In Search of Arabic Influences on Borges Author(s): Erika Spivakovsky Source: Hispania, Vol. 51, No. 2 (May, 1968), pp.

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IN SEARCH OF ARABIC INFLUENCESON BORGES

ERIKA SPIVAKOVSKY Radcliffe Institute Borges is so meaningful as to provoke the reader into making new discoveries even after uncounted readings. The purpose of this paper is to find, if not an ultimate understanding of Borges' meaning, at least a new trail in our quest for what is probably unreachable. I suggest that there may be a connection, however tenuous, between Borges' "oxymoronic"thinking (a concept to be discussed below) and Arabic thought, and that, as a result of such a potential influence, Borges has produced a new element in thought, or, rather, that Borges' originality of thought may rest, in part, on this influence. In the large number of critiques and the several books on Borges,' no consideration has yet been given, as far as I have seen, to the influence on him of Arabic philosophic thought and a certain quality of a given Arabic pattern of conceptualization. He has been among the most omnivorous readersof his generation, and in his critical and fictional works he has filled almost every page with reflections on more than 3000 years of world literature, the Islamic included. Borges himself points out the reading he considers most relevant to his work,2but he never singles out any Arabic influence on himself. Perhaps he is so deeply affected by Arabic thought that he hardly notices it-just as, according to his own words (citing Gibbon), the Koran mentions no camels because the environment in which the Koran was written was saturatedwith the camel (D, 156). It may be that the Arabic element claims a larger share of Borges' intellectual makeup than he himself realizes-despite his conscious introduction of Islamic literary topics. Take, for instance, Borges' extraordinary use of paradox, and his wealth

work Luis (by using multiple symbols) of intellectual of Jorge HE FICTIONAL

puzzles. Borges confesses that all one's writing is, in the end, autobiographical ("Profesi6n de fe literaria,"El tamafio de mi esperanza [Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1926], 146), and what he says of Nathaniel Hawthorne seems particularlyto define himself: he ascribes to Hawthorne the use of symbols open to many interpretations,"acasoincompatibles"(0.1., 92). I believe that Borges' contradictory style, his complexity and subtlety, is enhanced through his knowledge of Arabic-however imperfect that might be. He knows some of it at least, for he can write Arabic script.3 Arabic has various categories of ambivalent expressions, such as the Dual which makes one concept of contradictory locutions, or the Infinitive which does not distinguish between the active or the passive sense and also allows for a confusion in the tense."Thus, Arabic can apparently lend itself to a style thoroughly alive with inherent contradictions which ordinary sequential thought cannot attain. In his Introduction to one of his translations of Averroes, Max Horten points out certain inherently paired expressions for a single concept as he found them in Averroes'text. For example, "velocity"is expressed by a noun meaning "rapidityand lentitude;"the noun for "weight" means "heaviness and lightness," and so on.5 This shows the intrinsically dialectical process that goes into the formation of a single term, although it should not be inferred from these examples that the Arabs cannot make their meaning clear. Possibly, if Borges knew no Arabic at all, his thinking would be just as inherently dialectical-differing from what might be described as the sequentially dialectical method of Hegel and Marx. Yet

