Title

Dis-semblances: Physiognomy and Fiction in Borges's "Historia universal de la infamia"

Keywords

Fiction, Narrators, Slaves, Personal identity, Narratives, Honesty, Verisimilitude, Protagonists, Metaphysics, Facial expressions

Abstract

Over a decade after publishing Ficciones and some six years after ElAleph made its way into print, Borges had occasion to write a new introduction to Historia universal de U infamia, his first extended exploration of the mechanisms of fictional narrative. It was, he reflected of the 1935 work, an "irresponsable juego de un t?mido que no se anim? a escribir cuentos y que se distrajo en falsear y tergiversar [...]. No es otra cosa que apariencia [...] una superficie de im?genes" {Obras 1: 291). There can be little question that, compared with Ficciones and El Aleph, Historia universal de la infamia was uneven in quality and stylistically immature.1 But it is far from clear how to understand Borges s confession, since the work finds its unity in just those qualities that Borges censures in himself: where one might expect trustworthiness, the protagonists of Historia universal act deceitfully; where a reader might assume faithfulness to the works historical sources, details are falsified, suppressed, or simply invented. What sense is to be made of the author s confession that he has been guilty of the same indiscretions as his protagonists?

Original Publication Citation

Dis-semblances: Physiognomy and Fiction in Borges’s ​Historia universal de la infamia​.” ​Confluencia:Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura​ 17.1 (2001): 52-62

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2001-10

Publisher

Confluencia

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Philosophy

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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