Talk:Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

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I think the sentence is dumb.

"Effectively, Borges is commenting on how much richer Don Quixote is when read through the filter of over three centuries of intervening history than in its own time."

is highly questionable and ought to be deleted.

First, note that this is an interpretation of the story. Borges never says this is his intent. This is one particular reading, one viewpoing on what Borges is trying to say.

It is also, in my view, a wrong reading, and the sentence is not a simple summary of what precedes it. Reading Menard's Quixote is emphatically NOT reading Quixote with extra centuries of history in mind. Quixote by Cervantes is no more richer now (according to the narrator of the story) then when it was written.Menard's Quixote is deeper by virtue of the philosophical/historical knowledge that is attributed to a 20th century author. In other words, it isn't that new events have changed how we read the texts; its the different assumptions we make about the author that influences our understanding.

Anyway, whether I'm right or wrong in my interpretation is not very relevant; whats relevant is that this is a matter of opinion, not fact, and thus does not belong in an encyclopedia.

Unless someone offers some reasons for keeping, I'd like to delete this sentence. --Pierremenard

Go ahead and cut it pending citation, I don't have time to research for a citation right now. But I quite disagree with what you've said about "assumptions about the author": Borges's Menard is a fiction, and I continue to argue that he is largely a device for Borges to talk about how we read Don Quixote today, and how the parts that were mundane for Cervantes' contemporaries are part of the romance for us. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:09, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Your interpretation may be the right one and my interpretation may be the wrong one. But surely, as long as there is room to disagree here, it is wrong for wikipedia to state that the intentions of the author were this and not that, even if there are some good arguments to support it. --Pierremenard

Contents

[edit] are you sure pierre menard did not actually exist?

I believe Pierre Menard was a minor symbolist poet. I haven't found much information about him, but J.G. Cobo Borda, assures it in an interview:

http://www.elheraldo.com.co/revistas/dominical/99-11-14/noti2.htm

We certainly can mention Cobo Borda's comments in the article without endorsing them. I'd need to see something a lot more solid than this before I'd presume Cobo Borda wasn't just making a joke, though. - Jmabel | Talk 06:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Done. - Jmabel | Talk 06:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literary Hoax

Are reviews of fake works really literary hoaxes? It feels weird to have Pierre Menard in that category.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexhard (talk • contribs) 17 August 2007

You're probably right, because the term "hoax" usually implies the intention to mislead, and you could argue that Borges makes it very clear that his "review" is not meant to be taken as such. The inclusion of references to journal articles that don't exist (the journals or the articles in some cases) and to persons who could never reasonably be tracked down (if they exist either) could be taken as Borges' way of clueing the reader in on the fact that no genuine attempt is being made to evaluate the work of Menard (who is himself fictitious). The task that Menard presumably sets for himself, a re-creation of a fairly long and complex novel, is also made to appear ridiculous, though in the sense of a homage, something that also adds to the "open secret" concerning the true nature of the work by Borges.

Given that, maybe a more accurate way to categorize the work would be to call it a parody of a scholarly review, and to some extent, a parody of or satire on certain styles of academic writing. As Quixote itself is something of a satire, it would make sense that Borges set out to satirize a scholar who would take Quixote seriously enough to re-write the entire novel. C d h 14:21, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not a hoax—wrong categorization

This Borges story is not nor has it ever been considered a literary hoax. It might debatably be labeled a parody, though unquestionably it is a fiction in the purest sense of the word. To claim it is a hoax is simply misleading. --TallulahBelle 22:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The cryptomnesia reference

Is it relevant? Menard isn't trying to reach the Quixote though the memories of Cervantes, but either through recreating his experiences, or through his own experiences. Alexhard (talk) 02:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

Gilles Deleuze cites this piece as an example of what he means by his conjuction of difference and repetition in his, well, Difference and Repetition. Here is the quotation (p. XXII): "Borges, we know, excelled in recounting imaginary books. But he goes further when he considers a real book, such as Don Quixote, as though it were an imaginary book, itself reproduced by an imaginary author, Pierre Menard, who in turn he considers to be real. In this case, the most exact, the most strict repetition has as its correlate the maximum of difference ('The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer...)."

Does this merits a reference? -- Daniel Nagase (talk) 22:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

We might need to find out whether Deleuze was considered by others to be a notable commentator on Borges. How about putting something like this in Deleuze's article instead? EdJohnston (talk) 04:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)