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his command of both Spanish and English gains another dimension through his acquaintance with Arabic. So, his ambiguity might be in part due to his assimilation of the Arabic peculiarity of comprising an oxymoron within a single term. In "El Zahir," one of his short narratives with Arabic allusions, Borges uses the very term oximoron to describe the incongruity of a particular action (A, 106). In "Thin, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," Borges even makes the concept of the oxymoron tangible. "T16n"is an illusory world, a purely intellectual cosmos of Borges' own making, where-to mention one of the paradoxes composing it-no book is complete which does not contain its counter-book (F, 13-34). Only one materialobject hails from this Third World of the Intellect; Borges describes it as a cone of shining metal, no bigger than a die-an object at once tiny yet so heavy that a strong man can hardly lift it from the ground, and he calls this embodiment of the oxymoron "imagen de la divinidad, en ciertas religiones de Tl6n" (p. 32). Perhaps this intellectual device is a factor contributing to Borges' superlative power to shock. Under an intricate camouflage, he mocks the most cherished concepts of Christianity and Judaism, and also of Islam and Classical Greece (though he is gentler with the last two). For example, Judas becomes Christ, or Christ is really Judas (F, 169-76). In another tale, the holy Tetragrammatonof the name of God is serving a Jewish gangster to carry out murders ("La muerte y la brfijula,"F, 14358). In Islam, though he leaves divinity alone, Borges combines a historical personage or two, transforming them into a monstrous prophet whose veil conceals a leprous impostor (H.I., 83-92). Homer, in his turn, is changed into his old dog, Argos (A, 7-26). Similarly, a heresiarch,and the who burns him at the theologian-persecutor stake, become one person in the eyes of

God (E, 96).

Although Borges attributes his startling Christ-Judasidea to Lon Bloy (Prologue to "Artificios,"F, 116), I think that all these absurdities could have evolved from his own antithetical way of thinking. But in contrast to others who use the absurd in writing and other arts, Borges does not use the absurd for its own sake. The absurd with him is not simply a reflection of pessimism (of which he is often suspected), or of a general despair, although he gives many intimations of anguish. Borges uses the absurd, rather, it seems to me, because it is needed where no concept is complete without its anticoncept. In this sense, all these supposed caricaturesmust be understood as the indispensable complements of, say, the good and holy. The word complement should be stressed, for the antithesis is not necessarilyof the crude 'black-or-white'category. It need not be symmetrical.Most concepts formulated by Borges are relative to manifold nuances within a variety of contexts. Borges' procedure is, however, of more than technical accomplishment. His "oxymoronic" point-of-view (if we may call his complex thinking by such a simplified name) opens new vistas. It is sometimes questioned whether he has added anything new to his ecumenical digest of reading matter (cf. Emir Rodriguez Monegal, "Borgesessayiste,"L'Herne, 1964, p. 345). He has the genius to fuse the world'smost conflicting thoughts over the millenia into a few highly artistic pages. Is this not enough of an achievement? He himself does not seem to claim originality as a philosopher. Apparently he refers indirectly to himself when he says, discussing his teacher Macedonio Fernindez' affinities or differences with Hume or Schopenhauer: "Sufficeit to know that in Buenos Aires, around the 1920s, one man rethought and re-discoveredcertain eternal things" ("Macedonio Fernindez," L'Herne, 1964, p. 70). Despite his denial of intent or achievement, however, it appears that Borges has

IN SEARCHOF ARABICINFLUENCESON BORGES

added a new angle to mankind's philosophical dialogue. His new vision has developed from his conceptual polarity. With the hidden counter-bookthat completes his books, Borges provides the antidote to the nihilistic impression he gives on a superficial level. If he spreads despair, he also dispenses grace, though not lightly. He is secretive with his acts of mercy. But he sparks his essays with quotations that contain, to use his own words, "consuelos secretos"(O.I., 256), though he sometimes disclaims any agreement with them, and always professes a general skepticism. He limits himself to challenging the reader, though imperceptibly, to take or leave alone those "secret consolations." So, for instance, Borges leaves us in no doubt that he considers personal immortality impossible (cf. H.E., 37; 0.1., 237, 256). But in a small sketch about John W. Dunne (an abstruse experimenter with new dimensions in time), Borges imparts to us Dunne's assurance that, in death, we will know the secret of eternal happiness because then we will recover all moments of our life and combine them at our pleasure. "Una tisis tan esplkndida,"exclaims Borges (O.I., 35)-and we may use this idea as we see fit. In another of his discussions on time, Borges reminds us of a than Dunne's: saying even more "splendid" Marcus Aurelius' admonition that "ninguno pierde otra vida que la que vive ahora . . morir es perder el presente, que es un lapso brevisimo. Nadie pierde el pasado ni el porvenir,pues a nadie pueden quitarle lo que no tiene" (H.E., 95). Such offerings go a long way to help us endure Borges' oft-repeatedbelief that all men live always in terrible times, in a world that "desgraciadamente, es real" (O.I., 256). This hidden, yet obvious, vision is new because Borges transforms and transcends his vast reading by means of this antithetical twist. He gives a novel character not only to every line he writes, but even-being his own Pierre Menard ("Pierre Menard, autor

