Finder's Guide

Li Fang's Chinese encyclopedia of biography and other information, c. 990

fabulous animal of China

Volume of the Mishnah.

Silva Valdés poem in Poemas nativos

character in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi: 1) “el gangoso Tabacman”: un personaje al que −por su oficio y probablemente por su obstinación con la mecánica− llaman Tornillo Sin Fin.

2) “Tornillo Sin Fin que en buena ley se vino a ganar su medallón de Vero Desopilante”: el narrador considera a Tornillo (cf. supra §6) un auténtico bromista; en el discurso del narrador, el adjetivo ‘vero’ no proviene del antiguo castellano en desuso, sino del italiano con el significado de ‘verdadero’; cf. también infra §8.

Zorrilla de San Martín epic poem, 1888

Fishburn and Hughes: "A romantic verse drama by the Uruguayan poet Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (1855-1931) first published in 1888. Tabaré tells the story of a mestizo in love with a Spanish girl who is kidnapped by an Indian chief. In the process of rescuing her, the young man is killed by the girl's brother who believes him to be the abductor." (189)

colonel, character in Borges story

compadrito, character in Borges story

Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, Arab historian and commentator, c. 839-c. 923, author of the Golden Meadow and The Book of Indication and Revision

Fishburn and Hughes: "The tent or portable shrine carried by the Jews during their wanderings in the wilderness. It consisted of an inner sanctum known as the 'Holy of Holies' and an outer chamber used as a temple. The extensive description in Exodus (25-31 and 35-40) deals with the construction of the tabernacle, its precise measurements, the material from which it was built, its ornamentation, and even the colour of its curtains, all of which are laid down in minute detail. The tabernacle was believed to constitute the dwelling-place of the Lord, its symmetry and harmony being a reflection of divine perfection. The reference to the quadrangular shape of the Hebrew tabernacle accords with the overall pattern of the dimensions given for its construction." (189)

tango by Francisco Canaro

Jewish cemetery in Buenos Aires and the surrounding neighborhood

Rivera Indarte book on Rosas, 1843

Argentine poet, author of El novísimo órgano

Cornelius Tacitus, Roman historian, c. 55-c. 117, author of Germania, Dialogus de oratoribus, Historiae and Annales

Fishburn and Hughes: "Tacitus wrote the history the Roman Empire from 14 to 68 AD (Annals) and from 69 to 96 AD (Histories). At once passionate and epigrammatic, his work denounces the evil effects of power, the injustices suffered by the Romans at the hands of their emperors, and the servility with which senators and nobles bowed to their capricious rule. CF 121: The surviving books of the Annals (books 1-4, part of 5, most of 6, and 11-16 incomplete) cover the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. The violent episodes depicted show Tacitus' acute perception of tragedy, to which Borges pays tribute in relation to Christ's crucifixion, saying that, though Tacitus did not refer to the crucifixion directly, its occurrence is suggested and implied in his portrayal of the time (Other Inq.167)." (189)

city and province of Uruguay

Fishburn and Hughes: "Guarani for 'tall slender cane': a river in central Uruguay which gives its name to a city and department. It rises not far from the Brazilian border near Sant' Anna." (190)

street in Buenos Aires

Fishburn and Hughes: "A street in southern Buenos Aires near Plaza Constitución. See Caseros." (190)

Parodi: “en el cruce de Tacuarí y Belgrano”: intersección de dos calles, a unas ocho cuadras de la Plaza de Mayo.

character in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi: supuesto pintor argentino. El nombre, del que Bustos destaca su origen árabe, evoca el de Sheikh Obeid el-Rashid, un personaje de Los siete pilares de la sabiduría, el guía que acompaña a Thomas Edward Lawrence (cf. “Toros” i §2) en 1916 hasta Wadi Safra. En su relato, Lawrence alude a Obeid llamándolo ‘Tafas’, que a su vez hace referencia a un caserío en Dera’a, al sur de Damasco, donde Lawrence enfrentó a los turcos. De las once obras de Tafas, Bustos menciona Café Tortoni (cf. infra §2), Quiosco de las postales, el Pensador de Rodin (cf. infra §2), el Hotel España (cf. infra §2) y un inacabado mural de motivos indígenas.

US president, 1857-1930

composer of Puente Alsina, Villa Crespo and other tangos

Bengali writer and musician, 1861-1941, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913

Fishburn and Hughes: "The Incoherence of the Philosophers, an attack by the anti-rationalist Islamic philosopher Ghazali upon the Neoplatonism of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Ghazali held that the world was deliberately created by God and not, as the Neoplatonists claimed, simply an emanation of a First Being. His use of the word Tahafut ('destruction') implies something like the tumbling down of a house of cards; the same concept was used by Averroes in his refutation of Ghazali. See Tahafut-ul-Tahafut." (190)

Fishburn and Hughes: "Incoherence of Incoherence, a philosophical treatise published in about 1180, in which Averroes seeks to refute Ghazali's refutation of philosophy. The subject of chapter 11 is that divine nature cannot participate in the 'emotions' and passing 'inclinations' which occur in individual and material bodies. Averroes's argument in opposition to Ghazali is that there is no activity in God other than what there was from the start. Since God created only the universal and not the individual aspects of reality ('ipse fecit universalia et non fecit particularia'), it follows that God does not perceive the particular ('ipsum non apprehendere particularia'), whose existence is subsequent to creation. See Aristotle." (190)

island in French Polynesia

character in Bustos Domecq stories

C. F. Ramuz, 1933

Norman poet present at Battle of Hastings

French critic and historian, 1828-93, author of De l'intelligence, Histoire de la littérature anglaise and other works

tango by Luis Bayón Herrera

mausoleum in Agra, India

Parodi: un complejo de edificios construido entre 1631 y 1654 en la ciudad de Agra, India, por el emperador musulmán Shah Jahan de la dinastía mogol en honor de su esposa favorita. Combina elementos de las arquitecturas islámica, persa, india y turca.

