From Writing to Historicity

Jorge Luis Borges credits his inspiration to G. K. Chesterton and G. W. Leibniz, the first for “discurridor y exornador de elegantes misterios” (Borges, 1997, p. 146), and the second for discovering that what “appears to be causal interaction among substances is really a ‘pre-established harmony’ among them” (Leibniz, 1995, p. 436). The “discoverer of mysteries” and the “pre-established harmony” also establish two parallel underlying topics that accompany the narrative. One produces a sense of a what-and-whodunit plot-driven thriller in Ryan’s detective-like investigation. Setting the story one hundred years after Kilpatrick’s baffling homicide, Borges creates suspense as Ryan unravels the enigma that has bewildered previous historians. The second is that, by acknowledging Chesterton and Leibniz, Borges highlights the cycle of textually, recognizing what has been textually expressed before him —the intertextuality of ideas— that parallels the content of the short story: Ryan’s encounter with cryptic textual clues that point to a uniformity between historical-textual content and literary-textual content. This consistency between content in historical narrative and literature materializes in unique contents in the narrative. For example, the following trace is an echo between the life of Julius Caesar as represented William Shakespeare and Kilpatrick’s chronicled murder:

Los esbirros que examinaron el cadáver del héroe, hallaron una carta cerrada que le advertía el riesgo de concurrir al teatro esa noche también Julio César, al encaminarse al lugar donde lo aguardaban los puñales de sus amigos, recibió un memorial que no llegó a leer, en que iba declarada la traición, con los nombres de los traidores. (Borges, 1997, pp. 147-148).

These coincidences between Kilpatrick’s last days and William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (based on an actual historical event) vaguely reveal a potential mysterious connection. This would not be important if it were not for more illustrations that underscore an inscrutable association between literature and historical narrative. Another intertextuality is the following:

La mujer de César, Calpurnia, vio en sueños abatir una torre que le había decretado el Senado; falsos y anónimos rumores, la víspera de la muerte de Kilpatrick, publicaron en todo el país el incendio de la torre circular de Kilgarvan, hecho que pudo parecer un presagio, pues aquél había nacido en Kilvargan. (Borges, 1997, p. 149).

Before such odd parallelisms that affirm and reaffirm an underlying connection between literature and historical events, one can logically ask: Why do these literary references exist in historical narrative? Are they just random concurrences, or is there an anomaly at work here? That is the mystery Ryan wants to solve. Multiple correlations between historical narrative and literary narrative “inducen a Ryan a suponer una secreta forma del tiempo, un dibujo de líneas que se repiten” (Borges, 1997, p. 148). Ryan even ventures into metaphysical interpretations in thinking that “antes de ser Fergus Kilpatrick, Fergus Kilpatrick fue Julio César” (Borges, 1997, p. 148). While metaphysics could offer some intellectual insight, it could not completely explain the actual physical connections. These parallelisms that could be still understood as remarkable, random similarities are eclipsed by an even greater harmony: they become up-front plagiarism when “ciertas palabras de un mendigo que conversó con Fergus Kilpatrick en día de su muerte, fueron prefiguradas por Shakespeare, en la tragedia de Macbeth” (Borges, 1997, p. 149). What could originally be conceived as incidental harmonious affinities become deliberate literary piracy when certain words in Macbeth are reproduced verbatim by a beggar in Kilpatrick’s history. In the words of Leibniz, what appeared “to be causal interaction among substances is really a ‘pre-established harmony’ among them” (1995, p. 436). How could historical narrative have in its very content echoes, parallelisms, and direct word-for-word plagiarism of literature? What is the harmonious connection between the two? Before such a conundrum, Ryan finally decides to decipher what lies behind the intertextual residues in historical narrative. That is, he proceeds to discover the hidden parallax view —what is subjacent behind these (not so) small inklings. His detective aura takes form, preparing him for the discovery of his life.

