* Rosas: Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), tyrannical ruler of Argentina from 1835 to 1852, was in many ways a typical Latin American caudillo. He was the leader of the Federalist party and allied himself with the gauchos against the "city slickers" of Buenos Aires, whom he harassed and even murdered once he came to power. Other appearances of Rosas may be found in "Pedro Salvadores" (In Praise of Darkness) and "The Elderly Lady" (in this volume).
* And I prefer... Here the Obras completas seems to have a textual error; the text reads apto(adjective: "germane, apt, appropriate") when logic would dictate opto(verb: "I prefer, I choose, I opt.").
* Hugo Ramirez Moroni: JLB was fond of putting real people's names into his fictions; of course, he also put "just names" into his fictions. But into his forewords? Nevertheless, the translator has not been able to discover who this person, if person he be, was.
* The golden-pink coat of a certain horse famous in our literature: The reference is to the gauchesco poem "Fausto" by Estanislao del Campo, which was fiercely criticized by Paul Groussac, among others, though praised by Calixto Oyuela ("never charitable with gauchesco writers," in JLB's own words) and others. The color of the hero's horse (it was an overo rosado) came in for a great deal of attack; Rafael Hernández, for instance, said such a color had never been found in a fast horse; it would be, he said, "like finding a three-colored cat." Lugones also said this color would be found only on a horse suited for farm work or running chores. (This information from JLB,"La poesía gauchesca," Discusión[1932].)
The Interloper
* 2 Reyes 1:26: This citation corresponds to what in most English Bibles is the Second Book of Samuel (2 Samuel); the first chapter of the "Second Book of Kings" has only eighteen verses, as the reader will note. In the New Catholic Bible, however, 1 and 2 Samuel are indexed in the Table of Contents asiand 2 Kings, with the King James's 1 and 2 Kings bumped to 3 and 4 Kings. Though the translator's Spanish-language Bible uses the same divisions as the King James, one presumes that JLB was working from a "Catholic Bible" in Spanish. In a conversation with Norman Thomas diGiovanni, Borges insisted that this was a "prettier" name than "Samuel," so this text respects that sentiment. The text in question reads: "I am distressed for thee, my brother: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." (See Daniel Balderston, "The 'Fecal Dialectic': Homosexual Panic and the Origin of Writing in Borges," in ¿Entiendes?:Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith [Durham: Duke University Press, 1995]. PP- 29-45, for an intriguing reading of this story and others.)
* Those two criollos: There is no good word or short phrase for the Spanish word criollo. It is a word that indicates race, and so class; it always indicates a white-skinned person (and therefore presumed to be "superior") born in the New World colonies, and generally, though not always, to parents of Spanish descent (another putative mark of superiority). Here, however, clearly that last characteristic does not apply. JLB is saying with this word that the genetic or cultural roots of these men lie in Europe, and that their family's blood has apparently not mixed with black or Indian blood, and that they are fully naturalized as New Worlders and Argentines. The implicit reference to class (which an Argentine would immediately understand) is openly ironic.
* Costa Brava:"A small town in the district of Ramallo, a province of Buenos Aires, not to be confused with the island of the same name in the Paraná River, scene of various battles, including a naval defeat of Garibaldi" (Fishburn and Hughes). Bravo/a means "tough, mean, angry," etc.; in Spanish, therefore, Borges can say the toughs gave Costa Bravaits name, while in translation one can only say they gave the town its reputation.
Unworthy
* The Maldonado: The Maldonado was a stream that formed the northern boundary of the city of Buenos Aires at the turn of the century; the neighborhood around it, Palermo, was known as a rough part of town, and JLB makes reference to it repeatedly in his work. See the story "Juan Murafia," p. 370, for example. Thus, Fischbein and his family lived on the tough outskirts of the city. See also mention of this area on p. 359, below.
* I had started calling myself Santiago ... but there was nothing I could do about the Fischbein: The terrible thing here, which most Spanish-language readers would immediately perceive, is that the little red-headed Jewish boy has given himself a saint's name: Santiago is "Saint James," and as St. James is the patron saint of Spain, Santiago Matamoros, St. James the Moor Slayer. The boy's perhaps unwitting self-hatred and clearly conscious attempt to "fit in" are implicitly but most efficiently communicated by JLB in these few words.
* Juan Moreira: Agaucho turned outlaw (1819-1874) who was famous during his lifetime and legendary after death. Like Jesse James and Billy the Kid in the United States, he was seen as a kind of folk hero, handy with (in Moreira's case) a knife, and hunted down and killed by a corrupt police. Like the U. S. outlaws, his fictionalized life, by Eduardo Gutiérrez, was published serially in a widely read magazine, La Patria Argentina, and then dramatized, most famously by José de Podestà. See below, in note to "The Encounter," p. 368).
* Little Sheeny: Fishburn and Hughes gloss this nickname (in Spanish el rusito, literally "Little Russian") as being a "slang term for Ashkenazi Jews ... (as opposed to immigrants from the Middle East, who were known as turcos, 'Turks')." An earlier English translation gave this, therefore, as "sheeny," and I follow that solution. The slang used in Buenos Aires for ethnic groups was (and is) of course different from that of the English-speaking world, which leads to a barber of Italian extraction being called, strange to our ears, a gringo in the original Spanish version of the story "Juan Muraña" in this volume.
* Calle Junín: In Buenos Aires, running from the Plaza del Once to the prosperous northern district of the city; during the early years of the century, a stretch of Junín near the center of the city was the brothel district.
* Lunfardo: For an explanation of this supposed "thieves' jargon," see the Foreword to this volume, p. 347.
The Story from Rosendo Juárez
* The corner of Bolivar and Venezuela: Now in the center of the city, near the Plaza de Mayo, and about two blocks from the National Library, where Borges was the director. Thus the narrator ("Borges") is entering a place he would probably have been known to frequent (in "Guayaquil," the narrator says that "everyone knows" that he lives on Calle Chile, which also is but a block or so distant); the impression the man gives, of having been sitting at the table a good while, reinforces the impression that he'd been waiting for"Borges."But this area, some six blocks south of Rivadavia, the street "where the Southside began," also marks more or less the northern boundary of the neighborhood known as San Telmo, where Rosendo Juárez says he himself lives.