Emma Zunz

"Emma Zunz" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The tale recounts how its eponymous heroine avenges the death of her father.^[1] Originally published in September 1948 in the magazine Sur, it was reprinted in Borges' 1949 collection The Aleph. The story deals with the themes of justice and revenge, and of right and wrong.^[2] As in several other short stories, Borges illustrates the difficulty in understanding and describing reality. The story relies on issues of deceit, self-deception and inauthenticity to illustrate this.^[1]

In her discussion of "Emma Zunz", Dapía turns to a concept of Fritz Mauthner: the notion of Wortaberglaube, or "Word Superstition." Mauthner affirms that humans have an ineluctable inability to distinguish between the various ways in which a word can refer to an exterior reality that the word itself generates, so that by means of words, primitive humans asked themselves, "what does this earthquake mean, or this deformed child, or this comet?" Moderns are more inclined to get hung up on questions of the meaning of words like "soul" or "matter." says Mauthner, "Most humans suffer from this mental weakness of believing that because a word exists, this word must refer to something; they think that because a words exists, a real object must correspond to it." Without discounting the possibility of a psychoanalytic reading of "Emma Zunz", or other well-known interpretations, Dapía reads Emma as embodying the dangers of "Word Superstition." Emma manages to construct a story that has no reference outside of language itself, but that, at the same time, takes charge of itself and is not an object of question by others.^[3]

Screen adaptations

Various films have been based on Borges' "Emma Zunz":

Emma Zunz (1993) (Spain) directed for television by Jacquot Benoit.
Emma Zunz (1985) (Mexico) directed by Giangiacomo Tabet.
Emma Zunz (1984) (Holland) directed by Peter Delpeut.
Emma Zunz (1979) (Canada) directed by Isabel Beveridge.
Emma Zunz (1966) (Spain) directed by Jesús Martínez León.
Días de odio (1954) (Argentina) directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson.

References

1 2 Hall, J. B. (1982). "Deception or self-deception? The essential ambiguity of Borges' "Emma Zunz"". Forum for Modern Language Studies 18 (3): 258–265. doi:10.1093/fmls/XVIII.3.258. Retrieved 8 April 2012.
↑ Porinsky, Rebecca (2002). "True Lies: Metaphysical games in Borges’ "Emma Zunz"" (PDF). WELS and ELS Undergraduate Research Symposium. Retrieved 8 April 2012.
↑ Dapía, Silvia (1993). Die Rezeption der Sprachkritik Fritz Mauthners im Werk von Jorge Luis Borges. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau.

Sources

Dapía, Silvia (1993). Die Rezeption der Sprachkritik Fritz Mauthners im Werk von Jorge Luis Borges. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau.

Jorge Luis Borges

Bibliography

Original
collections

A Universal History of Infamy	"On Exactitude in Science"

Ficciones	"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" "The Circular Ruins" "The Lottery in Babylon" "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" "The Library of Babel" "The Garden of Forking Paths" "Funes the Memorious" "The Form of the Sword" "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" "Death and the Compass" "The Secret Miracle" "Three Versions of Judas" "The End" "The Sect of the Phoenix" "The South"

The Aleph	"The Immortal" "The Dead Man" "The Theologians" "Emma Zunz" "The House of Asterion" "Deutsches Requiem" "Averroes's Search" "The Zahir" "The Writing of the God" "The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths" "The Wait" "The Aleph"

Otras Inquisiciones (1937–1952)	"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"

Dreamtigers	"Borges and I"

Dr. Brodie's Report	"The Encounter" "The Gospel According to Mark"

The Book of Sand	"The Other" "Ulrikke" "The Congress" "There Are More Things" "The Disk" "The Book of Sand"

Shakespeare's Memory	"Blue Tigers" "Shakespeare's Memory"

Other works

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