These intertextual residues were (un)willingly incorporated during the creation and implementation of what became “la memoria apasionada de Irlanda”: the historical events that led to the independence of Ireland in which Kirkpatrick, despite his double perceived nature, had a central role. In one conclave, Kilpatrick, as leader of the independence movement, ordered James Alexander Nolan to find the spy among the conspirators, as the rebellion had always failed. “El país estaba maduro para la rebelión; algo, sin embargo, fallaba siempre: algún traidor había en el conclave” (Borges, 1997, p. 150). Diligently, the latter, after his investigation, proved that Kilpatrick himself had compromised previous attempts of national liberation. In other words, Kilpatrick, leader of the independence, was the “traidor …en el conclave”. This new information mediates the perspective between the plotters and Kilpatrick: Kilpatrick endures a rapid ontological shift for the conspirators as their fierce leader becomes their traitor. And the punishment for treason is execution. Kilpatrick had to die. However, while learning who among them the traitor is represents a step toward securing a successful rebellion (they would not be betrayed by an insider anymore), there is a sociopolitical facet that complicates this end. “Irlanda adoraba a Kilpatrick,” and thus “la más ténue sospecha de su vileza hubiera comprometido la rebelión” (Borges, 1997, p. 150). The public follows Kilpatrick religiously as their leader of the independence crusade. Making this new information public would have a counterproductive effect: if the public learned about his treason, it would compromise the tangible possibility of independence and sabotage their invested effort. The plotters had to figure out how to take advantage of the public’s love for Kilpatrick to culminate their home-rule crusade while at the same time execute him for treason. This paradox is the origin of the mediation regarding the nature of Kilpatrick in the story.

James Alexander Nolan had the intellectual tools to overcome the impending contradiction. In addition to being a close collaborator, he also had knowledge of English literature and had written an unpublished article about Swiss Festspiele. These were “vastas y errantes representaciones teatrales, que requieren miles de actores y que reiteran hechos históricos en las mismas ciudades y montañas donde ocurrieron” (Borges, 1997, p. 149). With vast knowledge of English theatrical heritage and the multiple forms of representing it, Nolan had the idea to execute Kilpatrick in an indecipherable form that could channel the awakened social anger and political awareness into a call to battle for independence. He turned to a Festspiele to carry out the death sentence in a form that not only would hide from the public Kilpatrick’s treason but, on the contrary, would highlight a carefully crafted master narrative:

Nolan propuso un plan que hizo de la ejecución del traidor un instrumento para la emancipación de la patria. Sugirió que el condenado muriera a manos de un asesino desconocido, en circunstancias deliberadamente dramáticas, que se grabaran en la imaginación popular y que apresuraran la rebelión. (Borges, 1997, p. 150).

The theater became the accepted solution following the logic that the actor’s character “depends —ontologically on the goodwill of the audience” (Leak, 2006, p. 106). And the public love for Kilpatrick was expected to corroborate his dramatized character. The accomplices, aware of both parallax views, accepted having Kilpatrick assassinated in a theatrical performance that would not only keep his prestige intact but also to cultivate the political movement they wanted. To do justice to their side of the parallax —executing the traitor— the revolutionaries accepted the public theater that would construct in the national imaginary a logical conclusion of his revolutionary leadership —Kilpatrick as a hero. The source of the intertextual residues in historical narrative was Nolan’s own literary creation that, under pressure to have the script done in a short time, included not only similar events from Julius Caesar but also direct plagiarism from Macbeth. In a paradoxical turn of events, the content of English literature —from the enemy— is used against English rule. Politics and literature are woven forever in Borges’ Irish history. Kilpatrick contributed to the independence movement by adhering to Nolan’s script and also improvising his own lines and actions on the spot, turning his execution into a historical spectacle fashioned from his original material and Nolan’s type-scripted material with Shakespeare’s plagiarized material. This literary mediation creates the illusion of an ontological change in Kilpatrick.