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del Quijote," F, 45-57)-to every line he quotes. Doubtless, Borges developed the oxymoronic element of thought as an adult writer. Whatever he may have absorbedof an indirect influence of Arabic philosophy (to be discussed later) occurred in the course of his literary career. But still another factor contributesto Borges'peculiarity of thought, fusing with the other elements into his originality, namely, his impression of his native landscape. His Argentine colleagues have variously commented on it (cf. Miguel Enguinadas, "Le caractere argentin de Borges," L'Herne, 1964, pp. 129-36); Cesar Magrini, "Fondation mythologique de Borges," Ibid., 18593), so that we consider this theme here only so far as it interweaves with his specific conceptualization. No Argentine writer before him has conveyed this native vision to a world-wide audience. Borges' poetic imagery is built upon the meeting point of the outlying districts of Buenos Aires-the rather drab streets of low, somewhat adobe-like houses-with the endless plain of the pampa as it looked in Borges' youth. The sprawling, absolutely flat, city of Buenos Aires is designed in square city blocks. This geometrical pattern continues from the center out in a seemingly infinite progression to the suburbs. The straight lines of the residential streets are edged by high fences or walls, behind which the blank fagades rarely show any life yet are constant witnesses of human existence. But unexpectedly, the chess-board pattern stops. In certain regions, walking in a northwesterly direction down along a nondescript block-length row of these silent dwellings, the passer-bywill find no more corner to turn. Abruptly the truly lifeless plain begins, a vague territory,large tracts of which are without roads, without cultivation, and perhaps (according to the season) even without vegetation. Here, from early childhood, Borges found the basis for his preoccupation with time, space, eternity. At this kind of frontier, one

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ERIKA SPIVAKOVSKY ancestors (O.P., 254), and lately Borges is studying him more intensively (L'Herne, 1964, p. 393). Paradoxically,the pantheistic view which often pervades Borges' sketches and stories, is not found in this story about Averroes who, though perhaps not himself a pantheist, caused the emergence of the later pantheism based on reason. Nor does Borges trouble himself to acquaint the reader with the major tenets of Averroes' philosophy-but is there perhaps a purpose in that omission? Borges' technique, as outlined in his "El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan,"is to present the real problem by leaving it out (F., 109). He does not allude to Averroes'concept of the unity of the intellect which permeates much of nineteenth-century literature (where Borges is most at home). Hegel's world spirit (der absolute Geist), Schopenhauer's "Atman" (the Upanishads' world soul), Yeats' "anima mundi" (taken over from Henry More), are but different names for a similar concept. Yet elsewhere Borges conceives of the fantastic "Orbis tertius" of the Intellect, his "Thin." In its fictional trappings, Tlon seems to be a magnificent parody of what the Arabic philosopher conceives to be the permanent universal intellect. For Averroes (as also for his Arabic predecessors, for example, Al-FIraibi), the intellect hovers about in the lowest of the ten heavenly spheres; it enters each living person-to the extent that he strives to acquire it by thinkingto remain with him for life. This concept is also behind Borges'oft-repeatedidea "de que un hombre es los otros, de que un hombre es todos los hombres" (0.I., 78). Borges, however, intrigued with the idealist philosophers'denial of the body, goes much further than Averroes,for whom "Abu and Zaid" or "Socratesand Plato" are distinctly separate in their physical attributes and sensations.sYet, clearly, bearing out Borges' concept that every writer creates his own predecessors(0.1., 148), Averroesis one of Borges' precursors. In view of the generosity with which Borges pays tribute to

