TIM CONLEY

BORGES VERSUS PROUST: TOWARD A COMBATIVE LITERATURE

FANFARE AS THE LIGHTS come up in the arena. In this corner, the challenger: the blind Argentinian librarian, sometime poet, essayist and lecturer, erstwhile poultry inspector, eclectic yet conservative. And in the other corner, the beloved recumbent French champion, weighing in with seven weighty volumes of protracted sentences and winding (perhaps literally breathtaking) meditations on the slightest sensations. An unlikely match, it may be soberly remarked, with unlikely combatants. Why should these two authors be in contest with one another, how should they combat, what title is at stake—quite simply, what purpose is served by placing them in opposition? The opposition is actually not just a whim: Borges, in whom we find such impeccable literary knowledge and taste, disliked Proust, that other paragon of cultural refinement. Why this should be so is a question that inspires this essay, a speculation upon a possible antagonism—for, after all, Proust could not be bothered to foresee, let alone fortify against or rebuke in anticipation, his future adversary.

Borges and Proust: crudely compared, both are Nobel-lacking mamma’s boys; both might be termed or criticized as (in the manner of Paul Claudel) literary anchorites; both have steered startlingly into and through the maelstrom of metaphysical solipsism, wherein so many other artists have foundered. Weighty is the cultural capital attached to either of their names and yet light their touches (Borgesian, Proustian, both mind-warping adjectives, tricks of shadows and thoughts). Why, then, should Borges disapprove of Proust? Apart from this blunt question—though obviously I think it is a good and intriguing one—there are two specific, intertwined reasons for this match. The first concerns the rudimentary observation that so much of literary study and theory is predicated upon comparative diagnoses of authorial (dys)functions. Indeed, there are favorite couplings, kinds of canonical prom dates: Racine and Corneille, Spenser and Milton, Melville and Hawthorne, and (to borrow George Steiner’s well-known title) Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. The pairings are typically made between authors of the same nationality and language, though of course there are popular exceptions (Dante and Beckett, Joyce and Flaubert, etc.), especially with authors who share genres and forms. It might be worth speculating that within any canon or critically endorsed set of authors each author has or is assigned an “other” author, the usual suspect called up for comparative line-ups when new critical charges are laid or accolades bestowed.

In any case, many of these comparative studies represent something of an imperialist enterprise, when the critic’s conclusions map the territories and boundaries of “a” determined body of literature, however subdivided or segregated that body of literature may be. This position, self-declared or otherwise, of the critic as a marker of poles and tropics is the second of my concerns, and I hope the Don King mask (wig?) I have donned for this particular match suggests a not altogether irreverent recognition of the pressures to pimp inevitably felt—if not always addressed—in academic scholarship. Rather than either impartial judge or exuberant fan, I admit myself as promoter, an opportunist who likes a good show. But my agenda is ultimately corrupt, for, as I will detail in the pages ahead, this “fight” is not a metaphor for dialogue; rather, it is what Swift meant by his “battle” between books. This essay’s arranged opposition of authors represents an informal argument against comparative literature. Specifically, I propose to reject the indifferent, often prescribed conjunction “and” within the title and method of critical comparison and to substitute “versus” in order to articulate an agenda of differentiation by way of competitive evaluation.  The differences between the two authors examined here typify some of the primary choices available to avant-garde prose. Proust and Borges are among the greatest non- and perhaps even anti-totalizing (pace Sartre, who recognized Proust as a totality, an overwhelming mythology located in a person) prose writers of the twentieth century, and they are almost certainly the most ardent resisters of completion. As such, they are eminent examples of the tendency towards authorial abortion, self-sabotage, and error that is the idea (in place of an ideal) of modernism and postmodernism.