The theatrical production would present Kilpatrick as martyr of the independence movement by being assassinated under inexplicable circumstances, leading the public to think that perhaps it had been coordinated by English authorities. The Festspiele that took place over multiple days in Dublin was the artifice of changing the substance of Kilpatrick from leader to hero for the innocent public and from the condemned traitor to a theatrically mediated hero. For Kilpatrick, this was “el destino que lo redimía y que lo perdía” (Borges, 1997, p. 149). What the community saw and heard throughout the three-day theatrical performance that surrounded the assassination of Kilpatrick was a “constructed literary image, not a natural reality” (Barry, 2009, p. 156). What became part of “la memoria apasionada de Irlanda” was a theatrical representation of Nolan’s script, a carefully masterminded narrative, that would impose one side of the parallax view of Kilpatrick. Bertolt Brecht (2005) creates this binary opposition between “natural reality” and “literary image” to highlight the “alienation effect” that results from the public’s awareness of witnessing a staged drama. For Brecht, in the experience of a conscious theatrical, “the audience is prevented from feeling his way into the characters. Acceptance or rejection of the characters’ words is thus placed in the conscious realm, not, as hitherto, in the spectator’s subconscious” (p. 13). In the case of Kilpatrick, the audience was not aware of experiencing a theatrical performance but rather believed they were experiencing historical reality. Kilpatrick’s contemporaries did not have the opportunity to accept or reject his spoken words. On the contrary, due to unconsciously participating in a Festspiele, the audience accepted it as reality. The presentation of Kilpatrick in front of an unsuspecting audience was designed to have (inter)textually-driven theater taken as ontological veracity. By having the public as audience and witnesses, the theatricality is (mis)taken as natural reality, creating the origins of intertextually-driven narrative with residues of its creation. However, due to the audience’s obliviousness to the fact that they were observing a drama performance, this takes place without the “alienation effect,” the realization that the theatricality is not ontological reality. While Kilpatrick and hundreds of other actors did their part in the scripted execution, it was Kilpatrick’s loving public that turned the theater into ontological history. In the words of Umberto Eco (1986), through the public performance the “‘completely real’ becomes identified with the ‘completely fake.’ Absolute unreality is offered as real presence” (p. 27). The audience accepted Kilpatrick’s execution as assassination, embraced him as a martyr for their independence, remembering every detail of his last days as part of the national consciousness that the rebellion was forging. The power of the theatrical performance penned and directed by James Alexander Nolan became embedded in the creation of the modern Irish state that continues having an effect today as “la memoria apasionada de Irlanda.” The politically sponsored, fiction-inspired dominant understanding of the historical successes became the historical consciousness. Kilpatrick’s treason is buried in the triumphalist acceptance of his perplexing murder as the heroic climax of his revolutionary leadership. What remained were the unexpected archival inconsistencies and literary parallelisms in historiography that vaguely illuminate the fact that the historical assassination was not the organic ontological reality that the historical consciousness recorded.

From Historicity to Writing

The discovery of his great-grandfather as the traitor scripted into a hero via a theatrical performance creates a unique opportunity to explore the role of words in the construction of political identities with historical consequences. It is here where the linguistic and the political facets intertwine, almost fusing together in a form that is perhaps impossible to separate. While on the symbolic level the titles hero and traitor reflect meaning-generating binaries, on the political level we find the results of partisan motivations to achieve the anticipated independence. The political movement —what Carl Schmitt (2007) calls “the political”— extracts its legitimacy from Kilpatrick’s mysterious assassination. In other words, Kilpatrick’s actions were “object-splitting” enough to create a complete epistemological shift in the observing public. His performed actions were essential in consolidating the political movement of his contemporaries by establishing the final dividing line between the Irish people and English domination. In the words of Schmitt (2007), “The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such relationship” (p. 28). It was the historical circumstances of the time —the political maturity, the discovered traitor, the enigmatic death, the hidden treason, etc.— that allowed the master narrative of Kilpatrick as martyr to be inaugurated in the social imagination, portraying the English as the enemy. Thus, the historical expediency of Kilpatrick as player cannot be overlooked. Although his joint conspirators condemned Kilpatrick to death for treason, they were willing to have the public —and history— accept him as a hero of the independence if it served their political purposes. Only by keeping the illusion of the traitor and the hero as separate ontological entities could the political movement be created after Kilpatrick’s apparent murder. Public acceptance of the carefully crafted martyrdom was indispensable in order to utilize the aforementioned historical circumstances. Thus, all goes back to which title within these specific conditions would most help to foster a successful revolutionary war of independence. On the political level, one title was acceptable for all those involved in the independence movement. For the plotters and the public —some conscious while others not— the title hero was compromised given the historical juncture. That is why trying to find the “correct” title to label Kilpatrick’s actual ontology becomes a meaningless effort. This effort reduces the rich mediation that makes him appear as hero for the public. This complicates the discovery of the concealed parallax view, overshadowed and forgotten by theatrical performance, as it was the result of a partisan political motivation.

