Jorge Luis Borges's Dream Tigers at the Buenos Aires Zoo
Sunday, May 08, 2016
I have a distinct memory of me sitting in my summer whites, my uniform as a conscript in the Argentine Navy in 1966. I was sitting on a bench of the Buenos Aires Zoo in front of the tiger cage. I was reading a copy of Time Magazine. I remember reading the body count for that week in Vietnam and reading how many Russian-made MiGs American Phantoms jets had shot down.
It is only at a later stage of my life, one in which I seem
to read one Jorge Luís poem or story many times a week that I have come to know
that Borges, too, loved tigers and disdained lions.
Of that disdain he wrote in a 1977 poem Leones (no available
translation at hand)
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| A sketch of a tiger by Borges when he was 4 |
Leones –
Jorge Luís Borges
Ni el
esplendor del cadencioso tigre
Ni del
jaguar los signos prefijados
Ni del gato
el sigilo. De la tribu
Es el menos
felino, pero siempre
Ha
encendido los sueños de los hombres.
Leones en
el oro y en el verso,
En patios del
Islam y en evangelios,
Vastos
leones en el orbe de Hugo,
Leones de
la puerta de Micenas,
Leones que
Cartago crucifica.
En el
violento cobre de Durero
Las manos
de Sansón lo despedazan.
Es la mitad
de la secreta esfinge
Y la mitad
del grifo que en las cóncavas
Grutas
custodia el oro de la sombra.
Es uno de
los símbolos de Shakespeare.
Los hombres
lo esculpieron con montañas
Y
estamparon su forma en las banderas
Y lo
coronan rey sobre los otros.
Con sus
ojos de sombra lo vio Milton
Emergiendo
del barro el quinto día,
Desligadas
las patas delanteras
Y en alto
la cabeza extraordinaria.
Resplandece
en la rueda del Caldeo
Y las
mitologías lo prodigan.
Un animal
que se parece a un perro
Come la presa que le trae la hembra.
Come la presa que le trae la hembra.
But I will translate those last two damning lines:
An animal that resembles a dog
Like the prey (a hyena perhaps?) his female mate brings to
him.
While taking the subway (the subte is how Argentines call
it) in my trip to Buenos Aires a few weeks ago I stopped at the Tribunales Station
(Law Courts) on my way to visit my friend, painter Juan Manuel Sánchez in his
studio on Paraguay and Talcahuano. For years (since I can remember) one has
been able to buy not only magazines but good books in any Subte station kiosks.
This particular kiosk had a book, surrounded by a marvelous and eclectic neighbours, that immediately stood out. I chatted with
the man who ran it. He is called Carlos Perez, and yes, most appropriately he
is a lawyer.
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| The Subte |
Since I have Jorge Luís Borges’s complete poetic output I
was slightly confused by a book that I saw behind the glass window. I was familiar with the poem called El Oro de Los
Tigres. Borges had written it in East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State
University where he was conducting a series of lectures.
I finally got the gist of this particular selection. The
title is not only about the colour of the Bengal Tiger but is also about yellow, the
last colour that Borges was able to discern by
that year, 1972, when he was going blind.
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| Carlos Perez at the Tribunales Subte kiosk |
So, on that Tribunales Subte platform it finally hit home
that since both Borges and I had been fascinated by the Bengal Tigers of the Buenos
Aires Zoo I had to pursue the subject for a blog.
There was some confusion in my task as many told me that the
zoo was being closed and that the tigers were gone. This was not the case but
it is a fact that the zoo is going to be closed and it’s all hush-hush what the
city government is going to do with the very valuable property. I was told the
tigers (alas not yellow but very white!) were going to be moved to a town near
the resort city of Mar del Plata called Batán.
I drafted my friend Roberto Baschetti who works at the
National Library to pose for me with the Borges book. All we needed was to find
a tiger. It seems that the tiger was indeed waiting for us as he posed for the
shot.
El oro de los tigres – Jorge Luís Borges - 1972
El oro de los tigres – Jorge Luís Borges - 1972
Hasta la
hora del ocaso amarillo
cuántas
veces habré mirado
al poderoso
tigre de Bengala
ir y venir
por el predestinado camino
detrás de
los barrotes de hierro,
sin
sospechar que eran su cárcel.
