THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.3 Dobles and Duplos: Latin American Perspectives The Avatar in Panamathe dream world. 28 The fragility of personal identity and the process ofwriting remained constant themes. 29 Borges’ obsession with unity andselfhood had him pondering the experience of encountering oneself,what it would be like and who would claim to be the original. There aremultiple instances of doubles, character and situational doubling inBorges’ work and the trilogy showcasing these comprises “Borges y yo”(1957), “El otro” (1975), and “Veinticinco de Agosto, 1983” (1983), allversions of each other: “El otro” can be read as a palimpsest of “Borgesy yo”, and “Veinticinco de Agosto, 1983” as a palimpsest of “El otro”.The theme of Borges’ other self which is the subject of this trilogy is aconcept the writer had entertained long before he wrote “Borges y yo”. 30One of the first micro-texts, the somewhat misleading title of“Borges y yo” suggests there are two independent characters; Borges,and an unidentified first person narrator privy to Borges’ secrets, whichis not the case. The first person narrator controls the readers’perception of Borges and the text. Although it features a public andprivate voice of Borges, the double (yo) proves to be more powerfulthan the self as Borges the Man (yo) differentiates himself from Borgesthe Artist (Borges). “The intrinsic Borges resents the tyranny of theOther and seeks to free himself, yet also acknowledges the impossibilityof maintaining that independence”. 31 The double real Borges finds atruer image of himself in other phenomena (like the “rasgueo de unaguitarra” which also appears in “El fin”) 32 than does Borges the Writer,yet the double is resigned to perishing in the Other. This is highlightedby the final line: “No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página”. 3328“En general, los argumentos de los cuentos o los poemas, los soñaba. Esos sueñospodían ser buenos o pesadillescos” (40). Sergio Ranieri and Miguel Russo, “MariaKodama: ‘Por suerte nos encontramos, y fue lindísimo’” 40-42. “Homenaje a Borges”Edición especial de Colección, La Maga: Noticias de Cultura, 18, Febrero 1996.Borges admired Stevenson, Chesterton, Kipling, and Kafka, the latter by whom hewas not only influenced; he was the first translator of The Metamorphosis intoSpanish. Flávio Loureiro Chaves, Fiçcão latino-americana (Porto Alegre: Editora daUrgs [Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul], 1973) 148.29 Borges also wrote with Bioy Casares under the joint pseudonym of Bustos Domecq.Harss and Dohmann Into the Mainstream 118-119.30 With Borges’ permission, Donald A Yates had access to the writer’s unpublisheddrafts which he discovered in a notebook. The writings, in which he questions hisessential nature and identity, demonstrate experimentation with the notion of a dualBorges well before the appearance of “Borges y Yo”. Donald A. Yates, “Behind Borgesand I”, Modern Fiction Studies Vol 19, (3), Autumn 1973. 317-324.31 Lanin A. Gyurko, “Borges and the Theme of the Double”, Ibero AmerikanischesArchiv 2 (3): 1976, 193-226. 223.32 Borges, “El fin”, Obras Completas 3, (Barcelona: Emecé, 1989) 177-180.33 Not unlike Hawthorne’s protagonist in “Monsieur du Miroir”: “So inimitably does hecounterfeit me that I could almost doubt which of us is the visionary form”. CompleteShort Stories 287.128