Collected Stories

by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni)

  The Chimera reappears in the sixth book of the Aeneid, ‘armed with flame’; Virgil’s commentator Servius Honoratus observed that, according to all authorities, the monster was native to Lycia, where there was a volcano bearing its name. The base of this mountain was infested with serpents, higher up on its flanks were meadows and goats, and towards its desolate top, which belched out flames, a pride of lions had its resort. The Chimera would seem to be a metaphor of this strange elevation. Earlier, Plutarch suggested that Chimera was the name of a pirate captain who adorned his ships with the images of a lion, a goat, and a snake.

  These absurd hypotheses are proof that the Chimera was beginning to bore people. Easier than imagining it was to translate it into something else. As a beast it was too heterogeneous; the lion, goat, and snake (in some texts, dragon) do not readily make up a single animal. With time the Chimera tended to become ‘chimerical’; a celebrated joke of Rabelais (‘Can a chimera, swinging in the void, swallow second intentions?’) clearly marks the transition. The patchwork image disappeared but the word remained, signifying the impossible. A vain or foolish fancy is the definition of Chimera that we now find in dictionaries.

  The Chinese Dragon

  Chinese cosmogony teaches that the Ten Thousand Beings or Archetypes (the world) are born of the rhythmic conjunction of the two complementary eternal principles, the yin and the yang. Corresponding to the yin are concentration, darkness, passivity, even numbers, and cold; to the yang, growth, light, activity, odd numbers, and heat. Symbols of the yin are women, the earth, the colour orange, valleys, riverbeds, and the tiger; of the yang, men, the sky, blue, mountains, pillars, the dragon.

  The Chinese Dragon, the lung, is one of the four magic animals. (The others are the unicorn, the phoenix, and the tortoise.) At best, the Western Dragon spreads terror; at worst, it is a figure of fun. The lung of Chinese myth, however, is divine and is like an angel that is also a lion. We read in the Historical Record of Ssu-ma Ch’ien that Confucius went to consult the archivist or librarian Lao-tzu, and after his visit said:

  Birds fly, fish swim, animals run. The running animal can be caught in a trap, the swimmer in a net, and the flyer by an arrow. But there is the Dragon; I don’t know how it rides on the wind or how it reaches the heavens. Today I met Lao-tzu and I can say that I have seen the Dragon.

  It was a Dragon, or a Dragon Horse, which emerged from the Yellow River to reveal to an emperor the famous circular diagram symbolizing the reciprocal play of the yang and yin. A certain king had in his stables saddle Dragons and draft Dragons; one emperor fed on Dragons, and his kingdom prospered. A famous poet, to illustrate the risks of greatness, wrote: ‘The unicorn ends up coldcuts; the dragon as meat pie.’

  In the I Ching or Book of Changes, the Dragon signifies wisdom. For centuries it was the imperial emblem. The emperor’s throne was called the Dragon Throne, his face the Dragon Face. On announcing an emperor’s death, it was said that he had ascended to heaven on the back of a Dragon.

  Popular imagination links the Dragon to clouds, to the rainfall needed by farmers, and to great rivers. The earth couples with the dragon’ is a common phrase for rain. About the sixth century, Chang Seng-yu executed a wall painting that depicted four Dragons. Viewers complained that he had left out their eyes. Annoyed, Chang picked up his brushes again and completed two of the twisted figures. Then ‘the air was filled with thunder and lightning, the wall cracked and the Dragons ascended to heaven. But the other two eyeless Dragons remained in place.’

  The Chinese Dragon has horns, claws, and scales, and its backbone prickles with spines. It is commonly pictured with a pearl, which it swallows or spits up. In this pearl lies its power; the Dragon is tamed if the pearl is taken from it.

  Chuang Tzu tells us of a determined man who at the end of three thankless years mastered the art of slaying Dragons, and for the rest of his days was not given a single chance to put his art into practice.

  The Chinese Fox

  In everyday zoology the Chinese Fox differs little from other Foxes, but not so in fantastic zoology. Statistics give it a lifespan that varies between eight hundred and a thousand years. The animal is considered a bad omen, and each part of its anatomy enjoys some special power. It has only to strike the ground with its tail to start a fire; it can see into the future; and it can change into many forms, preferably into old men, young ladies, and scholars. It is astute, wary, and sceptical; its pleasures lie in playing pranks and in causing torment. Men, when they die, may transmigrate with the body of a Fox. Its dwelling is close by graves. There are thousands of stories and legends concerning it; we transcribe one, a tale by the ninth-century poet Niu Chiao, which is not without its humorous side:

  Wang saw two Foxes standing on their hind legs and leaning against a tree. One of them held a sheet of paper in its hand, and they laughed together as though they were sharing a joke. Wang tried to frighten them off but they stood their ground, and finally he shot at the one holding the page. The Fox was hit in the eye and Wang took away the piece of paper. At the inn Wang told the story to the other guests. While he spoke a gentleman having a bandaged eye came in. He listened to Wang’s story with interest and asked if he might not be shown the paper. Wang was just about to produce it when the innkeeper noticed that the newcomer had a tail. ‘He’s a Fox!’ he shouted, and on the spot the gentleman turned into a Fox and fled. The Foxes tried time after time to recover the paper, which was filled with indecipherable writing, but were repeatedly set back. Wang decided at last to return home. On the road he met his whole family, who were on their way to the capital. They said that he had ordered them to undertake the journey, and his mother showed him the letter in which he asked them to sell off all their property and join him in the city. Wang, studying the letter, saw that the page was blank. Although they no longer had a roof over their heads, he ordered, ‘Let’s go back.’

