Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

“i) a study of the essential metrical rules of French prose, illustrated with examples taken from Saint-Simon (Revue des langues romanes, Montpellier, October 1909); j) a reply to Luc Durtain (who had countered that no such rules existed), illustrated with examples taken from Luc Durtain (Revue des langues romanes, Montpellier, December 1909).”

Hidden in the list of accolades, the critic lists two contrasting works: a study and then a response to criticism regarding that study. This serves as a metonym for the story as a whole; these two entries describe the way in which the story itself is constructed, as a review plus a defense, which gives the reader a rhetorical entry point into understanding the text.

“I shall turn now to the other, the subterranean, the interminably heroic production–the oeuvre nonpareil, the oeuvre that must remain—for such our human limitations!—unfinished.”

This declaration represents a transition in the text from correcting Mme. Henri Bachelier’s catalog to analyzing Menard’s work directly. The diction and tone also serve to reinforce the shift—the grandiosity with which the critic speaks of Menard highlights the literary importance that he will place on Menard’s work.

“I know that such a claim is on the face of it absurd; justifying that ‘absurdity’ shall be the primary object of this note.”

The acknowledgment of the absurdity of Menard’s project serves a double purpose: First, it shows the reader that Borges recognizes, and is commenting on, this absurdity; and second, it shows that the critic’s analysis will engage with the social and cultural reaction to Menard’s work, rather than purely the work itself. This also feeds into the theme of Relationship Between Reader and Author.

“One was that philological fragment by Novalis–number 2005 in the Dresden edition, to be precise–which outlines the notion of total identification with a given author.”

Initially, Menard considered attempting to recreate Cervantes’s life in order to achieve this total identification. However, this sort of total identification was eventually rejected, as Menard thought a more interesting project would be to recreate Don Quixote from the experiences of Menard himself. This helps reinforce the theme of Visible Versus Hidden Work, as the identification with the author is partially what makes the critic take on this exploration of Menard’s career and his hidden works.

“Those who have insinuated that Menard devoted his life to writing a contemporary Quixote besmirch his illustrious memory. Pierre Menard did not want to compose another Quixote, which surely is easy enough–he wanted to compose the Quixote.”

This is the first moment in the text in which the true contours of Menard’s project are revealed to the reader. The critic, while explaining what Menard’s intentions were, simultaneously speaks of him in grand, respectful terms, and therefore engages in a type of rhetorical exaggeration in order to make sure that the reader takes Menard’s work seriously.

“‘My purpose is merely astonishing,’ he wrote me on September 30, 1934, from Bayonne. ‘The final term of a theological or metaphysical proof—the world around us, or God, or chance, or universal Forms—is no more final, no more uncommon, than my revealed model. The sole difference is that philosophers publish pleasant volumes containing the intermediate stages of their work, while I am resolved to suppress those stages of my own.’”

Earlier than this point, the reader remains unaware that the critic and Menard have a professional relationship. This knowledge recontextualizes the rest of the work—it can be read in a different light, especially with regard to the critic’s praise of Menard—and provides a deeper characterization of the critic. However, there is also irony present in this statement, as the reader remains aware of the potential pitfalls in the critic’s biased perspective.

“‘The task I have undertaken is not in essence difficult,’ I read at another place in that letter. ‘If I could just be immortal, I could do it.’ Shall I confess that I often imagine that he did complete it, and that I read the Quixote—the entire Quixote—as if Menard had conceived it?”

Menard’s speculation on his own potential immortality serves to contrast him with Cervantes, who achieved immortality writing the exact same book that Menard is attempting to write. Menard believes he will only be able to complete his Don Quixote if he is immortal, as it would take an infinite amount of time to independently write the book. However, since the critic declares his fragmentary version to be more subtle than Cervantes’s finished work, it begs the question as to what immortality means, and underscores the story’s concern with Finding Meaning in Literature.

“Why the Quixote? my reader may ask. That choice, made by a Spaniard, would not have been incomprehensible, but it no doubt is so when made by a Symboliste from Nimes, a devotee essentially of Poe—who begat Baudelaire, who begat Mallarme, who begat Valery, who begat M. Edmond Teste.”

The critic’s speculations on the choice of Cervantes as originator serves to highlight the story’s deep irony. Just as the critic speculates on Menard’s motivations, so too might a reader of this story speculate on the intentions of Borges in choosing Don Quixote here. The explanation then given by Menard in the following letter can serve as a mouthpiece for Borges himself, in a bit of authorial intrusion.

“In spite of these three obstacles, Menard’s fragmentary Quixote is more subtle than Cervantes’. Cervantes crudely juxtaposes the humble provincial reality of his country against fantasies of the romance, while Menard chooses as his ‘reality’ the land of Carmen during the century that saw the Battle of Lepanto and the plays of Lope de Vega. What burlesque brushstrokes of local color that choice would have inspired in a Maurice Barres or Rodriguez Larreta*! Yet, Menard, with perfect naturalness, avoids them.”

This passage reinforces a central theme of the work, the Relationship Between Reader and Author. The choices made by Cervantes are deemed by the critic to be inferior to those same choices made by Menard, with the only difference between the two being the historical context with which they were made. The critic, then, is basing his entire analysis on the meaning generated purely by the continued flow of history.

“The Cervantes text and the Menard text are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say–but ambiguity is richness.).”

The conflation of ambiguity with richness is a confident declaration that helps establish the authoritative and knowledgeable voice of this piece. The critic’s suggestion that a greater ambiguity equals a greater richness also serves his rhetorical goals, as the ambiguity in Visible Versus Hidden Work can offer up, in that view, a greater breadth of analysis.

“History, the mother of truth!—the idea is staggering. Menard, a contemporary of William James, defines history not as a delving into reality but as the very fount of reality. Historical truth, for Menard, is not ‘what happened’; it is what we believe happened.”

In the critic’s view, just as history stems from what we believe happened, so too does our interpretation of literature depend on our view of historical events. The historical context that the critic keeps going back to in order to declare Menard’s version superior is just as dependent on our interpretations of it as fictional works.

“The contrast in styles is equally striking. The archaic style of Menard—who is, in addition, not a native speaker of the language in which he writes—is somewhat affected. Not so the style of his precursor, who employs the Spanish of his time with complete naturalness.”

This short paragraph represents the only time in the story in which the critic deems Cervantes’s Don Quixote superior to the version by Menard. In doing so, the critic is demonstrating that looking at the historical context—a requirement for fully interpreting a piece of literature, in the critic’s view—can apply both ways, and actually detract from a later work rather than just add to it.

“There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless.”

This declaration by the critic can be viewed as deeply ironic, as the entirety of the story is based on an intellectual exercise (cataloging and analyzing the works of a deceased French author). However, this statement in the midst of the self-serious analysis of an absurd text serves to highlight the absurdity and subjectiveness of the entire exercise.