has a unique physical sensation of living (vivir, erleben) the contrast between something and nothing. It is not just the overwhelming view of the empty plain, or the far-away horizon-or one would recapture a similar sensation on the high seas or in any flat open country. It is a traumaticconfrontation with the indescribable nothing, which, being of earth, is also the all. This Argentine vision, for him always tinged with the colorsof the sunset, is the kernel of Borges' aesthetic experience. Through not only his poetry but all his work as well, he has transformed this local item of his Argentine past into universal images. His thought, indelibly stamped with that unfathomable contrast, later fused with his gradually acquired antithetical or oxymoronic pattern (similar to the Arabic), and also, possibly, with the indirect influence of Arabic philosophy. The Arabic theme, especially the Spanish-Moorish,serves Borges as overt subjectmatter for only a few of his stories."The story "La busca de Averroes"is perhaps the only fictional narrative in all literature based on the personality of the SpanishIslamic philosopher. Averroes (Ibn-Rushd) is known chiefly for having interpreted Aristotle's concept of the active intellect (or, the rational part of the soul) as one for all mankind, the only part of man that is immortal. His influence opened the way to the investigation of the causes of natural phenomena independent of divine will. At the same time, Averroes'theory of the universal intellect has points of analogy with the pre-Islamic Indian pantheism of the Upanishads, a view, based on revelation, that filtered into the mystical movement of the Sufis, an esoteric Islamic sect. In an over-simplifiedway Averroes might therefore be called also an agent between ancient Hindu and Western thought. For our purpose the most pertinent fact is that he is regardedas the first link of the chain of European thinkers leading to Spinoza and his system of causality and pantheism.' Spinoza also belongs to Borges' spiritual

IN SEARCH OF ARABIC INFLUENCES ON BORGES even the most insignificant writer who influenced him in some detail, he is presumably not aware of his special debt to Averroes regarding the theory of the universal intellect. He might have absorbedthe doctrine subconsciously, and much filtered, from Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and others. Borges, then, as he explains in a postscript to the story, uses Averroes as a protagonist to depict the story of a defeat. He attributes a flaw, a conceptual blindness, to Averroes-a strange idea around which he constructs a handful of idyllic episodes. Contrary to most of his other stories, which usually end in, or contain, a murder, violent death, suicide, or at best, finish by a heart attack, no one dies here. In fact, this is perhaps the only narrative where Borges is kindly disposed and does not begrudge giving us something delightful. He obviously intended to make the background as historical as possible. Proof of this is his masterful evocation of the Andalusian setting of one of the typical Spanish-Islamic kingdoms of the Middle Ages, and his list of veritable names of Arabic philosophers,poets, emirs. (By contrast, his "El Zahir,"another Arabinspired short story, is invented throughout: subject matter, pseudo-historical introduction,names, and even the "sources.") He seems perfectly at home on a summer day in lofty cool interior of a Spanish Arabic the" villa in C6rdoba, which is not so different, after all, from the interior of an old-fashionedpatioed villa in Buenos Aires. And by Borges'criteria,violence (his otherwise steady companion) is touched on lightly-nothing worse happens than that the black-haired girls of Averroes' harem "torture" a red-haired slave girl. (The harem is one of Borges'few outright inventions. Averroes is said never to have interrupted his studying except for two nights in his life: the night his father died, and the night he married-one woman, presumably.) This is relative mildness in a writer who, for one thing, never, through-

