Finder's Guide: Q

Maya god mentioned in Borges story

Fishburn and Hughes : "A Quiché word from qaholah , 'to beget', meaning 'father' and referring to a primary spirit, the Great Father, who preceded creation. According to the Quiché concept of dual divinity, Qaholom was accompanied by Alom (from alan , 'to give birth'), the Great Mother. Though there does not seem to have been a pyramid of this name at the time of the conquest of Mexico, pyramids were a predominant form both in Mayan and in Aztec religious architecture. See Book of the Common." (161)

sacred letrine in Babylon in Borges story, obvious reference to Franz Kafka

Fishburn and Hughes : "Though the pseudo-Arabic transliteration of this word gives it a Middle Eastern ring, commensurate with its setting in Babylon, it is clearly an allusion to Franz Kafka (1883- 1924). Borges admired Kafka and openly acknowledged his influence on the story 'The Lottery of Babel'. In an essay entitled 'Kafka and his Precursors' he pays tribute to the Czech writer, saying that he influenced not only those who wrote after him but also those who came before him, by awakening in his readers an awareness of the obsessive quality of certain works of literature which pre-dated his own (TL 363)." (161)

al-Kazwini, Persian writer, d. 1095, author of various travel books

Plutarch dialogue, here called Cena de los siete sabios

British writer, character in Borges story, author of The Rose of Yesterday, The Secret Mirror, Statements, April March and The God of the Labyrinth

play by James Barrie, 1901

Edouard Dujardin, 1905

London bookseller mentioned in Borges story, 1819-1899, founded Quaritch in 1847

Fishburn and Hughes : "An English bookseller and collector first employed by the firm of Bohn. Quaritch started his own firm in Leicester Square and issued multiple catalogues of foreign books, early publications and rare manuscripts, developing the largest trade in old books in the world. He was the first publisher of FitzGerald's Omar Khayam . " (161-62)

character in Herbert Quain's The Secret Mirror, perhaps related to the Philip Quarles in Huxley's Point Counterpoint

Hamilton story, 1730

book by Guillermo Ara and others, 1970

Lugones poem

French series of books that introduce topics to a popular audience

Francophone Canadian province

town in Uruguay, site of battle in 1886 in uprising against the government of general Santos

Fishburn and Hughes : "The Quebracho uprisings in Uruguay lasted from 26 to 31 March 1886, when young rebels from Montevideo tried to prevent the re-election of a military government. Though they were defeated, their cause became politically important." (162)

tango

Mamoulian film, 1933

Strachey, 1921

pseud. of two cousins, Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee, US writers of detective stories and editors of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

British nobleman, originator of the code of rules governing modern boxing, 1844-1900, father of Lord Alfred Douglas and enemy of Oscar Wilde

state in northeastern Australia

Carriego poem in El alma del suburbio

Elías Metchnikoff work (1905).

former garbage dump in southern Buenos Aires

Portuguese poet, 1842-91

coastal town in southeastern part of province of Buenos Aires

Ruiz work, created by mistake when the typographer transposed the letters of the title of Querencias juidas

Ruiz nativist poems, turned by mistake into Querencias judías

city and state in central Mexico

Fishburn and Hughes : "A town and state in Mexico." (162)

character in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : uno de los asistentes al cenáculo simbolista en el café Procope; en 1892, abre su propio tenebrarium, Les Cinq Saveurs , en el Barrio Latino.

poet in Bustos Domecq story, author of En Noche-Buena

Parodi : Vicente Wenceslao Querol (1836-1889) fue abogado, poeta, traductor, autor de odas, rimas y poemas hogareños entre los que se cuenta “En Noche-Buena”, dedicado “A mis ancianos padres”, incluido en la edición de Rimas de 1891. En una conversación con Borges, en 1966 ( Borges 1153-1154), Bioy recita un verso del poema de Querol: “ Hablan de pie mi padre y mis hermanos ”; Borges comenta: “Qué bien que se descubrieran manuscritos con versiones anteriores; por ejemplo: Hablan del pie ...y también: Hablan a pie... que sugiere una casa llena de animales; y elogiar el certero criterio del poeta, que eligió finalmente lo mejor”.

cherubim, spiritual beings mentioned in the Bible

Argentine critic, historian, sociologist and essayist, 1858-1934, author of La época de Rosas and of essay on criollismo

Argentine journalist and novelist, author of La vendedora de Harrods

ballad formerly attributed to Zúñiga

Nicholas Blake crime story, 1935, the first of fifteen Strangeway stories

C. F. Ramuz, 1935

Spanish poet, satirist, moralist and novelist, 1580-1645, author of the Buscón, the Sueños, Parnaso español, Política de Dios and numerous other works

