Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Pierre Menard, Author of The “Quixote”

Summary: The narrator writes to correct a “deceitful catalog” written about the work of Pierre Menard by a certain Mme Henri Bachelier. The narrator has the support of “two high testimonials” from those who knew Menard: the baroness de Bacourt and the countess de Bagnoregio. He lists 19 works by Menard as his “visible lifework,” ranging from symbolist sonnets to monographs, articles, drafts of articles, translations, analyses, and diatribes on topics including poetry, chess, logic, and philosophy. But his most important work, according to the narrator, consists of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of Don Quixote and a fragment of Chapter XXII. “Those who have insinuated that Menard devoted his life to writing a contemporary ‘Quixote,’ besmirch his illustrious memory. Pierre Menard did not want to compose ‘another’ ‘Quixote,’ which surely is easy enough – he wanted to compose ‘the’ Quixote.” How was he going to do that? “Initially Menard’s method was to be relatively simple: Learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918 — ‘be’ Miguel de Cervantes.” But he thought that was “too easy.” Instead, he decided to recreate it as himself, which he seems to have done via trial and error. The narrator explains why Menard’s version is superior to the original and how this concept can be further developed and applied.

1) Are you persuaded by the narrator’s argument that Menard’s “Quixote” is superior to the original? Why/why not?

2) There are hints throughout the story of conflicting opinions of Menard and his work, involving the narrator, Mme Bachelier, the baroness de Bacourt, and the countess of Bagnoregio. Does this suggest the narrator may not be a reliable source of information?

The Circular Ruins

Summary: A mysterious man arrives, weak and injured, at a circular ruin “crowned by the stone figure of a horse or tiger…a temple devoured by an ancient holocaust.” He sleeps, and when he wakes, “…he knew that this temple was the place that his unconquerable plan called for; he knew that the unrelenting trees had not succeeded in strangling the ruins of another promising temple down river— like this one, a temple to dead, incinerated gods; he knew that his immediate obligation was to sleep.” When he awakes again, the reader learns that: “The goal that led him on was not impossible, though it was clearly supernatural: He wanted to dream a man. He wanted to dream him completely, in painstaking detail, and impose him upon reality.”

First, he tries one way of dreaming a man, starting with the circular ruins as a mysterious amphitheater filled with possible students. When that doesn’t work, he tries another way, starting with the image of a beating heart. At last, he succeeds, but the youth he has created is always sleeping. The man begs help from the statue, which is the god of the temple, who reveals “its earthly name was Fire.” Fire helps him awaken his dream son, and after the man accustoms his dream son to reality, he sends him off to the other ruined temple downstream. When word comes back of “a magical man in a temple in the North, a man who could walk on fire and not be burned,” he knows his son has arrived at his destination. Now, he begins to worry that his son will realize he is “a mere simulacrum. To be not a man, but the projection of another man’s dream — what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo?” But at the very end of the story, he realizes he himself is another man’s dream.

Starting questions:

1) At one point, the man thinks about destroying his dream creation but he doesn’t, and the narrator comments that “he’d have been better off if he had.” Why?

2) What are your questions about this story?

I feel like Borges is writing a satire of something, but his writing is so obscure that I can't tell what.

Roger wrote: "I feel like Borges is writing a satire of something, but his writing is so obscure that I can't tell what."

I agree that one level of “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” is a satire. I think Borges is targeting academic encomiums that list every work of an author however minor and heap praises on everything he/she ever wrote. I imagine Borges chuckling to himself as he carefully crafted the hodge-podge of Menard’s “oeuvre.” and as he detailed Menard’s quixotic attempt to “write” the Quixote by recreating Cervantes’ words, apparently by trial and error. Since Menard burned his manuscripts, I guess we’ll never know if he “cheated” ;).

Susan wrote: "Pierre Menard, Author of The “Quixote”

1) Are you persuaded by the narrator’s argument that Menard’s “Quixote” is superior to the original? Why/why not?"