The deployment of “la memoria apasionada de Irlanda” is rooted in this fiction-inspired historical performance. We cannot deny the length narrative has helped in creating, executing, and perpetuating the conventional system of signification: The execution-taken-as-assassination of Kilpatrick is a historical event inspired by fiction in Macbeth and fictionalized history in Julius Caesar, chronicled by historical narrative, and maintained by a series of historical and cultural publications that have validated their publication, a type of continuous intertextuality. Borges highlights this literary mediation, stating that “Las cosas que dijeron e hicieron perduran en los libros históricos, en la memoria apasionada de Irlanda” (Borges, 1997, p. 151), merging the historical chronicles and memory as one national consciousness. History lives both in the community and in its historical records. To accentuate the relationship between history and literature, Borges underlines that renowned writers subsequently praised the hero in their poetry. For example, Kilpatrick’s name “ilustra los versos de [Robert] Browning y de [Victor] Hugo”, unveiling the continued intimate relationship between history and literature (p. 147). The latter as well as the former contribute in perpetuating the memory in the national consciousness. In this case, historical narrative as well as literary narrative have the same social function: authenticating the past as ontological reality. Hayden White and Robert Doran (2010) explain the similarities in function between the literary and historical narrative in relation to making the past present. Historians may own the official study of history in so far as they present it in a “comprehensive vision of historical reality” (p. x). However, their ownership of narrative of the past is not unique. “As a matter of fact, that claim can as legitimately be made for literary writers” (White & Doran, 2010, p. x). By deciphering the enigma, Ryan encounters not only the original intertextuality that gave life to the events leading to the independence, but also the subsequent intertextuality that reaffirmed them as actual reality. While the a priori intertextuality contributed ideas to create theatricality of history, the a posteriori intertextuality affirmed this theatricality as natural reality. However, a posteriori narrative —whether it is literature or historical narrative— has the role of providing the sense of describing an ontological historical truth that is accessible to the readers. This a posteriori intertextuality provides the cultural fixity, a sense of veracity that, provides “a comprehensive vision of [organic] historical reality” (White & Doran, 2010, p. x). Thus, Kilpatrick’s role in Irish history is highly mediated, ensuring that his role as martyr-turned-hero established itself as ontological reality in the national imaginary.

What Ryan finds is a national history resulting from intertextualities before, during, and after the execution of Kilpatrick that have sustain a one-sided understanding of Kilpatrick’s final days. His new-found information contradicts the hegemonic understanding of Kilpatrick as hero in relation to national liberation. Ryan deliberates on what to do with these facts that undermine the established symbolic world. After considerations on whether to publish his discoveries, Ryan “resuelve silenciar el descubrimiento” (Borges, 1997, p. 152). The great-grandson of the hero decides to keep his findings to himself, withholding them from the public —just as the conspirators did a hundred years earlier. He realizes the clues were intentionally left by Nolan for someone to find out. Ryan’s decision to suppress his findings points to the power of the national master narrative of one parallax view in the public arena: one side of the parallax view triumphs over the other. The hero defeats the traitor (once again). Alternatively, it also points to the power of writing as mediation of the observable historical events. Historical literature chronicled an already mediated historical event without actually revealing the nature of the observed: Kilpatrick. That is why the great-grandson of the hero “[p]ublica un libro dedicado a la gloria del héroe” (Borges, 1997, p. 152). As such, Ryan commits himself to the traditional interpretation of his great-grandfather as a hero, closing any possibility of revealing the other compromising parallax view. In aligning himself with the hegemonic interpretation, Ryan’s book certifies the role of Kilpatrick in the independence. This historical endorsement of the performed history is the result of the trans-generational overreaching effect of being part of a scripted national history, as Ryan discovers. James Alexander Nolan wrote his script in such a way that would hint at its historical theatrical inauguration, but at the same time such information would not be publishable due to the overpowering accompanying discourse. Nolan not only wrote the past but also a potential future. In hiding his findings —just as the plotters did a hundred years earlier— Ryan lets the hegemonic parallax view continue to have its social and national function. Kilpatrick remains the center around which the historical events orbited. Ryan’s publication —along with those of Robert Browning and Victor Hugo— reaffirms the established system of signification initiated by the historical theater. And thanks to Ryan’s book, the parallax view of Kilpatrick as hero —inspired by literature and validated by more literature— continues in the “primer centenario de su muerte” (Borges, 1997, p. 247). With Ryan’s publication, his readers find themselves experiencing a “simulation” without a “referential being or a substance” just as Kilpatrick’s unaware public did a hundred years prior (Baudrillard, 2005, p. 12). This continuous fiction-inspired and literary-validating master narrative of national history creates a state of perpetual literary-sustained understanding of national history. Although the historical reality without an organic reference is created and sustained by Benedict Anderson’s (2006) “print-media”, what we have is a historical reality intimately mediated by intertextual literature. In Borges’s narrative, even Ryan’s hero-validating, history-reaffirming publication was perhaps part of Nolan’s scripted historical theater. In authenticating the literature-inspired historical performance —what became the national memory of Ireland— Ryan becomes part of Nolan’s scripted historicized fiction. This makes Ryan a type of asynchronous fellow conspirator of those who condemned his great-grandfather to death, while at the same time he is part of the public that validates the historical events as ontological reality.