Fishburn and Hughes : "A Spanish writer whose fame rests mainly on his picaresque novel El Buscón , his satirical poems and his burlesque 'letrillas'. Both in prose and poetry Quevedo's style is highly imaginative and baroque, characterised by puns, conceits and neologisms; his satire is pungent, dynamic and ruthless. He wrote five moral fantasies, the Sueños , which denounced the corruption and hypocrisy of the time and was censored by the Inquisition. Borges remarked on Quevedo's moral strength and uprightness, and on his refusal ever to strike a pathetic note. Though admiring the concision and intellectual density of his language, Borges seems to regret Quevedo's almost scientific approach to style which led him to mistrust the use of metaphors and made of him 'el literato de los literatos', a writers' writer (Other Inq. 36). See Hora de todos ..., Francis of Sales." (162)

from Janus Vitali's De Roma

Nouvelle by Guy de Maupassant (1890).

Argentine town on Bolivian border in province of Jujuy

Parodi : ciudad de la provincia de Jujuy, en el límite con Bolivia.

French philologist, 1799-1884, author of French-Latin dictionaries and of Melanges de philologies and Thesaurus poeticus

Fishburn and Hughes : "A distinguished Latin scholar who collaborated in a series of dictionaries and published numerous works of reference and annotated editions of classical authors. His Thesaurus poeticus linguae Latinae (1857) is an inventory of words used in Latin poetry." (162)

Short piece by French writer Léon Bloy (1846-1917) published in the Le Mendiant Ingrat (1898).

one of the most celebrated of traditional Spanish ballads, about conde Arnaldos

Graham Greene, novel, 1955.

character in Herbert Quain's The Secret Mirror

Alonso Quijano's niece in Don Quijote

name of hidalgo who in his madness dubs himself Don Quijote

main character in Cervantes's novel, also known as Alonso Quijano

Fishburn and Hughes : "The masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, regarded as the first modern novel for its blend of realism and fantasy. The story of the incredible adventures of a mad knight, it parodies the romances of chivalry and the values they upheld. Don Quixote came out in two successive volumes. The narrative in Part I (1605) is constantly interrupted by extraneous stories. The author responded to criticism and in Part II (1615) confined himself mainly to the relation of events. By chapter 44, however, the narrative begins to digress once more into episodes extraneous to the life of the hero and his companion Sancho Panza. Apart from its fantastic aspects and its technical innovations, the book has been considered a faithful record of life in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, rich in social innuendo and implied criticism, while the variety of scenes described affords vast scope for humour and pathos. The list of themes absent from Pierre Menard's version of 'Don Quijote', such as gypsies 'or conquistadors or mystics or Philip the Seconds or autos da fé' is a subtle reminder that these themes are absent also from the original, thereby challenging our understanding of 'realism' in literature. The tenuous relationship between fact and fiction is discussed by Borges from another angle in 'Partial Enchantments of Don Quixote' (Other Inq. 43). Recalling the episode in Part II, where characters pass comments, as readers, on Part I, Borges suggests that this self-reference has the disquieting effect of blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, making the reader aware that if the character can also be a reader, the reader may also be a character in someone else's fiction. The phrase 'truth, whose mother is history...' stems from a passage in Part I, ch. 9 in which Cervantes, showing his concern for realism, is seeking to establish the credibility of his story. His device of casting doubt on a detail in order to add credence to the rest was learnt and used by Borges in his fiction. Thus Cervantes's narrator tells of the discovery of the original manuscript, a text in Arabic by Cide Hamete Benengeli, and warns his readers that they may expect some small deviations from the truth, because the Arab chronicler may at times fall short in his praise of a Christian knight. This he considers reprehensible, for a historian must not twist the path of 'truth, whose mother is history...'" (163)

Spanish-born Jesuit, 1906-1993, taught at the Universidad del Salvador

town near Deán Funes in the province of Córdoba, Argentina

industrial suburb of Buenos Aires

Fishburn and Hughes : "An industrial and residential area in southern Buenos Aires on the banks of the River Plate. Though at one time favoured for weekend villas, particularly by the British, Quilmes has since become unfashionable, a heavily industrialised area, known mainly for Quilmes Beer, the largest brewing company in the world. Quilmes is not a seaside resort, though the river estuary does indeed look like a vast sea, sufficiently wide to have been the scene of naval battles." (162)

Parodi : 1) La ciudad de Quilmes, fundada en 1666, es estación ferroviaria del ferrocarril General Roca, en la línea Constitución-La Plata.

2) la ciudad de Quilmes está ubicada a unos 30 km al noreste de Tolosa. Para Quilmes, cf. “Limardo” i §26.

