The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  —WU CH’ENG EN

  The Sorcerers

  William Butler Yeats, born near Dublin in 1865. Went to London in 1887, where he became associated with the ‘decadent’ writers and dabbled in occultism and magic. He published The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Celtic Twilight (1893). After his return to Ireland he was involved with the Abbey Theatre, and many of his best poems come from this period, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), The Tower (1928), and The Winding Stair (1929). He died in 1939.

  In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers, and come across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastic and capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were they to unite them either with evil or with good. I have indeed come across very few persons in Ireland who try to communicate with evil powers, and the few I have keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those among whom they live. They are mainly small clerks, and meet for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings, but in what town that room is I shall not say. They would not admit me into this room, but finding me not altogether ignorant of the arcane science, showed elsewhere what they could do. ‘Come to us,’ said their leader, ‘and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in shapes as solid and heavy as our own.’

  I had been talking of the power of communicating in states of trance with the angelical and faery beings—the children of the day and of the twilight—and he had been contending that we should only believe in what we can see and feel, when in our ordinary everyday state of mind. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will come to you,’ or some such words; ‘but I will not permit myself to become entranced, and will therefore know whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched and felt by the ordinary senses than are these I talk of.’ I was not denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘we have seen them move the furniture hither and thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know nothing of them.’ I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as I can the substance of our talk.

  On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader sitting alone in almost total darkness in a small back room. He was dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor’s dress in an old drawing, that left nothing of him visible except his eyes, which peered out through two small round holes. Upon the table in front of him was a brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted symbols, two crossed daggers, and certain implements, whose use I failed to discover, shaped like quern stones. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was neither English nor Irish, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had finished, another of the sorcerers, a man of about twenty-five, came in, and having put on a black gown also, seated himself at my left hand. I had the invoker directly in front of me, and soon began to find his eyes, which glittered through the small holes in his hood, affecting me in a curious way. I struggled hard against their influence, and my head began to ache. The invocation continued, and nothing happened for the first few minutes. Then the invoker got up and extinguished the light in the hall, so that no glimmer might come through the slit under the door. There was now no light except from the herbs on the brass dish, and no sound except from the deep guttural murmur of the invocation.

  Presently the man at my left swayed himself about, and cried out, ‘O God! O God!’ I asked him what ailed him, but he did not know he had spoken. A moment after he could see a great serpent moving about the room, and became considerably excited. I saw nothing with any definite shape, but thought that black clouds were forming about me. I felt I must fall into a trance if I did not struggle against it, and that the influence which was causing this trance was out of harmony with itself, in other words, evil. After a struggle I got rid of the black clouds and was able to observe with my ordinary senses again. The two sorcerers now began to see black and white columns moving about the room, and finally a man in a monk’s habit, and they became greatly puzzled because I did not see these things also, for to them they were as solid as the table before them. The invoker appeared to be gradually increasing in power, and I bagan to feel as if a tide of darkness was pouring from him and concentrating itself about me; and now too I noticed that the man on my left hand had passed into a death-like trance. With a last great effort I drove off the black clouds; but feeling them to be the only shapes I could see without passing into a trance, and having no great love for them, I asked for lights and after the needful exorcism returned to the ordinary world.

  I said to the more powerful of the two sorcerers, ‘What would happen if one of your spirits had overpowered me?’ ‘You would go out of this room’ he answered, ‘with his character added to your own.’

  Fragment

  José Zorrilla, Spanish poet and dramatist. Born in Valladolid in 1817, died in Madrid in 1893. On 22nd January, 1889, the Granada Academy awarded him a laureate in the presence of 14,000 spectators. He is the author of Juan Dandolo (1833), A la memoria desraciada del joven literato D. Mariano Jose de Larra (1837), A buen juez mejor testigo (1838), Mas vale llegar a tiempo que rondar un ano (1838), Vigilias del estio (1842), Cain prata (1842), El caballo del rey D. Sancho (1842), El alcalde Ronguillo (1844), Un testigo de bronce (1845), La calentura (1845), Ofrenda poetica al Liceo Artistico y Literario de Madrid (1848), Traidor inconfeso y martir (1849), La rosa de Alejandria (1857), Album de un loco (1866), La leyenda del Cid (1882), Gnomos y mujeres (1886), A escape y al vuelo (1888), etc. As a poet, he contributed El album religioso to La corona funebre del 2 de mayo de 1808, and to El album del Bardo.

