The South (short story)
| "The South" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
| Original title | "El Sur" |
| Translator | Anthony Bonner |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Published in | Ficciones (2nd ed) |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1953 |
| Published in English | 1962 |
The South (original Spanish title: El Sur) is a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in La Nación in 1953 and later in the second edition (1956) of Ficciones, part two (Artifices).
Johannes Dahlmann was a minister in an Evangelical Church. Juan Dahlmann, one of his grandchildren, is a secretary in an Argentine library. Although of German descent, he is proud of his Argentine maternal ancestors. He has a number of artifacts from his forefather: an old sword, a lithograph photo, and a ranch home in southern Argentina he has never found time to visit.
In February 1939, he obtains a copy of the Arabian Nights. He takes the book home, and—eager to examine it—rushes up the stairs and gashes his forehead against a recently painted beam. The wound Dahlmann suffers forces him to lie bedridden with a very high fever. After a few days, his doctors move him to the hospital. On his way there, Dahlmann feels that perhaps the move will do him good. At the hospital, however, Dahlmann's treatment for his injury causes him great pain and discomfort, causing him to feel humiliation and self-hatred, almost as though he were in hell.
(It warrants noting at this point that, in the Prologue for Artifices, Borges explicitly acknowledged the possibility of an alternative interpretation of the narrative while refraining from giving any details or hints with respect to its nature. He writes, "Of 'The South,' which is perhaps my best story, let it suffice for me to suggest that it can be read as a direct narrative of novelistic events, and also in another way." With this in mind, one may well reinterpret the story such that all that follows Dahlmann's darkest moments in the hospital is a narration of his idealized death—the one Juan Dahlmann fabricates and enacts in his feverish mind, whilst upon the verge of a pathetic death in the hospital he never left, in order to redeem him of his actual and pitiful death and regain a measure of honor and self-respect in his last moments of consciousness.)
After days in the hospital, he is suddenly told that he is recovering, after almost having died of septicemia. Juan Dahlmann sets off to his ranch to convalesce. The story shifts locations to a train station, where Dahlmann is waiting for a train to travel to his ranch. He regards the city sights with great joy, and he decides to go to a restaurant for a bite to eat. In the restaurant, he notices a cat, the mythical creature who, in many cultures (for example, Egypt), is associated with eternity and the gods.
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