Borges and Bioy Casares rewrite Alexandra David-Néel. The case of “La vuelta del maestro” in Cuentos breves y extraordinarios

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the short-short story “La vuelta del maestro”, attributed to the French writer and orientalist Alexandra David-Néel and which appears in Cuentos breves y extraordinarios, an anthology prepared by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and originally published in 1955. The main objective is to expose the components or elements of a very short Borgian-style narrative based on the rewriting or false translation of a secondary text. To do this, we start from the postulates of David Lagmanovich regarding the invention of a short-short story, an invention constituted by what the Argentine critic considers as “a nebulous nucleus of meaning” that gives rise to an “intuition” and that leads to four discursive elements, namely, and according to his propositions: a title, an entry, a development, and an ending. The place that the miniature object of study occupies within the anthology exemplifies the construction of a discursive macrostructure and the dialogue between times and nations that the anthologists try to display in a compilation that today is considered canonical in the history of the Hispanic short-short story.