Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote

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Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote (original title: Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote ) is a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges .

The story of Borges

Borges begins the story with the fact that the (fictional) author "Pierre Menard" only has incomplete catalogs of the complete fonts. Therefore, the “visible” works are listed in chronological order. The more important work, however, is the invisible - parts of Don Quixote . However, Menard himself did not decide, as he originally intended, to immerse himself fully in the world of Cervantes in order to write Quixote. Instead, he chose to continue being a 20th century person, himself. Although the narrator only found parts of the work, he soon assumes that the entire Quixote is written by Menard.

Both works, that of Cervantes and that of Menard, are identical word for word. However, there are much more differentiated interpretations of Menard's work. While the version of Cervantes must be seen from her time and from the point of view of Cervantes, in Menard's version, in addition to the original interpretation, aspects of the present day, the (different) author and other influences can be asserted: “This infinitely applicable technique prompts us to read the Odyssey as if it had been composed after the Aeneid , and the book Le Jardin du Centaure by Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. [...] If one ascribes the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Céline or James Joyce : Wouldn't that be a sufficient renewal of these weak spiritual instructions? "

History of origin

After Borges suffered a serious head injury at Christmas 1938 and he was floating “between life and death”, he suffered from the fear of not being able to write any more essays. “So I decided to try something completely new. If I couldn't do that, the disappointment wouldn't be so great. So I tried stories of a fantastic character. ”Of these“ attempts ”, Pierre Menard was the first to appear in May 1939 in the Argentine magazine Sur . Borges then published a slightly modified version in 1941 in the short story collection El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan ( The garden of paths that branch out ), which appeared in 1944 within the Ficciones ( fictions ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote . In: Universal history of wickedness, fictions, the aleph. The first part of the stories Borges, Munich 1991, ISBN 978-3-446-19878-4 , p. 129.
  2. ↑ Borges, Bulatovi´c, Canetti. Three conversations with Horst Bieneck . Bieneck, Munich 1965, Carl Hanser Verlag pp. 7–8.
  3. ^ Reconstruction of a text: Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote . In: Jorge Luis Borges for an introduction . Hanke-Schaefer, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-88506-987-3 , p. 45.