I have said that the visible product of Menard's pen is easily enumerated. Having examined his personal files with the greatest care, I have established that his body of work consists of the following pieces:
a) a symbolist sonnet that appeared twice (with variants) in the review La Conque (in the numbers for March and October, 1899);
b) a monograph on the possibility of constructing a poetic vocabulary from concepts that are neither synonyms nor periphrastic locutions for the concepts that inform common speech, "but are, rather, ideal objects created by convention essentially for the needs of poetry" (Nîmes,1901);
c) a monograph on "certain connections or affinities" between the philosophies of Descartes, Leibniz, and John Wilkins (Nîmes,1903);
d) a monograph on Leibniz' Characteristica universalis (Nîmes,1904);
e) a technical article on the possibility of enriching the game of chess by eliminating one of the rook's pawns (Menard proposes, recommends, debates, and finally rejects this innovation);
f) a monograph on Ramon Lull'sArs magna generalis(Nîmes,1906);
g) a translation, with introduction and notes, of Ruy López de Segura's Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del axedrez (Paris, 1907);
h) drafts of a monograph on George Boole's symbolic logic;
i) a study of the essential metrical rules of French prose, illustrated with examples taken from Saint-Simon (Revuedes langues romanes, Montpellier, October 1909);
j) a reply to Luc Durtain (who had countered that no such rules existed), illustrated with examples taken from Luc Durtain (Revuedes langues romanes, Montpellier, December 1909);
k) a manuscript translation of Quevedo's Aguja de navegar cultos, titled La boussole des précieux;
l) a foreword to the catalog of an exhibit of lithographs by Carolus Hourcade (Nîmes,1914);
m) a work entitled Les problèmes d'un problème (Paris,1917), which discusses in chronological order the solutions to the famous problem of Achilles and the tortoise (two editions of this work have so far appeared; the second bears an epigraph consisting of Leibniz' advice "Ne craignez point, monsieur, la tortue," and brings up to date the chapters devoted to Russell and Descartes);
n) a dogged analysis of the "syntactical habits" of Toulet (N. R. F., March 1921) (Menard, I recall, affirmed that censure and praise were sentimental operations that bore not the slightest resemblance to criticism);
o) a transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry's Cimetière marin (N. R. F., January 1928);
p) a diatribe against Paul Valéry, in Jacques Reboul's Feuilles pourla suppressionde la réalité (which diatribe, I might add parenthetically, statesthe exact reverse of Menard's true opinion of Valéry; Valéry understood this, and the two men's friendship was never imperiled);
q) a "definition" of the countessde Bagnoregio, in the "triumphant volume" (the phrase is that of another contributor, Gabrieled 'Annunzio) published each year by that lady to rectify the inevitable biases of the popular press and to present "to the world and all of Italy" a true picture of her person, which was so exposed (by reason of her beauty and her bearing) to erroneous and/or hasty interpretations;
r) a cycle of admirable sonnets dedicated to the baronessde Bacourt (1934);
s) a handwritten list of lines of poetry that owe their excellence to punctuation. [1]
This is the full extent (save for a few vague sonnets of occasion destined for Mme. Henri Bachelier's hospitable, or greedy, album des souvenirs) of the visible lifework of Pierre Menard, in proper chronological order. I shall turn now to the other, the subterranean, the interminably heroic production—the œuvre nonpareil, the œuvre that must remain—for such are our human limitations!—unfinished. This work, perhaps the most significant writing of our time, consists of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of Part I of Don Quixote and a fragment of Chapter XXII. I know that such a claim is on the face of it absurd; justifying that "absurdity" shall be the primary object of this note. [2]
Two texts, of distinctly unequal value, inspired the undertaking. One was that philological fragment by Novalis—number 2005 in the Dresden edition, to be precise—which outlines the notion of total identification with a given author. The other was one of those parasitic books that set Christ on a boulevard, Hamlet on La Cannabière, or don Quixote on Wall Street. Like every man of taste, Menard abominated those pointless travesties, which, Menard would say, were good for nothing but occasioning a plebeian delight in anachronism or (worse yet) captivating us with the elementary notion that all times and places are the same, or are different. It might be more interesting, he thought, though of contradictory and superficial execution, to attempt what Daudet had so famously suggested: conjoin in a single figure (Tartarin, say) both the Ingenious Gentleman don Quixote and his squire....
Those who have insinuated that Menard devoted his life to writing a contemporary Quixote besmirch his illustrious memory. Pierre Menard did not want to compose another Quixote, which surely is easy enough—he wanted to compose the Quixote. Nor, surely, need one have to say that his goal was never a mechanical transcription of the original; he had no intention of copying it. His admirable ambition was to produce a number of pages which coincided—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes.
"My purpose is merely astonishing," he wrote me on September 30, 1934, from Bayonne. "The final term of a theological or metaphysical proof—the world around us, or God, or chance, or universal Forms—is no more final, no more uncommon, than my revealed novel. The sole difference is that philosophers publish pleasant volumes containing the intermediate stages of their work, while I am resolved to suppress those stages of my own." And indeed there is not a single draft to bear witness to that years-long labor.