Finder's Guide: K

Chinese unicorn

character in Kafka novels

character in Kafka's Prozess

Knorr von Rosenroth, 1677-1684

Scholem, 1950

Persian poet

oasis and town in Saudi Arabia

Fishburn and Hughes : "In Muslim mythology, the mountain range which surrounds the earth." (106)

Czech-German writer, 1883-1924, author of Der Prozess, Das Schloss, Die Verwandlung, Amerika and numerous stories, parables and letters.

Fishburn and Hughes : see Qaphqa.

name of one of four Biblical monsters seen by Ezekiel, according to the Zohar

possessor of magic cup, according to Richard Burton

Fishburn and Hughes : "One of the early kings of ancient Persia. Firdusi's epic, the Shahnamah , contains much legendary material about Kai Kosru's life, including a story of rival brotherhood, not dissimilar to that of the elder Cyrus and his brother Smerdis. With reference to the 'sevenfold cup', there are allusions in various Persian writers, but not in Firdusi, to a cup with seven lines belonging to Jamshid, an earlier legendary king of Persia." (106)

a universal history attributed to the priest Konrad, the German translator of the Chanson de Roland

Kafka story about message from an emperor, 1917

Japanese scholar, 1862-1913, here mentioned for his writings on the tea ceremony

town in Michigan

Sanskrit writer of Kashmir, author of the Rajatarangini or River of Kings, a Sanskrit chronicle of the kings of Kashmir, 1148

epic poem of Finland, compiled in 1835 by Elias Lönnrot

Hindu goddess of energy, time, change and death

Nomadic tribes living in northeastern Mongolia. 

Hindu book of love

Parodi : “ Kama-Sutra y/o Ananga-Ranga ”: el Kama-Sutra , el más antiguo manual de erotología hindú, escrito en sánscrito tal vez en el siglo III, se atribuye al filósofo Vatsyayana. El Ananga Ranga , un manual de características similares, fue escrito por Kalyana malla en honor de Ahmed Khan Lodi, que gobernó la India entre 1451 y 1526. Con frecuencia estas dos obras se presentan en forma conjunta y algunos textos del Ananga Ranga provienen del Kama Sutra . Ambas fueron traducidas al inglés por Sir Richard Francis Burton.

town in Japan

character from the Arabian Nights

Tres compañeros, Remarque novel, 1938

Japanese monster

German expressionist poet

character in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane

D. H. Lawrence novel, 1923

Canguros, cobra y corales, A. E. Johann, 1936

state in United States

city in Missouri

German metaphysician, 1724-1804, author of Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Prologomena zu einer jeden kunftigen Metaphysik and other works

Fishburn and Hughes : "The twelve concepts claimed by Kant to be necessary to a classification of sensory experience, each corresponding to a function of human understanding (see Critique of Pure Reason ). They are divided into four sets: quantity, quality, relation and modality. Each is symmetrically subclassified into three aspects: unity, totality and plurality; reality, negation and limitation; substance and accidence, cause and effect, and reciprocity; possibility, existence and necessity. In his 'Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy', which forms an appendix to The World as Will and Representation , Schopenhauer attacks the rigidity of these categories, saying that, in deference to his liking for symmetry, Kant 'goes as far as to do open violence to truth' so that the system 'has become the Procrustean bed on which Kant forces every possible consideration'." (106)

Chinese Buddhist monster, fish with one hundred heads, the reincarnation of an impatient teacher

Buddhist leader of Sankhya school

town in Nepal

Karl Marx's masterwork on political economy, first volume published in 1867

art critic mentioned in Borges story

Work by Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), sometimes called Agutagawa.

Hungarian writer, 1887-1938

rhinoceros in the Arabian Nights

in runic inscription

German nobleman, 1757-1828, friend of Goethe

Leonhard Frank novella, 1927

Icelandic saga about Charlemagne

character in Borges story

ancient Egyptian city

Japanese temple

Burton translation, 1880

US mathematician, 1878-1955, co-author of Mathematics and the Imagination

German printer of the 15th century, from Münnerstadt, Franconia

city in Germany

Austrian writer, 1873-1959

Kaitibi of Nishapur, Persian poet, d. 1434, author of the Majma'-ulbahrain or Confluence of the Two Seas

capital of Nepal

Fishburn and Hughes : "The capital of Nepal." (107)

Japanese critic, 1915-2008, author of a history of Japanese literature

character in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : “el Poldo Katz”: Poldo es sobrenombre frecuente de Leopoldo.

