Borges and Bertolucci

Borges' sketch "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" is a work that is prime for adaptation. When one reads it through the lens of adaptation theory--particularly Robert Stam's "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation"--the Borges work reads like a sort of narrative blue-print.

The story begins with Borges creating an amorphous setting for his narrative. He writes "The action takes place in an oppressed and tenacious country: Poland, Ireland, the Venetian Republic, some South American or Balkan state...". Though the narrator eventually decides to set the work in Ireland, the naming of various other localities at the onset of the work already demonstrates that "the mechanism" (as Bertolucci puts it) of the work more crucial than its details.

Bertolucci does not specifically clarify for us what he means by "mechanism" but in this context, and the context of his adaptation of the Borges work, the mechanism could be considered the over arcing narrative. For Bertolucci this is a "young man [who] is pursuing [...] a kind of voyage thorugh atavistic memory, through the precociousness" (52)

Stam's essay on adaptation opens with a critique of critics and readers who search for fidelity in adapted works. He writes that it is "questionable whether strict fidelity is even possible". Borges' loose sketch, as well as Bertolucci's interpretation of it, seem to ignore the idea of fidelity in the details of narrative and be concerned with the interpretation of the deeper themes.

Inherent Adaptability--Writing Seeing

Of the many propositions put forth by Robert Stam in his “The Diaologics of Adaptation” the most compelling for me is the sense of inherent adaptability in both the film and novel form. The idea that “[b]oth novel and film consistently canibaliz[e] other genres and media” (Stam 61) already establishes a certain level of adaptation in original works within cinema and literature.
Reading Cortazar’s short –story “Blow-up” through this lens of inherent adaptability created by Stam allows one to see a hidden layer of genius in the work. The hyper-metafictonality of “Blow-Up”—which first manifests itself in the form of confused and shifting perspective—is the first evidence that Cortazar is ready to experiment with his mode of expression. Later the reader experiences a “cannibalization” of genre in the story when our perspective is framed through the lens of the protagonist’s camera:

"I raised the camera, pretended to study a focus which did not includes them, and waited and watched closely, sure that I would finally catch the revealing expression, one that would sum it all up, life that is rhythemed by movement but which a stiff image destroys[…]" (Cortazar 5)

The language here—focus, rhythm of movement—are perspective tools that are fundamental to film and photography but are rarely used in literature. Cortazar’s work is essentially an adaptation. He weaves various structures and discourses within the literature form in order to capture elements of the story which the visual of representative letters on a page seem impossible of doing. These visual cues draw our attention to the failure of his form as well as establishing its infinite ability to adapt different generic tropes.