Tagus river in Spain and Portugal

title of Asano Naganori, 1687-1701, lord of the tower of Ako in Japanese legend of the forty-seven Ronins

posthumous Loomis work

Parodi: el título de la última obra de Loomis parece estar relacionado con el desasosiego provocado por el estreñimiento.

beach resort in the province of Buenos Aires

character in Walpole novel who turns into James Oliphant Tunstall

port city in Chile

street in Buenos Aires

Fishburn and Hughes: "A street in the centre of Buenos Aires containing numerous antiquarian and second-hand bookshops near its intersection with Corrientes." (190)

Swift satirical work, 1696

Colombian poet who lived in Neuquén, Argentina, d. 1920, author of Voz del desierto and Ecos de ausencia, built the Torre Talero in Neuquén

Poe’s collection of short-stories, 1845.

Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece and called the founder of physical science by Aristotle, 6th century B.C.

Sayers anthology of crime fiction, 1936 and later editions

Mitford, 1871

H. G. Wells’s collection of short stories and nouvelles, 1899.

Jack London, collection of short stories, 1906.

Poe short stories, 1840

Phillpotts, short stories, 1910.

Thalia, one of nine Greek muses, the muse of comedy

Parodi: “Melpómene y Talía”: las musas de la tragedia y de la comedia, según la mitología griega.

character in the Arabian Nights

medieval Welsh bard

Lugones story in Filosofícula

soccer team from Córdoba

Parodi: referencia a un extenso predio situado en la localidad de Remedios de Escalada, en el partido de Lanús, donde desde 1902 funcionaron los talleres generales del Ferrocarril del Sur, posteriormente rebautizado Ferrocarril General Roca. Tras la privatización del ferrocarril, un proceso que comenzó en 1991, gran parte de los talleres de reparaciones y mantenimiento, los almacenes, depósitos, oficinas y viviendas para el personal allí ocupado fueron abandonados. En 1995 se decidió sanear los edificios y terrenos e instalar allí la Universidad Nacional de Lanús, proyecto que se cumplió respetando la arquitectura de las construcciones que datan del siglo XIX. Los Talleres son mencionados también en “Signo” §9.

Argentine poet and essayist, 1904-1954, author of Las torres de Nuremberg and El tango en su etapa de música prohibida

body of Jewish laws

Fishburn and Hughes: "Jewish writings dating from the early centuries of the Christian era embodying the oral law, or Mishnah, and discussions of its interpretation. Its emphasis is on ritual and legalistic aspects of Jewish tradition. See Hasidim." (190-91)

monster of bronze, guardian of the island of Crete

French literary scholar, 1880-1959

Borges book of essays, 1926

Lugones lecture on astronomy, 1921

Marcial Tamayo Saenz. Bolivian poet and essayist (1921-1997). Author, with Adolfo Ruiz Díaz of the book Borges, enigma y clave (1955).

tenor, 1820-1889, Italian possibly of Romanian origin

Fishburn and Hughes: "A famous Italian tenor, possibly of Roumanian origin, who made his debut in Naples and sang in most of the world's opera houses. Among his most famous performances was Rossini's Otello with a libretto derived from Shakespeare, first produced in Naples in 1816 (not to be confused with Verdi's opera of the same name whose première was held in 1887 after Tamberlik had retired)." (191)

Celebrated tango dancehall in Palermo, Buenos Aires

presidential ticket in 1946 from the Unión Cívica Radical, José P. Tamborini for president and Enrique Mosca for vice-president

Marlowe play, 1590

Mongol conqueror, c.1336-1405, subject of a Marlowe play

Thames, river in southern England

Thracian bard who boasted that he could win a contest even if the Muses opposed him, whereat they blinded him and made him forget his skill

Tammany Hall, famous political organization in New York City

ancient nature deity of Babylon and Sumeria

city in southern part of the province of Buenos Aires

English actress, 1909-94

Chinese dynasty, 618-907

lake in east Africa

Tangier, port city in northern Morocco

Fishburn and Hughes: "A town in Morocco, on the straits of Gibraltar. Tangier was an important Muslim centre at the time of the Almohad dynasty." (191)

Hawthorne, 1853.

Güiraldes poem in El cencerro de cristal

 El tango: cuatro conferencias. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2016

stories by Enrique Gonzalez Tuñón, 1926

Text written by Manuel Gil de Oto (Also Known As. Miguel Toledano y Escalante)

Conference dictated by J.L. Borges at the University of Antioquía, Colombia in 1963.

Text written by Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

Camino poem in Chaquiras, 1926

Borges poem

Fernán Silva Valdés poem, from his book Agua del tiempo

Book by Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato (Buenos Aires, 1963).

face of Baal

brief Japanese poems

town in Germany, site of battle in 1410

character in Shaw's Man and Superman

13th century German Minnesinger

Short story by Macedonio Fernández.

in Greek mythology, king of Sipylos, condemned to suffer eternally in Tartarus

Parodi: “ese Tántalo de gallego con frac”: alusión al camarero. Con frecuencia, el oficio de mozo era desempeñado por inmigrantes españoles y en especial, gallegos quienes solían vestir un uniforme de chaqueta y pantalón negros. La falta de postre en la velada es comparada con el castigo sufrido por el mitológico Tántalo en el Tártaro.

late Buddhist writings

Lao Tse religious work, c.300 B.C.

