Borges hunting for dragons: the Nordic heritage in the work of the Argentine Master

Borges' enigmatic fictions, an admirable synthesis of apparently irreconcilable genres, have intrigued dozens of literary critics, scholars and fans of fantastic literature.

di Andrea Anselmo

Philosophy, alchemy and literature intersect in a kaleidoscope dthe enigmas, coincidences and conceptions of the universe: it almost seems that Borges' work itself can be represented as a typical plot of Germanic art: one of those dragons, inlaid with runes, faced by the solitary hero of tradition, as Sigurd or Beowulf. Critics have therefore questioned themselves extensively on his fantastic stories, cabalistic or related to the heresies of the first centuries of our era. Less investigated, on the other hand, is the fertile vein of Nordic inspiration in his work, although the same forcefully emerges in publications by Borges himself such as Medieval Germanic Literatures, as well as from a series of wonderful stories such as Undr, Ulrica and others.Β 


The Borges tombstone and its epitaphsΒ 

Lovecraft is an author who is a full member of the Borgesian literary multiverse complex, so much so that Borges dedicated the story to him There are more things, in the wonderful collection entitled The Book of Sand. Other tales in the Argentine Master's work also contain Lovecraftian themes, such as the mad and impious city of the Immortals in the first story of the collection The Aleph. In the Providence Solitaire novel titled The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward, antihero Joseph Curwen matches other sinister characters - sorcerers and necromancers - in his circle. In the obscure missives that they exchange, a millenary interest emerges in deciphering funeral epitaphs, which would keep the secret keys of the Cosmos. Below those tombstones, the object of the boundless interest of Curwen and his acolytes, lie buried ancient philosophers, custodians of those secrets that necromancers would like to take possession of with the ultimate aim of subverting the order of the Universe.Β 

Let's imagine ourselves wanting to decipher some epitaphs engraved on the stone, as in a Lovecraftian novel: but in this case they concern the tombstone of Borges himself. What did the Master want to communicate to us in his last wishes and even more what did he want to remain, engraved in stone, imperishable in his memory? What conception of the cosmos emerges from his last will? What warning is being issued? In this sense, not everyone knows that, despite his almost encyclopedic knowledge of world literature, such as to allow him almost unlimited sources of inspiration, Borges sealed both sides of his tombstone with references to the Germanic epos. One side in fact shows on the lower part the sentence written in old English "And ne forhtedon na"(Never with fear), from the epic poem of the XNUMXth centuryΒ The Battle of Maldon, together with a circular engraving depicting seven warriors who, holding their shields and unsheathed their swords, throw themselves into battle. A small Celtic cross and the dates "1899/1986" are then engraved. Let's see what meaning the Master attributed to the epic fragment of the battle of Maldon:

A gravestone in Northern England roughly represents a group of Northumbri warriors. One wields a broken sword; all threw up their shields; their lord died in defeat and they advance to get killed, because honor obliges them to follow him. The ballad of Maldon he has a memory of a similar episode.

Medieval Germanic Literatures, Adelphi

Therefore Borges, moving in his usual dichotomy between the contemplative world and the warrior world, chooses as his first epitaph the element of war, in particular that of the desperate battle, to the death, typical of the way of fighting of the Germans: reckless and contemptuous of death [1]. But paradoxically, the last assault of the vassals in honor of their fallen lord coincides with the achievement of definitive contemplation: death in battle, which traditionally grants immortality in the Walhalla [2].Β 

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On the other side of the tombstone there are two lines of theΒ Volsung sagahiΒ (XNUMXth century): "Hann tekr sverthit Gram okk / legg i methal theira bert"(He took his sword,Β Gram, and placed the bare metal between the two), under which aΒ longship, the well-known dragon-shaped boat with which the Norse pirates, the Vikings or literally β€œthe dockers”, raided the coasts of northern Europe and beyond. The writing appears further down "De Ulrica to Javier Otalora". The quote from the Saga is the one with which Borges' story opens Ulrica [3], which tells of the meeting, halfway between the fairy tale and the dreamlike, between the homonymous protagonist and a man of South American origin, Javier Otalora, who seems in more ways than one an alter ego of Borges himself. The gesture of placing the sword between the hero (Siegfried / Borges) and the Valkyrie (Brunilde / Ulrica) indicates the condition of an unconsummated, ephemeral and tragic love like the one that connotes the love story narrated both in the Volsunghi Saga and in the later one Nibelung song.Β 

Ulrica but she is not a human bride, concrete, material: its contours fade into those of a timeless spectrum, perhaps emerging from a rift in reality. With her, the protagonist, in an increasingly dreamlike, icy crescendo, almost a journey beyond the world to the snowy moor, hears the howling of the wolf in the distance, even if there are no more wolves in England. Javier is a man no longer young, that meeting represents for him the last leap of ferinity that perhaps life will give him. His carnal meeting with Ulrica is therefore announced, foreshadowed, by the howl of the last Wolf. On the other hand, this last call of life and nature is underlined by Ulrica herself: Β«Did you hear the Wolf? There are no more Wolves in England. Hurry up". The surname of the anti-hero, Otalora, is curiously reminiscent and it may not be a coincidence, the rune Othala [4]. We know that Borges knew the runes and often mentions them in his works, both alluding to them in the anthroponyms of some of his characters such as runeberg [5], both in discussing the works of the Anglo-Saxon man of letters Cynewulf [6]. The Othala rune traditionally is connected to the family circle, to the heritage in terms of land and livestock. Is it a representation of Borges' failed aspirations for family and lineage? At this point it would not be excluded.Β 

