What do you think?
Rate this book
El Aleph / The Aleph
Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges’s most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
2796 people are currently reading
58319 people want to read
About the author
Jorge Luis Borges
1,930 books14.1k followersJorge 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."
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."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,922 reviews
May 8, 2025
Every story is a step beyond…
Isn’t it about the modern omnipresent mass media?
As The Aleph is a locus of the entire world, so the stories by Jorge Luis Borges are the epitome of the entire intellectual universe.
Jorge Luis Borges has dreamt many of such men and they continue to live in his tales…
Probably we are someone’s dream as well.
Our twentieth century had inverted the story of Mohammed and the mountain; nowadays, the mountain came to the modern Mohammed.
Isn’t it about the modern omnipresent mass media?
‘When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph.’ ‘The Aleph?’ ‘Yes, the only place on earth where all places are – seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending.’
As The Aleph is a locus of the entire world, so the stories by Jorge Luis Borges are the epitome of the entire intellectual universe.
His guiding purpose, though it was supernatural, was not impossible. He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him down to the last detail and project him into the world of reality.
Jorge Luis Borges has dreamt many of such men and they continue to live in his tales…
Probably we are someone’s dream as well.
June 9, 2020
THE IMMORTAL
We have all experienced different dimensions in our life, to name just three: waking, deep sleep and dreaming. Yet when it comes to describing or imagining the afterlife, I’ve read very few accounts postulating how awareness could shift between various levels; rather, life (or lack of life) after death tends to be portrayed as an uninterrupted hum all at one frequency, the three major frequencies: 1) awareness within a specific form, like a light body 2) formless awareness, that is, our consciousness merging with undifferentiated oneness, an ocean of universal conscious 3) complete obliteration without a trace of conscious awareness.
Why is this? Why can’t we think in terms of an alternating between various frequencies or modes of awareness, perhaps even with an occasional shift into oblivion? And these questions are compounded if we also think of our bodily existence on planet earth continuing forever, if we became part of the race of the immortals. Questions such as these pop up, at least for me, after reading this Jorge Luis Borges tale.
Vintage Borges: The Borges-like narrator discloses a verbatim transcription of a document a French princess purchased in an old London bookshop after a conversation she had with the grubby old bookdealer in various languages: French, English, Spanish, Portuguese; she subsequently walked out of the shop with Alexander Pope's rendering of Homer’s Iliad in six volumes and later found this document in the last volume. You have to love how our Borges-like narrator isn’t claiming to invent the story; quite the contrary, he is simply reporting on someone else’s factual account of their extraordinary experience.
The Manuscript: The document’s narrator provides us with his back-story in brief: he is an officer in the Roman army in Egypt, the Roman legions that have recently defeated Egyptian forces; however, since he himself didn’t participate in any of the bloody combat, he was propelled to embark on an adventure through the deserts in quest of the secret City of the Immortals. You also have to love how the narrator, an adventurous soldier, hale, hearty, bold leader of men and lover of the god Mars, functions as an alter-ego to the frail, bookish, solitary Borges.
The Spark: One day a stranger, exhausted, covered in blood, rides into camp and, prior to dropping dead that very evening, informs the tribune how he is searching for the river that purifies men of death; and, he goes on to say, on the other side of that river lies the City of the Immortals, a city filled with bulwarks, amphitheaters and temples. With the inclusion of amphitheaters as part of his description of the immortal city, we are given a direct signal that what is contained within its walls shares a common culture with the Greco-Roman world. Anyway, the stranger’s words fire his spirit and imagination, thus primed for an astonishing discovery, off they go, the tribune and two hundred soldiers under his command provided complements of a high-ranking military commander.
Going Solo: As the tribune informs us, the first part of the journey proved harrowing, grueling and strenuous beyond endurance - most of his men were either driven mad or died, while others, attempting desertion, faced torture or crucifixion. Also in this initial phase, the seekers crossed lands and deserts of fantastic tribes, including the Troglodytes who “devour serpents and lack all verbal commerce.” Events reach such a pitch he is told by a soldier loyal to his cause that the remaining men desire to avenge a crucifixion of one of their comrades and plan to kill him. He subsequently flees camp with several soldiers but disaster hits: in the fury of blinding desert whirlwinds he quickly gets separated - from now on, he is on his own.
Turning Point: Our tribune wanders for days in the desert, forever scorched by the sun and parched by thirst until his living nightmare shifts and somehow he finds himself bound hands behind his back and lying in a stone niche the size of a grave on the slope of a mountain. There’s a stream running at the foot of this mountain and beyond the stream he beholds the dazzling structures of the City of the Immortals. Marcus Flaminius Rufus (at this point the tribune lets us know his name) can also see numerous holes riddling the mountain and valley and from those holes emerge grey skinned naked men with scraggly beards, men he recognizes as belonging to the race of Troglodytes. My sense is these Troglodytes represent a mode of being at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from that of a refined aesthete and man of letters like Borges. I suspect Borges perceived (and perhaps dreamed) many of his fellow humans inhabiting a Troglodyte-like existence.
Exploration, One: After many days and having finally freed himself from his bonds, Marcus enters the City of the Immortals. Soon after he explores the periphery, we read, “The force of the day drove me to seek refuge in a cavern; toward the rear there was a pit, and out of the pit, out of the gloom below, rose a ladder. I descended the ladder and made my way through a chaos of squalid galleries to a vast, indistinct circular chamber. Nine doors opened into that cellar-like place; eight led to a maze that returned deceitfully, to the same chamber; the ninth led through another maze to a second circular chamber identical to the first.” Anybody familiar with Jorge Luis Borges will recognized a number of recurrent themes: mazes, caverns, ladders, doors, chaos, circular chambers.
Exploration, Two: Having spent what appears an eternity underground, Marcus spots a series of metal rungs on a wall leading to a circle of sky. He climbs the ladder, sobbing with tears of joy, until he emerges into a type of small plaza within the brilliant City. Marcus senses the city's antiquity and wanders along staircases and inlaid floors of a labyrinthine palace thinking how all what he sees is the work of the gods or, more accurately, gods who have died or, even, perhaps, since much of the architecture appears to lack any trace of practical purpose, gods who were mad. Then, we read, “I had made my way through a dark maze, but it was the bright City of the Immortals that terrified and repelled me.” And this is only the beginning: as Marcus further discovers, there are revelations even more astonishing, including the shocking true identity of one of those Troglodytes.
Universal Questions: The second half of the tale takes a decidedly philosophical turn and, in the spirit of this Borges classic, I will conclude with a series of question posed either directly or indirectly by the narrator:
• How does memory relate to immortality? Is the erasure of our memory the first step in achieving immortality?
• Likewise, how does time relate to immortality and is the erasure of time a critical step in experiencing immortality?
• If we were to experience a state free of memory and time in this life, through powerful hallucinogens, deep meditation or otherwise, have we achieved a kind of immortality, at least for a time?
• What part does ecstasy and bliss play in the state or experience of immortality?
• How far does the consequences of our action extend? To a subsequent rebirth or afterlife in another state?
• How much weight should we give to history or a specific epoch of history? To our own personal history? How much of history is so much smoke and mirrors?
• What role does transformation on any level, physical, mental, artistic, spiritual, play in our life?
When I read the work of Jorge Luis Borges I feel like my universe is expanding a thousand-fold. And for good reason - my universe is, in fact, expanding a thousand-fold! This is especially true as I read The Aleph and Other Stories. Such sheer imaginative power. Fantastic! There are nearly fifty stories and brief tales collected here and every tale worth reading multiple times.
For the purposes of continuing this review, I will focus on 4 stories, the first 3 being no longer than 2 pages. (4,3,2 . . . moving down to the infinity of the Borges 0, which happens to be the shape of the Aleph). Sorry, I am getting too carried away.
THE TWO KINGS AND THE TWO LABYRINTHS
The king of Babylonia builds a labyrinth ". . . so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way." Although the king of Babylonia tricked the king of the Arabs into entering his diabolical labyrinth, the king, with the help of God, manages to find the secret exit. After claiming victory in a bloody war, the king of the Arabs leads the king of Babylonia, in turn, into a different kind of labyrinth, and says, " . . . the Powerful One has seen fit to allow me to show thee mine, which has no stairways to climb, nor doors to force, not wearying galleries to wander through, nor walls to impede thy passage." Then, the king of the Arabs abandoned the king of Babylonia in the middle of the desert. These two images of a labyrinth, one intricate, convoluted, infinitely confusing and the other an endless desert, have remained with me since I first read this tale some thirty years ago and will remain with me as long as there is a `me' with a memory.
THE CAPTIVE
A tale of identity where a young boy with sky-blue eyes is kidnapped in an Indian raid. The parents recover their son who is now a man and bring him back to their home. The man remembers exactly where he hid a knife. Not long thereafter, the man, now an Indian in spirit, returns to the wilderness. The story ends with a question, "I would like to know what he felt in that moment of vertigo when past and present intermingled; I would like to know whether the lost son was reborn and died in that ecstatic moment, and he ever managed to recognize, even as a baby or a dog might, his parents and the house." For Borges, memory and identity are ongoing themes. After reading Borges, I can assure you, memory and identity have become ongoing themes for me also.
THE PLOT
How many volumes have been written pondering and philosophizing over fate and free will? In two short paragraphs Borges gives us a tale where we are told, "Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries." How exactly? Let's just say life is always bigger than human-made notions of life.
THE ALEPH
Around the universe in fifteen pages. There is a little something here for anybody who cherishes literature - a dearly departed lover named Beatriz, a madman and poet named Carlos Argentino Daneri, who tells the first person narrator, a man by the name of Borges, about seeing the Aleph, and, of course, the Aleph. What will this Borges undergo to see the Aleph himself? We read, "I followed his ridiculous instructions; he finally left. He carefully let down the trap door; in spite of a chink of light that I began to make out later, the darkness seemed total. Suddenly I realized the danger I was in; I had allowed myself to be locked underground by a madman, after first drinking down a snifter of poison." Rather than saying anything further about the Aleph, let me simply note that through the magic of literature we as readers are also given a chance to see what Borges sees. I dare anybody who has an aesthetic or metaphysical bone in their body to read this story and not make the Aleph a permanent part of their imagination.
Go ahead. Take the risk. Be fascinated and enlarged. Have the universe and all its details spinning in your head. Read this book.
March 31, 2024
Ceea ce impresionează în aceste mici povestiri e simplitatea și limpezimea lor.
Abia acum înțeleg ce a vrut să spună Mario Vargas Llosa cînd a vorbit de „originalitatea violentă” a lui Borges. Nu găsim nici un adjectiv în plus, nici un cuvînt prisositor. Un exemplu: „I se făcu somn, i se făcu frig” („Căutările lui Averroes”, p.100). Altul: „Mi-am văzut chipul și măruntaiele, am văzut chipul tău” („Aleph”, p.166). Proza se țese din propoziții simple, subiect + predicat. Epitetele sînt rare și pregnante: „minuțioasă pierdere a cinstei” („Emma Zunz”, p.63).
Cele mai multe povestiri sînt abstracte. În „Căutările lui Averroes”, naratorul susține, de fapt, o teorie literară. Poeții contemporani nu mai pot inventa metafore noi. Există un număr finit de metafore, pot fi găsite la „primii poeți”: „Un mare poet este nu atît inventator, cît descoperitor” (p.93). În consecința acestei opinii, Borges propune o idee și mai radicală: „Primii poeți au spus... toate lucrurile ce pot fi spuse” (p.99). Afirmația povestitorului amintește de deviza lui Giordano Bruno: „Nil novi sub sole”. Totul a mai fost cîndva sub soare, totul s-a mai petrecut o dată, totul a fost deja spus și poeții nu fac decît să se repete.
Unii pot reproșa acestor texte caracterul lor „eterat”, îndepărtarea de realitate, atemporalitatea. Au probabil dreptate, dar asta nu înseamnă că povestirile speculative ale lui Borges sînt mai puțin captivante. Înainte de orice, sînt jocuri de idei...
Pînă și dușmanii lui Jorge Luis Borges au fost obsedați de proza lui. Nu cunosc un elogiu mai puțin discutabil.
Abia acum înțeleg ce a vrut să spună Mario Vargas Llosa cînd a vorbit de „originalitatea violentă” a lui Borges. Nu găsim nici un adjectiv în plus, nici un cuvînt prisositor. Un exemplu: „I se făcu somn, i se făcu frig” („Căutările lui Averroes”, p.100). Altul: „Mi-am văzut chipul și măruntaiele, am văzut chipul tău” („Aleph”, p.166). Proza se țese din propoziții simple, subiect + predicat. Epitetele sînt rare și pregnante: „minuțioasă pierdere a cinstei” („Emma Zunz”, p.63).