Fishburn and Hughes: "A text dating from the third century BC illustrating the doctrines of Taoism. Legend attributes it to an ancient sage, Tao te Ching." (191)

Fishburn and Hughes: "From the Chinese tao, 'the way': a philosophic and religious system which has been practised in China for more than 2,000 years. Over the centuries Taoist beliefs have mingled with Buddhism and with the preachings of Confucius, leading to a similarity of ideas within the three systems. Tao views the universe as a hierarchy, the entirety of whose being is reflected in man: anyone who sets out to understand the structure of the world ends up by finding it within the workings of his own mind. All being is 'tao' and returns to it: from unity to multiplicity and back to unity. Within this unity the alternation of the complementary energy forces Yin' and Yang' is the origin of the apparent external variety of reality. While the ways of the world are many and lead to a scattering of the personality, the Taoist aims to retain a primordial conviction of unity, balancing the Yin and the Yang within himself. The elderly, closer to realising this condition, are also closer to sainthood. Hence the cult of longevity." (191)

town in northern New Mexico

town in the province of Buenos Aires near Azul

Fishburn and Hughes: "An area in the south east of the province of Buenos Aires near the hills of Tandil." (191)

Fishburn and Hughes: "The name given in Uruguay to a half-caste Indian of Guaraní descent." (191)

Elías Regules poem in Versos criollos

knife-fighter

ancient name for island of Ceylon or Sri Lanka

Fishburn and Hughes: "A gem-mining centre in Sri Lanka." (192)

Lugones poem in El libro de los paisajes

Bustos Domecq

Lugones poem in Las horas doradas

Nierenstein Souza, 1908

character in Arabian Nights

Fishburn and Hughes: "An Arab leader who landed in Gibraltar in 711 and overran almost the whole of the Iberian peninsula, conquering it within the span of seven years. A legendary account of this event is told in the Thousand and One Nights (Nights 271-2), called The City of Labtayat' (perhaps Toledo). The story is told of a tower which was always kept shut. When a king died and another succeeded him, he would add a lock, until there were twenty-four. Eventually a king arrived from a different house and insisted on opening the tower. Having pulled off the locks, he entered and found figures of turbaned Arabs on horses and camels bearing lances, and an inscription warning that whoever opened the door would conquer the country. This was when Tarik ibn Ziyad sacked the city and killed its king. Tarik proceeded along the treasure-filled chambers of the tower, and when he came to the fifth chamber he found 'a marvellous mirror, great and round, of mixed metals, which had been made for Solomon, son of David... wherein whosover looked might see the counterfeit presentment of the seven climates of the world'. Borges adapted and translated this story as ‘The Chamber of Statues’, in The Universal History of Infamy, CF 54-56." (192)

German name of town in southern Poland, Tarnowskie Góry

Fishburn and Hughes: "A town in south-west Poland, in the province of Katowice, formerly in Silesia, It had a sizeable Jewish community and in the nineteenth century flourished as a centre of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah). During the German Occupation, in 1943, there was an attempt, by the Tarnow ghetto, to mount a rebellion. There was no concentation camp in Tarnow." (192)

Tartary, region of Central Asia

main character in Daudet's novel Tartarin de Tarascon

Fishburn and Hughes: see Alphonse Daudet.

Tartarus, Greek god

Tartarus, lowest region of the underworld in Greek mythology

Fishburn and Hughes: "In classical mythology an abyss below Hades where the Titans were imprisoned by Zeus. Later it became a general term for the underworld." (192)

Nomadic tribes living in northeastern Mongolia.

Italian violinist, 1692-1770

Molière play, here a reference to a film adaptation

character in novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs

monastery in Tibet

Fishburn and Hughes: "Tibetan for 'mount of blessing': one of the largest lamaseries in Tibet. It was founded in the fifteenth century and its Grand Lama is regarded as the reincarnation of the Buddha Amitabha, second in rank only to the Dalai Lama." (189)

large island in southern Australia

Italian poet, 1544-95, author of Gerusalemme liberata

Fishburn and Hughes: "A glossy magazine with a strong upper-class appeal, founded in 1901." (192)

British literary periodical edited by Richard Steele from 1709 to 1711, and its several successors

Parodi: “la revista The Tattler”: una revista elegante, con temas de sociedad, fundada en Londres en 1901 por Clement Shorter. El nombre (en castellano, ‘el parlanchín’, ‘el chismoso’) retomaba el del periódico literario y de temas sociales fundado por el escritor y político irlandés Richard Steel (1672-1729) en 1709, y revelaba La intención de Steel, y más tarde la de Shorter, de publicar noticias literarias acompañadas de chismes, sin ocuparse de temas políticos. El periódico de Steel apareció sólo durante dos años, tres veces a la semana. Por su parte la revista, que durante un tiempo se publicó semanalmente, ofrecía gran cantidad de ilustraciones y noticias de la vida de la alta sociedad londinense, de fiestas, bailes y reuniones de beneficencia, de moda, de caza e hipismo.

Argentine scholar, author of Historia de nuestros viejos teatros, 1932, and of various books on silversmithing in the River Plate region, old maps of Buenos Aires and other antiquarian topics

French writer, president of the PEN Club and father of the film director Bertrand Tavernier

Uruguayan dramatist, 1821-1909, author of Cosas de todos los días, 1858

Parodi: personaje mencionado sólo en esta ocasión.

