Here we could add that Borges had an uncanny ear for ugly prose, and he mocked it mercilessly. Because of his prodigious memory, he could recite long snatches of horrible verse by writers famous and little known, and he parodied their speech (as Sorrentino points out) in several of his writings. One comic story, written with Bioy, “El Testigo” (The Witness), in which the two authors parody the worst of Argentinean speech, has as its epigraph Isaiah 6:5, without spelling out the quotation. I looked it up. It says, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Such literary consciousness is never present in El enigma de la calle Arcos.
Sorrentino ends with one final fact, devastating for Bajarlía’s argument: the identity of the obviously pseudonymous “Sauli Lostal.” On 27 February 1997, a certain Tomás E. Giordano published a letter in the newspaper Clarín of Buenos Aires, stating that after seeing an advertisement for a new edition of El enigma de la calle Arcos “by an author whose real identity remains unknown,” he felt compelled to clarify the mystery. According to Giordano, Sauli Lostal was the anagram of Luis Stallo, a gentleman with whom his father had established a brief commercial acquaintance, and who was not a man of letters but a businessman, a fairly cultured Italian who had settled in Argentina after traveling the world. “His restless spirit,” wrote Giordano, “strengthened by a relentless dedication to reading, compelled him to take part in 1933 in a contest organized by the then popular evening paper Crítica, in which readers were asked to find a more ingenious outcome for the novel Le Mystère de la chambre jaune [The Mystery of the Yellow Chamber] by Gaston Leroux, whose ending the newspaper found somewhat disappointing.” The result was El enigma de la calle Arcos. An investigation of the Buenos Aires phonebooks for 1928, 1930, 1931, and 1932 revealed the existence of a Luis A. Stallo living in the city during those years. In spite of these incontrovertible facts, the attribution of El enigma de la calle Arcos to Borges persists. Even Nicolás Heft’s otherwise impeccable Bibliografía completa of Borges, published in 1997 by Fondo de Cultura Económica, retains the attribution in its later editions.
El enigma de la calle Arcos is the most notorious but certainly not the only execrable text attributed to Borges. In 1984, for instance, the prestigious Italian magazine Nuovi argomenti, edited by Alberto Moravia, Leonardo Sciascia, and Enzo Siciliano (three of the most distinguished names of the Italian literary scene), published a story, “El misterio de la cruz” (The Mystery of the Cross), attributed to Borges. The accompanying letter said that the story had been written in 1934 and translated by the superb writer and translator Franco Lucentini, and that permission had been granted to publish it by Borges himself and by one of his Italian publishers, Franco María Ricci. In an open letter to the newspaper La Stampa of Turin, Lucentini denied ever translating the story, which, he said, not only does not resemble anything by Borges but also “seems to have been written by a semi-illiterate person.”
In 1989, the Mexican magazine Plural, founded by the poet Octavio Paz, published a poem entitled “Instantes” (Moments) supposedly written by Borges the year of his death. It was preceded by an unctuous commentary by a certain Mauricio Ciechanower, who noted that the piece was “pregnant with a masterly power of synthesis.” The poem is an idiotic feel-good meditation that would not be out of place on a Hallmark greeting card. It reads (in a literal and, in my mind, generous translation):
If I could live my life over again
I would try to make more mistakes in the next one.
I would not try to be so perfect,
I’d relax more.
I’d be more of a fool than
I’ve been, in fact I’d take very few things seriously.
I’d be less hygienic.
I’d run more risks, I’d travel more, I’d watch
More sunsets, I’d climb more mountains, I’d swim more rivers.
I’d go to more places where I’ve never been, I’d eat
More ice cream and less beans, I’d have more real problems
And fewer imaginary ones.
I was one of those people who lived sensibly and prolifically
Every moment of his life; of course I had moments of happiness.
But if I could go back I’d try to have
Only good moments.
In case you don’t know, that is what life is made of, only moments;
Don’t miss out on the present moment.
I was one of those who never go anywhere without a thermometer,
A hot-water bottle, an umbrella and a parachute;
If I could live again, I’d travel lighter.
If I could live again, I’d start to walk barefoot at the beginning
Of spring and carry on like that until autumn.
I’d take more rides on the merry-go-round, I’d watch more sunsets
And I’d play with more children, if I had another life in front of me.
But I’m 85 years old and I know I’m dying.
Three years later, a new translation of these verses, by Alastair Reid, who had previously made excellent translations of several pieces by Borges, appeared in the Queen’s Quarterly. No one objected.
Then, on 9 May 1999, the critic Francisco Peregil published in the newspaper El País of Madrid the following revelation: “The real author of the apocryphal poem is an unknown American writer called Nadine Stair who published it in 1978, eight years before Borges died in Geneva, when she was 86.” The text (as a piece of turgid poetic prose) appeared in the periodical Family Circus of Louisville, Kentucky, on 27 March 1978 and has since appeared, in a number of different versions, in all sorts of different places, from the Reader’s Digest to printed T-shirts.
No doubt since the beginnings of literature, all manner of writings have been attributed to famous writers for a variety of reasons: as an honest intent to restore the paternity of a text, as a dishonest intent to lend it prestige, as a sly device to lend fame to the text’s attributor. Borges himself, in one of his most celebrated stories, “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,” adds (ironically, of course) a further possibility to this list of intentions: to lend new life to a text, that is to say, a fresh reading, by considering it in a different and unexpected context. “To attribute The Imitation of Christ to Louis-Ferdinand Céline or to James Joyce,” Borges asks at the conclusion of the story, “is that not enough of a renewal for these tenuous spiritual admonitions?”