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out all his prose narratives, has a good word for any woman, and, for another, prefers amusing himself by mocking the world's holiest concepts. Perhaps the unusual pleasantness of this story is less surprising when we regard it as the complement to Borges' other story on an Islamic theme, "El tintorero enrnascaradoHikim de Merv," the horrible fabrication about the leprous pseudo-prophet(with a harem of 114 blind women) which he wrote thirteen years earlier (H.I., 83-92). Within that deceptively mild framework, Borges wants us to see Averroes' "search" as the great philosopher's vain attempt to understand the Greek concepts "tragedy" and "comedy."Averroes,while working on his commentary to Aristotle's Poetics, wishes to find out the meaning of these strange words. In vain he recalls previous exegetes of Aristotle to memory;in vain he looks some more into the tomes of a blind writer, Abensida, which he has often consulted (this is, presumably, an actual dictionary by Ibn-Sida); then he lets himself be distracted by some children at play in his patio. Later, at a dinner party with other men of letters, a world traveler,Abulcasim (a somewhat shifty character), entertains the company with a report on the theater in China which he has seen, but the guests at this Andalusian "tertulia"do not understand. Yet on returning home, Averroes believes he has found enlightenment-though not from the unreliable Abulcasim-and proceeds to write down an absurd explanation of Aristotle's words. So Borges makes this great transmitterof Greek wisdom to the Western world stand as a symbol for failure-but, be it noted, as a multiple Borges-symbolwith inherent incompatibilities. Averroes' (supposed) inability to imagine the past symbolizes Borges' own failure to imagine Averroes, as Borges, in fact, frankly tells us. But Borges will hold another meaning, perhaps the true meaning, in reserve. Perhaps by comparing fact and fiction we might come closer to his ulterior purpose.

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The life work of Averroesis actually the story of an intellectual victory. In the history of philosophy, the end of his influence is not yet in sight. Today he is even acclaimed in Islamic countries, now at last "discovered"there, after their theocratic civilization ignored their own philosophers for almost 700 years. Present-day Arabic historians of Muslim philosophy admit that their once great civilization decayed through their rejection of rationalism."Al-Gazzali, the non-rationalist,mystic thinker whose influence Averroeshad tried to demolish, had triumphed in the Islamic East while Averroes continued his controversial influence in Western Christendom. On the other hand, Western Marxists accord Averroes an honored place in the so-called "AristotelianLeft."'0 So, Averroes can hardly be called a failure-despite his traditional seat, in a number of medieval paintings (e.g., on the mural by Andrea da Firenze in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella), below the feet of the triumphant St. Thomas Aquinas. Borges, who never chooses the obvious, would not have used as his symbol the relatively wellknown defeat attributedto Averroesby the Scholastics. Besides, for Borges, scholasticism certainly did not triumph over the Arabic school of thought. Instead, Borges stresses a little-known idea to illustrate Averroes' "defeat." He assumes this sage (and his cultural environment) to have been ignorant of the Greek drama and the theater itself. There is some historical fact in this, although the Moslems regularly performed a mystical religious play and had other kinds of spectacles." The texts of Greek and Latin dramatists were, however, unknown to them. Borges lets Averroes write: "Aristui (Arist6teles) denomina tragediaa los panegiricos y comedias a las saitiras y anatemas. Admirables tragedias y comedias abundan en las paiginasdel Corin . . ." (A, 100). This is a distortion of what Averroes says, traceable to defective information from Renan.12 Borges must have been un-