I think Borges is suggesting that the two Quixote passages are really not the same, even though they are word-for-word identical. What makes them different is that they are written by different people at different times.

The very end of the story makes this clearer, I think. Wouldn't we read "The Imitation of Christ" differently if it were written by an agnostic? Wouldn't the same words be interpreted differently? What if the Book of Genesis were published today? Would the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, as it is currently written, be ratified by today's legislatures, or would it be understood differently today than it was in the 18th century?

Thomas wrote: ". I think Borges is suggesting that the two Quixote passages are really not the same, even though they are word-for-word identical. What makes them different is that they are written by different people at different times..."

Yes, that’s how I read what the narrator is saying, too, and it’s an interesting argument. But would anyone care about Menard’s two plus chapters if the original Don Quixote didn’t exist? Doesn’t his work (such as it is) only have meaning in the context of the original text?

The image that kept coming to my mind was an infinity of apes at typewriters who eventually replicate Shakespeare’s plays, so I can’t quite convince myself to take Menard as seriously as the narrator does.

So, it follows that the lens through which we read a text also changes it. Don Quixote has "become" something over time, due to the responses of its many different readers, that it wasn't when it was first published. I tried to read Quixote with this group a few years ago and gave up. As a 21st-century woman reading it, I tired of what started to feel like a book about 17th-century "good old boys." Clearly a very particular and not very popular reading of this seminal text. The words were exactly the same, but the book was very different for me than it was for others.

Kathy wrote: "So, it follows that the lens through which we read a text also changes it. Don Quixote has "become" something over time, due to the responses of its many different readers, that it wasn't when it w..."

I think that follows. The book is different for each of its readers although it is the same book because the readers are different. This reminds me of a wonderful essay about an anthropologist who told the story of Hamlet to a group of Africans. Their culture was so different that the story made a different sort of sense to them. And that makes me wonder if it’s significant that Pierre Menard picked Don Quixote instead of a different work like Hamlet or War and Peace.

Assuming that the same text means different things depending on both the author's and the reader's time and place, is it safe to say then that no text has a fixed meaning that persists throughout history?

I think it's telling that the phrase that the narrator chooses from Quixote is about truth and history:

...truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future...

After pointing out the differences between the two "versions," and the superiority of Menard's, the narrator writes: "There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. A philosophical doctrine is in the beginning a seemingly true description of the universe; as the years pass it becomes a mere chapter -- if not a paragraph or a noun -- in the history of philosophy."

Is this a kind of intellectual nihilism? (Or is it just a game, like Stephen Dedalus's Hamlet theory in Ulysses... where he proves "by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Hamlet’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father")

Thomas wrote: "Is this a kind of intellectual nihilism? (Or is it just a game, like Stephen Dedalus's Hamlet theory in Ulysses... where he proves "by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Hamlet’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father".."

I laughed out loud reading this story so I’m going to vote for a literary game or jeu d’esprit, although Menard’s interests in philosophy and logic may signal otherwise.

But I’m also wondering about the reliability of the narrator who seems to have his own agenda. There are a number of layers to this story imo. I’m going to read the story again and take a closer look at the narrator

I can't help but notice that in the chronology of Borges' life published in the Everyman's Library edition, 1938 marks the year in which Borges "suffers an accident and contracts septicemia. Writes his first Borgesian story, 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote', to see whether his brain has fully recovered after his illness."

Thomas wrote: "I can't help but notice that in the chronology of Borges' life published in the Everyman's Library edition, 1938 marks the year in which Borges "suffers an accident and contracts septicemia. Writes his first Borgesian story, 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote', to see whether his brain has fully recovered after his illness.".."

So do you think he passed the test? (I think he did, in a big way ;)

I'm very curious to hear what everyone thought of "The Circular Ruins."
Does what we dream "exist" in some meaningful way? For me, that's one of the questions this story boils down to.