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Ulrica is dressed in black, Norwegian, she is aware of the dominion that the Norse Vikings imposed for a short time over early medieval England. In the same way Javier / Borges will make her Ulrica's body ephemeral for a moment. Ulrica herself laconic affirms Β«England was ours and we have lost it. As long as you can own something ". An identical feeling animates Javier, aware that that will be only a short act, not lasting and probably the last of his life. She ulric she claims that she is about to die and for this reason she has the gift of foresight, like someone who actually predicted the future, according to tradition, while she breathed her last breath. The specter of Ulrica is the specter of youth, of the hero's adventures that reveal themselves for one last time.Β 

A mythological and anthropological note could help: the presence of the wolf in a tale inspired by the Volsunghi saga does not appear random at all. The Saga in fact reports a passage of fundamental importance in the understanding of the ecstatic dimension of Germanic wolf warriors [7]. In fact, two protagonists of the saga, Sigmundr and SjnfiΓΆtli, turn into wolves after wearing the skins of this animal. In fact, the saga tells us that Sigmundr and SjnfiΓΆtli, wandering in the forest, come across the house of two men who cyclically [8] they are subject, as a result of a spell, to such theriomorphism by dressing with enchanted wolf robes. Sigmundr and SjnfiΓΆtli, once they put on their bewitched skins, will live, transformed into wolves too, ferocious and terrible adventures until they are able to get rid of their feral garments. It is possible that Borges was aware of this wolfish aspect of the story. This completes on an even deeper level the meaning of the Ulrica tale, where the call of the last Wolf corresponds to a momentary feral and carnal transformation. Β 

In conclusion, if the first epitaph refers to the ineluctable fate of those who face the battle without hope, so the second epitaph is that of ephemeral, painful love and also in some ways devoted to a tragic destiny of death and annihilation.Β The Borges Tombstone therefore has two faces: War [9] and Love, as means by which the ego miraculously dissolves. On the one hand the dramatic story of the fighters doomed to certain death and on the other the no less ruinous one of impossible love. Two faces that are at the same time the dry way and the wet way of magic [10] come on the alchemical albedo and rubedo: here are the faces of a two-faced Janus who tragically merges with Borges himself.Β 

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To unite the two faces is the feeling oflove fati compared to a dark, tragic and perfectly framed fate in the canons of the Germanic epos [11]. As Zur Linde, the tragic anti-hero of the Borgesian tale, said Deutsches Requiem:

In the first volume of Parerga and Paralipomena I reread that all the facts that can happen to a man, from the instant of his birth to that of his death, have been foreordained by himself. Thus, any negligence is deliberate, each chance encounter a date, each humiliation a penance, each failure a mysterious victory, each death a suicide. […] Such an individual teleology reveals to us a secret order and prodigiously confuses us with divinity.

[12]

Note:

[1] It is the same spirit that inflamed the Ostrogoths in their fight against the Byzantine invaders during the sixth century Gothic war. AD: the Goths in fact, Procopius of Caesarea tells us in his De bello Gotico, sought the pitched battle, openly and abhorred the gherminelle in which the cunning of the Byzantines often forced them to retreat or defeat.Β 

[2] Even if the stay in Walhalla is not final: in the background looms the Ragnarok, when the heroes fallen in battle, the einherjar, will have to face the forces of chaos unleashed at the end of this cycle.Β 

[3] Contained in the collection β€œThe Book of Sand”, Adelphi

[4] On the runes see the recent text by F. Perizzolo β€œRune - The Uthark System” with a preface by A. Brandi. Passage to the Woods 2021

[5] Three versions of Judas in Fictions, Adelphi, Milan.

[6] Medieval Germanic Literatures, Adelphi, Milan.

[7] The so-called Ulfhednar, who wore wolf skins and the Berserker, dressed themselves in bear skins.Β 

[8] The spell provided for nine days in the guise of a wolf and one of rest. The number nine is fraught with references in Norse mythology: from the nights Odin hangs from the cosmic tree to get the runes to the nine nights his Draupnir ring reproduces.Β 

[9] On the subject, see James Hilllman's work "A Terrible Love of War", AdelphiΒ 

[10] AA. VV. β€œIntroduction to Magic”, Group of Ur, Mediterranee.

[11] Let's think for example of the tragic story of Ildebrando's poem, the only example of an early medieval heroic poem that survived in the Germanic continental area, perhaps of Ostrogothic or Lombard origin.Β 

[12] Contained in the collection the Aleph, Feltrinelli.

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