Sudermann novel, 1890

Pittsburgh financier, character in Borges story

US movie actor, 1895-1966

English romantic poet, 1795-1821, author of On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Endymion, Lamia and other poems

defrocked priest, character in Shaw play John Bull's Island, misspelled Kreegan in first reference

Silvina Ocampo, short story.

friend of Borges

Argentine writer, author of Poemas para el ángel

Swiss novelist and poet, 1819-90

US writer and political activist, 1880-1968

German expressionist poet, 1890-1946, associated with Aktion

New York gangster

American mystery writer and a professor of English (1908-1996).

Fishburn and Hughes : "Perhaps an allusion to Martin Kemnitz (1522-1586), a German Lutheran theologian." (107)

also Chemnitz, German Lutheran theologian, 1522-86

Biblical city

Parodi : alusión al “John F. Kennedy International Airport”, uno de los aeropuertos de la ciudad de Nueva York. 

scholar, author of The Earliest English Poetry, 1943, and translator of Beowulf

U. S. president, 1917-63

English journalist and writer, 1894-1968. His complete name was Milward Rodon Kennedy Burge.

Meissner, 1921

Borges essay in Historia de la eternidad

in London

county in southeastern England

state in United States

character in Hawthorne's Marble Faun

Eleanor Kenyon Stimson Brooks, 1884-1944, wife of Van Wyck Brooks, here called Eleanor Kenyon

German astronomer, 1571-1630, author of Astronomia nova and other works

Greek death-bringer

Scottish scholar of medieval literature, 1855-1923, author of Epic and Romance, Essays on Medieval Literature and other works

Biblical town in Moab

Dutch linguist and Orientalist, 1833-1917, author of Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indie, a Manual of Indian Buddhism and a translation of the Saddharma Pundarika

Akutagawa short story

French writer born in Clara, Province of Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1898-1979

town in Cumbria, England where Hugh Walpole died

medieval Jewish demon

Hauptmann novella, 1924

island at end of the keys archipelago in southern Florida

author of The Story of Twentieth-Century Exploration, 1938

German writer and philosopher from the Russian Baltic provinces, 1880-1946, author of Europas Zukunft, Politik, Wirthschaft, Weisheit, Philosophie als Kunst, Amerika, Das Buch vom personlichen Leben and other works

Babylonian monster

character in the Hung Lu Meng

Chinese emperor, ruled 1795-1820

Chinese province.

US scholar, 1900-1985, author of The Library of Pico della Mirandola, Hippocrates latinus and Studies in Medieval Science, here called Pearl Kibbe

Chaplin film, 1921

Parodi : “Pibes modernos”: la frase encierra una doble alusión a dos famosas películas del cine mudo, ambas de Charlie Chaplin: The Kid (1921), conocida en Argentina como “El pibe”, y Modern Times (“Tiempos modernos”), de 1936.

English playwright, 1558-1594. 

W. Lowrie study, 1938

Danish philosopher and religious thinker, 1813-55, author of Frygt og Baevan and other works

Kyiv, capital of the Ukraine

county in Ireland

Fishburn and Hughes : "A small Irish town in County Kerry, Munster. Round towers are a feature of the Irish landscape; as an emblem of Ireland, they figured in the Irish national flag during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. No round tower is recorded in Kilgarvan." (107)

city and county of Ireland

Hugh Walpole, 1942

Irish traitor and hero, character in Borges story

character in Kipling novel Kim

Kipling novel about India, 1901

geographer, 1908-?, author of The Geography in the Middle Ages and of works on Africa

Jin Ping Mei or The Plum in the Golden Vase , chinese novel composed by Lanling xiaoxiao Sheng during the late Ming Dynasty.

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm collection of fairy tales, 2 vols., 1813-1814

Bernárdez book of poems, 1924

T. F. Powys, 1930

1933 film starring Fay Wray

Shakespeare tragedy, 1606

Yeats translation of Sophocles play, 1928

Yeats play, 1904

US civil rights leader, 1929-1968

English novelist, writer and clergyman, 1819-75, author of Westward Ho!, Hereward the Wake, Water Babies, The Saint's Tragedy and numerous other works

Kyoto, city and former capital of Japan

English author, born in India, 1865-1936, author of Kim, the Jungle Books, Just So Stories, Barrack-room Ballads, Plain Tales from the Hills, Many Inventions, Puck of Pook's Hill and other works