Susan wrote: "Thomas wrote: "I can't help but notice that in the chronology of Borges' life published in the Everyman's Library edition, 1938 marks the year in which Borges "suffers an accident and contracts sep..."

I have also read that, until then, he was mainly focused in poetry and this is one of his first works in prose. I also think that he did well in both accounts.

Kathy wrote: "I'm very curious to hear what everyone thought of "The Circular Ruins."
Does what we dream "exist" in some meaningful way? For me, that's one of the questions this story boils down to."

Kathy, that is interesting indeed. And, as we have read Freud's book about dreams interpretation, I think the answer is yes, dreams have their role in our psychology and in our lives. Especially when one decides to give them an important role in one's life.

But curiously what strikes me here is not the idea of the dream itself but the idea that to be someone else's dream would be humiliating. The end of the story seems very disturbing on this note.

Kathy wrote: "I'm very curious to hear what everyone thought of "The Circular Ruins."
Does what we dream "exist" in some meaningful way? For me, that's one of the questions this story boils down to."

I read it in the opposite direction -- that what we think of as our existence is the dream of someone else. And to make matters worse, that person is the dream of someone else, who is the dream of yet another, and so on and so forth down the ruinous drain.

Kathy wrote: "I'm very curious to hear what everyone thought of "The Circular Ruins."
Does what we dream "exist" in some meaningful way? For me, that's one of the questions this story boils down to."

The Circular Ruins reminded me of the story about the ancient Chinese philosopher who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wasn’t sure what was real. Was he a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming he was a man?

I’m not sure this story implies that kind of uncertainty. But, I wondered if the story could be taken as a metaphor for the act of creation. There are the two different ways that the protagonist tries to dream up a man, and it seemed significant that he had to start with imagining the heart to succeed.

I’m not sure we’ve actually encountered an image of a maze or labyrinth in the stories we’ve read yet, but they evoke the feeling for me of not knowing quite where you are. Everything seems very logical, but the conclusions follow a dream logic and not the logic of the everyday world.

Tamara reminded me that “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” was an interim read a few years ago. Here’s a link to the previous discussion for anyone who wants to check it out: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Susanna wrote: "I thought I remembered the story. But then, I thought I just remembered a story exactly like it. :)."

LOL. But isn't it remarkable how much the story has improved since the last time we read it?

Susanna wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Susanna wrote: "I thought I remembered the story. But then, I thought I just remembered a story exactly like it. :)."

LOL. But isn't it remarkable how much the story has improved si..."

Ha ha ha. Perhaps someone other than Borges is the author of “Pierre Menard?” It might be said to serve him right…

It's another version of the story from the Library of Babel. Only a single character is different. :)

Kathy wrote: "It's another version of the story from the Library of Babel. Only a single character is different. :)"

Lol. I’m fascinated by how his stories interrelate with each other, sometimes thematically and sometimes with direct references. I wonder if both the Menard and Cervantes versions of Don Quixote are included in the Library of Babel? I guess there’s no way to check and see.

Don't know if any of you reading here would consider this review of Borges a spoiler, so approach with caution if you think it might be, But, to Kathy, who spoke of wanting to read Ficciones with others, Jeffery Keeten might serve as one such other, albeit not a direct contributor here. Go to the Goodreads entry for Ficciones and read the reviews if you want to add other voices than those of us here to the discussion!?! One of the most unusual group of voices that I recall encountering, all musing upon a single book.

Thanks, Susan. To clarify, you all are the others I wanted to read with!

Kathy wrote: "Thanks, Susan. To clarify, you all are the others I wanted to read with!"

Kathy, Glad you all are part of our small but intrepid band, hunting through the labyrinths of Borges’ stories for meaning and traitorous Irishmen ;).

I do sometimes find the reviews on Goodreads (and the internet) a useful resource as Lily suggests, but personally, I prefer to read them after I’ve finished reading the book myself.