English bishop, theologian and devotional writer, 1613-67, author of Holy Living, Holy Dying and other works

British officer and journalist in India, 1808-76, author of Confessions of a Thug

Fishburn and Hughes: "An Anglo-Indian administrator, journalist and novelist. Taylor was in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad until 1860, when he returned to England for health reasons. His novel Confessions of a Thug (1839) was instrumental in eradicating Thuggee under the British Raj. Thuggee originated in the worship of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction whose disciples were rewarded with the right to strangle and steal." (192-93)

British mathematician and philosopher, 1768-1835, translator of Plotinus

Tango by J.B. Abad Reyes and G. Matos Rodríguez

character in Buddhist fable

Culto del té, Lafcadio Hearn study of the Japanese tea ceremony

Glendening manual, 1961

fabulous creature of North America

opera house in Buenos Aires

Feijoo collection in 9 vols., 1726-1740

Play by Gómez de la Serna, 1912.

Rodolfo Wilcock, 1962. 

in Buenos Aires

Japanese No theater

Lugones, section of Lunario sentimental

edition of Shakespeare published by the Círculo de Lectores in 1980, with a preface by Borges

Thebes, Greek city

Thebes, city in Egypt

Fishburn and Hughes: "The ancient capital of Boeotia, home of the mythical king Oedipus and the scene of other Greek tragedies. The Inmortal: The epithet 'Hekatompylos', 'with a hundred gates', is applied to Thebes by Homer in his list of the Trojan allies to indicate its wealth and power (Iliad 2. 505). The Theologians: The king of Thebes who saw two suns refers to Euripides' Bacchae (918): Pentheus, king of Thebes, grandson of Cadmus, the city's founder, has been initiated in the Dionysian rites and sent mad; he appears on the stage in a daze and utters the words: 'Why now! I seem to see two suns; a double Thebes; / Our city's walls with seven gates appears double.'" (195)

poem from Jenaro Estrada book Crucero

Swedish poet and novelist, bishop of Växjö, 1782-1846, author of Frithjofssaga

nickname for Gervasio Montenegro

capital of Iran

region of southern Mexico

Portuguese poet, 1877-1952, pseudonym of Joaquim Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcelos

(1604-1680) Argentine poet born in Córdoba.

Argentine jurist and politician, 1817-1903, author of the first Argentine Penal Code

character in Bustos Domecq story

Nydia Lamarque book, 1925

first newspaper in Buenos Aires, published 1801-1802

Telemachus, son of Odysseus in the Odyssey

nickname, see Cárdenas

Spanish general and politician, 1579-1624, subject of a Quevedo sonnet

book edited by Tomás de Lara and Inés Leonilda Roncetti de Panti, 1961

Cansinos Asséns essays, 1924

Themistocles, Athenian statesman, c. 528-462

Buenos Aires suburb

Parodi: ciudad del Gran Buenos Aires ubicada al sur de la Capital, en el partido de Lomas de Zamora. Es un importante nudo ferroviario y terminal de trasbordo de la línea ferroviaria Constitución-Ezeiza.

Shakespeare play, c. 1611

street in Buenos Aires

Fishburn and Hughes: "A street now known as Viamonte, in the fashionable Barrio Norte, named after the religious order of the Templars." (193)

US child film star, b. 1928, later ambassodor to the United Nations

Parodi: (1828-2014) fue una célebre actriz infantil en los años treinta; protagonizó más de cuarenta películas en las que actuó junto a las grandes estrellas de Hollywood; recibió un premio Oscar en 1935 y abandonó el cine en 1949; posteriormente actuó en la diplomacia.

character in Eden Phillpotts's Physician Heal Thyself

Rome

at Olympia

Atashkadah, Lutf Alí Azur biographical encyclopedia of Persian poets

Lenormand, 1919

Tiempo biológico, book by Lecomte du Nouy

Agatha Christie, novel, 1939.

Gertrude Stein prose poems, 1914

Fitzgerald novel, 1934

Rolland de Renéville, 1926

Fray Luis de León line in "Vida retirada"

Lugones poem in Romancero

Bret Harte story

English caricaturist and illustrator, 1820-1914, famous for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll

English poet, 1809-92, author of In Memoriam, Idylls of the King, Locksley Hall and other works

Fishburn and Hughes: "An English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1850 in succession to Wordsworth. Queen Victoria's favourite poet, Tennyson was the most representative versifier of the Victorian era. His Idylls of the King, a series of connected verses on the Arthurian legend, the first of which was written in 1842 and the last in 1885, was outstandingly popular. The distinguishing feature of Tennyson's poetry is his sensitivity to the sound of words. In an article on the translations of the Thousand and One Nights, Borges discusses the theme of the story -within-a-story, quoting a line from Tennyson as the perfect definition: 'Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere' (TL 109). The allusion is to 'Flower in the Crannied Wall' (1869) which reads: 'Flower in the crannied wall, /I pluck you out of the crannies, /I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, / Little flower - but if I could understand / What you are, root and all, and all in all, /I should know what God and man is.'" (193)

name for Don Juan in 1844 Zorrilla play

Text written by Federico M. Quintana.

Malraux novel, 1926

Flaubert prose poem, three versions of which were written before it was published in 1874

Work, 1911, attributed in the Antología de la literatura fantástica to I. A. Ireland. 

