Self v. Persona
By Khadijah Iqbal
“Borges and I” by Jorge Luis Borges is a short story that examines the difference of self and persona. The idea of self is who we see ourselves as a person; our inner likings and dislikes are hidden because they are for only us to know. The idea of persona is who others see us as; our likes and dislikes in the persona we exhibit are put on display to be criticized and examined. As the story progresses, the narrator goes through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But what is the narrator grieving? The narrator is grieving the control he no longer has. When reading “Borges and I”, Borges is presented as a character that the narrator is speaking about. Borges, in this short story, is displayed as the antagonist, and the narrator acts as the protagonist. Borges is the persona in this case, and the narrator is his true self. Before publishing, the narrator was writing as himself. He chooses to express what he felt the need to express and was writing because this is what he believed was important. Now published, he took on the name Borges. Everyone who read his work created this fantastical image of who the narrator was and put him under the tent of “Borges”. As his fame grew, the narrator was now writing for the image that Borges portrayed, not necessarily what the narrator felt was his own self. When you are writing, you are in full control of what you put on a page, whether that be as a diary entry or published work. When you are writing for the readers, you are no longer in control, but the readers are instead. The narrator is grieving his loss of control in this short story.
The first stage when grieving is denial, as the person grieving does not want to accept his or her reality. The narrator speaks of Borges as a secondary character. He does not want to be thinking of Borges as himself and so he disassociates from Borges, writing of him as if it is someone else: “I know of Borges from the mail…” (Borges 1). This idea of him not seeing Borges as himself is his way of refusing what is now his reality. Denial is the narrator’s first push back in this short story. If you were to read this short story with no knowledge of who was writing it, you would assume that Borges is someone the author is a fan of or is maybe stalking. “And see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary” (Borges 1): the narrator explains Borges in a professional manner. There are no emotions as the narrator writes this. It is known that the narrator knows of Borges and that he is someone that the narrator sees a lot of in his life. As the reader, this information tells me of the two characters we are going to be dealing with in this short story. Borges as the first figure, and the narrator as the second figure watching Borges. This sets the scene for this short story as calm, as the narrator has control of his life. But if the line were re-read and dissected further, the question of why someone named Borges appears in the narrator’s mail appears. Is this in a magazine that the narrator is seeing Borges in? Are Borges and the narrator writing to each other through mail? Is the mail that the narrator sees Borges name on Borges’ mail? These questions plague the reader into thinking there is more to this story than the narrator has written.
The second stage of grieving is anger, which is when the person grieving realizes that denying the reality in front of them is no longer working, which then causes animosity to fester. When the narrator was in denial of the control he no longer has, the emotion that the narrator emitted into his writing was passive. As the narrator continues, his tone and emotion in which he writes becomes more aggressive. The narrator still speaks of Borges as another character instead of a character within himself, so the readers are still believing that Borges is someone else. “It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship” (Borges 1): the narrator uses words like “exaggeration” and “hostile”. His word choice automatically allows a different train of thought. When describing a positive relationship, one would not use a word like hostile. Using negative words or words with a harsher sentiment, the connotation is that there is a reason for those words. If I felt great affection for someone, I would say “I love you”, not “I don’t hate you.” But saying you don’t hate someone doesn’t mean loving them either. You could still dislike them or be frustrated with them or feel an indefinite number of emotions towards them. The narrator in this case uses the word hostile, but says that it would be an “exaggeration” to say that. This feels sarcastic but a tad harsher, and the tone now takes a turn from a calmer setting to one with more negative emotions. The narrator now expresses his unfavorable opinion towards Borges, which differs from when Borges is first introduced. This shows that the narrator is starting to see his control slip away.
The third stage of grieving is bargaining, and it is when the person grieving starts to realize that feeling anger is no longer working, so they consider a compromise to accept the reality they are now in. The narrator changes his tone to be more docile. He is understanding that he can no longer deny Borges’ presence, nor can he be angry with it. “It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition” (Borges 1). The narrator knows that he is losing control in his writing and that Borges is the man getting the credit and control. So, what does the narrator do? He says that if he cannot have his writing belong to him, then no longer can Borges. The narrator now states that the good of Borges’ writing or his own belongs to neither of them, but to writing and literature itself. The narrator continues and states, “and only some instant of myself can survive in him” (Borges 1). This concludes that he is no longer in denial of Borges or his role in the narrator’s life, but instead stating that if Borges is true, then a part of who he is lives in Borges—but neither parts of Borges nor the narrator is in control. This bargaining technique the narrator uses is not one of acceptance but is one where he is trying to regain some control over his reality now.
The fourth stage of grieving is depression, where the person is now trying to accept their new reality but only feels negatively about it. They now feel as if there is no point in trying or going on because their reality is too hard for them to be content with. The narrator starts to feel that his life and his work is no longer his own. He feels that who he sees as himself is no longer in his work, and instead his work is the making of his persona. The narrator states, “but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others” (Borges 1). The narrator’s tone has turned a lot more dejected. The work that the narrator is writing feels as it is not his true self, but as the Borges that his readers portray him to be. He reads his work and thinks he is adding more for the persona that is Borges, but not what he himself in full control of his writing would write. The narrator states that when he was feeling less sorrow for his loss of control, he tried other forms of writing that didn’t fall under the tent that is Borges. “I tried to free myself from him … but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things” (Borges 1). The narrator tries to dissociate from Borges one last time, and it doesn’t work. The narrator at this point is feeling desperation for not wanting to admit loss of control to Borges seep through. No matter what the narrator tries, his persona still takes the narrator’s work for himself. This causes the narrator to reach the point of acceptance.
The final stage of grief is acceptance, the moment when the person who is grieving finally concludes that there is nothing that they can do now to change their reality, therefore it is time to accept the reality for what it is. The narrator ends his short story by stating, “I do not know which of us has written this page” (Borges 1). The narrator is seeing that no matter what he does, Borges is a part of who he is. The tone of the ending of this short story is finality. The narrator, after going through the previous four stages, understands that this is his new reality. The idea of self and persona is one which we all suffer through. Are we writing or doing something in service of how someone else may perceive us? Or are we writing or doing something because we wholeheartedly feel whatever we are doing is because we want to? The narrator may have started to write for himself but at some point, whether that be when he published or showed others his work, he started to write for what his readers saw him as. This is not showing that he has a split personality, but rather questioning the idea of whether the narrator is still writing for himself or others. “Borges” is the tent his readers put the narrator in. Therefore, either Borges or the narrator could have written this short story. The narrator accepts that he is no longer in control of his writing, but his readers are. The short story asks us to question whether what we do or what we write is for ourselves or for others. Who are we serving? And who is in control? Those questions vary answers for different situations but are questions that come up in daily life more times than we realize. Are we in control or are we stuck in an illusion of control?