Yo, JudÍo

Borges and the Jews

If I am not one of Thy repetitions or errata…
—J.L.B., ‘The Secret Miracle’

Throughout his life, Jorge Luis Borges was overwhelmed by a strange feeling of unworthiness. He was, he claimed, unworthy of friendship, of love, and of public attention. The more he achieved, the more puzzled he was by the praise he received. He kept waiting for the day when people would finally recognize how mistaken they had been about his genius. This, of course, might be seen as an excess of modesty; it could also be equated with a complex Jews are often linked to: self-deprecation.
For years I have been reading Borges’ oeuvre, turning it into a map. I myself have learned what it means to be a Hispanic Jew (I was raised in Mexico) through his meditations on time, dreams, doppelgangers and God.
Borges’ life-long feeling of unease, this unworthiness is the force behind his writing. Borges wasn’t an aristocrat, although often he behaved as such. And even though his genealogical connection with the soldados in Argentina on his mother’s side of the family is ethereal, his eulogies to them are defined by envy. Simply put, Borges refurbished his background, making it look more distinguished and more exciting than it really was. This enhancement of one’s own heritage, this falsification of the self, is a common trait in the Hispanic world where las apariencias engañan, nothing is at it appears on the surface.
One of Borges’ grandfathers, Francisco Borges Lafinur, had fought at the Battle of Caseros against the tyrant Juan Manuel de Rosas; he was killed by two bullets shot from a Remington rifle, the first time such a weapon had ever been used in Argentina. In his Autobiographical Essay, published in The New Yorker in 1974, Borges wrote of his military forbears who ‘may account for my yearning after that epic destiny which my gods denied me, no doubt wisely.’ This line suggests that he saw himself for what he was not and used literature to impersonate that absence — to become the warrior he could never be. Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.