Cele mai multe povestiri sînt abstracte. În „Căutările lui Averroes”, naratorul susține, de fapt, o teorie literară. Poeții contemporani nu mai pot inventa metafore noi. Există un număr finit de metafore, pot fi găsite la „primii poeți”: „Un mare poet este nu atît inventator, cît descoperitor” (p.93). În consecința acestei opinii, Borges propune o idee și mai radicală: „Primii poeți au spus... toate lucrurile ce pot fi spuse” (p.99). Afirmația povestitorului amintește de deviza lui Giordano Bruno: „Nil novi sub sole”. Totul a mai fost cîndva sub soare, totul s-a mai petrecut o dată, totul a fost deja spus și poeții nu fac decît să se repete.
Unii pot reproșa acestor texte caracterul lor „eterat”, îndepărtarea de realitate, atemporalitatea. Au probabil dreptate, dar asta nu înseamnă că povestirile speculative ale lui Borges sînt mai puțin captivante. Înainte de orice, sînt jocuri de idei...
Pînă și dușmanii lui Jorge Luis Borges au fost obsedați de proza lui. Nu cunosc un elogiu mai puțin discutabil.
September 19, 2019
This is a masterful collection by a writer of genius. I believe The Aleph is just as good as Fictions," and Fictions is as good as any book of short pieces produced in the 20th Century. If you like paradoxes, puzzles, doppelgangers and labyrinths used as metaphors for the relation of microcosm to macrocosm and the fluid nature of personal identity, then this is the book for you.
These stories are profound, but they are written in such an entertaining traditional narrative style that they might often be mistaken for pulp fiction if they weren't so astonishingly elegant.
May 18, 2025
It has always been a pleasure for me to read Borges, so I enjoyed each of the short stories in this collection.
Borges, always faithful to his style and magic, transports his reader to extraordinary places to discover fabulous things and stories. He doesn't tell. Borges builds labyrinths.
From the new metaphysics (if you will) to the new detective, to the philosophical but mythological tale, we lose ourselves to find ourselves more intelligent, as Claude Mauriac said.
For Borges, who has always read a lot, everything had steeped in universal literature; each act had explained my research and found an echo. Each being has a literary or mythological double. Nothing was written randomly in Borges' short stories; each sentence is essential in the construction. Thirsty for knowledge and discovery, Borges pursues his search for the absolute, the ultimate, the whole, which brings together all the universe's experiences, places, and objects, of the sentence which sums up the entire mystery of existence. For him, the world is an unfathomable labyrinth, which keeps its secrets, and every man represents all men in a game of symmetries.
One of the short stories, "The Abode of Asterion," curiously reminded me of a chapter in "Praise of the Stepmother" by Vargas Llosa, where the narrator is a monster which is "Head I," painted by Francis Bacon. The two characters are monsters inspired by paintings and mythology, naive, sympathetic, and pathetic.
Borges, always faithful to his style and magic, transports his reader to extraordinary places to discover fabulous things and stories. He doesn't tell. Borges builds labyrinths.
From the new metaphysics (if you will) to the new detective, to the philosophical but mythological tale, we lose ourselves to find ourselves more intelligent, as Claude Mauriac said.
For Borges, who has always read a lot, everything had steeped in universal literature; each act had explained my research and found an echo. Each being has a literary or mythological double. Nothing was written randomly in Borges' short stories; each sentence is essential in the construction. Thirsty for knowledge and discovery, Borges pursues his search for the absolute, the ultimate, the whole, which brings together all the universe's experiences, places, and objects, of the sentence which sums up the entire mystery of existence. For him, the world is an unfathomable labyrinth, which keeps its secrets, and every man represents all men in a game of symmetries.
One of the short stories, "The Abode of Asterion," curiously reminded me of a chapter in "Praise of the Stepmother" by Vargas Llosa, where the narrator is a monster which is "Head I," painted by Francis Bacon. The two characters are monsters inspired by paintings and mythology, naive, sympathetic, and pathetic.
December 12, 2020
Down and Out in Lovecraft and Borges
At some point (but not today) I intend to do a review of Borges and Lovecraft together. Not to say anything important but merely to understand how they depend on one another. I think it is clear that Borges borrowed from Lovecraft. And I think it is just as clear that we read Lovecraft in light of what Borges did with the genre of fantasy/horror.
At least a half dozen stories have been identified by readers as ‘cross-overs’ as it were from Lovecraft to Borges. And it is difficult to conceive of an interpretation of the genre that doesn’t presume the philosophical challenges put by Borges. But I think the influences may be much more widely seen in the detail of the stories.
One obvious connection is the way both authors use the Arabic world, and Islam especially, as a focus for spiritual mystery. Borges admitted to trying to write in the Arabic tradition during a seminar in the 1970's. Lovecraft flirted with Islam in his young adulthood and clearly is familiar with Islamic, particularly Sufi, mythology.
Another connection between the two authors is their use of space in a story to represent spiritual awakening, often in an inverted form: Lovecraft tends downward, inward into the earth and to the South when he enters the realm of the soul, hell, and fear. Perhaps this reflects his New England upbringing and the remnants of Puritan myth. Borges also goes downward but then typically rises upwards and puts his most primitive worlds in the North. Could the swamps and relative wildness of Uruguay and the Ibera Wetlands be a sort of gnostic symbol of earthly chaos directly opposed to Protestant certainties?
Who knows, maybe in my twilight years something will emerge.
At some point (but not today) I intend to do a review of Borges and Lovecraft together. Not to say anything important but merely to understand how they depend on one another. I think it is clear that Borges borrowed from Lovecraft. And I think it is just as clear that we read Lovecraft in light of what Borges did with the genre of fantasy/horror.
At least a half dozen stories have been identified by readers as ‘cross-overs’ as it were from Lovecraft to Borges. And it is difficult to conceive of an interpretation of the genre that doesn’t presume the philosophical challenges put by Borges. But I think the influences may be much more widely seen in the detail of the stories.
One obvious connection is the way both authors use the Arabic world, and Islam especially, as a focus for spiritual mystery. Borges admitted to trying to write in the Arabic tradition during a seminar in the 1970's. Lovecraft flirted with Islam in his young adulthood and clearly is familiar with Islamic, particularly Sufi, mythology.
Another connection between the two authors is their use of space in a story to represent spiritual awakening, often in an inverted form: Lovecraft tends downward, inward into the earth and to the South when he enters the realm of the soul, hell, and fear. Perhaps this reflects his New England upbringing and the remnants of Puritan myth. Borges also goes downward but then typically rises upwards and puts his most primitive worlds in the North. Could the swamps and relative wildness of Uruguay and the Ibera Wetlands be a sort of gnostic symbol of earthly chaos directly opposed to Protestant certainties?
Who knows, maybe in my twilight years something will emerge.
Read
July 30, 2020The 'Aleph' is a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness which lives under the ninth stair of a dark basement in Buenos Aires. The basement is in the house of would-be poet, Carlos Argentino Danieri, whose life's work is a never-to-be-completed poem, inspired by the images he claims to see in the iridescent sphere, and which becomes an impossibly detailed geography of the world as revealed to him by his many sessions lying on the basement floor gazing up at the Aleph.
The story of the Aleph more than deserves its place as the title story of this collection. It is not really about Danieri however, but rather about the narrator of the story and his own mystical experience with the Aleph, so what I've said here about Danieri won't spoil the story for you. As is the case with all of Borges's stories, this one has to be experienced, no words of mine will do.
But if I focussed on Danieri and his interminable poem about the geography of the world, it was because he reminded me of a favourite French author, Gustave Flaubert. Alongside his many novels and stories, Flaubert worked for years on a bizarre and never-to-be-finished writing project which involved trying to investigate/summarise all the knowledge in the world, including geography. But because he also had a marvellous sense of fun, Flaubert created a pair of buffoon characters called Bouvard and Pécuchet to help him exploit his obsession with knowledge. The two characters get transformed by the knowledge they keep accumulating, but are not necessarily wiser for the accumulation, and even though Flaubert constantly satirises his comical pair, the reader feels he is more like them in their crazy desire to accumulate mountains of knowledge than he admits.
Borges himself seems to have an equal fascination with knowledge about the world—his character Danieri is not unlike himself (even though it is the narrator of The Aleph who comes across as most Borges-like). I've now read four collections of Borges's stories in two separate editions and I feel I've roamed across the geography and history of the known world—and several unknown worlds—alongside him. But unlike Danieri, and Bouvard & Pécuchet, there has been no sense of being overwhelmed by an accumulation of detail. Instead I've been impressed by the way Borges hones everything down to the size of a walnut shell.
Yes, his stories are each in their own ways little iridescent spheres which allow us to transcend our own daily reality. Some of them I'd like to keep in my pocket and rub from time to time as you would a talisman. Others I'd probably want to lose rather than hold onto because they might haunt me in the long term.
But I'll never be not glad I read them.
The story of the Aleph more than deserves its place as the title story of this collection. It is not really about Danieri however, but rather about the narrator of the story and his own mystical experience with the Aleph, so what I've said here about Danieri won't spoil the story for you. As is the case with all of Borges's stories, this one has to be experienced, no words of mine will do.
But if I focussed on Danieri and his interminable poem about the geography of the world, it was because he reminded me of a favourite French author, Gustave Flaubert. Alongside his many novels and stories, Flaubert worked for years on a bizarre and never-to-be-finished writing project which involved trying to investigate/summarise all the knowledge in the world, including geography. But because he also had a marvellous sense of fun, Flaubert created a pair of buffoon characters called Bouvard and Pécuchet to help him exploit his obsession with knowledge. The two characters get transformed by the knowledge they keep accumulating, but are not necessarily wiser for the accumulation, and even though Flaubert constantly satirises his comical pair, the reader feels he is more like them in their crazy desire to accumulate mountains of knowledge than he admits.
Borges himself seems to have an equal fascination with knowledge about the world—his character Danieri is not unlike himself (even though it is the narrator of The Aleph who comes across as most Borges-like). I've now read four collections of Borges's stories in two separate editions and I feel I've roamed across the geography and history of the known world—and several unknown worlds—alongside him. But unlike Danieri, and Bouvard & Pécuchet, there has been no sense of being overwhelmed by an accumulation of detail. Instead I've been impressed by the way Borges hones everything down to the size of a walnut shell.
Yes, his stories are each in their own ways little iridescent spheres which allow us to transcend our own daily reality. Some of them I'd like to keep in my pocket and rub from time to time as you would a talisman. Others I'd probably want to lose rather than hold onto because they might haunt me in the long term.
But I'll never be not glad I read them.
December 14, 2021
"Cualquier destino, por largo y complicado que sea, consta en realidad de un solo momento: el momento en que el hombre sabe para siempre quién es."
Maravilloso Borges, eterno Borges, infinito Borges, sabio Borges, maestro Borges, Borges único.
Después de “Ficciones”, este es el libro que más me gusta leer y releer del maestro.
Aquí, vuelven a aparecer los temas recurrentes de su obra como la inmortalidad, la muerte, los cuchilleros, la teología, el Martin Fierro, la mitología griega, las parábolas sobre el infinito y las atribulaciones del hombre que es todos los hombres.
Naturalmente, sobresalen algunos de ellos por su perfección literaria, tal es el caso de “Emma Zunz”, una historia de venganza, “Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos”, que es otra forma de venganza, “El inmortal”, que narra la búsqueda de la vida eterna, “El Zahir”, que funciona a modo de adaptación de “El Aleph” y cuya trama está atada al destino y por supuesto, el que muchos consideran su mejor cuento junto a “El Sur” de “Ficciones”: me refiero a “El aleph”, con su única y particular visión del universo y que al mismo tiempo posee la interpolación del Borges real en el ficcional, algo que no cualquier autor se atreve a poner en práctica.
Terminé de leer este libro ayer y casualmente por la noche tuve un sueño.
En él soñaba que levantaba la vista después de leer un libro de Borges, salía a la calle y escuchaba su voz. Eso me llevaba a caminar unas cuadras para verlo en el techo de una casa, con la cara pintada y usando una túnica griega, mientras declamaba un poema.
El sueño, uno de los temas más preponderantes de su obra me dio la posibilidad de disfrutar de Borges como a él le hubiera gustado que se lo recordara.
