Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘The South’
This essay was written for Prof. Bogucki’s Socioeconomic Influences on the Arts and Literature class (AH156) at Minerva University in September of 2022.
“The South” is a short story by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) that explores themes of Argentine nationalism and existentialism while maintaining a distinctly Borgesian style. Borges was a polymath and polyglot born in Buenos Aires in 1899. He moved to Switzerland with his family in 1914 and stayed during the untimely outbreak of World War I, before settling in Spain for a few years. He studied French and German and joined the Ultraist literary movement.[1] Borges returned to Buenos Aires in 1921 and began to synthesize his global perspective with Argentinian themes through writing.[2]
The protagonist of Borges’s 1953 short story “The South” is Juan Dahlmann, from German and criollo[3] descent. His grandfather died fighting the aboriginals in the wild pampas (vast, fertile grasslands that comprise most of the provinces of Buenos Aires and La Pampa). Dahlmann has retained his maternal family’s ranch in the pampas, though he has not visited in years. The plot begins with Dahlmann hitting his head on a window frame out of an eagerness to read Arabian Nights. After days of painful treatment in a hospital, he is told he has recovered from sepsis. For convalescence, Dahlmann takes a train to the pampas. At a deserted station, he begins to read again, only to be bullied by three peones (farm hands). One of them brandishes a knife, at which point an old gaucho in the corner tosses a dagger at Dahlmann’s feet. He knows he will surely die in the fight, but figures that such a death is honorable. The last sentence switches from past to present tense as Dahlmann heads outside for the confrontation.[4]
“The South” contains many autobiographical elements. Like his main character, Borges worked in a library, recovered from sepsis after a head trauma, and had ancestors who fought in Argentinian wars. The short story also contains many Borgesian themes. One such theme is the importance of living in the present moment. Before boarding the train, Dahlmannn pets a cat at a café and remarks that man lives in successive time while the animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant. Additionally, Arabian Nights[5] plays a prominent role in the story. Strangely, the protagonist never manages to read it: the first time he attempts to, he hits his head; the second time, he decides to instead gaze out the train window: “The joy of life distracted him from paying attention to Scheherazade… Dahlmann closed his book and allowed himself to live.”[6] Perhaps the switch to present tense at the close of the story reflects Dahlmann finally coming into the present moment: paradoxically, right before his death.
Another theme is human inability to order existence in a world with a hidden order of its own. This is reflected most prominently in Borges’s “The Library of Babel,” in which an infinite library containing every possible permutation of letters (and thus every book that has ever and will ever be written) cannot be useful to the library’s inhabitants, though some fanatics continue to search for meaning.[7] In “The South,” an accident brings Dahlmann close to death, and later he faces the peones with a dagger despite knowing he will die. This dichotomy of arbitrary/destined echoes Jaime Alazraki’s assertion that Borges writes about “the tragic contrast between a man who believes himself to be the master and maker of his fate and a text or divine plan in which his fortune has already been written.”[8]
“The South” was published in 1953 during the Perón era,[9] but the story itself is set in 1939, and gives us a glimpse into the politics and changing demographics of Argentina on the eve of WWII. The 1930s was Argentina’s “Infamous Decade.” The Radical government of Hipólito Yrigoyen was overthrown and replaced with the short-lived fascist government of José Uriburu, before the 1932 conservative government of Agustín Justo.[10] As part of a treaty with Britain to export beef, Justo supported industrialization of the pampas. Many saw this treaty as a sell-out, and resentment towards Britain led to a surge of right-wing nationalism. Justo hired militaristic organizations created by his predecessor Uriburu to beat up and torture opponents of the government, while benefitting his supporters in the cities.[11] In “The South,” this pervasive violence (lasting until 1953) is shown through the tenuous last scene between rural laborers and rich porteños (inhabitants of Buenos Aires). Like many landlords in the pampas, Dahlmannn is absentee—he owns a ranch but has rarely visited it, like 62% of the landlords at the time.[12] Dahlmannn’s final confrontation exemplifies laborers’ resentment against their absentee landlords.
Interestingly, the house of president Hipólito Yrigoyen is mentioned briefly in the story, though scholars have debated its placement. This, alongside a statement from Borges in the prologue for “Artifices,” provides evidence for an alternate interpretation of the ending of “The South.” It is possible that Dahlmannn died in the hospital and subsequently dreamed a heroic death for himself filled with Argentine national symbols.
An Argentinian gaucho.