Fishburn and Hughes : "A British writer born in India. Kipling was educated in England but worked in India as a journalist from the age of 16 to 25, when he returned to England. His memory of India persisted, and he is most strongly identified with his images of life under the British Raj, as in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), The Jungle Book (1894/5) and Kim (1901). 
The Man on the Threshold: Borges, a great admirer of Kipling, was one of the first to recognise that beyond the occasionally jingoistic descriptions of Victorian India lay a deep appreciation of the country's essence distilled by Kipling's imagination. A feature of Kipling's writing that Borges claimed had influenced him was the minute accumulation of circumstantial detail to create atmosphere. 
The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim: Kipling's short story 'On the City Wall' from his collection In Black and White (1897) is similar to 'The Approach to Almotasim'; it concerns the bravery of the prostitute Lalun and the cowardice of her suitor, the Mohammedan Wali Dad, an unbeliever who has been educated as an Englishman. When a skirmish breaks out between Moslems and Hindus, Wali Dad pretends to plunge into the fight, but in fact hides away and wounds himself." (107-08)

Wells novel, 1905

executioner mentioned by Richard Burton

Athanasius Kircher, Jesuit scientist, polymath and philosopher, 1601-1680

A formerly nomadic community from Kyrgyzstan. 

Scottish cleric, 1644-1692, author of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

painter in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : en la mitología griega, Quirón es un centauro inteligente, sabio y de buen carácter, dócil, a diferencia de la mayoría de los de su especie. Vivía en una cueva del monte Pelión, en Tesalia, y fue un gran educador en música, arte, caza, moral, medicina y cirugía, y tutor de varios héroes griegos. En Comedia de Dante, Quirón es el guardián del séptimo círculo del Infierno.

name of Sigurd in the Laxdoela Saga

pseudonym of German writer, Alfred Henschke, 1890-1928

German-born US scholar, 1863-1954, editor of the Beowulf

character in Borges-Levinson story

Swiss painter, graphic artist and art theorist, 1879-1940

German writer, 1777-1811

German expressionist poet, 1881-1968, author of poems about the First World War

Hesse, 1919-1920

district in Yukon Territory, Canada, where gold was discovered in 1896

De Quincey novel, 1832, based on Grillparzer's Kloster bei Sendomir, 1828, works which may in turn have inspired Hladík's Los enemigos

pseud. of Washington Irving

Faulkner, short story, 1949.

in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

English author, 1897-1936, creator of Lassie

German mystic, 1636-1689, author of Kabbalah denudata

Fishburn and Hughes : "Christian Hebraist and devoted student of the Cabbala, whose teachings he believed afforded proof of the doctrines of Christianity, such as the identification of Jesus with Adam Kadmon (primordial man) and of the Trinity with the three highest sephirot (spheres, or divine manifestations in which God emerges from his hidden abode - also known as 'emanations'). Knorr wrote extensively on the subject, his major work being the Kabbala Denudata (1677- 84) whose first two volumes comprise Cabbalistic nomenclature and other essays, and the remaining two writings by Isaac Luria." (108)

Knossos, Minoan palace in Crete, sometimes spelled Cnossos

Scottish religious reformer, founder of Presbyterianism, 1514?-1572, author of First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, Treatise on Predestination and other works

English theologian, poet and crime writer, 1888-1957

Zen fables

German literary critic, 1855-1931, co-author of Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, 1900

German ethnologist and explorer, 1872-1924, author of Zum Animismus der sudamerikanischen Indianer and several other works. Also known as Theodor Koch-Grünberg. 

Cochin, coastal city in southern India

Argentine writer, b. 1941

Argentine translator and writer, heir of the Borges estate, 1937-2023 
 

Leo von König, German artist, 1871-1944

Königsberg, now Kalinigrad, former capital of East Prussia, now a western outpost of Russia

German scholar of Norse mythology and Buddhism, 1808-1863, author of Die Religion des Buddhas, 1857, and Literarische Einleitung in die nordische Mythologie, 1837

character in Soffici film Prisioneros de la tierra

name of the speaker in Ecclesiastes

US movie actor, 1889-1938, often seen as the bad guy in cowboy films

subject of St. Olaf, king of Norway

Köln newspaper from 1798 to 1945

city in Hungary

Fishburn and Hughes : "The Hungarian name for Cluj, originally a Roman colony and later the capital of Transylvania." (108)

Jean Paul Richter, 1820-22

Marx and Engels, 1848

US playwright, novelist and translator, 1890-1974, editor of the Modern Library

Congo, 1932 film with Walter Huston, a remake of the silent film West of Zanzibar with Lou Chaney

