I’m going to go about commenting on this one a bit differently; Borges once again enters the realm of time warps and questions, but it is an intriguing premise that follows the axiom of art imitating life, and its reverse, life imitating art.
Borges begins with the statement that this is a proposal of story, or at the least, that facts are not fully available. Hence, he sets the story of a young man named Ryan who is seeking facts about an ancestor, Fergus Kilpatrick, a leader of a rebellion in Ireland in 1824. Kilpatrick’s sepulcher is mysteriously violated, 100 years after his death and Ryan sets about clearing up certain mysteries of how Kilpatrick came to his death, having been shot in a theater box only days before the victorious end of the revolution.
What Borges brings to light is that Kilpatrick, in ordering a comrade named Norton to discover the identity of a spy within the ranks, is found to be that spy himself. Norton plans, with Kilpatrick, the assassination of Kilpatrick so that history will instead show him to have been a noble leader of the rebellion.
Borges brings up the fact that Norton was a reader of Shakespeare, so certain similarities with the death in Julius Caesar and in MacBeth will occur in the murder of Kilpatrick. Thus, life imitating art. Then he also mentions Abraham Lincoln–with the obvious link of the war and Lincoln’s assassination while in theater attendance; Lincoln’s assassination occuring several decades later.
Borges is not only playing with time in this repetition or plagiarizing of historical drama, but he intimates that all is carefully planned out to have truth discovered eventually, and the truth again disguised for the good of the populace.
One thing that Borges has not mentioned, and yet I considered in my reading, was the theory of Jesus having arranged with Judas for his betrayal and crucifixion. Traitor and Hero implies that history is both arranged and rewritten for the benefit of itself; the line between reality and fiction then becomes blurred, leaving us with…what?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
What about the similarities between Lincoln´s and Kennedy´s assasinations? Borges could have not envisioned that (he wrote the story in the 40´) but people who killed Kennedy could have been inspired by his story, as Sheakspeare´s tragedies inspired Nolan.