Borges in Cervantes' Mirror
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/vestnik.13.317-331Keywords:
literary entanglement, Miguel de Cervantes, Jorge Luis Borges, reader, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, The Book ActAbstract
Borges is one of the most original readers and interpreters of Cervantes' novel Don Quixote, which marks the beginning of the modern novel in the literature of the Western European spiritual circle and of the postmodern narrative. The article discusses some of the literary connections between Cervantes and Borges, each of which marked the beginning of great changes in the understanding of world literature in their own time and on their own side of the Atlantic. Their referential world is not a direct reality, but either an ironic comparison of the real with the literary world or a fiction created on the basis of a creative reading of literary works. There is no clear demarcation between reality and fiction, which are strongly entangled. Cervantes reads ancient, Renaissance and baroque authors, Don Quixote (or Alonso Kihano) gets lost in the fictional worlds of chivalric novels, which he has carefully stored in his library. Borges cannot imagine his life without literature and the library. The analysis of two Borges’ short stories – Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote (1939) and The Book Act (1981) – shows their incredible creative entanglement. Borges was able to masterfully incorporate Cervantes’ literary material into the content of his own work, and to continue literary research with metafictional procedures. Therefore, the selected Borges’ epigraph confirms his commitment to the act of reading, which is an infinite and recurring act. Readers, however, must be actively involved in the reading process as literary co-creators, open to all possibilities of reception.
Downloads
References
BARTH, John (1988) Literarura izčrpanosti. Debeljak, Aleš (ur.), Ameriška metafikcija. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 6-43.
BARTHES, Roland (1995) Smrt avtorja. Pogačnik, Aleš (ur.), Sodobna literarna teorija. Ljubljana: Krtina, 19-25.
BORGES, Jorge Luis (2001) Namišljenosti. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, prev. Aleš Berger.
BORGES, Jorge Luis (2002) Proza. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, prev. Aleš Berger, Marjeta Drobnič, Maja Šabec.
BORGES, Jorge Luis (2002) Poezija. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, prev. Aleš Berger.
CERVANTES, Miguel de (1973) Veleumni plemič don Kihot iz Manče. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, prev. Niko Košir.
FUENTES, Carlos (1994) Cervantes o la crítica de la lectura. Alcalá de Henares: Centro de estudios cervantinos.
FUENTES, Carlos (2011) La gran novela latinoamericana. Madrid: Alfaguara.
JAUSS, Hans Robert (1995) Recepcijska teorija – retrospektiva njene ne(pre)poznane predzgodovine. Pogačnik, Aleš (ur.), Sodobna literarna teorija. Ljubljana: Krtina, 157-175.
KALENIĆ RAMŠAK, Branka (2011) Recepcija književnosti v španskem jeziku: še vedno španska vas?. Kranjc, Simona (ur.), Meddisciplinarnost v slovenistiki, Obdobja (Simpozij, 30). Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, 233-239. 30. julij 2021. https://centerslo.si/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/30-Kalenic_Ramsak.pdf
KALENIĆ RAMŠAK, Branka (2008) El Quijote de dos caras: Cervantes versus Avellaneda. Linguistica 48, 191-204.
POZNANOVIČ JEZERŠEK, Mojca et al. (2008) Učni načrt, Slovenščina, Gimnazija. Ljubljana: Ministrstvo za šolstvo in šport, Zavod RS za šolstvo. 15. julij 2021. http://eportal.mss.edus.si/msswww/programi2018/programi/media/pdf/un_gimnazija/un_slovenscina_gimn.pdf
ROTTERDAMSKI, Erazem (2010) Hvalnica norosti. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis.
UNAMUNO, Miguel (1966) Del sentimiento trágico de la vida. Madrid: Editorial Plenitud.
VARGAS LLOSA, Mario (2004) Una novela para el siglo XXI. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid: Alfaguara, XIII–XXVIII.
VIRK, Tomo (1992) Borges in slovenska proza. Primerjalna književnost XV (2), 1-20.
VIRK, Tomo (1994) Bela dama v labirintu. Ljubljana: Literarno-umetniško društvo Literatura.
ZUPAN SOSIČ, Alojzija (2017) Teorija pripovedi. Maribor: Litera.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Branka Kalenić Ramšak

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal Journal for Foreign Languages by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the publisher right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.