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PARTISAN REVIEW
these authors-each so very different from the rest-persuade us,
because words, characters, and things constitute an indissoluble unity;
it is impossible to conceive of one part without the others.
It
is this per–
fect integration of style and content that I refer to when
I
speak of the
quality of
essentiality
any creative writing must possess.
The
essentiality
of the language of great writers is detected, by con–
trast, in the forced and false writing of their epigones. Borges is one of
the most original prose stylists of the Spanish language, and perhaps the
greatest Spanish stylist of the twentieth century. For that very reason, he
has exerted a great influence, and if I may say so, an unfortunate one.
Borges's style is unmistakable, and functions extraordinarily well, giv–
ing life and credibility to a world of sophisticated intellectual and
abstract ideas and curiosities.
In
this world, philosophical systems, the–
ological disquisitions, myths and literary symbols, reflective and specu–
lative tasks, and universal history (contemplated from an eminently
literary perspective) provide the raw material of invention. Borges's style
adapts itself to its subject matter and merges with it in a powerful alloy,
and the reader feels from the first sentences of his stories and essays that
these works have the inventive and sovereign quality of true fictions,
that they could only have been told in this way, in this intelligent, ironic,
and mathematically precise language-not a word too few, not a word
too many-with its cold elegance and aristocratic defiance, privileging
intellect and knowledge over sensation and emotion, playing with eru–
dition, making a technique of presumption, eluding all forms of senti–
mentality and the body and sensuality (or noting them at a great
distance, as lower manifestations of existence). His stories are human–
ized thanks to their subtle irony, a fresh breeze that lightens the com–
plexity of the arguments, intellectual labyrinths, and baroque
constructions which are almost always their subject matter. The color
and grace of Borges's style lies first and foremost in its use of adjectives,
which shake the reader with their audacity and eccentricity ("No one
saw him disembark in the
unanimous
night"), and in its violent and
unexpected metaphors, whose adjectives or adverbs, besides fleshing
out an idea or highlighting a physical or psychological character trait,
often serve to foster a Borgesian atmosphere. Precisely because it is
essential, Borges's style is inimitable. When his admirers or literary fol–
lowers copy his way of using adjectives, his irreverent sallies, his witti–
cisms and poses, their stylings are as obvious as badly made wigs that
fail to pass as real hair, proclaiming their falseness and bringing ridicule
upon the unhappy heads they cover. Jorge Luis Borges was a formida–
ble creator, and there is nothing more irritating or bothersome than the
