Disclaimer - This is the first in a series of posts where I will try (following some personal copyright issues I had) share what I have learned about it.
To put them in context. Katchadjián published "El Aleph Engordado" in 2009, with a run of 200 copies under the publishing house IAP (Imprenta Argentina de Poesía). It is a text that Katchadjián wrote from the story by Jorge Luis Borges, "El Aleph", transforming it into a different work whose length was more than double that of Borges' story, which has 4,000 words (the "fattened" version is added 5,600 more).
In other words, Pablo Katchadjián took Borges's "El Aleph" and "intervened" him, "made him fat", warned that he was doing it, played with that story, paid tribute to him. You can more or less like the literary result of what you did but it is in no way plagiarism because plagiarism is hiding, being surreptitious, using someone else's text to solve your own disabilities. Katchadjián did not plagiarize Borges as Borges did not plagiarize Hernández when he made an end to Martín Fierro. Katchadjián USED Borges because Borges is a world heritage site. Katchadjián's text is an appropriation that relates to the creative methods of the historical avant-gardes. If he had taken for example a text by Fina Warschaver, or a very little known writer, he would have counted (as in fact he did) with what work he is working and how he "intervenes", he would be greeted by the heirs of the unknown writer because To do this is to spread a valuable and hidden work, it is to generate interest and honor it. But he did it with Borges and around Borges move hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more. Then they jump on him.
Wild capitalism came to literary creation and dynamite any frontier of common sense. I do not accept plagiarism nor do I have the relativistic, cynical and pathetic positions of cool postmodernity where anything can be done. Borges is a big business and there are powerful lawyers who jump on anyone who lays their hands on him, and a widow who took a lot of work to live as a widow and has no limits in her claim.
So, on the one hand - not the most important but there is no reason to avoid - that mechanism by which, when entering the system of "current affairs", a minor work (yes, I think there are "minor" works and "older," but I'm not going to discuss it now) takes on an importance that it wouldn't have otherwise. And, on the other hand, the one I want to highlight the most: Katchadjián's gesture when he refuses to subsume literature in exchange.
"El Aleph Engordado" would be a minor work were it not for the process it unleashed. Or perhaps by an act of the process. Kodama apparently proposed to drop the lawsuit if Katchadjián paid the absurd and symbolic sum of one peso. That the author has rejected that agreement is what makes the process interesting. The author was prosecuted, in part, for refusing to subsume literature in the form of exchange. That is admirable.
That ethical integrity towards his creative process allowed Katchadjián to finally obtain the dismissal in the judicial case.
And this was achieved precisely because there was no plagiarism. Plagiarism is hiding, being surreptitious, using someone else's text to solve one's own disabilities.