German editor of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda

Konunga aevi, Ari Thorgilsson book on the lives of foreign kings, now lost

Fishburn and Hughes : "From the Arabic Qu'ran , meaning recitation. The Koran is the sacred book of Mohammedanism, believed in Islam to be the infallible word of God as revealed to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. Tradition dates it to the year 610. The Koran teaches the oneness of God, his righteousness and omnipotence, and his divine mercy and forgiveness. Averroës’ Search, CF 237: Abulcasim's reflection 'that the Lord possesses the key to all hidden things and that there is not a green or withered thing on earth which is not registered in His Book' is probably a reference to the five Pillars of Islam (the Kalima, or belief that there is no God but Allah, prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage) and a paraphrase of 'Not an atom's weight in earth or heaven escapes your Lord nor is there any object smaller or greater but is recorded in a glorious book' (Sura 10, Jonah, 61). The idea of the Koran as the mother of the Book deposited in Heaven and persisting in the centre of God in the words of Ghazali, 'unaltered by its passage through human written pages and human understanding’, stems from Sura 13, The Cave, 139: 'God abrogates, establishes and joins what he pleases; and with him is the Mother of the Book.' Borges discusses various interpretations of the Eternal Book in TL 358. The Secret Miracle: 'And God had him die for a hundred years.' This quotation from the Koran (ch. 2, v. 259) is taken from the Sura named 'The Cow' and refers to an incident in which Allah gave proof of his power to an unbeliever by altering the passing of time. Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth: the epigraph stems from the chapter in the Koran entitled The Spider . The whole sentence reads: 'The false gods which the idolaters serve besides Allah may be compared to the spider's cobweb. Surely the spider's is the frailest of all dwellings, if they but knew it.'" (108-09)

Hungarian film director and producer, 1893-1956

region of the Sudan

Argentine writer, 1915-2002

Argentine writer, 1916-2010

Icelandic skald

Argentine intellectual, founder of the Grupo Renovación in La Plata

Argentine philosopher, 1860-1936

Argentine playwright and political figure, founder of the Teatro del Pueblo in La Plata

Polish-American philosopher of language, 1879-1950, author of The Manhood of Humanity

name of kosher butcher in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : “el carnicero Kosher”: supuesto carnicero; el apellido sugiere que posiblemente vende carne ateniéndose a los preceptos del judaísmo relativos a los alimentos puros.

perhaps the Koshikijima islands in southern Japan

pseudonym of Fernando Fallik, Slovakian-born Argentine artist, b. 1924, part of the Movimiento Madí

uncivil master of ceremonies of Japanese legend, subject of an early Borges story

Capek, 1924

Scandinavian sea monster, subject of a poem by Tennyson

Tennyson poem

German scholar, author of Die Kultur der Griechen, 1943, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1934 and other works

George Herriman cartoon character, subject of numerous animated films from 1916 to 1960

Klabund play, 1925

in Moscow

Swedish industrialist, 1880-1932

US poet and novelist, 1883-1966, co-founder of The American Caravan

Prisioneros de guerra, Feuchtwanger book, 1919

character in the Nibelungenlied

Hindu deity, the eighth avatar of Vishnu

Runeberg theological work, 1904

publisher in Leipzig and Stuttgart

friend of Emma Zunz, character in Borges story

primitive tribe similar to the Yahoos, mentioned in Brodie's report

Russian prince and anarchist, 1842-1921

German family of industrialists, mentioned here because of Alfried Krupp, 1907-1967, and his association with Nazism

American writer, critic, and naturalist (1893-1970). 

Chinese goddess of mercy

Austrian expressionist writer and artist, 1877-1959

character in Borges-Bioy filmscript

character in Jaromir Hladik's verse drama Los enemigos

Coleridge poem, written in 1797, published in 1816

Mongol emperor of China, founder of the Yuan dynasty, 1215?-1294

Middle High German heroic epic, written c. 1230, about the adventures of Kudrun and Hartmut, sometimes Gudrun

friend of Borges

Fishburn and Hughes : "A friend of Borges, mentioned in 'The Other Death' and the dedicatee of 'Story of the Warrior and the Captive'. In Borges's fiction the name Ulrica, used in 'An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain' and given to the eponymous heroine of a story in The Book of Sand , seems to apply to the prototype of the northern European woman, proud, noble and unattainable." (109)

German translator (1884-1961), know for his translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsue-Kin.

German philologist and folklorist, 1822-1881, author of numerous works on comparative mythology, Indo-Germanic peoples and languages, German folktales and early literature, etc.

Parodi : un licor dulce y transparente condimentado con comino, en alemán Kümmel . 

chamberlain, 1659-1703, character in Japanese story of the forty seven Ronins

character in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Kusinagara, place in India where Buddha sank into Nirvana

upright men of Islam whose mission is to justify the world to God

Islamic monster, bull with four thousand eyes

Chinese admiral, character in Borges story

mythical character in Dunsany

tango