Maravilloso Borges, eterno Borges, infinito Borges, sabio Borges, maestro Borges, Borges único.
Después de “Ficciones”, este es el libro que más me gusta leer y releer del maestro.
Aquí, vuelven a aparecer los temas recurrentes de su obra como la inmortalidad, la muerte, los cuchilleros, la teología, el Martin Fierro, la mitología griega, las parábolas sobre el infinito y las atribulaciones del hombre que es todos los hombres.
Naturalmente, sobresalen algunos de ellos por su perfección literaria, tal es el caso de “Emma Zunz”, una historia de venganza, “Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos”, que es otra forma de venganza, “El inmortal”, que narra la búsqueda de la vida eterna, “El Zahir”, que funciona a modo de adaptación de “El Aleph” y cuya trama está atada al destino y por supuesto, el que muchos consideran su mejor cuento junto a “El Sur” de “Ficciones”: me refiero a “El aleph”, con su única y particular visión del universo y que al mismo tiempo posee la interpolación del Borges real en el ficcional, algo que no cualquier autor se atreve a poner en práctica.
Terminé de leer este libro ayer y casualmente por la noche tuve un sueño.
En él soñaba que levantaba la vista después de leer un libro de Borges, salía a la calle y escuchaba su voz. Eso me llevaba a caminar unas cuadras para verlo en el techo de una casa, con la cara pintada y usando una túnica griega, mientras declamaba un poema.
El sueño, uno de los temas más preponderantes de su obra me dio la posibilidad de disfrutar de Borges como a él le hubiera gustado que se lo recordara.
Read
August 25, 2020
July 27, 2015
“Anything can drive a person insane if that person cannot manage to put it out of their mind” – even… “a map of Hungary”! Obsession is the unifying theme of virtually all these stories, which is apt, because I’m beginning to be a trifle obsessed myself. It is perhaps most central to The Zahir.
I have the Collected Fictions (with copious translator's notes), but am splitting my review of that into its components, listed in publication order: Collected Fictions - all reviews. This is the fourth, published in 1949.
The now familiar Borgesian tropes are also here in abundance too: time, reality and dreams, immortality, infinity, mirrors and opposites, labyrinths, recursion and circularity, memory.
At this stage of working though Borge’s Collected Fictions, I feel deeply connected. There is still a beguiling, mysterious layer, but it’s not impenetrable by any means, even though I’m very aware that I’m nowhere near as erudite as Borges, so although I know many of the great literary names he drops, I’m not necessarily intimately familiar with their works.
The Immortal 6*
What price immortality? And what an opening premise: a story by a rare-book dealer, found by a princess, in a copy of The Ilyad! The story itself is about a mysterious, obsessive quest to find the secret City of the Immortals.
The journey includes Roman soldiers; escape; loneliness; fear of otherness; extraordinary architecture; finding a way through a labyrinth of caves, ladders, doors and multiple rooms; sinister troglodytes, references to The Odyssey, and much musing on life, death, mortality, and the nature of time. It sounds like a checklist of clichés, but in the hands of this master storyteller, it is fresh, beautiful, profound – and unsettling.
The city is found – abandoned and part ruined. It is beautiful and impressive, but somehow sinister – not an easy combination to describe: “This place is the work of the gods… The gods that built this place have died… The gods that built this place were mad… The impression of great antiquity was joined by others: the impression of endlessness, the sensation of oppressiveness and horror, the sensation of complex irrationality… A maze is a house built purposely to confuse men… the architecture had no purpose.” Its very existence “pollutes the past and the future and somehow compromises the stars.”
The philosophical aspects mainly concern the essence of opposites, and hence, ways and forms of immortality: the “Wheel, which has neither end not beginning, each life is the effect of the previous life and engenderer of the next… Over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men… heads and tails tend to even out… Viewed in that way, all our acts are just, though also unimportant.” Worse, “the notion of the world as an exact system of compensation… made them immune to pity.”
For mortals, it’s different: “Death… makes men precious and pathetic… any act they perform may be their last… Everything in the world of mortals has the value of the irrecoverable and contingent.”
The Dead Man
The story is summarised in the opening sentence: a low-life urban hoodlum becomes a horseman and the leader of a band smugglers. His obsession is gaining power.
This is more than 1/3 through the Collected Fictions, and I think this has the first female character who merits more than a sentence (though it’s not a very enviable role).
Of course, it’s really about death. If you’re almost dead anyway, does it matter what happens just before?
The Theologians
A rather dry piece that perks up towards the end. It concerns two sects, each of which thinks the other heretical, compounded by a pair of believers in a doctrine, and one protagonist is obsessed with gaining the intellectual upper-hand. Are they allies (the same) or opponents (opposites)?
If “every man is two men, and… the real one is the other one, the one in heaven… our acts cast an inverted reflection” so by doing bad things on earth, good things can happen in heaven! I’m not sure that would stand up in court.
Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden
Is “going native” a choice or a necessity? Are contrasting stories essentially two sides of the same story? This is only three pages long, and the story starts halfway through.
This has echoes of The Captive and The Ethnographer (reviewed in Dreamtigers).
A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz
“Any life… actually consists of a single moment - the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”
There is lots of historical background in the translator’s notes and the conclusion echoes that of The Theologians .
Emma Zunz 6*
A woman (at last), with clear inspiration from Kafka although Borges says in the afterword that the plot was given to him by a woman (without indicating whether it’s meant to be fact or fiction). It’s a compelling, twisted, and tragic story of bereavement and obsessive revenge, leading to thoughts of justice and truth.
Like the tree falling in the deserted forest, if the condemned man doesn’t know or understand what he’s guilty of, does it matter – is the sentence valid? See Kafka’s The Penal Colony for another approach to the same question. There’s a similar idea in Borges’ “The Secret Miracle”, which is in Artifices
Then what? An unbelievable story may convince everyone if the substance is true. Her “shame was real, her hatred was real… all that was false were the circumstances, the time, and one or two proper names.”
Plot summary:
The House of Asterion 6*
The son of a queen lives a strange and solitary life in an empty house “like no other”, with many doors and corridors.
The oddness and sadness only increase when Asterion confides, “A certain generous impatience has prevented me from learning to read”.
He runs “joyously” to greet rare visitors, in part because he can “free them from evil”. Then you realise how, why - and who. There are (at least) two sides to every story.
The Other Death
Does each choice or change create a new path through time?
Grim but dull memories of a bloody civil war followed by interesting diversions into truth versus memory and the omnipotence of god, encapsulated in the question of whether a hero and a coward with the same name are two people, or two facets of one.
Deutsches Requiem
A brave and controversial piece: on the eve of his execution, the subdirector of a Nazi concentration camp sets down his thoughts, so he can be understood (he has “no desire to be pardoned, for I feel no guilt”).
He sees Nazism as “intrinsically moral” in part, because “compassion on the part of the superior man is Zarathustra’s ultimate sin”. That justifies murdering Jews, even a poet he admired: “I destroyed him… to destroy my own compassion”. Chilling.
He engenders no sympathy, but I did, reluctantly, feel the desire to be understood had been partially achieved.
Averroes’Search
A look at failure and defeat, despite great striving. An Arab physician in Al-Andalus is writing interpretations of Aristotle, but is stumped by the terms “comedy” and “tragedy”.
The Zahir 6*
Head-spinning time. “Idealist doctrine has it that the verbs ‘to live’ and ‘to dream’ are at every point synonymous; for me, thousands upon thousands of appearances will pass into one; a complex dream will pass into a simple one. Others will dream that I am mad, while I dream of the Zahir.
This opens by listing the many meanings of the word, zahir, in different languages and cultures. The one that matters here is an object that can inspire obsession to the extent that the victim loses touch with reality. Perhaps that is why, at the outset, Borges writes “I am still, albeit only partially, Borges”.
All sorts of things have been zahirs in mythology, but this one is an innocent-looking coin that Borges is given in a bar, when drowning his sorrows about a lost, dead love (a woman with an obsession of her own: glamour and perfection). It has the letters N and T scratched on it.
“There is nothing less material than money, since any coin… [is] a panoply of all possible futures”, a symbol of free will, perhaps. Money is abstract… Money is future time.”
After sleepless nights, confusion, consultation with a psychiatrist and scouring books, Borges learns more about zahirs and resolves to rid himself of the coin in another anonymous bar and to write a fantasy about it.
In Deutsches Requiem, a couple of stories earlier, the idea of being driven to madness by being fixated on a single thing (even a map of Hungary) is mentioned, and that idea is extended here. He tells of a magic tiger that was a zahir, and a fakir who painted “an infinite tiger… composed of many tigers in the most dizzying of ways”. In fact, it contained almost everything (like an Aleph – the final story in this collection). “Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is” because everything has elements of everything else. Another obsession-inducing object is The Book of Sand, in the collection of the same name.
“Perhaps behind the coin is God.”
“The Writing of the God
“Wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity.”
A priest of the god (lower case, no possessive) is in prison, with a tiger/jaguar the other side of a piece of glass. Following on from The Zahir, his growing obsession with this tiger is no surprise.
The priest believes the god created a secret magical phrase that is hidden in creation and can ward off evil. He may have seen it many times, without realizing it, or without understanding it. He trawls his memories of the world and starts to see god and a message in everything – but especially the creature’s markings. The obsession drives him to the brink of insanity.
He has a final revelation, but it was unique to him and it dies with him.
“In the language of a god every word would speak that infinite concatenation of events… A god… must speak but a single word, and in that word there must be absolute plenitude.”
Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in his Labyrinth 5*
Cornwall, 1914 (quite a shock, compared with the vague and more exotic locations of most of the other stories), and two men explore a ruined labyrinthine house, while one tells the other its story, involving a north African prince, a slave, a lion, and a prophesy of a murderous dead man.
Walking around “They felt they were being suffocated by the house… through the knotted darkness… the invisible wall, cumbered with ruggedness and angles, passed endlessly under his hand”.
When it was built, the local vicar had condemned it from the pulpit, declaring it “intolerable that a house should be composed of a single room, yet league upon league of hallways… No Christian ever built such a house.” He also told a story – which is the one after this: The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.
Like a detective, the listener is intrigued but unconvinced: “the facts were true… but told the way you told them, they were clearly humbug”. He unpicks the less plausible aspects of the story, turns it round, and suggests an alternative.
The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
This is the short tale quoted by the vicar in the previous story: “It is the prerogative of God, not man, to strike confusion and inspire wonder.”
The Wait
“It is easier to endure a terrifying event that to imagine it, wait for it endlessly.”
According to the afterword, this was “suggested by a true police story”. A man arrives in a new town, wanting to be inconspicuous, using a false name – that of his enemy – even though “he was not seduced by the literary error of imagining that adopting the name of his enemy would be an astute thing to do”.
He keeps to himself, goes out rarely and cautiously, tries to live in the present, and scours the news to discover if the other man has died.
The Man on the Threshold
“One house is like another – what matters is knowing whether it is built in heaven or hell.”
A man sent to quell riots in an Indian city vanished a few years later; the narrator is trying to find him. In the afterword, Borges says he set it in India “so that its improbabilities might be bearable” though it seems no less probable than most of the others.
In “the opaque city that had magically swallowed up a man… I felt… the infinite presence of a spell cast to hide Glencairn’s whereabouts”. Everyone claimed either to have never heard of, let alone seen him, or to have seen him moments ago.
Finally, a very old man seems to know something, though what he knows is obscure and its relevance unclear, especially because he seems to be talking about events many years ago.
The Aleph 6*
This has similarities with The Zahir, earlier in this collection: a man obsessed with a dead woman, and a mysterious object that inspires obsession and seems to contain everything.
Borges visits the house of his love each year, on the anniversary of her death, staying a little longer each time, until he ends up a dinner guest. Her cousin is an obsessive poet, who “planned to versify the entire planet” and delights in reading his epic doggerel to Borges. He lavishly praises his own work, but won’t publish for fear “he might create an army of implacable and powerful enemies”. Borges “realized that the poet’s work had lain not in the poetry but in the invention of reasons for accounting the poetry admirable” – which it wasn’t, “a poem that seemed to draw out to infinity the possibilities of cacophony and chaos”!
The poet’s house comes under threat of demolition, and he is distraught because in his cellar is the Aleph, which he shows to Borges. “An Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all points”, in this case, a disc about three centimetres in diameter. This provides a dizzying effect, wonderfully described (and also explains the poet’s attempt to write about everywhere in the world). “In that unbound moment, I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts… all occupying the same point, without superposition and without transparency… Each thing… was infinite things because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos.”