aware of Renan's mistake. When he read Renan's work about Averroes, probably more than thirty years ago, the French scholar, who practically rediscoveredAverroes for the nineteenth century, was regarded as a source of unblemished authority which is declining only gradually under the newer criticism.'8 (Borges did not read Averroesin the original; he might have had access to translatedtexts, but presumably he used nothing else than the secondary sources he mentions at the end of this story: "yo, queriendo imaginar a Averroes sin otro material que unos adarmes de Renan, de Lane y de Asin Palacios . . ." [p. 101].) But since the Borgian point of this story-or one of the pointsrequires historical verisimilitude, let us accept, for his purposes, that the historical Averroes fills the role assigned to him and stands for his defeat, and in the second or third level of meaning, is also a stand-in for Borges' defeat in Borges' attempt to imagine Averroes,and as a multiple symbol conceals something more. For, still another meaning seems to be Borges' negation of history. "La busca de Averroes,"a historical sketch, attracts precisely the reader who is interested in history, but Borges traps the unwary. History, as a possible way to find truth, is a cherished tradition-and as such, one of the targets Borges selects for demolition. No one but he would write, for example, a detective story which ends with the murderer killing the detective (though Conan Doyle tried, but was forced by public opinion to bring Sherlock Holmes back to life). Similarly to his unprecedented treatment of the detective story (it occurs in "La muerte y la brijula," F, 143-158), Borges, in "La busca . .. ," upsets everyone's belief in history. He simply lets Averroes and the whole fictional, yet quite painstakingly (almost) historical world around him brusquely disappear when Averroes looks into the mirror. (Incidentally, Nestor Ibarra errs in accusing Borges of having Averroesmistakenly "die"

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in C6rdoba instead of in Marrakesh [L'Herne, 1964, p. 442]. Borges does not refer to or describe Averroes' death. He merely lets the picture of Averroesand his world slip away from him.) So Borges mocks us and also himself with the Schopenhauerian view that there really is no history. He illustrates Schopenhauer's words: "At every moment [the historian] is forsaken by the original of his picture, or a false picture is substituted for it; and this happens so frequently that I think I can assume that in all history the false outweighs the true. .. ."'" Borges treatment here of the problem of research into the past is a variation of his opinion, stated elsewhere, that it is not possible to prove anything, because "toda prueba exige a su vez una prueba, y asi hasta lo infinito" (D, 141); it also corresponds to his view that the past is modifiable. But does Borges intend to abandon us to such futility? Is this surprise ending, the frustratinginsight that history is bunk, the story's point? If Borges were writing only for the shock value of his surprise endings, his work, accordingto some words from this very story, would perhaps last only minutes. But like his entire oeuvre, this story gains at every reading. Besides, to bear out his thought pattern, his concept of frustration surely requires its complement. So one must suspect a clue somewhere. Probably it lies there open, ready to be picked up like Poe's "Purloined Letter." Or, maybe it is carefully encapsuled, the innermost box in a Russian nest of boxes within boxes. Going over the story once more, we read on the second page that Averroes ("sin demasiada fe") says: "suele estar muy cerca lo que buscamos." After that, as we have seen, Averroes consults in vain a dictionarybut this is only a little dead-end alley in the Borges-labyrinth. Then, Averroes is distracted by the noise coming from some children. He looks down on them from the railing of his balcony and sees three boys. They are playing "Mosque." One,

standing on another's shoulders, obviously is the muezzin. With closed eyes he singsongs: "No hay otro dios que el Dios." The other, motionlessly holding him up, is the minaret; the third, kneeling in the dust, is the congregation of the faithful. The play does not last long; every boy wishes to be the muezzin, and none the congregation or the tower. That is the entire episode, an apparent non-sequitur, a little interlude which one ordinarily would pass by. But perhaps it should be understood as one of the story's more deeply hidden meanings: Averroes' story is not only that of a failure but also that of a success. At least one of the meanings, then, would be Borges' implication that Averroes knew all the time what a dramatic action is. Why, every child is a born actor, Borges tells us. Every person acts. We see plays every day, and so did Averroes, who is a stand-in for Borges' own quest. So Borges contributes to the problem of perception (Erkenntnis): if we but really see what we look at, he seems to say, we will know all there is to know -except, possibly, ourselves. I do not presume this clue-if it is a clue-to disclose whatever other and deeper meanings the story might hold, as this subject is probably inexhaustible.

nos Aires: Sur, 1961), includes this story, as also "El Zahir," high on the list of his favorites. Obviously, he is fond of the Arabic subject matter, as well he might be, for, as we have seen, his unusual way of integrating opposites, with its resulting multiple symbols and paradoxes, may be based on ambivalences in Arabic thought patterns, and his concepts of the "oneness of all men" and his "Third World of the Intellect" have their origin, perhaps indirectly, in Averroes' theory of the universal intellect.

