Borges, Buddhism and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales

149 Pages·2019·1.93 MB·English

by  Dominique Jullien

LITERATURES OF THE
AMERICAS
Series Editor: Norma E. Cantú
BORGES,
BUDDHISM AND
WORLD
LITERATURE
A Morphology of
Renunciation Tales
Dominique Jullien
Literatures of the Americas
Series Editor
Norma E. Cantú
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX, USA
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within
a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin
America. Books in the series highlight work that explores concerns in
literature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical
boundaries and also include work on the specific Latina/o realities in the
United States. Designed to explore key questions confronting contem-
porary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas is
rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but seeks to include
cutting-edge scholarship using theories from postcolonial, critical race,
and ecofeminist approaches.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14819
Dominique Jullien
Borges, Buddhism
and World Literature
A Morphology of Renunciation Tales
Dominique Jullien
Department of French and
Italian, Comparative Literature
Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Literatures of the Americas
ISBN 978-3-030-04716-0 ISBN 978-3-030-04717-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04717-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964583
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A
cknowledgements
I am happy to acknowledge the many people who have critiqued,
advised, or simply encouraged me during the years of imagining, writing,
and rewriting this book.
I received valuable feedback at numerous conferences where incre-
mental bits of this book were first tried out. I am thankful to the stu-
dents from S. Jill Levine’s and Jorge Luis Castillo’s Borges seminar at
UCSB, where I gave a first overview of my project, and especially to
my students from the Borges seminar I had the good fortune to teach
in 2017 at the Harvard Institute for World Literature in Copenhagen.
Their excellent questions and insights spurred me to rethink or reshape
some of the arguments.
Over the years, I have benefited immeasurably from discussing vari-
ous aspects of this project with wonderful colleagues and friends both far
and near, whose careful listening and brilliant suggestions pushed me to
sharpen the big picture or reframe ideas: Marco Bernini, Piero Boitani,
Aboubakr Chraïbi, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Paulo Lemos Horta,
Stefan Helgesson, Vincent Kaufmann, Florence Klein, Françoise Lavocat,
S. Jill Levine, Sandra Laugier, Florian Mussgnug, Hélène Mitjavile,
Peter Madsen, Catherine Nesci, Sophie Niedergang, Francesca Orsini,
Christopher Prendergast, Glyn Salton-Cox, Ram Seshadri, Christine
Thomas, Galin Tihanov, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Marco Tavani, Delia
Ungureanu, Marina Warner, and Kay Young—my thanks to all of them.
I gratefully acknowledge the anonymous Palgrave reader for incisive
and stimulating criticism. I am especially indebted to the generosity of
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
interlocutors who took time to read, or re-read, parts of the book-in-
progress: Grégoire Halbout, Béatrice Baboulet, Efraín Kristal, Wen-chin
Ouyang, and Sowon Park all shared their wisdom at various stages and
helped the manuscript come to life. Their friendship, support, and con-
tinued interest in my work mean much to me.
Writing books is a solitary affair, but it happens in the home. To my
family, I owe the largest debt of gratitude. Nina and Mamzelle gave their
purring approval to many a page, while their habit of stretching over
notes, books and keyboard redefined the notion of close reading. As
always, my greatest thanks go to my daughters, who witnessed this other
kind of birth pangs, and to my husband, who believes in me, even when
I can’t think why.
This book began with my curiosity about an enigmatic story of a king
leaving his palace. I did not think it would relate to anything happening
in the present. Since I began writing it, time has made that story, and the
political anxiety at its source, painfully relevant once again.
P B , B W
rAise for orges uddhism and orld
l
iterature
“When it comes to Jorge Luis Borges, the genius is in the details. In
Borges, Buddhism and World Literature, Dominique Jullien carefully
shows how this eponymous leitmotif permeates Borges’ work and con-
nects it to the world’s literatures and to questions of philosophy, poetics
and politics alike. With its refined sense of the concrete and its broad
range of references that develop the many facets of the guiding theme,
Professor Jullien’s book is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in
Borges.”
—Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Aarhus University, Denmark
“A king leaves his palace to become a monk, following a dialogue with
an ascetic. This is the Great Renunciation scene found many times in sto-
ries around the world. Dominique Jullien’s Borges, Buddhism and World
Literature picks up Borges’ lifelong attachment to Buddhism and exam-
ines his morphological model for the circulation of narrative. Touching
on issues of politics and philosophy, the book presents a most original
view of world literature, where the author analyzes Borges’ own stories
and then successfully tries the pattern to writers as diverse as amongst
others Burton, Kipling, Kafka, Yourcenar, Blixen and Coetzee. A brilliant
feat of criticism, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.”
—Piero Boitani, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
and University of Italian Switzerland
vii
viii PRAISE FOR BORGES, BUDDHISM AND WORLD LITERATURE
“Jullien has written a seminal account of renunciation as a circulating
narrative framework and a wider cultural gesture. She has managed to
tease out its political and aesthetic implications in an extensive corpus of
stories within and beyond the Borgesian hypertext. Students of world lit-
erature and Latin American culture will find this a very stimulating read.”
—Galin Tihanov, Queen Mary University of London, UK
c
ontents
1 A Borgesian Morphology: Renunciation, Morphology,
and World Literature 1
1 A Borgesian Morphology 3
1.1 “The Universe Is Our Birthright”: Buddhism
and the Cosmopolitan Ideal 3
1.2 Borges’s Essays on Buddhism, Narrative Circulation,
and Morphology 4
1.3 Borgesian Weltliteratur 10
1.4 A Morphological Conception of Literary Inventio 14
2 “Ethics for Immortals”: Buddhism, Impersonality,
and the Novel 16
3 Renunciation, Politics, Blindness 18
2 A Lesson for the King: Renunciation and Politics 23
1 The Appeal of Paradox 25
2 The King-and-Ascetic Dialogue and the Mirror for Princes 27
3 The King-in-Disguise Paradigm 30
4 Burton’s Hermits: Reforming Shahryar 32
5 Asiatic Parrhesia 36
6 The Otherworldly Variant: Radical Renunciation
and the Ascetic Imperative 38
7 Victorian Renouncers 40
ix