  One day a younger brother appeared whom everyone had given up for dead. He asked about the family’s misfortunes and Wang told him the whole story. ‘Ah,’ said the brother when Wang came to the part about the Foxes, ‘there lies the root of all the evil.’ Wang showed him the page in question. Tearing it from Wang’s hand, the brother stuffed the sheet into his pocket and said, ‘At last I have back what I wanted.’ Then, changing himself into a Fox, he made his escape.

  The Chinese Phoenix

  The sacred books of the Chinese may be disappointing for the reason that they lack the pathetic element to which we have been accustomed by the Bible. But occasionally, all at once in their even-tempered discourse, we are moved by some intimacy. This one, for instance, recorded in Book VII of the Confucian Analects (Waley translation):

  The Master said, How utterly have things gone to the bad with me! It is long now indeed since I dreamed that I saw the Duke of Chou.

  Or this one from Book IX:

  The Master said, The phoenix does not come; the river gives forth no chart. It is all over with me!

  The chart, or sign (explain the commentaries), refers to an inscription on the back of a magical tortoise. As for the Phoenix, it is a bird of brilliant colours, not unlike the pheasant and peacock. In prehistoric times it visited the gardens and palaces of virtuous emperors as a visible token of celestial favour. The male (Feng), which had three legs, lived in the sun. The female is the Huang; together they are the emblem of everlasting love.

  In the first century a.d., the daring unbeliever Wang Ch’ung denied that the Phoenix constituted a determined species. He said that just as the serpent turns into a fish and the rat into a tortoise, the stag in times of widespread prosperity takes the form of the unicorn, and the goose that of the Phoenix. He explained these mutations by the ‘well-known liquid’ which, some 2,356 years b.c., in the courtyard of Yao who was one of the model emperors had made the grass grow scarlet. As may be seen, his information was deficient, or rather, excessive. In the Infernal Regions there is an imaginary structure known as the Tower of the Phoenix.<
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  Chronos or Hercules

  The treatise Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles by the Neoplatonist Damascus (born about a.d. 480) records a strange version of the theogony and cosmogony of Orphism, in which Chronos or Hercules is a monster:

  According to Hieronymus and Hellanicus (if the two are not one), Orphic doctrine teaches that in the beginning there was water and mud, with which the earth was shaped. These two principles were taught to be the first: water and earth. From them came the third, a winged dragon, which in its foreparts had the head of a bull, in its hindparts the head of a lion, and in its middle the face of a god; this dragon was named the Unageing Chronos and also Heracles. With him Necessity, also known as the Inevitable, was born and spread to the boundaries of the Universe . . . Chronos, the dragon, drew from himself a threefold seed: moist Ether, limitless Chaos, and misty Erebus. Under them he laid an egg, from which the world was to hatch. The last principle was a god who was man and woman, with golden wings on its back, and bulls’ heads on its sides, and on its head a huge dragon, like all manner of beasts . . .

  Perhaps because what is excessively monstrous seems less fitting to Greece than to the East, Walter Kranz attributes an Oriental origin to these fancies.

  A Creature Imagined by C. S. Lewis

  Slowly, shakily, with unnatural and inhuman movements a human form, scarlet in the firelight, crawled out on to the floor of the cave. It was the Un-man, of course: dragging its broken leg and with its lower jaw sagging open like that of a corpse, it raised itself to a standing position. And then, close behind it, something else came up out of the hole. First came what looked like branches of trees, and then seven or eight spots of light, irregularly grouped like a constellation. Then a tubular mass which reflected the red glow as if it were polished. His heart gave a great leap as the branches suddenly resolved themselves into long wiry feelers and the dotted lights became the many eyes of a shell-helmeted head and the mass that followed it was revealed as a large roughly cylindrical body.

  Horrible things followed angular, many jointed legs, and presently, when he thought the whole body was in sight, a second body came following it and after that a third. The thing was in three parts, united only by a kind of wasp’s waist structure three parts that did not seem to be truly aligned and made it look as if it had been trodden on a huge, many legged, quivering deformity, standing just behind the Un-man so that the horrible shadows of both danced in enormous and united menace on the wall of rock behind them.

  C. S. Lewis: Perelandra

  The Crocotta and the Leucrocotta

  Ctesias, physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon in the fourth century b.c., made use of Persian sources to compile a description of India, a work of incalculable value if we are curious as to how Persians under Artaxerxes Mnemon imagined India. In Chapter 32, he gives an account of the cynolycus, or dog-wolf, from which Pliny seems to have evolved his Crocotta. Pliny writes (VIII, 30) that the Crocotta is ‘an animal which looks as though it had been produced by the coupling of the wolf and the dog, for it can break anything with its teeth, and instantly on swallowing it digest it with the stomach He goes on to describe another Indian animal, the Leucrocotta, as follows:

  a wild beast of great swiftness, the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a stag, the neck, tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven hoof, the mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one continuous bone instead of teeth; it is said, too, that this animal can imitate the human voice.