Parodi : “Quilmes Bock”, era la marca de una cerveza negra de origen alemán , c < 

Kilwa Kisiwani, island in Tanzania in east Africa

character in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop

chimera, fabulous animal

Lugones poem in Lunario sentimental

character in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : en Crónicas , este nombre corresponde a uno de los dos supuestos iniciadores de la arquitectura funcional y pretendido autor del breve folleto Hacia una arquitectura sin concesiones , publicado en 1937, en el que Quincey habría criticado a Le Corbusier (cf. “Tai An” i §14) y desaprobado Las siete lámparas de la arquitectura , la obra fundamental de John Ruskin (1819-1900), un escritor, crítico de arte, sociólogo, artista y reformador social británico ii, en la que en 1849 desarrolló sus ideas estéticas; (sobre Ruskin, cf. también infra §3). El apellido Quincey evoca al ensayista inglés Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), un autor a quien Borges menciona, cita y elogia en múltiples pasajes de su obra ensayística y de ficción. También para Borges el título fundamental en la vasta obra de De Quincey es Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). En Introducción a la Literatura Inglesa ( OCC II:352) escribe Borges: “ Las confesiones de un opiófago inglés […] refieren las vicisitudes de sus andanzas, de sus visiones, de sus pesadillas. Buscó un placer intelectual en el opio […] Con los años lo abrumaron las pesadillas, el espacio se dilataba de un modo que no puede abarcar el ojo humano […]”. Esas alucinaciones y sueños arquitectónicos bajo los efectos del opio, Borges los traspone en algunas de las arquitecturas alucinantes que encontramos en su obra (cf. por ejemplo, la Ciudad de los Inmortales en “El inmortal”, incluido en El Aleph , 1949).

See De Quincey, Thomas

Argentine writer, author of El viejo país and Viento Sur

Argentine painter, 1890-1977, known particularly for his paintings of La Boca neighborhood, including representations of port activity and workers' life

place mentioned in satirical text

nickname for cemetery, ñato being a flat-nosed person, here a skull

Parodi : ‘La Quinta del Ñato’ se aplica popularmente al cementerio, la finca en que reside la Muerte, generalmente representada por una calavera ‘ñata’, o sea, que carece de nariz (para ñato, cf. supra i §9; para ‘quinta’, “Doce” i §13).

vacation house in Suárez Lynch novella

street in Buenos Aires

Argentine intellectual, author of Entorno a lo Argentino 

Spanish poet and dramatist, 1772-1857

place mentioned in Don Quixote

Obligado poem

1949 anthology edited by Stephen Winstein

Shaw book, 1891

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Roman rhetorician, c. 35-c. 95, author of De Institutione Oratoria

Carlyle translation of Jean Paul Richter novel

Jean Paul Richter novella, 1796

“—Me contó un pajarito que  la señora atiende en un quiosco en la quinta. ¡Sandié, sandié , quién lo conociera a Quiosquito!” It is the diminutive form of kiosk, a kind of small store where cigarettes and candies are sold. The character Savastano would like that dissolute Mrs. Kruif did him a special “service” in that kiosk. (Mentioned in Bustos Domecq story.)

Uruguayan short-story writer and poet, 1878-1937, author of Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte and other works

Argentine caudillo, 1793-1835, subject of a famous 1845 vbook by Sarmiento

Chiron, wise centaur in Greek myth

Argentine painter, 1881-1968

owner of paint store in Necochea in Bustos Domecq story

Parodi : “la pinturería Quiroz”: supuesto negocio en Necochea.

Fishburn and Hughes : "The first Arabic dictionary, compiled by Jalil. It is not arranged alphabetically, but according to groups of sounds known as the 'order of Jalil'." (163)

capital city of Ecuador

Planes work

Sienkiewicz historical novel about ancient Rome, 1895-96

Parodi : El autor de Quo vadis? es el escritor polaco y Premio Nobel de Literatura de 1905, Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916); Quo vadis? fue publicada en 1896 y adaptada varias veces al cine, dando lugar a diversos largometrajes. Tal vez la confusión de Bustos se deba a que el famoso actor mexicano Juan Ramón Gil Samaniego (1899-1968) conocido como Ramón Novarro, uno de los grandes latin lovers del cine mudo, en 1926 protagonizó una de las varias versiones cinematográficas de Ben Hur , película muda basada en la novela del General Lewis Wallace (1827-1905): Ben Hur: una historia de los tiempos de Cristo , publicada en 1880. Una serie de elementos compartidos por ambas novelas y la profusión de versiones cinematográficas explican la confusión de Bustos.