Después
vendrían otros tigres,
el tigre de
fuego de Blake;
después
vendrían otros oros,
el metal
amoroso que era Zeus,
el anillo
que cada nueve noches *
engendra
nueve anillos y éstos, nueve,
y no hay un
fin.
Con los
años fueron dejándome
los otros
hermosos colores
y ahora
sólo me quedan
la vaga
luz, la inextricable sombra
y el oro
del principio.
Oh
ponientes, oh tigres, oh fulgores
del mito y
de la épica,
oh un oro
más precioso, tu cabello
que ansían estas manos.
I will translate the first six lines. The "this way that way" walk of the tiger behind bars Borges wrote at least twice before and in one of the poems it was about a panther.
I will translate the first six lines. The "this way that way" walk of the tiger behind bars Borges wrote at least twice before and in one of the poems it was about a panther.
Hasta la
hora del ocaso amarillo
cuántas
veces habré mirado
al poderoso
tigre de Bengala
ir y venir
por el predestinado camino
detrás de
los barrotes de hierro,
sin
sospechar que eran su cárcel.
Until the hour of the yellow sunset
how many times have I looked at
the powerful Bengal Tiger
come and go on that predestined way
behind the iron bars
without suspecting that they were his jail.
Perhaps Borges never returned to the zoo once the tigers were removed from their cages,
There were no golden Bengal Tigers to be found. The closest were hundreds of papier mâché jaguaretés (South American jaguars) behind bars sunning themselves. Below you will find the Borges essay Dreamtigers which always had its title in English. Note how Borges deprecates the South American jaguar as seen bellow!
Until the hour of the yellow sunset
how many times have I looked at
the powerful Bengal Tiger
come and go on that predestined way
behind the iron bars
without suspecting that they were his jail.
Perhaps Borges never returned to the zoo once the tigers were removed from their cages,
 | ||
| Roberto Baschetti at the Buenos Aires Zoo |
There were no golden Bengal Tigers to be found. The closest were hundreds of papier mâché jaguaretés (South American jaguars) behind bars sunning themselves. Below you will find the Borges essay Dreamtigers which always had its title in English. Note how Borges deprecates the South American jaguar as seen bellow!
Dreamtigers
- Jorge Luís Borges- El Hacedor - 1960
En la
infancia yo ejercí con fervor la adoración del tigre: no el tigre overo de los
camalotes del Paraná y de la confusión amazónica, sino el tigre rayado,
asiático, real, que sólo pueden afrontar los hombres de guerra, sobre un
castillo encima de un elefante. Yo solía demorarme sin fin ante una de las
jaulas en el Zoológico; yo apreciaba las vastas enciclopedias y los libros de
historia natural, por el esplendor de sus tigres. (Todavía me acuerdo de esas
figuras: yo que no puedo recordar sin error la frente o la sonrisa de una
mujer.) Pasó la infancia, caducaron los tigres y su pasión, pero tadavía están
en mis sueños. En esa napa sumergida o caótica siguen prevaleciendo y así:
Dormido, me distrae un sueño cualquiera y de pronto sé que es un sueño. Suelo pensar
entonces: Éste es un sueño, una pura invención de mi voluntad, y ya que tengo
un ilimitado poder, voy a causar un tigre.
¡Oh,
incompetencia! Nunca mis sueños saben engendrar la apetecida fiera. Aparece el
tigre, eso sí, pero disecado o endeble, o con impuras variaciones de forma, o
de un tamaño inadmisible, o harto fugaz, o tirando a perro o a pájaro.
Dreamtigers :: J. L. Borges
In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger:
not the jaguar, the spotted “tiger” of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of
vegetation that float down the Paraná, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger,
that can only be faced by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to
linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast
encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I
still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the
smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for
them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic
level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and
suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion
of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.
Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild
beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with
impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or
with a touch of the dog or the bird.
[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by
Mildred Boyer]