Those stream-of-consciousness passages are wonderful, but the ending is unexpectedly flat: .
Quotes
• “The black shadow – bristling with idolatrous shapes upon the yellow sand – of the City’s wall.”
• “I imagined a world without memory, without time” and “a language that had no nouns, a language of impersonal verbs or indeclinable adjectives.”
• “All creatures are immortal for they know nothing of death.”
• “Argos and I lived our lives in separate universes… our perceptions were different, but that Argos combined them differently than I.”
• “Like all those who possess libraries, Aurelian felt a nagging sense of guilt at not being acquainted with every volume in his.”
• “The heresies we ought to fear are those that can be confused with orthodoxy.”
• “Her eyes were that half-hearted blue that the English call grey.”
• “The most solemn of events are outside time… the immediate past is severed… from the future because the elements that compose those events seem not to be consecutive.”
• “Tearing up money is an act of impiety, like throwing away bread.”
• “To change the past is not to change a mere single event; it is to annul all its consequences, which tend to infinity.”
• “There is no more cunning consolation than the thought that we have chosen our own misfortunes.”
• It’s hard to follow fashion in war, so “A foreign man she had always had her doubts about was allowed to take advantage of her good will” by sending her hats. “These ridiculous shapes had never been worn in Paris” and “were not hats, but arbitrary and unauthorized caprices”.
• “The predictable ranks of one- and two-story houses had taken on that abstract air they often have at night, when they are simplified by darkness and silence.”
• “A man comes to resemble the shape of his destiny.”
• “Weary of a world that lacked the dignity of danger, the friends prized the solitude of that corner of Cornwall.”
• “The past is the stuff that time is made of.”
• “The notion that there might be parallels between art and life never occurred to him… Unlike people who had read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a book.”
• A very old man “His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb.”
• “This ancient little man for whom the present was scarcely more than an indefinite rumor.”
• “Our minds are permeable to forgetfulness” which sounds rather back-to-front.
I have the Collected Fictions (with copious translator's notes), but am splitting my review of that into its components, listed in publication order: Collected Fictions - all reviews. This is the fourth, published in 1949.
The now familiar Borgesian tropes are also here in abundance too: time, reality and dreams, immortality, infinity, mirrors and opposites, labyrinths, recursion and circularity, memory.
At this stage of working though Borge’s Collected Fictions, I feel deeply connected. There is still a beguiling, mysterious layer, but it’s not impenetrable by any means, even though I’m very aware that I’m nowhere near as erudite as Borges, so although I know many of the great literary names he drops, I’m not necessarily intimately familiar with their works.
The Immortal 6*
What price immortality? And what an opening premise: a story by a rare-book dealer, found by a princess, in a copy of The Ilyad! The story itself is about a mysterious, obsessive quest to find the secret City of the Immortals.
The journey includes Roman soldiers; escape; loneliness; fear of otherness; extraordinary architecture; finding a way through a labyrinth of caves, ladders, doors and multiple rooms; sinister troglodytes, references to The Odyssey, and much musing on life, death, mortality, and the nature of time. It sounds like a checklist of clichés, but in the hands of this master storyteller, it is fresh, beautiful, profound – and unsettling.
The city is found – abandoned and part ruined. It is beautiful and impressive, but somehow sinister – not an easy combination to describe: “This place is the work of the gods… The gods that built this place have died… The gods that built this place were mad… The impression of great antiquity was joined by others: the impression of endlessness, the sensation of oppressiveness and horror, the sensation of complex irrationality… A maze is a house built purposely to confuse men… the architecture had no purpose.” Its very existence “pollutes the past and the future and somehow compromises the stars.”
The philosophical aspects mainly concern the essence of opposites, and hence, ways and forms of immortality: the “Wheel, which has neither end not beginning, each life is the effect of the previous life and engenderer of the next… Over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men… heads and tails tend to even out… Viewed in that way, all our acts are just, though also unimportant.” Worse, “the notion of the world as an exact system of compensation… made them immune to pity.”
For mortals, it’s different: “Death… makes men precious and pathetic… any act they perform may be their last… Everything in the world of mortals has the value of the irrecoverable and contingent.”
The Dead Man
The story is summarised in the opening sentence: a low-life urban hoodlum becomes a horseman and the leader of a band smugglers. His obsession is gaining power.
This is more than 1/3 through the Collected Fictions, and I think this has the first female character who merits more than a sentence (though it’s not a very enviable role).
Of course, it’s really about death. If you’re almost dead anyway, does it matter what happens just before?
The Theologians
A rather dry piece that perks up towards the end. It concerns two sects, each of which thinks the other heretical, compounded by a pair of believers in a doctrine, and one protagonist is obsessed with gaining the intellectual upper-hand. Are they allies (the same) or opponents (opposites)?
If “every man is two men, and… the real one is the other one, the one in heaven… our acts cast an inverted reflection” so by doing bad things on earth, good things can happen in heaven! I’m not sure that would stand up in court.
Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden
Is “going native” a choice or a necessity? Are contrasting stories essentially two sides of the same story? This is only three pages long, and the story starts halfway through.
This has echoes of The Captive and The Ethnographer (reviewed in Dreamtigers).
A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz
“Any life… actually consists of a single moment - the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”
There is lots of historical background in the translator’s notes and the conclusion echoes that of The Theologians .
Emma Zunz 6*
A woman (at last), with clear inspiration from Kafka although Borges says in the afterword that the plot was given to him by a woman (without indicating whether it’s meant to be fact or fiction). It’s a compelling, twisted, and tragic story of bereavement and obsessive revenge, leading to thoughts of justice and truth.
Like the tree falling in the deserted forest, if the condemned man doesn’t know or understand what he’s guilty of, does it matter – is the sentence valid? See Kafka’s The Penal Colony for another approach to the same question. There’s a similar idea in Borges’ “The Secret Miracle”, which is in Artifices
Then what? An unbelievable story may convince everyone if the substance is true. Her “shame was real, her hatred was real… all that was false were the circumstances, the time, and one or two proper names.”
Plot summary:
The House of Asterion 6*
The son of a queen lives a strange and solitary life in an empty house “like no other”, with many doors and corridors.
The oddness and sadness only increase when Asterion confides, “A certain generous impatience has prevented me from learning to read”.
He runs “joyously” to greet rare visitors, in part because he can “free them from evil”. Then you realise how, why - and who. There are (at least) two sides to every story.
The Other Death
Does each choice or change create a new path through time?
Grim but dull memories of a bloody civil war followed by interesting diversions into truth versus memory and the omnipotence of god, encapsulated in the question of whether a hero and a coward with the same name are two people, or two facets of one.
Deutsches Requiem
A brave and controversial piece: on the eve of his execution, the subdirector of a Nazi concentration camp sets down his thoughts, so he can be understood (he has “no desire to be pardoned, for I feel no guilt”).
He sees Nazism as “intrinsically moral” in part, because “compassion on the part of the superior man is Zarathustra’s ultimate sin”. That justifies murdering Jews, even a poet he admired: “I destroyed him… to destroy my own compassion”. Chilling.
He engenders no sympathy, but I did, reluctantly, feel the desire to be understood had been partially achieved.
Averroes’Search
A look at failure and defeat, despite great striving. An Arab physician in Al-Andalus is writing interpretations of Aristotle, but is stumped by the terms “comedy” and “tragedy”.
The Zahir 6*
Head-spinning time. “Idealist doctrine has it that the verbs ‘to live’ and ‘to dream’ are at every point synonymous; for me, thousands upon thousands of appearances will pass into one; a complex dream will pass into a simple one. Others will dream that I am mad, while I dream of the Zahir.
This opens by listing the many meanings of the word, zahir, in different languages and cultures. The one that matters here is an object that can inspire obsession to the extent that the victim loses touch with reality. Perhaps that is why, at the outset, Borges writes “I am still, albeit only partially, Borges”.
All sorts of things have been zahirs in mythology, but this one is an innocent-looking coin that Borges is given in a bar, when drowning his sorrows about a lost, dead love (a woman with an obsession of her own: glamour and perfection). It has the letters N and T scratched on it.
“There is nothing less material than money, since any coin… [is] a panoply of all possible futures”, a symbol of free will, perhaps. Money is abstract… Money is future time.”
After sleepless nights, confusion, consultation with a psychiatrist and scouring books, Borges learns more about zahirs and resolves to rid himself of the coin in another anonymous bar and to write a fantasy about it.
In Deutsches Requiem, a couple of stories earlier, the idea of being driven to madness by being fixated on a single thing (even a map of Hungary) is mentioned, and that idea is extended here. He tells of a magic tiger that was a zahir, and a fakir who painted “an infinite tiger… composed of many tigers in the most dizzying of ways”. In fact, it contained almost everything (like an Aleph – the final story in this collection). “Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is” because everything has elements of everything else. Another obsession-inducing object is The Book of Sand, in the collection of the same name.
“Perhaps behind the coin is God.”
“The Writing of the God
“Wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity.”
A priest of the god (lower case, no possessive) is in prison, with a tiger/jaguar the other side of a piece of glass. Following on from The Zahir, his growing obsession with this tiger is no surprise.
The priest believes the god created a secret magical phrase that is hidden in creation and can ward off evil. He may have seen it many times, without realizing it, or without understanding it. He trawls his memories of the world and starts to see god and a message in everything – but especially the creature’s markings. The obsession drives him to the brink of insanity.
He has a final revelation, but it was unique to him and it dies with him.
“In the language of a god every word would speak that infinite concatenation of events… A god… must speak but a single word, and in that word there must be absolute plenitude.”
Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in his Labyrinth 5*
Cornwall, 1914 (quite a shock, compared with the vague and more exotic locations of most of the other stories), and two men explore a ruined labyrinthine house, while one tells the other its story, involving a north African prince, a slave, a lion, and a prophesy of a murderous dead man.
Walking around “They felt they were being suffocated by the house… through the knotted darkness… the invisible wall, cumbered with ruggedness and angles, passed endlessly under his hand”.
When it was built, the local vicar had condemned it from the pulpit, declaring it “intolerable that a house should be composed of a single room, yet league upon league of hallways… No Christian ever built such a house.” He also told a story – which is the one after this: The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.
Like a detective, the listener is intrigued but unconvinced: “the facts were true… but told the way you told them, they were clearly humbug”. He unpicks the less plausible aspects of the story, turns it round, and suggests an alternative.
The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
This is the short tale quoted by the vicar in the previous story: “It is the prerogative of God, not man, to strike confusion and inspire wonder.”
The Wait
“It is easier to endure a terrifying event that to imagine it, wait for it endlessly.”
According to the afterword, this was “suggested by a true police story”. A man arrives in a new town, wanting to be inconspicuous, using a false name – that of his enemy – even though “he was not seduced by the literary error of imagining that adopting the name of his enemy would be an astute thing to do”.
He keeps to himself, goes out rarely and cautiously, tries to live in the present, and scours the news to discover if the other man has died.
The Man on the Threshold
“One house is like another – what matters is knowing whether it is built in heaven or hell.”
A man sent to quell riots in an Indian city vanished a few years later; the narrator is trying to find him. In the afterword, Borges says he set it in India “so that its improbabilities might be bearable” though it seems no less probable than most of the others.
In “the opaque city that had magically swallowed up a man… I felt… the infinite presence of a spell cast to hide Glencairn’s whereabouts”. Everyone claimed either to have never heard of, let alone seen him, or to have seen him moments ago.
Finally, a very old man seems to know something, though what he knows is obscure and its relevance unclear, especially because he seems to be talking about events many years ago.
The Aleph 6*
This has similarities with The Zahir, earlier in this collection: a man obsessed with a dead woman, and a mysterious object that inspires obsession and seems to contain everything.
Borges visits the house of his love each year, on the anniversary of her death, staying a little longer each time, until he ends up a dinner guest. Her cousin is an obsessive poet, who “planned to versify the entire planet” and delights in reading his epic doggerel to Borges. He lavishly praises his own work, but won’t publish for fear “he might create an army of implacable and powerful enemies”. Borges “realized that the poet’s work had lain not in the poetry but in the invention of reasons for accounting the poetry admirable” – which it wasn’t, “a poem that seemed to draw out to infinity the possibilities of cacophony and chaos”!
The poet’s house comes under threat of demolition, and he is distraught because in his cellar is the Aleph, which he shows to Borges. “An Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all points”, in this case, a disc about three centimetres in diameter. This provides a dizzying effect, wonderfully described (and also explains the poet’s attempt to write about everywhere in the world). “In that unbound moment, I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts… all occupying the same point, without superposition and without transparency… Each thing… was infinite things because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos.”