Theocritus, Hellenistic Greek poet, fl. c. 270 B.C., author of pastoral idylls

Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, rival of Odoacer and conqueror of Italy, c.454-526, sometimes called Theodoric of Verona or Dietrich von Berne

Theogony, Hesiod poem on the origin and genealogies of the gods

Name given in the Antología de la literatura fantástica to a fragment of Arcana Coelestia (1749) by Swedenborg.

Borges story in El Aleph

Theopompus, Greek historian and rhetorician, b. c. 378 B.C., author of the Hellenica and the Philippica

Fishburn and Hughes: "A Greek historian, author of a history of Greece in twelve books of which only some fragments remain, and of Philippics. The latter is based on the reign of Philip of Macedon (360-336 BC) and contains long digressions on the nations with whom Macedon came into contact. The original text is lost, but fragments are quoted by Plutarch and other later historians. The reference is to a passage from Philippics during a dialogue betweeen Silenus and Milenus. Silenus talks of a continent where, among other wonderful things, there grow by the River of Pleasure trees which produce fruit of a 'contrary nature': anyone who eats the fruit 'forgets what he loved and desired, grows younger and relives his life... becoming a youth, a child, an infant and then dying' (Aelian, Varia Historia, bk. 8)." (195-96)

planned Borges book

Croce book on historiography, 1916

Spanish Carmelite nun, Doctor of the Church and leading mystic writer, born Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada in Avila, 1519-1582

Parodi: “Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada”: (1515−1582), también conocida por el nombre de santa Teresa de Jesús o santa Teresa de Ávila; religiosa, Doctora de la Iglesia Católica, mística y escritora española; fundadora de la orden de las Carmelitas Descalzas. Autora de Camino de perfección; Conceptos del amor de Dios y Castillo interior o Las moradas, entre varios otros títulos.

title of theatrical comedy in Bustos Domecq story

Thermopylae, site of battle between Greeks and Persians

Parodi: “No te mandés a bodega todos los Terrabussi, morfón”: desde 1911, la fábrica Terrabussi produce fideos, galletitas, alfajores y golosinas. ‘Mandarse algo a la bodega’: mandar al estómago, comérselo; ‘mandarse’, cf. “Toros” v §9. ‘Morfón’: de ‘morfar’, italianismo por ‘comer’; Gobello (Lunfardía) lo vincula con el genovés smorfiri, vocablo del hampa con el significado de ‘comer’. Para el empleo de ‘mandés’ en lugar de ‘mandes’, cf. supra ii §43.

Markland or Newfoundland

character in Bustos Domecq story

Pérez Zelaschi, novel, 1954.

Aquilino Ribeiro novel, 1919

city in Indiana

Fishburn and Hughes: "'He was of frightening appearance but had a gentle nature / and his long beard fell on his strong chest': from the anonymous epitaph to Droctulft which appears in full in Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards (3. 19). The lines are quoted by Gibbon in chapter 45 of the Decline and Fall to describe 'the influence of climate and example' which the Lombards underwent in contact with the culture of Italy. Gibbon remarks that the Lombards so succumbed to the influence of those they conquered that by the fourth generation 'they surveyed with curiosity and affright the portraits of their savage forefathers'. The lines are quoted also by Croce in La Poesia as an example of poetry blossoming spontaneously in the most unexpected situations. See 'Contempsit caros ...'" (193)

Machen, 1917

British mathematician, president of The Duodecimal Society in 1945 and author of a book on duodecimal arithmetic

Uspenski mystical work, 1920

Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, Roman theologian and Christian apologist, c. 160-c. 230, author of Apologeticus

Thessaly, a district of northern Greece

Fishburn and Hughes: "An area of north-central Greece inhabited at least since 1000 BC in which was situated the beautiful Vale of Tempo. Thessaly passed to Macedon in 344 BC and two centuries later became part of the Roman province of Macedonia. The river mentioned here could be the Peneus or one of its two tributaries, the Titaresios or the Enipeus." (196)

Boccaccio poem about Theseus

Theseus, in Greek mythology, hero of Athens, son of Aegeus and killer of the Minotaur

Fishburn and Hughes: "A mythical Greek hero, the son of Aegeus and the slayer of the Minotaur. Among Theseus' other heroic adventures were the killing of Procrustes and the defeat of the Amazons and Centaurs." (197)

encyclopedia for children in 20 vols.

Parodi: El Tesoro de la Juventud o Enciclopedia de Conocimiento, una colección de veinte tomos y más de 7.000 páginas ilustradas, originariamente publicada en inglés; fue traducida al castellano, editada y distribuida en América Latina por la Editorial Jackson en 1920. En cada país, las primeras ediciones contaron con la colaboración de escritores y científicos locales; en la edición argentina −dirigida por Estanislao Zeballos− colaboraron entre otros Miguel de Unamuno, José Enrique Rodó, Adolfo Holmberg. Cada tomo, encuadernado en tela e impreso en papel satinado, incluía cuentos tradicionales, poesías, biografías de hombres y mujeres famosos, información sobre temas científicos, geográficos, históricos, literarios; lecciones de francés e inglés; manualidades; juegos, canciones, con excelentes ilustraciones y fotografías. Fue la más célebre y difundida enciclopedia para niños del siglo XX, una obra infaltable en muchas bibliotecas domésticas, que podía adquirirse junto con un mueble diseñado especialmente para contener y exhibir los veinte tomos.