One such symbol is the gaucho. Like how cowboys have a place in American history and folklore, gauchos—expert horsemen who created black markets off free-range cattle in the pampas—were the embodiment of Argentine rugged individualism and provincialism. As one scholar writes, “A man of the frontier, he was the lord of the open plain, and the country supported him.”[13] The gaucho as a heroic icon is indebted to José Hernandez’s canonical 1872 poem The Gaucho Martín Fierro. In one essay, Borges questioned the nationalistic bases of Argentine literature like Martín Fierro, which were limited to just a few uninspiring local topics, “as if we Argentines could only speak of neighborhoods and ranches and not of the universe.”[14]
Borges’s global perspective contributed to his belief that national literature shouldn’t be protected against ‘corrosive’ foreign influences, since it “disempowers the capacity of Argentine writers to engage with broader aspects of human existence.”[15] Thus, the inclusion of the gaucho in Borges’s story is not a simplistic nationalistic symbol, but a nuanced exploration of Argentine themes alongside existential ones. It also serves to demonstrate the protagonist’s own romanticized and disconnected view of Argentine identity: Dahlmann deems the gaucho “a summary and cipher of the South (his South).”[16] In “The South,” Borges sought to demonstrate the universality in being Argentinian in relating Argentine themes and figures with others outside its sphere.[17]
[1] Linda S. Maier, Borges and the European Avant-Garde (New York: Peter Lang, 1996).
[2] Emir Rodriguez Monegal, “Jorge Luis Borges,” in Britannica, August 20, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jorge-Luis-Borges.
[3] A person of Spanish descent born in the Americas.
[4] Jorge Luis Borges, “The South,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York City, NY: Viking, 1998), http://medina502.com/classes/ml260_2017/readings/Borges-The_South.pdf.
[5] Borges loved Arabian Nights, which featured prominently in his essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote.” He described the 602nd night in Arabian Nights as “magical among all the nights” since Scheherazade tells the king the story of King Shahryār himself, thus turning the story infinite and circular. Borges wrote that “if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious.” I wish I had more space to discuss the implications of the inclusion of Arabian Nights in “The South,” perhaps touching on its theme of circular/infinite time.
[6] Borges, “The South,” 4.
[7] Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, trans. James E. Irby (New York: New Directions), accessed September 22, 2022, http://www.jonathanbasile.info/borgeslibraryofbabelirby.pdf.
[8] “Jorge Luis Borges,” Poetry Foundation, September 22, 2022, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jorge-luis-borges.
[9] Juan Perón was a populist authoritarian leader who pushed for industrialization and state intervention in the economy, while also silencing opposition. Under Perón, Borges was dismissed from his library position for supporting the Allies during WWII, and became a staunch anti-Perónist.
[10] “Argentina,” in Britannica, accessed September 22, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/place/Argentina.
[11] “Argentina.”
[12] David Rock, Argentina, 1516-1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War (Bekeley: University of California Press, 1985), 237.
[13] Madaline W. Nichols, “The Gaucho,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 17, no. 4 (1937): 532–36.
[14] Geraldine Rogers, “Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, April 26, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.274.
[15] Humberto Núñez-Faraco, “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” in Jorge Luis Borges in Context, ed. Robin Fiddian, Literature in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 99–105, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635981.014.
[16] Borges, “The South,” 6–7.
[17] “Jorge Luis Borges.”
Bibliography
“Argentina.” In Britannica. Accessed September 22, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/place/Argentina.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “Partial Magic in the Quixote.” In Other Inquisitions. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1952. https://idoc.pub/documents/borges-partial-magic-in-the-quixote-pon2y978y040.
———. The Library of Babel. Translated by James E. Irby. New York: New Directions. Accessed September 22, 2022. http://www.jonathanbasile.info/borgeslibraryofbabelirby.pdf.
———. “The South.” In Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. New York City, NY: Viking, 1998. http://medina502.com/classes/ml260_2017/readings/Borges-The_South.pdf.
Poetry Foundation. “Jorge Luis Borges,” September 22, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jorge-luis-borges.
Maier, Linda S. Borges and the European Avant-Garde. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.
McGann, Thomas. “Juan Peron.” In Britannica, September 17, 2007. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isabel-Peron.
Monegal, Emir Rodriguez. “Jorge Luis Borges.” In Britannica, August 20, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jorge-Luis-Borges.
Nichols, Madaline W. “The Gaucho.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 17, no. 4 (1937): 532–36.
Núñez-Faraco, Humberto. “The Argentine Writer and Tradition.” In Jorge Luis Borges in Context, edited by Robin Fiddian, 99–105. Literature in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635981.014.
Rock, David. Argentina, 1516-1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War. Bekeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Rogers, Geraldine. “Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, April 26, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.274.