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Ginzberg, Ginsburg or Gryphius

Index: La muerte y la brújula, Ficciones, OC,Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974. 501, 507.

alias of Scharlach in Borges story, the name being derived from that of Christian David Ginsburg.

Fishburn and Hughes: "Ginzberg - Ginsburg - Gryphius: Three aliases of the character Scharlach in 'Death and the Compass'. The first two are common Jewish surnames: Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953) was an American Talmudic and Rabbinic scholar who wrote extensively on Jewish subjects and edited the Jewish Encyclopaedia; David Ginsburg (1831-1914), who converted to Christianity in 1846, was the author of The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature, first published in 1863. The narrator of The Unworthy Friend' is said to own books on the Cabbala by Ginsberg. Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664) was a leading German lyric poet and dramatist with a predilection for 'sanguinary themes and the terrors of the supernatural'. His delight in the absurd is exemplified by the title of one of his comedies, Horribilicribifax. " (79)