B ORGEs, in his Antologia personal (Bue-

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translations or adaptations by Borges-are set in Islamic Spain: (1) H.E. "Los traductores de las 1001 noches," 99-134. (2) H.E. "El acercamiento a Almotdsim," 135-44; repeated in F.; 35-43. (3) H.I. "El tintorero enmascarado Hakim de Merv," 83-92. (4) H.I. "La camara de las estatuas," 113-116 (transcr. from 1001 Nights, Night 272). (5) H.I. "Historia de los dos que sofiaron," 117-119 (transcr. from 1001 Nights, Night 351). (6) H.I. "El brujo postergado," 119-223 (transcr. from Don Juan Manuel, Libro del Patronio, derived from an Arabic

NOTES 'For bibliographies of works by and about Borges see L'H-erne (Paris, 1964), pp. 487-516 (issue dedicated to J. L. Borges); and Ana Maria Barrenechea, La expresi6n de la irrealidad en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges (Mexico, 1957), 145-73. Among more recent studies: David William Foster, "Borges' 'El Aleph'- Some Thematic Considerations," Hispania (1964), 56-9; Guillermo de Torre, "Para la prehistoria ultraista de Borges," ibid., 457-63; Thomas Montgomery, "Don Juan Manuel's Tale of Don Illin and its Revision by Jorge Luis Borges," ibid., 464-66; Keith Botsford, "About Borges and not about Borges," Kenyon Review, xxvi (1964), 723-37; John Updike, "The Author as Librarian," The New Yorker (Oct. 30, 1965), 223-46; Gustav neuer Siebenmann, "Jorge Luis Borges-ein Typus des lateinamerikanischen Schriftstellers," neue Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift, Folge, xvi, 3 (July, 1966), 297-314. 2E.g., in 1944 he mentions Schopenhauer, De Quincey, Stevenson, Mauthner, Shaw, Chesterton, Leon Bloy, in that order, as the list of authors he rereads all the time, in Prologue to "Artificios," Ficciones (Buenos Aires: Emec6, ed. of 1965), Obras Completas in nine volumes. Subsequently, unless stated otherwise, the quotations from Borges' works will be taken from this edition, indicating the titles of the eight volumes used, by the following abbreviations: Historia de la eternidad, H.E.; Obra podtica, O.P.; Historia universal de la infamia, H.I.; Ficciones, F; Discusidn, D; El Aleph, A; Otras inquisiciones, 0.1.; El hacedor, Hac. 3Cf. the facsimile of Borges' script reproduced in L'Herne (1964). 4Dual e.g., "Moon and sun" = al qamarani; or "East and west" = al-magriqani; "Gold and saffron" or "Gold and silk" = al-,hmarani; "Teeth and hoofs" (the two hard ones) = as-sulbani; "Morning and evening" (the two cold ones) = al-qarratani. Cf. Carl Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen (Berlin, 1913), iI, 57, 58; also on p. 701 the note to p. 58. Infinitive e.g., the same term expresses "to kill," "to be killed," "to have killed," and "to have been killed." Cf. Carl Brockelmann, Arabische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1948), p. 66. 5Max Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes (Halle, 1912), in "Abhandlungen zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte," vol. xxxvi, vii. Cf. also Horten's observation: "The Islamic philosopher, when thinking of a process of causation, thinks of the object that is about to evolve, and of its opposite, as being evenly balanced. Then, by adding a 'decisive principle,' he lets one (element) gain preponderance over the other: so the being of a thing receives its preponderance over non-being." Die Hauptlehren des Averroes nach seiner Schrift: Die Widerlegung des Gazali (Bonn, 1913), p. xiv. 6Besides "La busca de Averroes" (A, 91-101) and "El Zahir," the following deal with Islamic topics, but only the short pieces (4) and (6)-

book).