Covarrubias dictionary, 1611

Lugones story in Filosofícula

Robert Bridges philosophical poem, 1929

character in Valéry

Fishburn and Hughes: "A fictional character, the protagonist of Valéry's early prose work La Soirée avec Monsieur Teste (1896). Edmond Teste is considered to be Valéry's alter ego: the opinions expressed by him during the course of his nocturnal conversations embody the literary ideas and intellectual pursuits of his author - concern with metre, syntax and punctuation, linguistic preciosity and a catholic interest in subjects as diverse as lithography, chess and philosophy. Pierre Menard, who reflects many of Borges's interests and preoccupations, may be seen as a parody of Edmond Teste." (193-94)

Zorrilla, 1845.

ten volumes of collected essays by Victoria Ocampo

Thetis in Greek mythology, a Nereid, mother of Achilles

Milton essay on divorce, 1645

four letters of sacred name in Judaism

Fishburn and Hughes: "From the Greek tettara, 'four' and gramma, 'letter': the technical name in Judaism for the four Hebrew letters J H V H denoting the pre-eminent name of God: that which is separate from, and which exceeds, all other appellations. Of uncertain meaning, it is generally thought to be etymologically connected with an imperfect form of the Hebrew verb 'to be'. The tetragrammaton was uttered only by the high priest during worship in the temple, probably to safeguard it from desecration by heathens. It was held in such reverence that, after the destruction of the temple, its utterance was forbidden, and in the liturgical passages in which it appeared it was pronounced Adonai ('Lord'). In a non-religious context it was referred to simply as 'the Name'. There is historical precedent for Borges's irreverent and perhaps subversive use of the tetragrammaton in 'Death and the Compass'. As its utterance fell into disuse its original pronunciation became uncertain (though it is now thought to be represented in English by the sound Yahweh'). Moreover it often came to be written in an abbreviated or substitute form worked out by means of combinations based on the numerical value of the four sacred letters. This extreme reverence attracted a heretical belief in its magic and healing properties, and its letters were used in magic papyri and inscribed in amulets." (194)

character in Borges story

Fishburn and Hughes: "From the Greek for 'ruler of one of four divisions': a term meaning 'vassal-ruler' given to minor despots in the provinces of Judaea and Syria in the Roman period. There was obviously no Tetrarch of Galileo at the time in which 'Death and the Compass' was set, but the name recalls Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who was Tetrarch of Galilee during the lifetime of Jesus and who beheaded John the Baptist." (194)

Tetouan, city in Morocco

Fishburn and Hughes: "The capital of Spanish Morocco, a town and port on the Mediterranean dating from the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain in 1492. It served as a refuge also for some Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who formed their own community from 1511 onwards, preserving their language, customs and traditions. From 1807 until 1912 Jews were consigned to their own quarter, called the judería." (194)

Parodi: la Biblia del Diablo, del siglo XIII, conocida también como Códice Gigas, es por su tamaño (92 cm de alto, 50 cm de ancho y 22 cm de grosor) el mayor manuscrito medieval del mundo. El nombre de Teufelsbibel proviene de una ilustración del Diablo (Teufel, en alemán) incluida en el códice.

character in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus

state in United States

Pseudonym of Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960).

English novelist, 1811-1863, author of Vanity Fair and numerous other works

Southey poem, 1801

German physician, co-author of "Prophylaxis of Puerperal Fever by Lactic Acid Vaginal Douches" (1915)

street in Buenos Aires

Fishburn and Hughes: "A street in Buenos Aires running from Villa Crespo to Palermo. Thames no longer intersects with Triunvirato: by mentioning 'the corner' of these two streets, Borges is evoking the Palermo of his youth. Allusion to this corner of old Buenos Aires, which has long disappeared, conjures up the life of hoodlums and petty criminals nostalgically recalled in Borges's collection of poems Para las seis cuerdas (For the Guitar). In 'The Puppet' a pimp meets his fate: 

Un balazo lo tumbó

En Thames y Triunvirato;

Se mudó a un barrio vecino,

En la Quinta del Ñato.

A pistol shot brought him down on the corner of Thames and Triunvirato; he moved to a new neighbourhood, the cemetery, called Quinta del Ñato (Trans. Anthony Edkins)." (194)

Chinese monster

character in the Njals Saga

The Devil's Advocate: A Plea for Superstition (1909), work by James George Frazer.

Short story by English writer and caricaturist Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) first published in the journal The Yellow Book in 1896 and then as a separate volume in 1897.

Work attributed to George Loring Frost (1913).

Story by Edgar Allan Poe, 1842

Thomas De Quincey essay on the deeper layers of human consciousness and memory

Fishburn and Hughes: "A quotation from Don Quixote, part 1, ch.26. The Knight of the Doleful Countenance, having decided to imitate the style of Amadis of Gaul (the hero of an early romance of chivalry), engraves lamentations on the bark of a tree and calls on the mythical creatures of the woods and 'the river nymphs and the dolorous and humid Echo' for consolation. Rodríguez Martín in his notes to the Clásicos Castellanos edition offers the following explanation for the epithets 'dolorous and humid'. The nymph Echo, daughter of Air and Earth, is condemned by Juno to silence except for repeating the last two syllables of anything said to her. She is called dolorous and humid because, having been rejected by Narcissus for her disabilities, she retires to the caverns and glens, where she is consumed by grief." (195)

Work attributed to Geroge Loring Frost (1924).

Work attributed to George Loring Frost (1931).

Work attributed to George Loring Frost (1919).

Fishburn and Hughes: "Perhaps an allusion to the myth of Daedalus. Daedalus, on the orders of King Minos, constructed a labyrinth for the Minotaur to live in and trap his victims. Fearing that Daedalus would reveal the secret of his design, Minos imprisoned him in the labyrinth with his son Icarus. Daedalus thereupon made wings for himself and his son, and they both flew out of the labyrinth." (195)

Aldous Huxley poem

perhaps a reference to the Latin poem Thebais by Statius, c. 91 A.D.