Conclusion

Borges presents a historian’s greatest, yet most difficult to publish, historical information for contradicting the hegemonic master narrative of history. While Ryan knows the subject-splitting qualities that create two parallax views of Fergus Kilpatrick, he also realizes the power of the established perspective inhibits the other view from combining into a joint social understanding. In narrating a historian that discovers the conventional interpretation of the assassination of the hero was a staged theatrical execution for his political treason, Borges highlights the intimate relationship between literature and historiography. It shows the power of the written word to create, chronicle, and reaffirm what has already been mediated between the observed individual and the observing public. Once established, the replication of this highly-mediated perspective ensures its survival. Ryan’s contributions are a reaffirmation based on the assumption that Fergus Kilpatrick is a national hero. This cycle of repetition exposes a fundamental problematic of the written word: the importance of literature in grounding what has been understood as historical facts. Borges questions the essential emptiness that exists between the text and the actual ontological world by ascribing to society the delineated significance of highly interceded historical successes. And by having a historian give more importance to the accepted, now fictionalized understanding of history, Borges places historical narrative at the same level of fiction, the publications of which authenticates other publications, creating an unbreakable cycle of repetitions that endorse each other’s mediated parallax view. In this short story, literature becomes not only the inspiration for the execution of the historical master narrative —the hero of the independence— but the perpetual replicator of it. The assumption that the written word represents historical truths faces the literature-inspired, literature-based and literature-perpetuated historical performance. In this case, the assumption that historical literature describes an objective truth, if it not highly questionable, at least reveals that is extremely arbitrated. This highlights the mediation as the only source of truth, following Jacques Derrida’s (1997) statement that “There is nothing outside the text” (p. 158), specifically that meaning is achieved through textuality. Although many publications try to reaffirm the historical myth as understood by society, the only support is literature. That is not only due to the inability of the written word to guarantee truth but by the inability of historical successes to guarantee the meaning that society has bestowed upon it.

If there is truth in the parallax view, it is not in the event itself, but in its textual mediation. It is this fabric of intertextualities that helps in constituting, understanding, and reaffirming the historical perspective of Kilpatrick. When Ryan encounters the hidden parallax view of history, he realizes that what society believes about the role of his great-grandfather in Irish history is not a misrepresentation of historical events; it is not even a partial representation of a historical event. It is the deliberate public performance of a fictionalized historical event that presented itself as real —by Kilpatrick and the rest of the plotters— and was validated as such by the loving public, which then became engrained in the national imagination. The irony of literature and history could not be more obvious. Due to the intricate links between the contents in national historical and literature in this short story, it becomes imperative to analyze the implication of the relationship between the creation and the perpetuation of Kilpatrick as a historical hero through literature in Borges’s “Tema del traidor y del héroe”. The intersectional relationship between literary fiction —Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Julius Caesar— becoming the source of the fiction-inspired historical theater —the public execution of Kilpatrick— the national importance of which can only be sustained by cultural replication. The audience is forever trapped in a circular discourse that continuously validates its own truth.

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