Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to investigate the influence of Jorge Luis Borges on Mario Vargas Llosa's fiction, particularly the adoption of Borges' technique of cultural and literary association in 'Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto'.

Paper long abstract:

Vargas Llosa wrote that Borges’ rejection of the novel may represent the basis for a disquisition on this genre. Commenting on John Sturrock’s analysis of Borges’ fiction, he observes that the Argentinean writer used culture and literacy as a stimulus for his imagination.

The hypothesis of this paper is that Vargas Llosa displays the same technique in Los cuadernos. Indeed, differently from his other works dedicated to the theme of imagination such as Kathie y el hipopótamo, erudition plays a dominant role in this novel. The mechanism of cultural and literary association will be described in the light of Los cuadernos’s fragmented structure and of themes such as the library, dream and (erotic) fantasy.

The aim is to underline how Los cuadernos seems to be modelled on Borges’ view of literature. In fact, through the incorporation of quotation from other texts, Vargas Llosa emphasises the ontological plurality of his novel and the circularity of creation which breaks with chronological linearity. Using Allen Graham’s words, Los cuadernos appears to suggest that “art works, or ‘texts’, refer not directly to external reality but to other texts” (Intertextuality, p.215). Particularly, opening the doors of Borges’ Library of Babel to visual art, the Peruvian novelist shows the power of (written) language to translate iconic signs into a verbal system.

Considering Borges’ influence is crucial to shed a new light on the reflection on the limits of mimesis that has characterised Vargas Llosa’s narrative since the publication of La tía Julia y el escribidor.