Those stream-of-consciousness passages are wonderful, but the ending is unexpectedly flat: .
Quotes
• “The black shadow – bristling with idolatrous shapes upon the yellow sand – of the City’s wall.”
• “I imagined a world without memory, without time” and “a language that had no nouns, a language of impersonal verbs or indeclinable adjectives.”
• “All creatures are immortal for they know nothing of death.”
• “Argos and I lived our lives in separate universes… our perceptions were different, but that Argos combined them differently than I.”
• “Like all those who possess libraries, Aurelian felt a nagging sense of guilt at not being acquainted with every volume in his.”
• “The heresies we ought to fear are those that can be confused with orthodoxy.”
• “Her eyes were that half-hearted blue that the English call grey.”
• “The most solemn of events are outside time… the immediate past is severed… from the future because the elements that compose those events seem not to be consecutive.”
• “Tearing up money is an act of impiety, like throwing away bread.”
• “To change the past is not to change a mere single event; it is to annul all its consequences, which tend to infinity.”
• “There is no more cunning consolation than the thought that we have chosen our own misfortunes.”
• It’s hard to follow fashion in war, so “A foreign man she had always had her doubts about was allowed to take advantage of her good will” by sending her hats. “These ridiculous shapes had never been worn in Paris” and “were not hats, but arbitrary and unauthorized caprices”.
• “The predictable ranks of one- and two-story houses had taken on that abstract air they often have at night, when they are simplified by darkness and silence.”
• “A man comes to resemble the shape of his destiny.”
• “Weary of a world that lacked the dignity of danger, the friends prized the solitude of that corner of Cornwall.”
• “The past is the stuff that time is made of.”
• “The notion that there might be parallels between art and life never occurred to him… Unlike people who had read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a book.”
• A very old man “His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb.”
• “This ancient little man for whom the present was scarcely more than an indefinite rumor.”
• “Our minds are permeable to forgetfulness” which sounds rather back-to-front.
January 17, 2018
Telaraña de historias y leyendas absurdas y maravillosas, llenas de elementos fantásticos pero con las que viajas por todo el mundo y a través del tiempo.
He disfrutado mucho de esta lectura, aunque hay un puñado de relatos que no llegué a apreciar o entender, en cambio otros como 'El inmortal', 'Emma Zunz', 'La casa de Asterión', 'Deutsches Requiem' y 'El Alpeh' me fascinaron completamente y no puedo dejar de darles vueltas.
Borges consigue algo que nunca me había pasado, que según termine un relato quiera volver a leerlo una y otra vez para poder comprender cada uno de los mil detalles y referencias que nos presenta.
Desde luego, una lectura muuuuuy particular y no apta para todos los paladares
He disfrutado mucho de esta lectura, aunque hay un puñado de relatos que no llegué a apreciar o entender, en cambio otros como 'El inmortal', 'Emma Zunz', 'La casa de Asterión', 'Deutsches Requiem' y 'El Alpeh' me fascinaron completamente y no puedo dejar de darles vueltas.
Borges consigue algo que nunca me había pasado, que según termine un relato quiera volver a leerlo una y otra vez para poder comprender cada uno de los mil detalles y referencias que nos presenta.
Desde luego, una lectura muuuuuy particular y no apta para todos los paladares
Read
January 27, 2021Borges's book had the gift of revealing an idea to me, which, after all, I already had, somewhere in the corners of my mind.
Literature repeats endlessly the same few themes, the only thing that changes is the time of writing and reading. The main themes used by Homer are found in contemporary works too. Though, the perspective is different. Borges is fascinated by this idea of the text that is written endlessly, that only by getting lost in this re-reading of the text - will we come to understand the supreme text.
These 17 fantastic stories contained in " Aleph" - folow this obsession of finding the symbol that most accurately depicts the divinity. His prose has a fantastic air, and this fantastic is the means by which Borges invites us to know the divinity. Of course, this knowledge cannot be rational, because the human mind is limited, it is rather one of trust, of acceptance of the existence of the state of miracle.
And Borges's miracle is manifested in purely holistic images. What has his prose in addition to the mystical texts is precisely the astonishment that encompasses the one who saw the unseen. The author finds a very strong connection between dream and revelation. The symbol of the labyrinth is perhaps the most present in the book, along with that of the double. Borges's God has as many faces as there are religions, he is the Text that brings together the texts of the whole world, from all times, he is a God who changes from reading to reading, always keeping the same features, but with a different face.
Although difficult to decipher, Borges's prose is fascinanting, the only problem with this writer is that once you read it, you are left with the desire to re-read it, endlessly.
Literature repeats endlessly the same few themes, the only thing that changes is the time of writing and reading. The main themes used by Homer are found in contemporary works too. Though, the perspective is different. Borges is fascinated by this idea of the text that is written endlessly, that only by getting lost in this re-reading of the text - will we come to understand the supreme text.
These 17 fantastic stories contained in " Aleph" - folow this obsession of finding the symbol that most accurately depicts the divinity. His prose has a fantastic air, and this fantastic is the means by which Borges invites us to know the divinity. Of course, this knowledge cannot be rational, because the human mind is limited, it is rather one of trust, of acceptance of the existence of the state of miracle.
And Borges's miracle is manifested in purely holistic images. What has his prose in addition to the mystical texts is precisely the astonishment that encompasses the one who saw the unseen. The author finds a very strong connection between dream and revelation. The symbol of the labyrinth is perhaps the most present in the book, along with that of the double. Borges's God has as many faces as there are religions, he is the Text that brings together the texts of the whole world, from all times, he is a God who changes from reading to reading, always keeping the same features, but with a different face.
Although difficult to decipher, Borges's prose is fascinanting, the only problem with this writer is that once you read it, you are left with the desire to re-read it, endlessly.
July 2, 2011
You're avoiding a single star, Borges, simply because I try my best not to dish them out. There's little value in reading if one is going to try consider ways to dislike doing it. I love your ideas, but not your executions. Reading through the contents list, I can easily choose five or six stories whose very conception alone excite me(The Immortal, The Zahir, The Writing of The God, The House of Asterion), but you continually bashed me over the head with names, places, dates, literary and historical allusions(all of which I recognise as necessary to legitimise a story's authenticity), but I simply wanted a story, not a reference manual. It would have been fine had the stories been chunkier, but when I have five or more consecutive lines of undiluted information being dunked into me, I'm more than likely going to have to return to the beginning of the sentence to remind myself what it was originally about. To my mind it seems the reason you didn't get that award from the guys in Sweden was because you simply tried much too hard to get it. But I'll give you the respect you clearly deserve by putting you back in my bookshelf where you sat before, instead of throwing you with the scrapheap in the corner.
July 31, 2025
نامیرا بودن چیز پیشپاافتادهای است؛ جز آدمی، همهی موجودات نامیرا هستند، چراکه از مرگ وقوف ندارند.
وقتی برای اولین بار نشستم و بورخس خوندم فکرشم نمیکردم یه روزی یه دل نه صد دل عاشق کارش بشم. ظاهرا انقدر بد خونده بودمش که هیچ دستگیرم نشده چی داشته مینویشته. یکی از دلایلش بر میگرده به اون زمانی که به کارهایی با محوریت تخیل علاقهی زیادی نداشتم و یکی دیگه از دلایلش برمیگرده به ترجمهی نهچندان جالب اون کتابی که اون زمان انتخابش کردم. کتابخانهی بابل اولین کاری بود که ازش خوندم با ترجمهی بدون حواشی و توضیح و تفاسیری که لازمهی نوشتههایی مثل نوشتههای بورخسه چراکه اگر این توضیحات وجود نداشته باشه بههیچ عنوان کار بورخس برای خوانندهی عادی فارسیزبانی مثل منِ نوعی قابل فهم و تامل نیس.
خیلی وقت بود میخواستم به بورخس برگردم. توی خودم این توان رو دیدم که بهتر بفهممش و همینطور هم شد. (برای خوندن داستانهای دیگرش لحظهشماری میکنم.)
این کتابی که الان دارین رویویش رو میخونین و اسمش الفه شامل ۱۷ داستان بورخسه که ۱۰ تا از داستانهاش با کتاب کتابخانهی بابل مشترکه ولی ترجمهی متفاوتی داره و حواشی و توضیحات فوقالعاده بیشتر و بهتری داره که توی فهم داستانهای بورخس خیلی کمککنندهاس.
داستانهایی که در این کتاب اومده یکی از یکی شاهکارترن. بورخس با تلفیق تاریخ و اسطوره و مذهب و فلسفه به انتزاعیترین و جادوییترین شیوهی ممکن داستان کوتاه مینویسه. قلمش انقدر سرشار و غنی و لبریز از ارجاعات ادبیه که گاهی بیشتر به تحقیقات و تحلیلات ادبی یک مفسر یا تاریخدان ادبیات شباهت پیدا میکنه. نوع نگاهی که به داستان داره اونقدر بینظیره که با خودت میگی دیگه بهتر از این نمیشه. روایتش از نوع غیرخطی اون قدر پیچیدگیِ لذتبخشی داره که سلولهای خاکستری مغزتون رو یه ماساژ حسابی میده. موضوعاتی که برای پراختن انتخاب میکنه (و شامل مرگ و زمان و جاودانگی و وحدت وجود و .. میشه.) انقدر جهانشموله که برای مطرح کردنش از انتخاب هیچ شرایط مکانی و زمانیِ داستانیای واهمه نداره. و درنهایت خوندنشون انقدر لذتبخشه که نگم براتون.
پ.ن: این ریویوی محقر تقدیم میشه به دوست و رفیق عزیزم نیک (مخفف نیکلاس!؟) بزرگ که این کتاب و علاقهی وافرم به بورخس رو مدیون وجودشم.
August 24, 2025
“Accettiamo facilmente la realtà, forse perché intuiamo che nulla è reale.”
Borges mi ha stupito con i suoi costrutti letterari infusi di cultura e sogno, poesia e fantasia, luoghi mitici e distanti. Ultima frontiera dell'immaginazione.
Perdersi nei labirinti per ritrovare se stessi, nuovi, rinati, vivi, o perduti per sempre.
Un'esperienza che esprime tutte le doti dell'erudito in una perdizione di sensi e sublime capacità di sognare attraverso le parole. La realtà delle cose nascoste in un tripudio di illusioni.
..e probabilmente non l'ho capito
---------------------------
⭐⭐⭐⭐
"We easily accept reality, perhaps because we sense that nothing is real."
Borges amazed me with his literary constructs infused with culture and dreams, poetry and fantasy, mythical and distant places. The final frontier of the imagination.
Getting lost in labyrinths to rediscover oneself, new, reborn, alive, or lost forever.
An experience that expresses all the qualities of the erudite in a loss of the senses and a sublime ability to dream through words. The reality of things hidden in a riot of illusions.
..and I probably didn't understand it.
Borges mi ha stupito con i suoi costrutti letterari infusi di cultura e sogno, poesia e fantasia, luoghi mitici e distanti. Ultima frontiera dell'immaginazione.
Perdersi nei labirinti per ritrovare se stessi, nuovi, rinati, vivi, o perduti per sempre.
Un'esperienza che esprime tutte le doti dell'erudito in una perdizione di sensi e sublime capacità di sognare attraverso le parole. La realtà delle cose nascoste in un tripudio di illusioni.
..e probabilmente non l'ho capito
---------------------------
⭐⭐⭐⭐
"We easily accept reality, perhaps because we sense that nothing is real."
Borges amazed me with his literary constructs infused with culture and dreams, poetry and fantasy, mythical and distant places. The final frontier of the imagination.
Getting lost in labyrinths to rediscover oneself, new, reborn, alive, or lost forever.
An experience that expresses all the qualities of the erudite in a loss of the senses and a sublime ability to dream through words. The reality of things hidden in a riot of illusions.
..and I probably didn't understand it.
November 14, 2019
Pocas veces existe consenso en este mundo, por lo que nos podemos fiar: Borges es, necesariamente, un narrador magistral. Su manera de describir las extrañas situaciones y los objetos curiosos con los que topan sus personajes es, a la postre, de lo más inquietante y absorbente que he leído.
Se me antoja además que la base del terror borgiano está, no en lo desconocido, sino en el saber, en el momento en el que despertamos al significado de lo que nos rodea.
Se me antoja además que la base del terror borgiano está, no en lo desconocido, sino en el saber, en el momento en el que despertamos al significado de lo que nos rodea.
