From the Supreme Archive to the Library of Babel: Salaverría, a Precursor to Borges

Abstract

Judging by some of the rather negative statements made by Borges concerning Spanish literature, one might be tempted to believe that the latter did not influence him greatly. However, there is evidence to suggest that he could have also been inspired by selected, now obscure, contemporary Spanish writers. One of these might have been José María Salaverría, whose story “The Supreme Archive” (1926) has been said to have “anticipated some of the typical concerns of the kind Borges would, in later years, raise to their highest aesthetic level”. It is, in fact, reminiscent of Borges’ “The Library of Babel” (1941) to the point where it might be suggested that the Argentinean master, upon writing this masterpiece, had Salaverría’s story in mind, which was first published in Caras y Caretas (Faces and Masks) – a Buenosairean magazine that Borges admitted “devouring” in his youth. Nonetheless, the major concern of comparison between “The Supreme Catalogue” and “The Library of Babel” does not focus only on the notion the former as a source for the latter, but rather on a contrast between their narrative strategies: third-person omniscient in Salaverría’s case, with a realistic framework; and first person, practically without any framework, in Borges’ case. The latter appears to have developed, in the literary mode of “reasoned imagination” as described by himself, a potential already present in Salaverría’s tale, whose comparison to “The Library of Babel” can also elicit some reflection upon the enigma of identity and the character of the speaker’s voice in Babel’s universal library. In any case, Borges’ library appears to have fulfilled, in a sublime manner, the pathetic divine dream of the archivist imagined by Salaverría.