Parodi: ‘doctor Thebussem’ fue el pseudónimo empleado por el múltiple escritor español Mariano José María, Odón de la Santísima Trinidad, Pardo de Figueroa y de la Serna (1828-1918). Es autor de más de ochenta libros sobre una diversidad de temas de gastronomía, correo, costumbres, pesca, tauromaquia, caza; fue un destacado estudioso de la obra de Cervantes y también incursionó en gramática, biografías, fábulas, filología, historia, lexicografía, teatro, etc. Correspondiente de la Real Academia Española, fue además Cartero Honorario de España y de las Indias, y miembro de sociedades de Gastronomía y Filatélica de Londres, siendo además presidente de El Arte Culinario de Madrid. Mantuvo un copioso epistolario con personajes de la época; se conservan de él unas 12.000 cartas. De su pseudónimo –un anagrama invertido de ‘embustes’− se deriva el título de su obra Thebussianas (1886), entendidas como ‘naderías’, ‘pequeñeces’, de la que publicó una primera serie, que fue traducida al ruso, polaco, alemán, inglés, italiano y portugués. Los textos que componen el libro incluyen títulos variados: “Farsas del Quijote”, “Fórmulas”, “Señor y Don”, “Hablen cartas”, “Noticias de la Biblioteca del Dr. Thebussem”, “Más noticias de la Biblioteca del Dr. Thebussem”, “Cartas de Paca Pérez”, y otros. Las Thebussianas (segunda serie) de César Paladión son del período 1911-1919.

British textual editor, 1668-1744, author of Shakespeare Restored. His work in seven volumes is a rival edition to Pope’s which it critiques, suggesting many variants

Theodorus of Cyrene, Greek atheist philosopher and mathematician

Veblen, 1899

Borges horror story in El libro de arena

Fishburn and Hughes: "The basic Muslim profession of faith: 'There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.' See Allah." (196)

Fishburn and Hughes: "A quotation from chapter 103 of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The chapter is entitled 'Myself and consists of a self-analysis on the author's thirtieth birthday. Near to fulfilling the ambitions of four years earlier, at the start of his Arab adventure Lawrence feels unworthy of the 'trust' and 'favourable opinion' he enjoys and wonders if all established reputations like his are 'founded on fraud'. He confesses that, though he has always craved to be popular and famous and has been afraid of failure, he has also felt a deep attraction for base behaviour. 'There seemed a certainty in degradation,' he explains: a kind of safety, for no matter how high one could rise there was a limit below which one could not fall." (196)

Nicholas Blake novel, 1937

French literary critic and novelist, 1891-1967

Swedenborg

Quicherat, 1836

Fishburn and Hughes: see Louis-Marie Quicherat.

Phillpotts, novel, 1945.

French literary critic, 1874-1936, author of Histoire de la littérature française de 1789 à nos jours and numerous other works on modern French literature

Icelandic saga of the 13th century based on the Hildebrandslied

German writer, 1860-1914, wife of Gerhart Hauptmann from 1885 to 1904

French historian, 1795-1856, author of L'Histoire de la conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands, Récits des temps merovingiens and other works

German theologian, author of Die theologisiriende rechts- und staatslehre, 1861, studies of Spinoza and other works

Fishburn and Hughes: "A colleague of Gesenius, with whom he travelled in 1822 to Paris, London and Oxford to examine oriental manuscripts." (196)

Hammett novel, 1934

town in Iceland, site of ancient monastery

Machen autobiography, 1923

Augustine Birrell autobiography

Menzies film, 1936, based on the Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come

1949 film directed by Carol Reed based on a filmscript by Graham Greene, who later developed the script into a novella

Fishburn and Hughes: "From the German Reich, 'empire': a concept made popular by a treatise Das Dritte Reich ('The Third Reich') published in 1923 by A. Moller van den Bruck. It originated in the Christian tradition of the millennium described in the book of Revelation (20-22) and adopted in the twelfth century by the German theologian J. von Floris (1132-1202). Floris divided all time into three ages: the age of the Father (up to the birth of Christ); the age of the Son (up to 1260); and the age of the Holy Spirit, or Drittes Reich, a messianic age in which there would be a universal reordering of peoples and nations. Under National Socialism the idea of a Third Reich was reinterpreted in triadic Hegelian terms, as the synthesis of the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, 962-1806, (the thesis), and the Second Reich, the empire of the Hohenzollerns created by Bismark in 1871, (the antithesis)." (196-97)

Buchan novel, 1915

Hitchcock film, 1935, later remade in 1959 and 1978 by other directors

British historian and bishop, 1797-1875

Ésta es mi historia, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1937

Pearl Buck novel, 1938

Dickinson poem

English martyr, politician and archbishop of Canterbury, 1118-1170

Thomas Hammerlein or Hammerken, German monk, c. 1379-1471, traditional author of De Imitatione Christi

Cocteau novel, 1923, made into a film in 1964 by Georges Franju

Feuchtwanger novel, 1920

Anglo-Indian scholar, 1869-1958, author of The Life of Buddha as Legend and History

English poet, 1859-1907, author of The Hound of Heaven

Thunaer or Thunor or Donar, Norse god of thunder

character in Grettirs Saga

US essayist, naturalist and poet, 1817-62, author of Walden, Civil Disobedience and other works