July 14, 2022
عالم بورخيس القصصي عجيب
في بعض أحيان بتكون الفانتازيا والغرابة في النص الأدبي طريفة وممتعة وفيها صور خيالية جميلة
وأحيان أخرى تكون غاية في الغموض
بعض القصص في هذه المجموعة الخيال فيها مثير للدهشة, وأخرى أفكارها مفهومة إلى حد ما
وبعضها الكاتب نفسه بيدخل فيها فكأنها أجزاء من حياته.
قراءة مختلفة ومحيرة
في بعض أحيان بتكون الفانتازيا والغرابة في النص الأدبي طريفة وممتعة وفيها صور خيالية جميلة
وأحيان أخرى تكون غاية في الغموض
بعض القصص في هذه المجموعة الخيال فيها مثير للدهشة, وأخرى أفكارها مفهومة إلى حد ما
وبعضها الكاتب نفسه بيدخل فيها فكأنها أجزاء من حياته.
قراءة مختلفة ومحيرة
April 28, 2021
Stevenson, Wells, Twain, Verne, the Arabian Nights, were some of the references for Borges very early on, back in Argentina. At his father’s library he read a lot. Then he went to Europe...
Borges: “American, old and a blind poet “ he realized once, later in life. Afterwards he had to live up to it and face old age as a “time of happiness”; the “animal being dead…man and soul go on”.
Borges “a shy man who longed for oblivion” (“siempre tímido”, as he said of himself). But not shy stories, he wrote. Stories venturing into strange worlds of past times and mythologies and religious beliefs.
(by Borges)
Of his infancy he recalls the horror of mirrors: “that reflection”…”an enemy of me”. For some time, before complete blindness, he’s seen “vague whitish shapes”. He’s seen the black and the red. Then the “silver color left”, blue and yellow “blended”. Yellow was the “last color” to be seen. Blindness “came very quietly”. He knew about family blindness. Some family members had died blind.
(by Borges)
Now blind, books have “no letters”, ”friends are faceless”. And yet he pursues the search for his “(secret) center...my Algebra,…my mirror, my key…soon I shall know who I am.”
Borges in search for himself.
"Time has been my Democritus".
The first story is about the writing of God. About a magician, Tzinacan, imprisoned. He finds a way out….but decides to stay. Imprisoned.
The second story is about the Zahir, the coin, first gotten as money change from a drink ("aguardente").
It all starts with the death of actress Teodelina Villar. According to the author, she committed the solipsism of dying right on the “bairro der sur”. She was more interested in perfection rather than beauty.
It’s a story full of reflections on currency:”money is abstract”,”unpredictable” …it may be “coffee,…Brahms music”.
On the 16th of July the narrator bought 1 sterling pound and studied it under the magnifying glass. In August, due to insomnia, he had to consult with a psychiatrist. He could not get rid of a fixed idea.
The narrator has had a dream: “I was the coin, …a Griffin watched”
...
Plus, reflections on Sufi wisdom: the repetition of names for 99 times: “maybe behind it is God”.
Ah, the zahir, the coin. The narrator got rid of it. In a drink.
“The zahir is the shadow of the rose, and the parting of the veil”;… “now I use both”.
Mostly, stories to ponder. To enjoy their full color. Maybe to get perplexed. To start searching for meaning. Identity too.
Stories to be read not once. But 9 times. Or 99 times. Over 9 years. Preferably over 99 years.
-If you've got the time.
UPDATE
Nice interview
https://borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com...
Borges: “American, old and a blind poet “ he realized once, later in life. Afterwards he had to live up to it and face old age as a “time of happiness”; the “animal being dead…man and soul go on”.
Borges “a shy man who longed for oblivion” (“siempre tímido”, as he said of himself). But not shy stories, he wrote. Stories venturing into strange worlds of past times and mythologies and religious beliefs.
(by Borges)
Of his infancy he recalls the horror of mirrors: “that reflection”…”an enemy of me”. For some time, before complete blindness, he’s seen “vague whitish shapes”. He’s seen the black and the red. Then the “silver color left”, blue and yellow “blended”. Yellow was the “last color” to be seen. Blindness “came very quietly”. He knew about family blindness. Some family members had died blind.
(by Borges)
Now blind, books have “no letters”, ”friends are faceless”. And yet he pursues the search for his “(secret) center...my Algebra,…my mirror, my key…soon I shall know who I am.”
Borges in search for himself.
"Time has been my Democritus".
The first story is about the writing of God. About a magician, Tzinacan, imprisoned. He finds a way out….but decides to stay. Imprisoned.
The second story is about the Zahir, the coin, first gotten as money change from a drink ("aguardente").
It all starts with the death of actress Teodelina Villar. According to the author, she committed the solipsism of dying right on the “bairro der sur”. She was more interested in perfection rather than beauty.
It’s a story full of reflections on currency:”money is abstract”,”unpredictable” …it may be “coffee,…Brahms music”.
On the 16th of July the narrator bought 1 sterling pound and studied it under the magnifying glass. In August, due to insomnia, he had to consult with a psychiatrist. He could not get rid of a fixed idea.
The narrator has had a dream: “I was the coin, …a Griffin watched”
...
Plus, reflections on Sufi wisdom: the repetition of names for 99 times: “maybe behind it is God”.
Ah, the zahir, the coin. The narrator got rid of it. In a drink.
“The zahir is the shadow of the rose, and the parting of the veil”;… “now I use both”.
Mostly, stories to ponder. To enjoy their full color. Maybe to get perplexed. To start searching for meaning. Identity too.
Stories to be read not once. But 9 times. Or 99 times. Over 9 years. Preferably over 99 years.
-If you've got the time.
UPDATE
Nice interview
https://borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com...
April 2, 2020
به نظر من نوشتن دربارهی بورخس سخته. شاید به خاطر اینه که طوری رسمی مینویسه که جرئت نمیکنی چیزی بگی دربارهش :))
داستانهاش مولفههای مشخصی دارن که راحت میتونی موقع خوندنش بگی بورخسیه و بورخس رو از غیر بورخس متمایز کنی.
یکی اینه که به شدت ارجاع داره. مثلا یه داستان رو اینطوری شروع میکنه:
توی کتاب فلان، حاشیهای دیدم که فلانی نوشته بود و به کتاب دیگهای ارجاع میده و داستان رو توی کتاب دوم خونده و حالا اومده که اون رو تعریف کنه. و این اسامی و کتابشناسی، انقدر واقعی هستند که من نمیدونم واقعیان یا نه. اگر واقعی هستن که نشون میده این آدم چقدر با حافظه و مطالعه بوده (که تاریخ و زندگینامهش هم همین رو میگه) و اگر واقعی نیستن هم نشون از تکنیک بالاش در جعل واقعیته.
مورد دوم استفاده از اساطیر و داستانهای قدیمیه. تقریبا توی تمامی داستانهاش یا ارجاعهایی به داستانهای کهن داریم، یا اصلا خود داستان کهن رو که بازنویسی و اقتباس شده و به شکلی امروزی در اومده.
مورد سوم هزارتوها هستند که خیلی مورد علاقه بورخس بودن و توی بیشتر داستانهاش ردپایی ازشون هست :))
مورد بعدی علاقهی بورخس به موضوع وحدته. مثلا داستان الف، که شیءای در اون وجود داره که توش میشه همه چیز و همه زمان رو دید. یا داستان کلمهی خدا که اونجا فرد به وحدت در همه چیز میرسه و همه چیز رو در یک چیز میبینه. اما بورخس نمیاد فقط این موضوع رو بازنمایی کنه. اتفاقا میاد و این مسائل رو با مسائل مدرن و به روز ترکیب میکنه. و باز مثالم داستان الفه که میاد امر متعالی رو، با عشق(یا مرگ) و هنر در جنبه هایی بررسی می کنه. در این که هر سه سوبژکتیو هستن و غیرقابل دسترسی. و آیرونیای که توی توضیح دادن وجود داره. امر متعالی، توضیحناپذیره و فقط درک شدنیه و راوی با این که میتونه برای لحظهای درکاش کنه، اما هرچه میخواد توضیحش بده نمیشه و میشه این توضیحناپذیری رو به هنر یا مرگ هم گسترش داد.
درونمایههای مرگ، حافظه، نامیرایی، توی داستانهای بورخس زیاد تکرار شدن.
داستانهاش شاید در نظر اول سختخون و پیچیده بیان، فقط کافیه که یکم با تمرکز بیشتری خونده بشن، مخصوصا این که از لحاظ زبانی کمی از کلمات قدیمی استفاده میکرده و در ترجمه هم این اتفاق رخ داده و باعث میشه که خوندنش کمی دشوار بشه. ولی این دشواری فقط اولِ راه خودش رو نشون میده. من سایت واژهیاب رو هم کنار دستم داشتم و گاهی کلمات فارسی رو سرچ میکردم.
البته فکر کنم مترجم هم کمی زیادهروی کرده توی این امر و متن اصلی یکی از داستانها رو که میخوندم اینقدر سختخون به نظر نیومد.
نوع روایت بورخس به نظرم خیلی جذابه. تاثیر ادبیات شرق به خصوص هزار و یک شب توش دیده میشه. همین که داستان در دستان داریم یا ارجاع در ارجاع، یا فردی کنارهای هست که داستان اصلی رو روایت میکنه، همه فکر کنم از تکنیکایی هست که توی ادبیات شرق به چشم میخوردن و بورخس هم که کتابدار بوده، حسابی اونها رو خونده بوده.
اقتباسهاش از اسطورهها و داستانها هم به نظر من خیلی جذابن. محتویاتی کهن رو میریزه توی فرمهایی جدید و وقتی اسمها رو سرچ میکنی و داستانهای پیشین رو میخونی، داستان بورخس برات جذابتر میشه.
بعضی از داستانها هم که مایههای اسطورهای/تاریخی/کهن ندارن، مربوط میشن به ریزهکاریهای ذهن انسان و پیرنگ توشون کمتر دیده میشه. مثلا مردی که جرمی مرتکب شده و فرار کرده به یه هتل و منتظره که بیان و بکشنش. (و اینجا چقدر شبیه میشه به داستان «آدمکشها»ی همینگوی).
البته داستانهای پیرنگدار هم داره، مثلا داستان «ناخوانده» که دو برادر عاشق زنی هستن و کمتر درونیه و بیشتر بیرونی.
بورخس، استادی واقعی در داستاننویسیه. نه داستان، به معنای کلاسیکاش، شاید بهتر باشه بگیم قصهنویسی.
(چون بعضی داستانهاش واقعا از داستان فاصله میگیرن و حتا به یادداشت یا فرضیهبافی و خیالبافی نزدیک میشن)
داستانهاش مولفههای مشخصی دارن که راحت میتونی موقع خوندنش بگی بورخسیه و بورخس رو از غیر بورخس متمایز کنی.
یکی اینه که به شدت ارجاع داره. مثلا یه داستان رو اینطوری شروع میکنه:
توی کتاب فلان، حاشیهای دیدم که فلانی نوشته بود و به کتاب دیگهای ارجاع میده و داستان رو توی کتاب دوم خونده و حالا اومده که اون رو تعریف کنه. و این اسامی و کتابشناسی، انقدر واقعی هستند که من نمیدونم واقعیان یا نه. اگر واقعی هستن که نشون میده این آدم چقدر با حافظه و مطالعه بوده (که تاریخ و زندگینامهش هم همین رو میگه) و اگر واقعی نیستن هم نشون از تکنیک بالاش در جعل واقعیته.
مورد دوم استفاده از اساطیر و داستانهای قدیمیه. تقریبا توی تمامی داستانهاش یا ارجاعهایی به داستانهای کهن داریم، یا اصلا خود داستان کهن رو که بازنویسی و اقتباس شده و به شکلی امروزی در اومده.
مورد سوم هزارتوها هستند که خیلی مورد علاقه بورخس بودن و توی بیشتر داستانهاش ردپایی ازشون هست :))
مورد بعدی علاقهی بورخس به موضوع وحدته. مثلا داستان الف، که شیءای در اون وجود داره که توش میشه همه چیز و همه زمان رو دید. یا داستان کلمهی خدا که اونجا فرد به وحدت در همه چیز میرسه و همه چیز رو در یک چیز میبینه. اما بورخس نمیاد فقط این موضوع رو بازنمایی کنه. اتفاقا میاد و این مسائل رو با مسائل مدرن و به روز ترکیب میکنه. و باز مثالم داستان الفه که میاد امر متعالی رو، با عشق(یا مرگ) و هنر در جنبه هایی بررسی می کنه. در این که هر سه سوبژکتیو هستن و غیرقابل دسترسی. و آیرونیای که توی توضیح دادن وجود داره. امر متعالی، توضیحناپذیره و فقط درک شدنیه و راوی با این که میتونه برای لحظهای درکاش کنه، اما هرچه میخواد توضیحش بده نمیشه و میشه این توضیحناپذیری رو به هنر یا مرگ هم گسترش داد.
