Jorge Luis Borges's Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is the story of early-twentieth century novelist Pierre Menard's attempt at "an undertaking which was… from the very beginning futile" (B. 44). Menard takes it upon himself to write Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote verbatim, not in the words of the work's original author, but instead in the words of Pierre Menard. Only managing to complete the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of the heroic epic, Menard fails in his attempt to write the entire Quixote, in fact "not one worksheet remains to bear witness to his years of effort;" however, a righteous line can be drawn between blatant facsimile and the fruits of Menard's labors. Menard's writings, consisting of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the Quixote, are justified as original art when his work is criticized by means of retrieval, and, as a result, his creative process and intended meaning are found to be distinct from those of Cervantes, differentiating his achievement from his predecessor's.
Criticism as Retrieval
Pierre Menard's unfinished Quixote is justified as original art once one conducts criticism of his work by retrieval, the technique of recreating the creative process surrounding a work of art in order to discover the work's truths, whereby the critic gains an intimate understanding of the work which perception of the art object as an entity unto itself does not afford. In part I, chapter IX of Don Quixote, Cervantes writes:
If any objection can be raised against the truth of this history, it can only be because its author was an Arab, for those of that nation are much inclined to lying; and since they are such bitter enemies of ours, we might more readily suppose him to have fallen short of the truth than to have exaggerated. And this is my personal belief, for when he should and could have let his pen run on in indulgent eulogies of [Don Quixote], he seems to pass them over in silence deliberately, thereby acting badly and with malicious intention, for historians are in honor bound to be precise, truthful, and dispassionate so that neither interest, nor fear, nor ill will, nor affection should move them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, [depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor.] In this history I know you will find all the entertainment you could possibly desire, and if any good quality is missing, I am certain it was through the fault of its dog of an author rather than through any defect in the subject.
Cervantes juxtaposes the narrator's blind prejudice with respect to the unknown author, the supposed Arab to whom chapter IX's account of one of Don Quixote's many failed attempts at chivalry is attributed, with the narrator's opinion that historians, himself included, ought to be impartial arbiters of truth. The narrator's criticism and subsequent contradiction are somewhat of a Cartesian mechanism, demonstrating how truths enter the lens of our experience only to be distorted before being perceived. In Cervantes's example, the narrator perceives the "malicious intention" of the Arab author in the eulogies that the author did not write. In Criticism as Retrieval, Richard Wollheim offers a view of perception as art criticism that resonates with the words of Cervantes:
With any form of perception… what is perceptible is always dependent not only upon such physical factors as the nature of the stimulus… but also upon cognitive factors. (W. 409)
Wollheim argues that in order to observe a work of art in the light of truth we must conduct criticism as retrieval. He furthers that when we conduct criticism by scrutinizing the art object as something separate from the creative process whence it came, we do a disservice to the work because we presuppose its truths, infecting our perception of the work with prejudice and misinformation, distorting the art in the lens of our understanding. By conducting criticism as retrieval, we intertwine Menard's unfinished Quixote with his unique creative process and intended meaning, in turn justifying Menard's Quixote as an original work of art.
Menard's Creative Process
When criticizing Menard's Quixote by retrieval, his work is justified as original art once it is shown that the creative process through which Menard writes the Quixote is different from that of Cervantes. Menard is only capable of completing two chapters of the Quixote after years of arduous work; however, this fact only hints at the cosmic difficulty of Menard's venture. In Menard's words, Cervantes "did not refuse the collaboration of chance." In the task of "reconstructing literally [Cervantes's] spontaneous work," Menard encounters "variations of a… psychological type;" however, in order for him to write the Quixote verbatim, Menard must, upon conceiving these variations, "sacrifice [them] to the 'original text' and reason out [these annihilations] in an irrefutable manner" (B. 41). While writing his Quixote, Cervantes had the luxury of letting his will direct his pen; Menard, on the other hand, must go about this process in reverse, using reason to bend his mind in accordance with the words he writes. This seemingly impossible, willed acquiescence of thought is why Menard "multiplied draft upon draft, revised tenaciously and tore up thousands of manuscript pages" in his attempt to write the Quixote. By using criticism as retrieval to understand Menard's work through his creative process, the enormously complex and difficult nature of Menard's creative process is understood and the originality of his Quixote is affirmed.
Intended Meaning
Menard's Quixote is justified as original art through criticism by retrieval once Menard's intended meaning in writing the Quixote is understood to be different from the meaning Cervantes intended to imbue in the words of the Quixote three-hundred years earlier. Unlike the languages of computers, the meaning conveyed by human language is not explicit. When we use language to communicate, we often employ idiomatic expressions, sarcasm, and other ambiguous constructs to communicate meaning. In verbal communication, our voice, body language, and facial expressions lend themselves to an original expression of meaning. The written word, unfortunately, lacks many of these rich nuances, and the intended meaning of written language is therefore much more difficult to derive. This is why some might call Menard's Quixote plagiarism while Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet won two Oscars in 1968; Menard and Zeffirelli's works are both intrinsically identical to the works of their predecessors, but the meanings of their works are unique. Menard's accomplishment is challenged because his meaning is not explicit, making it extremely difficult to differentiate his work from the original. Through criticism as retrieval, we know that Menard's goal was not to intend the words of the Quixote as Cervantes, but as Pierre Menard. This difference in meaning justifies Menard's Quixote as original art.
Conclusion
Pierre Menard attempts an impossible undertaking with three hundred years of history opposing his every advance: to write the literary classic Don Quixote both verbatim of the original work and in his own words. "My undertaking is not difficult, essentially… I should only have to be immortal to carry it out" (B. 40). Although one might be tempted to immediately dismiss the two chapters Menard is able to complete as plagiarism, by accepting Richard Wollheim's critical theory of criticism as retrieval, Menard's accomplishment is justified as an original work of art after the creative process through which he produces his Quixote and the meaning he intends to convey in his work are understood to be different from those of Cervantes.
