of literary studies that goes far beyond traditional text analysis unaided by
computers. Equipped with these tools, students of stylometry profess to have
unmasked the Italian bestseller novelist who goes by the name Elena Ferrante.
While their claim has not been confirmed or denied, it is evident that the new
methods have made it easier and more reliable to identify an author.
His or her style becomes part of a writer’s identity. Without overstretching the
analogy, an author’s stylistic profile can be likened to a fingerprint or a
voiceprint. While these distinctive features identify an individual, they hardly
constitute that individual’s identity in its full depth and breadth. In addition to
writing in a distinct, recognizable style, writers also have an identity as a private
person and as a persona that corresponds more or less closely to their mask, that
is, the projected identity of the author of XYZ. On occasion, writers ask
themselves which one is their real self.
An intriguing example is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges,
entitled ‘Borges and I’. In the story, there are two characters. One is called
‘Borges’, and the other is the first person narrator ‘I’. The story recounts how I
has various relationships with Borges. For instance, I knows of Borges from a
list of names of professors. I acknowledges Borges as a writer, but says that he
can go on living, while Borges dedicates himself to writing. I also mentions that
he is destined to perish, but some parts of I will perhaps survive in Borges.
While these apparent contradictions are perplexing enough by themselves, we
eventually also have to ask, where in all this is the fictional author of the short
story whose name happens to be ‘Borges’?
Russell (who, incidentally, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature) resolved
the problem of the identity/non-identity of ‘Scott’ and ‘author of Waverley’ for
logicians. His theory in ‘On Denoting’ spirited it away by reducing it to an
ambiguity of de dicto (about what is said) and de re (about the thing). Borges, by
contrast, rather than resolving the ‘I’ vs ‘Borges’ ambiguity leaves normal people
wondering about it and the peculiar relationship between reality, fiction, names,
and identity, concluding the short story thus: ‘I do not know which of us has
written this page.’
Conclusions
In literature we can find an echo of all of the identity problems that have