درونمایههای مرگ، حافظه، نامیرایی، توی داستانهای بورخس زیاد تکرار شدن.
داستانهاش شاید در نظر اول سختخون و پیچیده بیان، فقط کافیه که یکم با تمرکز بیشتری خونده بشن، مخصوصا این که از لحاظ زبانی کمی از کلمات قدیمی استفاده میکرده و در ترجمه هم این اتفاق رخ داده و باعث میشه که خوندنش کمی دشوار بشه. ولی این دشواری فقط اولِ راه خودش رو نشون میده. من سایت واژهیاب رو هم کنار دستم داشتم و گاهی کلمات فارسی رو سرچ میکردم.
البته فکر کنم مترجم هم کمی زیادهروی کرده توی این امر و متن اصلی یکی از داستانها رو که میخوندم اینقدر سختخون به نظر نیومد.
نوع روایت بورخس به نظرم خیلی جذابه. تاثیر ادبیات شرق به خصوص هزار و یک شب توش دیده میشه. همین که داستان در دستان داریم یا ارجاع در ارجاع، یا فردی کنارهای هست که داستان اصلی رو روایت میکنه، همه فکر کنم از تکنیکایی هست که توی ادبیات شرق به چشم میخوردن و بورخس هم که کتابدار بوده، حسابی اونها رو خونده بوده.
اقتباسهاش از اسطورهها و داستانها هم به نظر من خیلی جذابن. محتویاتی کهن رو میریزه توی فرمهایی جدید و وقتی اسمها رو سرچ میکنی و داستانهای پیشین رو میخونی، داستان بورخس برات جذابتر میشه.
بعضی از داستانها هم که مایههای اسطورهای/تاریخی/کهن ندارن، مربوط میشن به ریزهکاریهای ذهن انسان و پیرنگ توشون کمتر دیده میشه. مثلا مردی که جرمی مرتکب شده و فرار کرده به یه هتل و منتظره که بیان و بکشنش. (و اینجا چقدر شبیه میشه به داستان «آدمکشها»ی همینگوی).
البته داستانهای پیرنگدار هم داره، مثلا داستان «ناخوانده» که دو برادر عاشق زنی هستن و کمتر درونیه و بیشتر بیرونی.
بورخس، استادی واقعی در داستاننویسیه. نه داستان، به معنای کلاسیکاش، شاید بهتر باشه بگیم قصهنویسی.
(چون بعضی داستانهاش واقعا از داستان فاصله میگیرن و حتا به یادداشت یا فرضیهبافی و خیالبافی نزدیک میشن)
January 27, 2022
No soy muy fan de los libros que incluyen varios relatos por eso estoy tan sorprendida de haberlo devorado tan pronto 🤭 en este caso siento que todos los cuentos cobran sentido cuando lees el último como que están conectados y eso me ha encantado. Necesito pensar en lo que me han enseñado y sin duda los releeré en un futuro.
December 7, 2012
Me costó mucho terminar este libro. Tenía ganas de leerlo por decir "ya leí a Borges en algún punto de mi vida", pero realmente fue una lectura algo difícil.
El contexto histórico, fantasioso y en ciertos momentos filosóficos fueron muy abrumantes. Seguramente me pareció eso debido a que venía leyendo estilos y géneros muy distintos al de cuentos fantaseosos con un nivel de profundidad alto (en la mayoría de ellos).
Es el primer libro con el que experimento la convicción de volver a leerlo en otro punto de mi vida. Generalmente leo los libros una sola vez y con esa sola vez quiero sentir que absorbí toda el alma de esa obra. Siento que con "El Aleph" lo leí, lo terminé, pero sólo capté algunos brillos de su escencia. Siento que me falta madurez para experimentar más a fondo la nostalgia que describe, el amor pasional y maduro, y en general enseñanzas sabias de la vida. Por ello, creo que lo voy a volver a leer en algunos años.
No puedo decir que disfrute su lectura plenamente. En momentos fue muy tedioso y hasta quise romper mi regla de no cambiar de libro, pero persistí. Quizás era más mi deseo de querer leer a Borges. Sin embargo rescato algunos extractos y frases que de verdad siento que son muy sabias y hasta me dieron respuesta a algunas preguntas y dudas que quisiera responder ahora.
En general es un libro que siento que se debe leer más de una vez y en distintas etapas de nuestras vidas.
El contexto histórico, fantasioso y en ciertos momentos filosóficos fueron muy abrumantes. Seguramente me pareció eso debido a que venía leyendo estilos y géneros muy distintos al de cuentos fantaseosos con un nivel de profundidad alto (en la mayoría de ellos).
Es el primer libro con el que experimento la convicción de volver a leerlo en otro punto de mi vida. Generalmente leo los libros una sola vez y con esa sola vez quiero sentir que absorbí toda el alma de esa obra. Siento que con "El Aleph" lo leí, lo terminé, pero sólo capté algunos brillos de su escencia. Siento que me falta madurez para experimentar más a fondo la nostalgia que describe, el amor pasional y maduro, y en general enseñanzas sabias de la vida. Por ello, creo que lo voy a volver a leer en algunos años.
No puedo decir que disfrute su lectura plenamente. En momentos fue muy tedioso y hasta quise romper mi regla de no cambiar de libro, pero persistí. Quizás era más mi deseo de querer leer a Borges. Sin embargo rescato algunos extractos y frases que de verdad siento que son muy sabias y hasta me dieron respuesta a algunas preguntas y dudas que quisiera responder ahora.
En general es un libro que siento que se debe leer más de una vez y en distintas etapas de nuestras vidas.
July 30, 2017
I know why I didn't write a review. I wrote several reviews about Borges' books and I got tired of saying how amazing this writer was. Is. Will always be. This is one of the greatest short stories collections I've ever read. There are ordinary situations combined with magical events, sometimes very subtle, sometimes not. But it's there. And they're all beautifully written. Stories like "El Inmortal", "Emma Zunz", "La casa de Asterión" or "Los teólogos" are outstanding pieces of literary work that nobody should miss. This guy created an amazing universe that will surely captivate you, if you give it a chance. I think about it and dsadsafsafs. Breathtaking.
March 5, 2023
Чудесный сборник фантастических рассказов с глубоким философским смыслом, многие из рассказов посвящены дуальности в той или иной ипостаси. Писать рецензии на сборники сложно, поскольку у каждого рассказа свой сюжет, свои достоинства, какие-то спорные вопросы или проблематика. Безусловно, гениальным является рассказ «Бессмертные», по которым я напишу отдельную рецензию.
Алеф
Этот рассказ, давший название сборнику, помещен в самый конец, но он самый необычный. Он о том, что некая точка в пространстве (в данном случае в подвале героя) способен вместить в себя всю вселенную за счет того, что в ней сходятся все остальные точки. Несмотря на пережитый опыт созерцания вселенной через эту точку, автор самым парадоксальным образом сообщает, что этот Алеф ненастоящий, а настоящий в одной из мечетей Каира.
Богословы.
История представляет собой замкнутый круг. Оба богослова Аврелиан и Иоанн Паннонский умерли одной смертью – сожжением, только Иоанн Паннонский по искусному навету Аврелиана, а Аврелиан – от молнии. В раю Аврелиан узнал, что "для непостижимого божества он и Иоанн Паннонский (ортодокс и еретик, ненавидящий и ненавидимый, обвинитель и жертва) были одной и той же личностью."
История воина и пленницы
Светловолосая индеянка, урожденная в Йоркшире, и бабушка Борхеса, тоже родом из Англии, варвар Дроктульф принял сторону Равенны сродни той англичанки, ставшей женой индейского вождя. Борхес заключает, что возможно обе пересказанные истории – на самом деле одна. Орел и решка этой монеты для Господа неотличимы.
Биография Тадео Исидора Круса
О том, как пес из стаи встал на сторону волка-одиночки
Эмма Цунц
О том, как можно отомстить убийце своего отца и выйти сухой из воды, при этом только имена будут ненастоящими, а неподдельными будут и позор, и голос.
Алеф
Этот рассказ, давший название сборнику, помещен в самый конец, но он самый необычный. Он о том, что некая точка в пространстве (в данном случае в подвале героя) способен вместить в себя всю вселенную за счет того, что в ней сходятся все остальные точки. Несмотря на пережитый опыт созерцания вселенной через эту точку, автор самым парадоксальным образом сообщает, что этот Алеф ненастоящий, а настоящий в одной из мечетей Каира.
Богословы.
История представляет собой замкнутый круг. Оба богослова Аврелиан и Иоанн Паннонский умерли одной смертью – сожжением, только Иоанн Паннонский по искусному навету Аврелиана, а Аврелиан – от молнии. В раю Аврелиан узнал, что "для непостижимого божества он и Иоанн Паннонский (ортодокс и еретик, ненавидящий и ненавидимый, обвинитель и жертва) были одной и той же личностью."
История воина и пленницы
Светловолосая индеянка, урожденная в Йоркшире, и бабушка Борхеса, тоже родом из Англии, варвар Дроктульф принял сторону Равенны сродни той англичанки, ставшей женой индейского вождя. Борхес заключает, что возможно обе пересказанные истории – на самом деле одна. Орел и решка этой монеты для Господа неотличимы.
Биография Тадео Исидора Круса
О том, как пес из стаи встал на сторону волка-одиночки
Эмма Цунц
О том, как можно отомстить убийце своего отца и выйти сухой из воды, при этом только имена будут ненастоящими, а неподдельными будут и позор, и голос.
February 26, 2023
A collection of very short stories or, rather, prose poems on the big mysteries of life. Not an easy read but extremely erudite and edifying. When I got what he was getting at I loved it. Other times it went over my head.
March 9, 2023
Musai de (re)citit!
"[...] Sa modifici trecutul nu inseamna sa modifici un singur fapt, ci sa-i anulezi consecintele, care tind sa fie infinite."
"[...] Nu exista mangaiere mai iscusita decat gandul ca ne-am ales singuri nefericirile [...]"
"[...] Iar problema fundamentala, de altfel, nu poate fi dezlegata: cum ar putea fi enumerat, macar in parte, un ansamblu infinit?"
"[...] Sa modifici trecutul nu inseamna sa modifici un singur fapt, ci sa-i anulezi consecintele, care tind sa fie infinite."
"[...] Nu exista mangaiere mai iscusita decat gandul ca ne-am ales singuri nefericirile [...]"
"[...] Iar problema fundamentala, de altfel, nu poate fi dezlegata: cum ar putea fi enumerat, macar in parte, un ansamblu infinit?"
December 26, 2021
Che fatica.
November 23, 2015
After reading Borges my brain usually feels fried, so excuse all the nonsense in this review. My intention was never to write anything about it, to let it flow, to carry on with my life. But trust me, after reading this magnificent writer, and specially such writings as the ones collected in El Aleph, life's never the same. My brain may be fried, but my soul feels somewhat soothed.
Reading him is like facing the Zahir: something that seeds in one's soul a never-ending obsession in life's groundless soil. Reading him is like finding a two-hundred-paged Aleph in a shelf, wherein I found infinite selves, like Abraham's seed, multiplied as the stars of Heaven (Genesis 26:4), living infinite scenarios that I saw forking in time and space. I read philosophical and theological theories; I read Plato and Dante reborn as an Argentinian writer living in the 20th century, who seemed to have forgotten about his authorship of The Divine Comedy, and now has to conform merely with fondness. Just like the letter (א) is interpreted as a man pointing simultaneously towards the Earth and the Heavens, representing the former as a mirror of the latter, just like that, Borges's imagination is a mirror (element he seems to love as well as tigers) that reflects what is not but could have been. If life's formula were written in the patterns of a tiger's fur, then Borges's writings would be the alter ego of that tiger. I read all the books in the world condensed in a few pages, but none of them reflected how I feel about this book in particular. I saw myself, never visiting my aunt and never finding her Kabbalah study texts and never getting interested in such theories, and ergo, in Borges neither. I saw myself at a noisy party, drinking cheap booze with friends and such, instead of staying at home, feeling the weight of solitude, trying to find a meaning to cling to and reading how Buddhism influenced Borges. The past was changed and therefore the cause was changed but the effect — Borges as an awful writer — was not. Reading him may not be like reading the writing of God, but I'm sure it is an accurate translation of it.