  Later authorities seem to feel that Pliny’s Leucrocotta is a cumbersome blend of the Indian antelope and the hyena. All of these animals Pliny has fit into an Ethiopian landscape, where he also lodges a wild bull with convenient movable horns, a hide as hard as flint, and hair turned contrariwise.

  A Crossbreed

  I have a curious animal, half-cat, half-lamb. It is a legacy from my father. But it only developed in my time; formerly it was far more lamb than cat. Now it is both in about equal parts. From the cat it takes its head and claws, from the lamb its size and shape; from both its eyes, which are wild and changing, its hair, which is soft, lying close to its body, its movements, which partake both of skipping and slinking. Lying on the window-sill in the sun it curls itself up in a ball and purrs; out in the meadow it rushes about as if mad and is scarcely to be caught. It flies from cats and makes to attack lambs. On moonlight nights its favourite promenade is the tiles. It cannot mew and it loathes rats. Beside the hen-coop it can lie for hours in ambush, but it has never yet seized an opportunity for murder.

  I feed it on milk; that seems to suit it best. In long draughts it sucks the milk into it through its teeth of a beast of prey. Naturally it is a great source of entertainment for children. Sunday morning is the visiting hour. I sit with the little beast on my knees, and the children of the whole neighbourhood stand round me.

  Then the strangest questions are asked, which no human being could answer: Why there is only one such animal, why I rather than anybody else should own it, whether there was ever an animal like it before and what would happen if it died, whether it feels lonely, why it has no children, what it is called, etc.

  I never trouble to answer, but confine myself without further explanation to exhibiting my possession. Sometimes the children bring cats with them; once they actually brought two lambs. But against all their hopes there was no scene of recognition. The animals gazed calmly at each other with their animal eyes, and obviously accepted their reciprocal existence as a divine fact.

  Sitting on my knees the beast knows neither fear nor lust of pursuit. Pressed against me it is happiest. It remains faithful to the family that brought it up. In that there is certainly no extraordinary mark of fidelity, but merely the true instinct of an animal which, though it has countless step-relations in the world, has perhaps not a single blood relation, and to which consequently the protection it has found with us is sacred. Sometimes I cannot help laughing when it sniffs round me and winds itself between my legs and simply will not be parted from me. Not content with being lamb and cat, it almost insists on being a dog as well. Once when, as may happen to any one, I could see no way out of my business difficulties and all that depends on such things, and had resolved to let everything go, and in this mood was lying in my rocking-chair in my room, the beast on my knees, I happened to glance down and saw tears dropping from its huge whiskers. Were they mine, or were they the animal’s? Had this cat, along with the soul of a lamb, the ambitions of a human being? I did not inherit much from my father, but this legacy is worth looking at.

  It has the restlessness of both beasts, that of the cat and that of the lamb, diverse as they are. For that reason its skin feels too narrow for it. Sometimes it jumps up on the armchair beside me, plants its front legs on my shoulder, and puts its muzzle to my ear. It is as if it were saying something to me, and as a matter of fact it turns its head afterwards and gazes in my face to see the impression its communication has made. And to oblige it I behave as if I had understood and nod. Then it jumps to the floor and dances about with joy.

  Perhaps the knife of the butcher would be a release for this animal; but as it is a legacy I must deny it that. So it must wait until the breath voluntarily leaves its body, even though it sometimes gazes at me with a look of human understanding, challenging me to do the thing of which both of us are thinking.

  Franz Kafka: Description of a Struggle

  (Translated from the German by Tania and James Stern)

  The Double

  Suggested or stimulated by reflections in mirrors and in water and by twins, the idea of the Double is common to many countries. It is likely that sentences such as A friend is another self by Pythagoras or the Platonic Know thyself were inspired by it. In Germany this Double is called Doppelgänger, which means ‘double walker.’ In Scotland there is the fetch, which comes to fetch a man to bring him to his death; there is also the Scottish word wraith for an apparition thought to be seen by a person in his exact image just b
efore death. To meet oneself is, therefore, ominous. The tragic ballad ‘Ticonderoga’ by Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a legend on this theme. There is also the strange picture by Rossetti (‘How They Met Themselves’) in which two lovers come upon themselves in the dusky gloom of a wood. We may also cite examples from Hawthorne (‘Howe’s Masquerade’), Dostoyevsky, Alfred de Musset, James (‘The Jolly Corner’), Kleist, Chesterton (‘The Mirror of Madmen’), and Hearn (Some Chinese Ghosts).

  The ancient Egyptians believed that the Double, the ka, was a man’s exact counterpart, having his same walk and his same dress. Not only men, but gods and beasts, stones and trees, chairs and knives had their ka, which was invisible except to certain priests who could see the Doubles of the gods and were granted by them a knowledge of things past and things to come.