Re: Borges in Gravity´s Rainbow

[Otto Sell]

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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2000 6:05 PM
Subject: Borges in Gravity´s Rainbow
In Gravity´s Rainbow, in the argentinian episodes, Pynchon (correction, the
narrator) says that Borges dedicated a poem to Graciela Imago Portales.
Well, I checked all the Borges´ books (previous and posteriors to 1945) and
didn´t find the verses.
Does anybody know if they are "pynchon made" or if they belong to an actual
Borges poem (and I didn´t check well)?
If it is a "fake", good for Mr P, since he got the Borges feeling.
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The argentinian episodes have always puzzled me . . .the hijacked submarine
reappears in the Illuminatus of Wilson but seems to come from Ishamel Reed.
On the referenced poem of  p. 383 (ep. 37) your post is a confirmation of
Weisenburger who says that it "does not appear in the Obras Poeticas
(Poetical Works) of JLB, nor does it crop up in the fictional works. It is
neatly consistent with the rhythms and motifs in Borge´s poems, and if the
lines are not his then Pynchon has worked up a decent imitation-a neat
trick, given the way Borges´s fiction reinvent literary history. The lines
translate: "The labyrinths of your uncertainty / detains me with the anxious
moon."" (Steven Weisenburger, Athens & London 1988, p. 187)
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0820310263/qid=958563926/sr=1-1/028-80
24413-3775052

Otto
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