Reading him is like facing the Zahir: something that seeds in one's soul a never-ending obsession in life's groundless soil. Reading him is like finding a two-hundred-paged Aleph in a shelf, wherein I found infinite selves, like Abraham's seed, multiplied as the stars of Heaven (Genesis 26:4), living infinite scenarios that I saw forking in time and space. I read philosophical and theological theories; I read Plato and Dante reborn as an Argentinian writer living in the 20th century, who seemed to have forgotten about his authorship of The Divine Comedy, and now has to conform merely with fondness. Just like the letter (א) is interpreted as a man pointing simultaneously towards the Earth and the Heavens, representing the former as a mirror of the latter, just like that, Borges's imagination is a mirror (element he seems to love as well as tigers) that reflects what is not but could have been. If life's formula were written in the patterns of a tiger's fur, then Borges's writings would be the alter ego of that tiger. I read all the books in the world condensed in a few pages, but none of them reflected how I feel about this book in particular. I saw myself, never visiting my aunt and never finding her Kabbalah study texts and never getting interested in such theories, and ergo, in Borges neither. I saw myself at a noisy party, drinking cheap booze with friends and such, instead of staying at home, feeling the weight of solitude, trying to find a meaning to cling to and reading how Buddhism influenced Borges. The past was changed and therefore the cause was changed but the effect — Borges as an awful writer — was not. Reading him may not be like reading the writing of God, but I'm sure it is an accurate translation of it.
January 22, 2024
Perfecto el libro y perfecto el cuento.
Éste cuento se puede leer como una anti-Divina Comedia, o digamos una Prágmática Tragedia.
El protagonista es acompañado por un poeta (ahora un mal poeta) a descender al inframundo (la escalera y la bodega de una simple casa) donde presenciará la revelación de su amada (el ideal de Beatriz, que se llama igual en Dante, ahora es desidealizado: la muestra no virtuosa, se le insinúa pecadora y "Borges" ve el cáncer en su pecho y luego su cadáver), además la revelación de todo lo que existe (ve todo pero no está el Creador, no lo hay).
En la original, el protagonista ya ascendido va a contemplar a Dios. Dante -ante la tamaña dificultad de describirlo- recurre a una solución que no diré (muy atrevida para la época). Borges, recurre a otra, que tampoco diré: cuando el individuo tiene la visión de la totalidad de experincias del universo (lo que para Borges es casi "Dios" -uno Spinoziano-) algo paradojal le será revelado.
Borges juega con la concatenación de sus cuentos. El Aleph no es uno solo (como objeto) aunque sólo exista uno a la vez (como el mutante Zahír, otro cuento de Borges). Lo anterior, a su vez, participa de la idea del eterno retorno con la que Borges ensayó en otros escritos. Es increíble como este escritor de inicio a fin, en sus más de 50 años escribiendo, siempre tuvo claro el norte de su obra como totalidad: los motivos que se repiten o desarrollan, las preguntas y respuestas (con décadas de diferencia entre una y otra).
En sus inicios Borges crea un cuento donde el minotauro del laberinto espera sin beligerancia al héroe (parte por el fin). Luego, casi cercano a su muerte, crea un poema donde se versa la hazaña heroíca de Teseo (el inicio conocido por todos), cerrando el gran círculo de su obra y del tiempo.
Éste cuento se puede leer como una anti-Divina Comedia, o digamos una Prágmática Tragedia.
El protagonista es acompañado por un poeta (ahora un mal poeta) a descender al inframundo (la escalera y la bodega de una simple casa) donde presenciará la revelación de su amada (el ideal de Beatriz, que se llama igual en Dante, ahora es desidealizado: la muestra no virtuosa, se le insinúa pecadora y "Borges" ve el cáncer en su pecho y luego su cadáver), además la revelación de todo lo que existe (ve todo pero no está el Creador, no lo hay).
En la original, el protagonista ya ascendido va a contemplar a Dios. Dante -ante la tamaña dificultad de describirlo- recurre a una solución que no diré (muy atrevida para la época). Borges, recurre a otra, que tampoco diré: cuando el individuo tiene la visión de la totalidad de experincias del universo (lo que para Borges es casi "Dios" -uno Spinoziano-) algo paradojal le será revelado.
Borges juega con la concatenación de sus cuentos. El Aleph no es uno solo (como objeto) aunque sólo exista uno a la vez (como el mutante Zahír, otro cuento de Borges). Lo anterior, a su vez, participa de la idea del eterno retorno con la que Borges ensayó en otros escritos. Es increíble como este escritor de inicio a fin, en sus más de 50 años escribiendo, siempre tuvo claro el norte de su obra como totalidad: los motivos que se repiten o desarrollan, las preguntas y respuestas (con décadas de diferencia entre una y otra).
En sus inicios Borges crea un cuento donde el minotauro del laberinto espera sin beligerancia al héroe (parte por el fin). Luego, casi cercano a su muerte, crea un poema donde se versa la hazaña heroíca de Teseo (el inicio conocido por todos), cerrando el gran círculo de su obra y del tiempo.
November 24, 2018
This is the second Borges book that I have read (though the first in Spanish), and I have found that my reaction was an echo of the first. With Borges, I have the constant sensation that the writing is superlative and the style very much to my taste; yet somehow I often manage to be uninspired. The typical Borgesian themes—the collapse of personal identity, the sense of a mysterious connection, the obsession with a sort of occult understanding of a higher reality—make me uneasy, and at times strike me as a kind of armchair mysticism: the translation of spiritual impulses into erudite literature. And I am suspicious of anyone who uses their learning to intentionally create obscurity.
This only applies when his style falls flat. But when Borges is at his best, such as (for me) in El inmortal, La casa de Asterión, and the title story, El Aleph—when Borges breaks through my instinctive suspicion of all art that is intentionally mysterious—I feel the floor collapse from under me, and I am lost in an expansive feeling of literary pleasure. This is the trademark Borges effect; and, to my mind, all of his stories are aimed at evoking this same feeling. As a result, the stories are hit or miss for me. My problem is that, when the mysterious Borges effect fails to manifest, I am left with dense and at times dry prose (no doubt intentionally so), which I have trouble enjoying.
I was hoping that reading the stories in the original would be a different experience; but, alas, it was déjà vu. Thus I was somewhat disappointed as I read—no doubt unfairly, since his literary talent is impossible to deny.
This only applies when his style falls flat. But when Borges is at his best, such as (for me) in El inmortal, La casa de Asterión, and the title story, El Aleph—when Borges breaks through my instinctive suspicion of all art that is intentionally mysterious—I feel the floor collapse from under me, and I am lost in an expansive feeling of literary pleasure. This is the trademark Borges effect; and, to my mind, all of his stories are aimed at evoking this same feeling. As a result, the stories are hit or miss for me. My problem is that, when the mysterious Borges effect fails to manifest, I am left with dense and at times dry prose (no doubt intentionally so), which I have trouble enjoying.
I was hoping that reading the stories in the original would be a different experience; but, alas, it was déjà vu. Thus I was somewhat disappointed as I read—no doubt unfairly, since his literary talent is impossible to deny.
May 7, 2019
I’ve read Borges in my early twenties, I liked it, but was not totally overwhelmed. So this time around I did not know what to expect. And this time around I am totally in awe to his genius. I would finish the story and go back to the beginning to read it again. This collection was written later that The Fictions. And it is better to read them in the order they’ve written. “Fictions” creates the universe. And makes you to look at it with the new eyes. This is darker, more diverse and more grounded in the day-to-day reality, or maybe, it tries to catch that threshold between day-to-day and our consciousness. In many of this stories, he brings Borges as a narrator to be a character within the story. This brings the events almost painfully close.
As in all his work, the ideas of time, metaphors and symbols, the symmetry and labyrinths, the coins and the swords, the identity and betrayal, the divinity and infinity, are all present. Ricardo Piglia writes that “Borges’s greatest lesson is perhaps certainty that fiction doesn’t only depend on the person who constructs it, but also on the person who reads it.” Barthes extended this notion to the whole literature. So any individual approaching these stories will take away something unique. Below are just few of my thoughts on the stories.
Aleph - the concept of reality as diverse but single whole containing infinitely many, containing infinity. Borges in the story was able to see it, but only for a brief time. The concept reminded the beauty of monism of Advaita Vedanta, the branch of indian phisophy. I am not fan of the lists in literature. But here the story contains the long list of things Borges sees looking at Aleph. And the list is probably the most powerful of a kind. Aleph is also the mathematical symbol if the smallest infinity. However, the story is not only about abstract. It masterfully connects the world of human passions with the abstract notions.
The limits of imagination and our own preconceptions. In the story “Averroes search” the famous schooler in Cordoba is trying to translate Aristotle But totally cannot imagine what might be “a comedy” or “a tragedy”as such forms of art are not forbidden in Islam (at least based upon the story). He cannot do it. But at the end of the story he disappears together with the whole world just created by Borges on the page. And the reason - Borges thinks his power of properly imagine Averroes is as limited by his background and knowledge as Averroes power of imagining a tragedy.
The direction of civilisation with time. In the story “Immortal” the people who reached immortality, instead of infinitely bettering themselves, have forgotten whatever they know, including the language, as they had an unlimited time for everything. In the other story “The story of the warrior and the captive maiden”, the absurdity of what we aspire to as civilisation has shown even more vividly. A barbarian soldier, stunned by the beauty of Ravenna, changes the sides and fights for the Romans. The conclusion seem to be clear. But it is immediately juxtaposed with the story of an english girl kidnapped by an Indian tribe and totally assimilated with their ways of living. Two stories might seem opposite but Borges concludes : “ Nevertheless both were carried by the secret impulse, impulse greater than the reason, and both obeyed that impulse they could not justify. Perhaps the story i have recounted is a single story. To God, the obverse and reverse of this coin are the same.”
And i can write more and more. But i would probably stop here. And at the moment, I do not know how i could come back to reading modern novels after the clarity and the vision of these stories, each of them not more than 5 pages.
As in all his work, the ideas of time, metaphors and symbols, the symmetry and labyrinths, the coins and the swords, the identity and betrayal, the divinity and infinity, are all present. Ricardo Piglia writes that “Borges’s greatest lesson is perhaps certainty that fiction doesn’t only depend on the person who constructs it, but also on the person who reads it.” Barthes extended this notion to the whole literature. So any individual approaching these stories will take away something unique. Below are just few of my thoughts on the stories.
Aleph - the concept of reality as diverse but single whole containing infinitely many, containing infinity. Borges in the story was able to see it, but only for a brief time. The concept reminded the beauty of monism of Advaita Vedanta, the branch of indian phisophy. I am not fan of the lists in literature. But here the story contains the long list of things Borges sees looking at Aleph. And the list is probably the most powerful of a kind. Aleph is also the mathematical symbol if the smallest infinity. However, the story is not only about abstract. It masterfully connects the world of human passions with the abstract notions.
The limits of imagination and our own preconceptions. In the story “Averroes search” the famous schooler in Cordoba is trying to translate Aristotle But totally cannot imagine what might be “a comedy” or “a tragedy”as such forms of art are not forbidden in Islam (at least based upon the story). He cannot do it. But at the end of the story he disappears together with the whole world just created by Borges on the page. And the reason - Borges thinks his power of properly imagine Averroes is as limited by his background and knowledge as Averroes power of imagining a tragedy.
The direction of civilisation with time. In the story “Immortal” the people who reached immortality, instead of infinitely bettering themselves, have forgotten whatever they know, including the language, as they had an unlimited time for everything. In the other story “The story of the warrior and the captive maiden”, the absurdity of what we aspire to as civilisation has shown even more vividly. A barbarian soldier, stunned by the beauty of Ravenna, changes the sides and fights for the Romans. The conclusion seem to be clear. But it is immediately juxtaposed with the story of an english girl kidnapped by an Indian tribe and totally assimilated with their ways of living. Two stories might seem opposite but Borges concludes : “ Nevertheless both were carried by the secret impulse, impulse greater than the reason, and both obeyed that impulse they could not justify. Perhaps the story i have recounted is a single story. To God, the obverse and reverse of this coin are the same.”
And i can write more and more. But i would probably stop here. And at the moment, I do not know how i could come back to reading modern novels after the clarity and the vision of these stories, each of them not more than 5 pages.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,922 reviews