Icelandic leader of an attempt to colonize America, fl. 1002-1015

one of the gates in the old walls around York, England

Turgesius, 9th century Viking conqueror of Ireland

Icelander, 1816-1879

one of Gudrun's husbands in the Laxdoela Saga

Icelandic scholar and professor, 1752-1829, who copied the Beowulf manuscript and published it in 1815

character in Borges story

German photographer and painter, 1908-1986, whose book of photographs of Argentina has a preface by Borges

character in the Fostbroethra Saga who dies singing

town near Peterborough, England

character in the Egils Saga

powerful leader in Thorsness in medieval Iceland, mentioned in the Eyrbyggja and Njal Sagas, grandfather of Snorri Sturluson

character in Borges story said to have written a biography of Shakespeare published in the USA. Possible allusion to Thorpe Running wrote on Borges’s ultraist poetry in Bloom’s Jorge Luis Borges, Modern Critical Views

Thorstein Olafsson, Viking chieftain in late ninth-century Scotland

Thorstein Oxfoot, Icelander whose adventures are narrated in the Heimskringla

two Icelandic sagas feature Thorsteinn Uxafotr, who also appears in the Flateyjarbok

character in the Sturlunga Saga, enemy of Hrafn Sveinbjornsson

Danish sculptor, c. 1770-1844, known for his heroic neoclassical monuments

Egyptian god, see also Hermes Trismegisto

Poe story, 1844

Mil y una noches, Lane translation, 1840

Fishburn and Hughes: "An anonymous collection of tales of Indian origin but of uncertain date translated into Persian and Arabic. Its nucleus was expanded with stories from Baghdad, anecdotes about rogues and tricksters from Cairo, and other independent tales, to make up a number intended originally as meaning simply 'a large quantity'. The stories can be divided into three kinds: 'histories', or long romances based on historical or allegedly historical events; anecdotes, short stories dealing with historical personages, mainly of the Abbasid Caliphate; and romances and romantic fiction. The last category can be subdivided into: stories which are purely romantic, making free use of the supernatural; stories which appear to be purely fictitious but which reproduce the habits and manners of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Eyonbite Sultans of Egypt; and - the largest category, from which most European authors have drawn inspiration - stories which are purely fictitious, and stories of miracles and saints. There are also moral stories and some tales which serve as an excuse for dissertations upon various subjects. The most striking characteristic of the book is the extreme simplicity of its style, which belies most Western readers' expectation of tales 'showering barbaric pearl and gold'. The Thousand and One Nights first became known in Europe during the eighteenth century. Borges was an avid reader of the work, which he declared 'superior to the Koran' for its imaginative power. He often referred to it in his fiction and wrote an essay on its various translations (TL 92-109). As a boy he found Burton's unexpurgated translation, published in London in 1885-8, in his father's library. This edition was considered pornographic at the time because of its illustrations and sexual references, and Borges claims he had to read it secretly in the attic but was too carried away by the splendour of the narrative to notice its erotic content. A number of other editions are also mentioned by Borges. Many aspects of the book fascinated him, such as the circular form of the narrative which makes it the eternal book, the idea of multiple stories told within the framework of a single story, and the disquieting effect of the story which includes its own story-telling. TL: in Vol. 10, 128-9, of Burton's Arabian Nights discusses the rise of Sufism (before 815 AD) and its influence upon Islamic thought and art. Burton defines 'Sufyism' as 'a revival of classic Platonism and Christian Gnosticism with a mingling of modern Hylozoism; which, quickened by the glowing imagination of the East, speedily formed itself into a creed the most poetical and impractical, the most spiritual and the most transcendental ever invented.' See Night of Nights, Scheherazade." (197-98)

general, character in Borges story

character in Borges story

May Sinclair biography, 1912

Short story by Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960).

Chesterton story in The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, 1936

Machen, 1895

Stein novellas, 1908

Santayana, 1910

Shaw, 1901

May Sinclair novel, 1914

Hemingway, 1923

Waley study, 1939

Kipling story

the second of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, 1872

Old Norse name for Thrace

giant in the Elder Edda who stole Thor's ax

a humorous episode in the Elder Edda involving Thor, Freyja and the giant Thrymr

Trueno a la izquierda, Christopher Morley, 1925

Swiss river

Fishburn and Hughes: "A pseudo-Chinese literary reference, untypical since military heroism is not a common theme in Chinese literature. In early Chinese poetry references to bravery were normally connected with hunting. In later periods military figures were presented as tragic victims who had died on distant borders and whose souls wandered unhappily, or as errant husbands who had abandoned their wives for long periods. Only in popular fiction do bandit-warriors attain heroic stature." (198)

Chinese monster

Chinese monster

river in Rome

Fishburn and Hughes: "The greatest river in Central Italy, by whose left bank Rome was built." (198)

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Roman political leader, c. 168-133

country in Himalayas

brand of alarm clocks

Parodi: popular marca de relojes que aparece en algunas publicidades de la época; Bioy la menciona en el Cap. xxiv de Sueño.

Henriette Félicité, Roger Charles Tichborne's French mother, who recognized the Claimant

heir to the Tichborne baronetcy, b. 1829, whose disappearance, and the subsequent reappearance of someone claiming to be him, led to the longest case in British legal history

Stevenson poem on premonitions of death, about the battle of Ticonderoga in New York

Borges essay in Historia de la eternidad

Argentine poet, 1906-1980, pseudonym of Israel Zeitlin

Gaspar Martin philosophical work, 1924

Borges essay, perhaps El tiempo circular

Tianjin, city in China

Fishburn and Hughes: "A city in north-east China." (198)

Greek earth god

the planet earth