  D. JUAN: Tolling for me . . .?

  STATUE: For you.

  D. JUAN: And these funereal dirges that I hear?

  STATUE: The penitential psalms they chant for you. (At the back, left, between the tombs, lighted candles are seen passing, and the sounds of the service for the dead.)

  D. JUAN: But how for me? They bear a wreathed hearse.

  STATUE: Your hearse, that bears your body.

  D. JUAN: I, dead . . .?

  STATUE: The Captain killed you at your door.

  SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The publishers would like to thank Jim Shean, Sheila Brownlee and Alison Bailey for their help with the research for this book, and special thanks are due to Lucia Alvarez de Toledo for her invaluable assistance. Thanks are also due to the copyright-holders detailed below for granting permission to reprint material. Whilst every effort has been made to trace authors and copyright-holders, in some cases this has proved impossible, and Xanadu Publications would be glad to hear from any such parties so that any omissions can be rectified in future editions of the book.

  ‘Sennin’ by Ryunosuke Akutagawa is from The Three Treasures (1951), translation by S. Takamasa reprinted by permission of Hukuseido Press, Tokyo. ‘A woman alone With Her Soul’ by Thomas Bailey Aldrich is from his Works, Vol. 9 (1912). ‘Ben-Tobith’ by Leonid Andreyev is from A Treasury of Russian Literature (n.d.), translation by Bernard Guilbert Guerney reprinted by permission of The Bodley Head Ltd. ‘The Phantom Basket’ is from John Aubrey’s Miscellanies (1696). ‘The Drowned Giant’ by J.G. Ballard was originally published under the title ‘Souvenir’ in Playboy, Copyright © 1965 by HMH Publications, reprinted by permission of the author. ‘Enoch Soames’ by Sir Max Beerbohm is from Seven Man (1919), reprinted by permission of William Heinemann Ltd. ‘The Tail of the Sphinx’ by Ambrose Bierce is from Fantastic Fables. ‘The Squid in its Own Ink’ by Adolfo Bioy Casares is from El Lado de la Sombra (1962), C
opyright © A. Bioy Casares 1962, reprinted by permission of the author and Emece Editores; translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts. ‘Anything You Want! …’ by Leon Bloy is from Histoires Disobligeantes (1894), translated by Moira Banks. Mon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by James E. Irby, is from Labyrinths and reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp; Copyright The Estate of Jorge Luis Borges 1941. ‘The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind’ by Ray Bradbury is from The Golden Apples of the Sun, Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1952, 1953, reprinted by permission of Don Condon Associates Inc. ‘The Man Who Collected the First of September 1973’ by Tor Age Bringsvaerd is translated by Oddrun Gronvik; Copyright © Tor Age Bringsvaerd 1973, reprinted by permission of the author. ‘The Careless Rabbi’ by Martin Buber, translated by Olga Marx, is from Tales of the Hasidin, Vol. 1 (1956), reprinted by permission of Thames and Hudson Ltd. ‘Fate is a Fool’ by Arturo Cancela and Pilar di Lusarreta is translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts and reprinted by permission of Editorial Sudamericana. ‘An Actual Authentic Ghost’ by Thomas Carlyle is from Sartor Resartus (1834). The Red King’s Dream’ by Lewis Carroll is from Through the Looking-Glass (1871). ‘The Tree of Pride’ and ‘The Tower of Babel’ by G.K. Chesterton are from The Man who Knew Too Much (1922). ‘The Look of Death’ by Jean Cocteau is from Le Grand Ecart, Copyright © Editions Stock 1923, reprinted by permission of the publisher. ‘House Taken Over’ by Julio Cortizar is from End of Game, and Other Stories, translated by Paul Blackburn, Copyright © Random House, Inc., 1967, 1963; reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc., ALIA and the Estate of the author. ‘Being Dust’ by Santiago Dabove is from La Muerte y su Traje (1961), translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toldo and Alexandra Potts, reprinted by permission of the Estate of the author. ‘A Parable of Gluttony’ and ‘The Persecution of the Master’ by Alexandra David-Neel are from With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931), reprinted by permission of The Bodley Head Ltd. ‘The Idle City’ by Lord Dunsany is from A Dreamer’s Tales; Copyright © The Estate of Lord Dunsany 1910, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, London. ‘Tantalia’ by Macedonio Fernandez, translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts, is reprinted by permission of Ediciones Corregidor, Buenos Aires. ‘Eternal Life’ by J.G. Frazer is from The Golden Bough, Part 7; Baldur the Beautiful (1913), reprinted by permission of Macmillan and Company Ltd. ‘A Secure Home’ by Elena Garro, translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts, is reprinted by permission of Universided Veracruzana. ‘The Man Who Did Not Believe in Miracles’ by Herbert A. Giles is from Confucianism and its Rivals (1915). ‘Ending for a Ghost Story’ by I.A. Ireland is from Visitations (1919). The Monkey’s Paw’ by W.W. Jacobs is from The Lady of the Barge (1902), Copyright © the Estate of W.W. Jacobs, reprinted by permission of the Society of Authors as the literary representatives of the Estate of W.W. Jacobs. ‘What is a Ghost?’ and ‘May Goulding’ by James Joyce are from Ulysses (1921), reprinted by permission of the Executors of the James Joyce Estate. ‘The Wizard Passed Over’ by Don Juan Manuel is from Count Lucanor (1575); this version by Jorge Luis Borges from A Universal History of Infamy is translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, 1970, 1971, reprinted by permission of the publishers, E.P. Dutton, Inc. ‘Josephine the Singer’ and ‘Before the Law’ by Franz Kafka are from The Penguin Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka, both translated by Willa and Edwin Muir; Copyright © 1946 by Schocken Books, Inc., reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, Inc. and Secker and Warburg Ltd. ‘The Return of Imray’ by Rudyard Kipling is from Life’s Handicap (1891), reprinted by permission of Doubleday and Company, Inc. ‘The Horses of Abdera’ by Leopoldo Lugones is from Las Fuerzas Extranas (1906), reprinted by permission of Editorial Huemul, Buenos Aires; translated by Janet Barber. ‘The Ceremony’ by Arthur Machen, Copyright © the Estate of Arthur Machen, reprinted by permission of A.M. Heath and Co., Ltd. ‘The Riddle’ by Walter de la Mare is from The Riddle, and Other Stories (1923), reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors. ‘Who Knows?’ by Guy de Maupassant is from L’Inutile Beaute (1899); this translation by Dr. Arnold Kellett is from Tales of Supernatural Terror (Pan, 1972), Copyright © Arnold Kellett 1972, reprinted by permission of Dr. Kellett. ‘The Shadow of the Players’ by Edwin Morgan is from The Weekend Guide to Wales. ‘The Cat’ by H.A. Murena is reprinted by permission of Editorial Sur, Buenos Aires, and translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts. The Atonement’ by Silvina Ocampo is from Los Invitades, Copyright © the Estate of Silvina Ocampo 1961, reprinted by permission of Alfredo Bioy Casares; translated by Sonio Soto. ‘The Man Who Belonged To Me’ by Giovanni Papini is from Il Trangico Quotidian (1906), reprinted by permission of Mondadori. ‘Rani’ by Carlos Peralta is reprinted by permission of Editorial Sudamericana; translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts. ‘The Blind Spot’ by Barry Perowne is reprinted by permission of A.P. Watt Limited on behalf of The Executors of the Estate of Philip Atkey. The Wolf’ by Petronius is from The Satyricon, translation Copyright ID J.P. Sullivan 1965, 1969, 1974, 1977, reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. ‘The Bust’ by Manuel Peyrou is from La Noche Repetida and reprinted by permission of Emece Editores, Buenos Aires; translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts. ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ by Edgar Allan Poe is from his Tales (1845). ‘The Tiger of Chao-ch‘êng’ by P’u Sung Ling is from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880), translated by Herbert A. Giles. ‘How We Arrived at the Island of Tools’ by Francois Rabelais is from Pantagruel (1564), translated by Sir Thomas. Urquhart. ‘The Music on the Hill’ by ‘Saki’ (H.H. Munro) is from The Chronicles of Clovis (1911), Copyright © in the USA by Viking Press, Inc. 1930, renewed 1958. ‘Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched’ by May Sinclair is from Uncanny Stories (1923), Copyright © May Sinclair 1922, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, London. ‘The Cloth Which Weaves Itself’ by W.W., Skeat is from Malay Magic (1900). Universal History’ by Olaf Stapledon is from Star Maker (1937), reprinted by permission of Methuen Ltd. ‘A Theologian in Death’ by Emanuel Swedenborg is from Arcana Coelestia (1794); this version by Jorge Luis Borges from A Universal History of Infamy is translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, 1970, 1971, reprinted by permission of the publishers, E.P. Dutton, Inc. ‘The Three Hermits’ by Leo Tolstoy is from Twenty-Three Tales, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. ‘Macario’ by B. Traven is from The Night Visitor, and Other Stories, Copyright © B. Traven 1966, reprinted by permission of Cassell and Company Ltd. ‘The Infinite Dream of Pao-Yu’ and ‘The Mirror of Wind-to-Moon’ by Tsao Hsueh-Chin are from Dream of the Red Chamber, translated by Arthur Waley, reprinted by permission of Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. ‘The Desire to be a Man’ by Villiers de L’Isle Adam is from Sardonic Tales, translated by Hamish Miles, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ‘Memmon, or Human Wisdom’ by Voltaire is from Romances, Tales and Smaller Pieces of M. de Voltaire, Vol. 1(1794), translated anonymously. ‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’ by Evelyn Waugh, Copyright © the Estate of Evelyn Waugh, is reprinted by permission of A.D, Peters and Company Ltd. ‘Pomegranate Seed’ by Edith Wharton, Copyright 0 Curtis Publishing Company 1931, Copyright renewed A. Watkins, Inc., and Constable Publishers 1959. ‘Lukundoo’ by Edward Lucas White is from Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927). ‘The Donguys’ by Juan Rudolfo Wilcock is reprinted by permission of the author; translated by Lucia Alvarez de Toledo and Alexandra Potts. ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ by Oscar Wilde is from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, and Other Stories (1891). ‘The Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge’ by Richard Wilhelm is from Chinesische Volksmaerchen (1924), translated by F.H. Martens. ‘The Celestial Stag’ and ‘Saved by the Book’ by G. Willoughby-Meade are from Chinese Ghouls and Goblins (1928), reprinted by permission of Constable and Company Ltd. ‘The Reanimated Englishman’ by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is from Roger Dods-worth (1826). ‘The Sentence’ by Wu Ch’Eng En is from Monkey, translated by Arthur Waley, reprinted by permission of Unwin Hyman Ltd.
‘The Sorcerers’ by W.B. Yeats, Copyright © W.B. Yeats (undated), reprinted by permission of Macmillan and Company Ltd. Fragment from Don Juan Tenorio by Jose Zorilla, translated by Walter Owen, reprinted by permission of the translator.

  Biographical notes Copyright © The Estate of Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Estate of Silvina Ocampo and Xanadu Publications Limited, 1988.

  English translations of stories by A. Bioy Casares, Arturo Cancela and Pilar di Lusarreta, Santiago Dabove, Macedonio Fernandez, Elena Garro, H.A. Murena, Carolos Peralta, Manuel Peyrou and Juan Rudolfo Wilcock are Copyright © Lucia Alvarez de Toledo, Alexandra Potts and Xanadu Publications Limited 1988. English translation of story by Leon Bloy Copyright © Moira Banks and Xanadu Publications Limited 1987. English translation of story by Leopoldo Lugones Copyright © Janet Barber and Xanadu Publications Limited 1987. English translation of story by Silvina Ocampo Copyright © Sonia Soto and Xanadu Publications Limited 1988, with thanks to Translation Express.