Borges versus Proust: Towards a combative literature

Comparative Literature, Winter 2003 by Conley, Tim

Los doctores del Gran Vehiculo ensenan que lo esencial del universo es la vacuidad. Tienen plena razon en lo referente a esa minima parte del universo que es este libro. Patibulos y piratas lo pueblan y la palabra infamia aturde en el titulo, pero bajo los tumultos no hay nada. No es otra cosa que apariencia, que una superficie de imagines: por eso mismo puede acaso agradar. (OC 3:10)

The learned doctors of the Great Vehicle teach us that the essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness. They are certainly correct with respect to the tiny part of the universe that is this book. Gallows and pirates fill its pages, and that word iniquity [perhaps not the best translation of infamia] strikes awe in its title, but under all the storm and lightning, there is nothing. It is all just appearance, a surface of images-which is why readers may, perhaps, enjoy it. (CF 5)

Borges's history and his concept of self are refractions of that essential emptiness, while Proust's cumulative science posits that there is "[quelque chose] de soi-meme partout, tout est fecond, tout est dangereux, et on peut faire d'aussi precieuses decouvertes que dans les Pensees de Pascal dans une reclame pur un savon" (R 3:543; "something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensees in an advertisement for soap" [M-K 3:553-54]). Proust does not locate himself in his universe: he finds himself reflected in the soap advertisement and is touched by the flares of violence he surreptitiously watches but retains his position at that "intermediate stage, the status gratiae" of which Kristeva speaks. Borges, on the other hand, is in his hall of mirrors himself, many times over and yet always, "desgraciadamente" without grace.

Round 3. Writing

In Proust's final volume, Marcel addresses the trees and admits, "Si j'ai jamais pu me croire po&te, je sais maintenant que je ne le suis pas" (R 3:855; "If ever I thought of myself as a poet, I know now that I am not one" [M-K 3:886]). "Faithful to a tradition that goes back to Aristotle's criticism of Plato," writes Descombes, "Proust sees poetry and history as in opposition to each other" (19). The question that arises, then, is whether Marcel or his author may be said to be an historian, but I have already recognized Proust as a scientist in contradistinction to Borges's historian, and in the guise of the alchemist the scientist can transmute and merge elements of poetry and history: as Descombes puts it, "[i]t is not the factual truth of historians and encyclopedists that concerns [Proust], but rather the truth of sages and metaphysicians" (4). For Borges prose is not closer to reality than poetry (SN 78, 80-81), and though he enjoyed being called a poet he is more highly esteemed for his short fiction.

But what is prose, and how does it work? In their works of fiction Borges and Proust offer significantly different answers to these questions. Consider the choice not to write poetry in conjunction with this elementary distinction offered by Roman Jakobson: