Everything and Nothing

by Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A Yates (Translator), James E Irby (Translator)

Celebrating the centennial of his birth, Everything & Nothing compiles the most anthologized and widely read fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, "a giant of world literature" (John Updike, The New Yorker). Some of the narrative pieces herein contained are: "Pierre Menard" in which a modern writer reconstructs passages from Don Quixote that are verbally identical but read differently; "The Garden of Forking Paths," an intellectual variation on the detective-story genre; and "Nightmares," a lecture which, as Alastair Reid puts it, "shifts from personal memories to writers, to an examination of other peoples' metaphors, to language itself." Everything & Nothing serves as a perfect introduction to Borges's genius.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Essays, Philosophy, Poetry, Collections

129 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading books by Jorge Luis Borges is like taking a walk in the intellectual garden of forking paths.

In London he found the calling he had been predestined to; he became an actor, that person who stands upon a stage and plays at being another person, for an audience of people who play at taking him for that person. The work of a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to him – the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but when the last line was delivered and the last dead man applauded off the stage, the hated taste of unreality would assail him.

The writer is a universal actor too – writing a book he plays the roles of all his characters and the better he acts the better is the book.

Pierre Menard did not want to compose another Quixote, which surely is easy enough – he wanted to compose the Quixote. Nor, surely, need one have to say that his goal was never a mechanical transcription of the original; he had no intention of copying it. His admirable ambition was to produce a number of pages which coincided – word for word and line for line – with those of Miguel de Cervantes.

Although Pierre Menard’s Don Quixote is word for word identical with the original he had put in his fragment quite a different meaning… So to every reader the same book has his own unique meaning which is so often quite different from the meaning intended by the author.
Reading a book a reader looks in it for his own reflection like in a mirror… And usually he finds it, even if it is twisted like in a funhouse.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything and Nothing -- After reading the title Borges work in this collection, below are the questions I would ask myself and anybody else reflecting on the subject. I have also included the actual Borges tale beneath the questions. Have fun!

1. If in a dream you heard a voice say that you are everything and nothing, what would you think?

2. “One man is all men” is a familiar Borges theme. In this short piece, an actor is no one man in particular yet all men. If you are a fiction writer, is there anybody on this planet you couldn’t write a story about using first-person narrative?

3. According to Borges, Shakespeare is unable to have a singular identity, a constant and an unchanging Self. What is consistent, if anything, about your own sense of identity?

4. Again, according to Borges, Shakespeare created multiple identities to give his life an identity. Is such a creation of multiple identities a viable way to establish identity? Is establishing identity important in the first place?

5. Borges says Shakespeare was never meant to be anyone. Is Borges being ironic? How would an actor or author stake a claim to actually being someone away from the stage or writing desk?

6. Do you feel yourself to be infinitely full of possibilities or completely empty of any way of being in the world other than the way you are?

7. What actions, if any, are unique to you? Is there any pain or joy you have experienced that, in your mind, hasn’t been experienced by someone previously?

8. Borges claims in this piece that Shakespeare’s destiny is no different from the destiny of all other men. Is this another way of stating that there is no individual destiny but only a collective destiny? Do you agree?

9. Is this story really saying that all individual identities are an illusion, that there is only one identity split into so many dreams having no more substance than soap bubbles?

10. Is there any question I've overlooked?

---------------------------

Everything and Nothing

There was no one inside him, nothing but a trace of chill, a dream dreamt by no one else behind the face that looks like no other face (even in the bad paintings of the period) and the abundant, whimsical, impassioned words. He started out assuming that everyone was just like him; the puzzlement of a friend to whom he had confided a little of his emptiness revealed his error and left him with the lasting impression that the individual should not diverge from the species. At one time he thought he could find a cure for his ailment in books and accordingly learned the "small Latin and less Greek" to which a contemporary later referred. He next decided that what he was looking for might be found in the practice of one of humanity's more elemental rituals: he allowed Anne Hathaway to initiate him over the course of a long June afternoon. In his twenties he went to London. He had become instinctively adept at pretending to be somebody, so that no one would suspect he was in fact nobody. In London he discovered the profession for which he was destined, that of the actor who stands on a stage and pretends to be someone else in front of a group of people who pretend to take him for that other person. Theatrical work brought him rare happiness, possibly the first he had ever known–but when the last line had been applauded and the last corpse removed from the stage, the odious shadow of unreality fell over him again: he ceased being Ferrex or Tamburlaine and went back to being nobody. Hard pressed, he took to making up other heroes, other tragic tales. While his body fulfilled its bodily destiny in the taverns and brothels of London, the soul inside it belonged to Caesar who paid no heed to the oracle's warnings and Juliet who hated skylarks and Macbeth in conversation, on the heath, with witches who were also the Fates. No one was as many men as this man: like the Egyptian Proteus, he used up the forms of all creatures. Every now and then he would tuck a confession into some hidden corner of his work, certain that no one would spot it. Richard states that he plays many roles in one, and Iago makes the odd claim: "I am not what I am." The fundamental identity of existing, dreaming, and acting inspired him to write famous lines.

For twenty years he kept up this controlled delirium. Then one morning he was overcome by the tedium and horror of being all those kings who died by the sword and all those thwarted lovers who came together and broke apart and melodiously suffered. That very day he decided to sell his troupe. Before the week was out he had returned to his hometown: there he reclaimed the trees and the river of his youth without tying them to the other selves that his muse had sung, decked out in mythological allusion and latinate words. He had to be somebody, and so he became a retired impresario who dabbled in money-lending, lawsuits, and petty usury. It was as this character that he wrote the rather dry last will and testament with which we are familiar, having purposefully expunged from it every trace of emotion and every literary flourish. When friends visited him from London, he went back to playing the role of poet for their benefit.

The story goes that shortly before or after his death, when he found himself in the presence of God, he said: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one man only, myself." The voice of God answered him out of a whirlwind: "Neither am I what I am. I dreamed the world the way you dreamt your plays, dear Shakespeare. You are one of the shapes of my dreams: like me, you are everything and nothing."

[Daisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s no denying that Borges had a big old brain on him. His writing is not so much stories as invented worlds in which the stories exist. He creates characters and works that then allow him a fictional narrative posing as fact – as in the first tale of a translator of Don Quixote. Pierre Menard does not exist any more than his translation does and yet Borges writes a convincing biography of him. It is not mere faction he creates, imagining conversations and meetings that may have occurred, he constructs a wholly new event so complete and detailed that it appears as documentation rather than fiction.

If one was to say Borges work had a theme it would be the exploration of multiple worlds, the various options that we have, a sort of literary quantum theory. These themes are present here, but they are not my favourite. My highlight of this short collection was his titular essay on Shakespeare. Borges joy and admiration of the English language is evident here as he discusses Shakespeare and his work and the various lives the playwright inhabited claiming that the words uttered by Iago, “I am not what I am”, is Shakespeare speaking of himself existing, dreaming and acting. It finishes with one of the most beautiful endings I have ever read. In his dying moments God tells Shakespeare,
“I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.”

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume collects a few pieces not found in Collected Fictions including "Nightmares," "Kafka and His Precursors," "The Wall and the Books," and "Blindness," plus several famous, masterful tales.

In "Blindness," Borges discusses the various qualities of his blindness, along with similar instances in literary history: Milton, Joyce, Homer. A strange current of poetic and visual grasp of language connects them. I could read Borges on literature endlessly. His essay style is approachable and as fascinating as his fiction.

In "Nightmares," he gives us an impressive and captivating essay on the topic of dreams. Per usual, he captures dozens of literary references without sounding didactic, and stimulates the mind and imagination of the the reader with the finely tuned instrument of his own. It reminded me of many dreams I've had, in which whole histories and lifetimes blossom and die during the nocturnal interval. Dreams are intimately associated with desires. So in a dream a writer may dream that he or she has written a slew of books which do not exist in reality, one can recall pieces of those fake books upon awaking in the same way that a writer can recall fondly many parts of the books they have actually written - where then, is that ephemeral data conjured, stored, or manifested? Where are the remaining segments of these dream books? If you are wandering down a hallway in a dream, you may hear sounds beyond closed doorways. What is happening behind those doors, in invisible dream rooms? Why does the mind feel the need to fill the unseen rooms with inhabitants? A very thought-provoking essay.

All of Borges' writings should be cherished and reread throughout one's life.

[Aldrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers who are lamentably uninitiated in the seminal writings of Jorge Luis Borges and are looking for a propitious place to serve as their invitation to his world—universe, really—of possibilities and impossibilities could scarcely do better than to sample the great Argentine writer’s work by reading “Everything and Nothing.” One of several New Directions Pearl paperbacks, “Everything and Nothing” is a slim volume that presents a comprehensive view of Borges’s development as a man of letters through a series of eleven selections, arranged according to date of publication, from Borges’s extensive fiction, nonfiction, and in-between.

The book opens with “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” It’s Borges’s first foray into fiction, yet it’s already potent and quite disorienting in its pseudo-critical analysis of a fictional author’s task of rewriting Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece. What’s interesting is that Pierre Menard doesn’t aim to accomplish a mere remake or reimagining of “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha,” setting out instead to literally rewrite the novel, that is, to write it again, word for word. “He did not want to compose another ‘Quixote’—which is easy—but ‘the Quixote itself.’” By some absurd miracle Menard succeeds in completing this undertaking, which is nothing if not quixotic, and the subsequent assessment of Menard’s finished fragments by the story’s unnamed reviewer—Borges, of course—is at once hilarious and provocative. The nub of his criticism is that Cervantes’s novel and Menard’s are “verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer.” His arguments, laid out with sharp examples, point to the two authors’ differing backgrounds. Essentially they are in direct contention with the “death of the author” thesis famously championed by Roland Barthes, post-Menard.

The overlap between fact and fake is a particularly Borgesian trait. Small wonder it appears to be the unifying theme of the writings included in “Everything and Nothing.” “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” elevates this cognitive distortion to astronomical heights: it’s an unnervingly awe-inspiring piece of speculative short fiction where the inchoate idiosyncrasies and Berkeleyan biases of an imaginary planet (Tlön), which dominates the fiction of an already fictional region in Asia Minor (Uqbar), culminate in their language-powered invasion of life on Earth (Orbis Tertius, “the third world”)—a metaphor for the World Wide Web had the story not predated it. The following short story, “The Lottery in Babylon,” also treads a path of unreality, slowly but surely sketching an existential allegory.

The two succeeding tales, “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “Death and the Compass,” constitute a stimulating coupling of similar genres. The former is a spy thriller whose center is a dynamite of sub-mystery, with the actual espionage story framing the slightly more intriguing account of the spying hero’s ancestor who gave up a life of privilege only to concentrate on making a book and a maze (two of Borges’s obssessions). The latter, on the other hand, is a detective story that owes its plot to Arthur Conan Doyle and its tone to G. K. Chesterton (a couple of Borges’s literary antecedents). On its own, either story offers a headfirst plunge into a bloody expanse of intrigues—one of the villains is named Red Scharlach, two words that pertain to the sanguinary. Read back to back, they suspend as two strands of the same thread, intertwined by their shared philosophical and metaphysical slants.

The sequential pairings of “Tlön” and “Babylon” and of “Forking Paths” and “Compass” predicate in the remaining items in the collection three more similarly apt twinnings based largely on similarity of subject, line of sight, mode of delivery, or any combination of the three. The first is that of “The Wall and the Books” and “Kafka and His Precursors.” “Wall” is an open-ended essay about the implications of the simultaneity or non-simultaneity of First Emperor Shih Huang Ti’s decrees to build the Great Wall of China and to burn all extant books. “Kafka” is initially an enumeration of the influential Austrian writer’s major influences and finally a daring assertion by Borges that “every writer creates his own precursors”—a statement which, if embraced, implies that Borges himself is the original of Conan Doyle and Chesterton, that Kafka, to whom Borges nods in one of the preceding stories by assigning the name Qaphqa to a clandestine latrine, is Kafkaesque precisely because Borges is Borgesian.

The penultimate pair is made up of “Borges and I” and the title piece, “Everything and Nothing.” Both exhibit an appropriately confused inflection and operate on the consciousness of a literary persona (Borges in the former, Shakespeare in the latter).

Lastly, bringing the collection to a satisfying close are the topical gems “Nightmares” and “Blindness.” One is a passionate appreciation of the aesthetics of dreams; the other an unsentimental and self-effacing acknowledgement of Borges’s loss of sight, which proved to him more boon than bane. Both are transcripts of lectures that Borges, as the Blind Librarian of Babel, gave in his latter years. It’s only natural, then, that they should inspire applause at every turn and especially upon conclusion.

“Everything and Nothing,” the capsule biography of sorts of Shakespeare, ends thus: “History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: ‘I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: ‘Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.’” Shakespeare here could be a stand-in for Borges, and Borges could very well have merely transcribed a near-death or afterlife conversation between him and God overheard in a premonition. Borges was Shakespeare, just as he was Kafka and Menard and Tlön and the Garden of Forking Paths. Borges was both “both Borges and I” and “neither Borges nor I.” Borges was neither “both Borges and I” nor “neither Borges nor I.” Borges was many and no one. He was a paradox. He was an asymptote. He was Schrödinger’s cat. He was a dream tiger. He was, for all intents and purposes, everything and nothing. And “Everything and Nothing,” the artist’s career-spanning collection and his brief verbal portrait of his precursor, is his capsule biography of sorts.

—

Originally posted on Fully Booked .Me.

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borges has, quite possibly, the most incredibly lush imagination of any writer I have ever read. This book is marvelous. I love how his pieces are fictions but also essays. I also love how he invents his references so that the writing gives off a slightly academic 'university prof' veneer. This is done in a very tongue-in-cheek but classy way. I must add him to my 'favourite writers' list immediately. Highly recommended!

[Jessica 🥨 (kinda inactive rn because of school) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool idea that Shakespeare felt this way about his life honestly because I feel like a lot of people can relate to that

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another collection of his short works which The New York Times has described as "scalp-crinkling metaphysical arguments that transcend individual consciousness" (back cover) was as mysteriously thrilling like being in a reading labyrinth as usual. This might sound weird to some readers unfamiliar with Borges; therefore, those interested are welcome to browse through any story you like and you would see why his narration is exceptional.

[Kai Todt · Rating 5 out of 5]

this has gotta be one of the best short story collections ever, to be fair it's basically a best of collection. but i mean every story hits and they include most of my favorite borges stories. one of the books i never get tired of rereading. as bolaño says, "one must reread borges." i think this is also a good introductory book to people unfamiliar with borges' stuff. gives a good variety and focuses on the most interesting and influential aspects of borges' stories.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Borges bends my mind in a manner akin to what Timothy Leary attributed to the effect of LSD on human consciousness. I find it necessary to take his work in small doses, taking time to ponder what I’ve read, often extrapolating his notions along unforeseen vectors. So, writing a review of this small volume could easily morph into a commentary greater in length than the book itself (which, of course, no one will want to read!) I'll therefore limit this review to citing a few examples, to illustrate what I mean.
The theme that meanders through the essays is the elusive notion of identity: the realization of self and the task of discerning between illusion and reality: the Delphic challenge to “Know thyself!”
In “Kafka and his Precursors” Borges posits that Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify our future. A startling revelation! An acutely perceptive writer surveys existing concepts, values, notions, holding them up to new lights, thereby constructing something new that is in no way a copy or a parody of its precursor but rather modifies our understanding of what came before. So, by reading Kafka, one acquires a mutated conception of what was previously written: Kafka has created his own precursor. I suspect that this is such an organic process, embedded in a writer’s DNA, that it takes place without the writer consciously causing it to occur.
Taking a step back, in “The Wall and the Books”, Borges presents us with Emperor Shih Huang Ti who sought to remove any possible precursor from existence, thereby ensuring his own identity as the first emperor; all history began with him!
“Everything and Nothing” is a droll speculation on the notion of identity, a case study to illustrate Borges' thesis. And then, in the final three essays, he turns the camera relentlessly on himself, taking the notion of identity securely onto his own shoulders, enunciating the paradox of self.
Having spent much of his life as an essayist, when Borges turned his attention to fiction, he is like an actor in costume, utilizing the same unique set of tools (language, eccentricity, analysis, agility) that he applies in the essays but doing so in the interest of free speculation of events which one might imagine to have taken place, as opposed to exploring known phenomena. Thus, ad libitum, he spins for us in succession: a peripatetic caricature of a writer; a whimsical, fraudulent encyclopedia; a ludicrous lottery; and a couple of noir pieces featuring scholarly, fatalistic spies and sleuths.
And all of that miraculously concentrated into 129 pages!

[Christopherseelie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does New Directions make bad books?
This is perhaps the best introduction to Jorge Luis Borges. It is short, and covers all the bases. However, I was fortunate enough to read first a story not included here that it still one of my favorites. Regardless, this book contains his best nonfiction essays, and several stories central to his fame. Strike that, his legacy.
For sheer wit diguising profundity: Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
-In which Borges exhibits the tenuous nature of meaning through context with the irreverent plot of a modern Spanish poet rewriting Don Quixote verbatim.

What it's like when Borges ponders: The Wall and the Books
-A story with no plot, but history. Borges essay-styled fiction explores the possible motivations and characterization of the Chinese Emporer under whose rein the Great Wall was constructed and all the books written before his rule were burned.

Portrait of the Artist: Borges and I
-A little thing. Borges does a Keatsian meander through his presence and absence as an author and living being.

A Better(?) Portrait of the Artist: Blindness
-A transcription of his lecture on Blindness among great artists. He's modest about his own affinity with these men, but his personal recollections are among the most astounding.

Why Borges is one of the best ever: Nightmares
-Another transcription from a lecture. This is where his preoccupation with labrynths comes to light. His discussion of nightmares, their linguistic overlaps and presence in his stories, makes this one of the most fascinating reads you could pick up.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an excellent slim volume! I re-found it while I was home from where it lay upon a pile of books that is near table height (mostly all the results of unwanted gifts or spontaneous purchases I never had the time to follow up on). But I did open it, long ago, only to be perplexed, and annoyed at its exceedingly intellectual patterns. Luckily the volume found it's way into my backpacks and on to Taiwan.
As the note in front says, Borges wrote "essay-like fictions, and fiction-like essays." And I no longer find them exceedingly intellectual (they are--but it's no longer a fault), rather, exceedingly original. And originality is everything these days, isn't it? In any case, I'm very sure that in the next week I will reread what I already read, again, just like one insists upon revisiting a dream all day because of the profound and unknowable impression it instantly made. In that way, the stories stuck me as truths made fast to paper (by what adhesive or genius I know not) for common people (such as my self) to see.
I was also very intrigue by how his earliest fiction was so much more inaccessibly than his latter fictions. I wonder exactly what the story behind THAT is.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borges is stunning, as usual. His total devotion to literature is apparent- his writing is often personal (some tracts here describe his thoughts on his blindness, for example) but never fails to touch the paradoxical and sublime.
I'd read a few of these short stories and essays before in other collections. My favorite in this one is the eponymous "Everything and Nothing," about Shakespeare.

[TK421 · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much to learn if we only allowed our mouths to become silent and our hearts and minds to open. Simply stated: This is a beautiful collection of thoughts processed through an imagination seldom seen in others.

[SR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant intro to his work - I have another two collections that I can't wait to get to.

[ernest (Ellen) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borges is kind of pseudo intellectual when it comes to science and “infinity” (he mentions this around 3 times in every essay) but a great writer for linguistics, religion, philosophical interesting depictions and thought experiments - practically everything else .

Some memorable threads:

The solipsist as the dreamer; not everyone is "you" but everyone is living in your simulation.

God is the dreamer who observes the simulation but does not interfere. Boethius argument of free will. Just like our dream happens in an instant but our waking mind constructs the conception of time/sequential nature, God sees everything happen instanteously in a dream and we only exist temporally in his waking recollection.

At the end of everything and nothing: is God a dream? Who dreamed of God?

Shakespeare realizes he's a philosophical zombies: we are simultaneously the stage, the actor, the play, and we will keep acting like we exist as long as everyone else keeps up the act.

Every writer creates his own precursors; original thinking modifies our understanding of past and future. He gives 8 examples in "Kafka and his precursors", but the caveat is we would not have noticed this connection in the first place if Kafka had not existed.

Kafka on describing becoming blind: you don’t see darkness, but greens, yellows, blues (but never reds, I wonder why, when we have RGB cones?). Your cones and rods are still imagining stimulus. Interesting he turned to poetry.

> The story goes that shortly before or after his death, when he found himself in the presence of God, he said: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one man only, myself." The voice of God answered him out of a whirlwind: "Neither am I what I am. I dreamed the world the way you dreamt your plays, dear Shakespeare. You are one of the shapes of my dreams: like me, you are everything and nothing."

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is philosophical, creative, personal, poignant, real… I don’t even know how to describe it but it really makes you expand your thinking. Borges is an incredible writer and I think this collection is an excellent place to start with his work – it takes you through some of his early and most iconic ficciones, his later essays, and his dictated prose and lectures from after he went blind (some of his final work). You can see his growth as a writer and his thematic focuses develop as you go through the collection, and of course the stories/writings themselves are unique and very impactful. I’m honestly just so amazed by this book and it’s definitely one I will revisit.

[Jordyn Damato · Rating 3 out of 5]

i can understand why ppl rave over this book but it just wasnt For Me and thats okay! rlly well written, interesting at parts, and definitely unique. big fan of the line: “whoever is a poet is one always, and continuously assaulted by poetry”

[Calvin Isch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains some of the best (and most confusing) short stories I've come across.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the stories I had read in other Borges books, but I was delighted the essays included - in particular "Nightmares", "Blindness", as well as the brief the eponymous essay.

Borges is uniquely qualified to discuss dreams and nightmares - his format of fantastical short stories reads like embellished dreams. Near the end of the essay, Borges attempts a summarization:

"We may draw two conclusions, at least tonight; later we can change our minds. The first is that dreams are an aesthetic work, perhaps the most ancient aesthetic expression. They take a strangely dramatic form. We are, as Addison said, the theater, the spectators, the actors, the story. The second refers to the horror of nightmares. Our waking life abounds in terrible moments; we all know that there are moments in which reality overwhelms us. A loved one has died, a loved one has left us; such are the causes of sadness, of despair...Nevertheless, these do not pertain to nightmares. The nightmare has a particular horror, and that horror may be expressed by any story. It may be expressed by Wordsworth's Bedouin who is also Don Quixote, by scissors and threads, by my dream of the king, by the famous nightmares of Poe. But there is something: it is the flavor of the nightmare."

We know Borges was inspired by his dreams and nightmares, and his writing about them is delightful, but his essay on Blindness is far more fundamentally important.

"A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it. For this reason I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform us that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so."

Like his stories, his essays shouldn't be captured in a summary - they are meant to be enjoyed. In both, Borges references a rich lineage of authors who harnessed dreams and nightmares, or authors who were blind like he was. Borges is sharing with us in these two essays (they sound like they might have actually been lectures?) two dramatically different but complimentary opinions on what inspires him. They are a great supplement for a fan of his fiction.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this little book while in Madrid last year. The shopkeeper of a second-hand bookshop recommended it to me, saying that even if I wouldn't like the stories, they might add to my cultural knowledge (or something along those lines).

Borges is a name I had seen or heard before (a long time ago, though), but never paid attention to it. This compilation is only 108 pages thin and consists of eleven stories and essays, next to an introduction by one of the translators, Donald A. Yates. The blurb and several other readers describe this compilation as "a perfect introduction to Borges's genius." Unfortunately, I can't agree at all, for whatever reason.

Only two of the eleven stories (I'll use that term) managed to be of my liking: 'Nightmares', which is about dreams and nightmares and the influence they have on your thinking, writing, behaviour, etc..., and 'Blindness', since Borges became blind at some point in his life. In this little essay he describes this situation and how he dealt with it, in his work, in his renewed interest to study history (about the Celts, the Saxons, literature, and more).

The other stories just couldn't convince me, there was no click, no connection, no emotion. I was reading the texts without understanding what I was reading or what the possible meaning/message was. Several felt like extracts that missed background info of a bigger whole. Also, Borges may have had a way with words, but this also formed an obstacle in trying to find the story, the idea, the message, whatever-you-want-to-call-it in the respective texts.

Maybe Borges's works just aren't for me, regardless of eventual philosophical influences, witty elements (which I have not detected at all), and what not. But you can't know if you don't try. I tried and didn't like it.

[Andrewcharles420 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five of "the best" fictional stories as well as five nonfiction essays.

I've read some of these before but I always enjoy Borges' new perspectives and unique viewpoint! All the writings (fiction & non) are very contemplative, and frequently result in a total reconsidering of the subjects for me--mind expanding like a drug trip. I get similar effects from Hermann Hesse and David Foster Wallace just off the top of my head.

Borges I would recommend universally, though I'm not well-versed in his writings enough to know if this is the best collection of them. My favorites this time reading were the essays 'Kafka and His Predecessors', 'Borges and I', and 'Everything and Nothing', perhaps because I was generally more familiar with his fictions than his essays.

[Mark Schomburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I disliked about this book is that it's so short. It's a great introduction to Borges though, showing his unique style of fiction, and some later personal reflections. For one or two of these I found myself in a zone between Stanislaw Lem and Arthur Conan Doyle. The English translations read well, but remain enticingly Spanish in some details.

[Justine Morrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not be surprised by the size of this lovely little tome. The scope for imagination held within is vast and beautiful. Although steeped in mysticism and folklore it rings truer than most concrete histories & non-fiction I have bothered to read. Even the humility with which it feels to have been written makes it all the more special.

[Madhuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is only one collection of Borges that you will read - this should be the one. Of course after reading this you will not want to stop.
His stories transcend the border of reality, dreams and imagination. Often set in or referring to labyrinths, they strangely remind me of being in the dream conversations of Last year in Marienbad.

[Jrowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amelia recommended Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, but I recommend Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and The Garden of Forking Paths. Also, the Believer loves this guy. So if you read the believer, you should read this.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

A startling but pleasant batch of surrealism that draws from many philosophical and physical concepts. Must read for fantasy/sci-fi literary junkies but would be enjoyable for anyone who enjoys the odd and fantastic.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borges is absolutely brilliant. This slim volume remarkably showcases his genius not only as short-story writer, but also as philosopher, historian, literary theorist, sociologist, and general Renaissance man.

[Aral · Rating 5 out of 5]

they go on in despair, for they hear around them infinite sighs.

gryphius-ginzburg-ginsburg

the fact that no one believes in the reality of nouns paradoxically causes their number to be unending.

[Anna Erwin]

Shares a kind of warped magical realism with Garcia Marquez