H.I. "El espejo de tinta," 123-28 (transcr. from R. F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa). (8) H.I. "Un doble de Mahoma," 129-30 (transcr. from E. Swedenborg). (9) A., "Abenjacin el Bojari, muerto en su laberinto," 123-36. (10) Hac. "Ariosto y los irabes," 89-92. (11) Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, Libro del cielo y del infierno (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1960), has nine fragments from or concerning Islamic literature in a total of 163 excerpts comprising this collection. ,A useful recent bibliography on Averroes is found in M. M. Sharif, A History of Muslim Otto Harrassowitz, Philosophy (Wiesbaden: 1963), I, 540, 541. SCf. Averroes, Tahafut al-Tahdfut, transl. from the Arabic by Simon Van den Bergh (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), 2 vols. 9Cf. Ahmed Fouad el-Ehwany, "Ibn Rushd," chapter xxviii in M. M. Sharif, History . . . (see note 7), p. 558: "a return to ibn Rushd is one of the incentives to recent renaissance in the East. . . " Also: Omar A. Farrukh, The Arab Genius in Science and Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954) calls Ibn Rushd "the greatest Muslim philosopher," p. 103. 1oCf. Ernst Bloch, Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke (Berlin: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1963), pp. 92-9, and passim. "1Cf. George Freedley and John A. Reeves, A History of the Theatre (New York: Crown, 1962), p. 176. Also: Emilio Garcia G6mez, Ibn Zamrak, el poeta de la Alhambra (Madrid, 1943), describes Spanish-Islamic spectacles, pp. 62-8. 12As compared with the Junta edition: Secundum volumen Aristoteles stagiritae De Rhetorica et Poetica Libri cum Averrois cordubensis in eosdem Paraphrasibus, "Paraphrasis in librum Poeticas, nupera Iacob Mantino latinitate donata" (Venice, 1550), pp. 89-94. See Ernest Renan, Averrofs et l'Averroisme (1852), in Oeuvres conmpltes (Paris, ed. of 1949), IxI, 55, 56. (7)

IN SEARCH OF ARABIC INFLUENCES ON BORGES Renan, who did not work from the Arabic text which was still unpublished, used a Latin version which he himself considered defective (p. 79). Averroes not only did not make such a statement, but he might not even have "searched" for the meaning of the terms "tragedy" and "comedy" because it was furnished him by the Arabic translator. Averroes worked from an Arabic version of a Syrian translation of the Greek text; the Arabic version of the Poetics says madih (panegyric) instead of the Greek tragoidia, and hidjd' (invective, satire), instead

231

of the Greek komoidia. Cf. Khalil Georr, Les

categories d'Aristote dans leurs versions syronew Arabic ed. of the Poetics by Badawi (1953). 13Cf. Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Paduan Averroism and Alexandrism in the Light of Recent Studies," in Renaissance Thought ii (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1965), 111-118. 14The World as Will and Representation, transl. by E. F. J. Payne (Colorado: The Falcon Wing's Press, 1958), 1, 245.

arabes (Beyrouth, 1948), pp. 35, 36; also: a

THE FIFTIETH ANNUAL AATSP MEETING The next Annual Meeting of the AATSP will take place at the Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas, on August 28-30 during the celebration of the HemisFair. See p. 296-98 for the program. OFFICERS FOR 1969 A diligent Nominating Committee is offering a fine slate of candidates for this year's election. See p. 298. DON'T LET US LEAVE YOU OUT OF THE DIRECTORY! As soon as you know your new address, send it with your zip code to Eugene Savaiano Secretary-Treasurer, AATSP Wichita State University Wichita, Kansas 67208