that whenever we make something, we are using tools and elements that already exist."This reminds me of Kwame Anthony Appiah's Nov. 2016 Reith Lecture on culture Nov.2016 Reith Lecture on culture.
He argues that what we know as Western civilization is somewhat mythic, since the best of ideas is often a cross-cultural hybrid gathering from many sources who are able to express something universal.
David wrote: "Thomas wrote: "But curiously, no one has yet attempted a remake of the quadratic formula."Perhaps that is due to a difference between something discovered vs. something created/invented?"
I think it's a question of expressibility. Take something less sublime than a work of creative art, like a sport, perhaps. Can someone like basketball star Steph Curry explain how he can hit a shot from 30 feet with a defender in his face? How can such a thing be expressed in words? (Especially when it doesn't always work, and he misses a shot.) Clearly, he "knows" how to do it better than most people who have played the game. Is it possible to explain this kind of "knowledge"? If not, why not?
There a kind of irony implicit in poetry -- it tries to express the inexpressible with the very elements of expression, words. I'm not sure if what it expresses can be called a discovery though. But I could be convinced otherwise....
Two completely identical texts (not just one!) written by two authors, in a different time & place. The proposition seems absurd, but the consequence, that the interpretations must differ too, seems sound. Or maybe not? Borges’ delightful critic gives many examples of how context influences interpretation and evaluation (just one example: what is natural Spanish in the 16th century, seems effected when written in the 20th century). The case reminds me of Duchamp’s urinal: signed by the artist and on show in a gallery it was very different from its humble brother in the lavatories next door. Bearing incomparable price tags too.
However, urinals have a material existence, while Menard’s DQ is 'unseen'. In fact, I'm sure our critic has become the victim of a hoax (there is definitely something of Borges in that Menard character). There can of course be only one DQ, Cervantes’. And yet, if our delusional critic believes in a second version, he is making all the right moves as a reader. Or isn’t he?
By the way, if we assume that the idea of different authors was false, we might think that we are actually dealing with reader context. I’ve considered this, but it’s always possible that a reader proceeds from wrong contextual information. Since the story does not refer to some special will to believe on the critics part, I conclude that reader context does not need to concern us here.
Given the assumptions regarding the authorship of his 'second' text, the critics reasoning may seem sound, even if we do not agree with all his arguments or with his evaluation. But then, in the final paragraphs his essay takes an absurd turn. Basically he concludes that if our reading depends on context, we might as well limit ourselves to just one text, imagining different authors.
This suggests that Borges had not much use for authorial context. But then, he might, like Menard, say one thing and mean something else. Which brings us back to the idea that anything outside the text leads only to confusion. Or, the critic was wrong all the time, a urinal is a urinal. But is the story's drastic finale not a trick, pulling wool over our eyes?
We are on our own here. As fas as I’m concerned it may be a matter of choice. For me every text is an artefact existing in time & space. The author will always be part of the equation and intentional fallacy does not worry me. But an orthodox Bible reader might want to exclude anything standing in the way of Gods word. And a literary critic might follow the same strategy, in the (vain?) hope of reaching a purer understanding and a more objective judgement that way.
Wendel wrote: "Borges’ delightful critic gives many examples of how context influences interpretation and evaluation (just one example: what is natural Spanish in the 16th century, seems effected when written in the 20th century."Great post Wendel. This puts me in mind of the King James Bible favoring a more archaic idioms over contemporary ones to add to its air of authority.
This also makes me wonder about the many and variously preferred versions of the Bible and how translations of it and other books may play some part in this "controversy". They are all supposed to be essentially the same text, right? Maybe those that argue that the Quranic text cannot be reproduced in another language or form are on to something?
David wrote: "...Maybe Flannery O'Connor should have prepended his thought with: I sometimes still don't know what to think when I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. ..."No intent to "make you wrong," David, but the feminist in me can't resist pointing out that Flannery O'Connor was a woman. Don't know what that means in terms of how our context as people (individuals) influences what we choose to "hear" when we read. But I suspect it is relevant.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Crime and Punishment (other topics)Fermat's Proof to his "Last Theorem" [A Restoration] (other topics)
It is not a long piece, but it is fairly dense. Don't let that bother you. I'd recommend that you read it through without worrying over the details (most of which are fairly esoteric) and then go back to read it again. The key to the story is in the ending, which is how most stories work. The difference here is that the story is more logically driven than plot driven, and the logic isn't really apparent until the end.
At least that's the way I see it. I'm very curious to see what you all think of the story. Does it say anything instructive about how we read literature, or is it just absurd?
http://hispanlit.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu...