Jorge Luis Borges

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"Borges" redirects here. For other uses, see Borges (disambiguation).
For other people with the same name, see Borges (surname).
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Borges and the second or
maternal family name is Acevedo.

Jorge Luis Borges

Borges in 1976

Born Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo

24 August 1899
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Died 14 June 1986 (aged 86)

Geneva, Switzerland
 Occupation Writer, poet, philosopher, translator, editor, critic,
librarian

Language Spanish

Nationality Argentine

Notable works • A Universal History of Infamy (1935)

• Ficciones (1944)
• El Aleph (1949)
• Labyrinths (1962)
• The Book of Sand (1975)

Notable Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des

awards
Lettres (1962)[1]

Relatives • Leonor Acevedo (mother)

• Jorge Guillermo Borges (father)
• Norah Borges (sister)
• Guillermo de Torre (brother-in-law)
• Francisco Borges (grandfather)
• Manuel Isidoro Suárez (great-
grandfather)

Signature

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (/ˈbɔːrhɛs/;[2] Spanish: [ˈboɾxes] ( listen);
24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and
translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and universal literature. His best-
known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s,
are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams,
labyrinths, philosophers, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology.[3] Borges'
works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have been
considered by some critics to mark the beginning of the magic realist movement in 20th
century Latin American literature.[4] His late poems converse with such cultural figures
as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.
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.[Note 1] 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 his works being
available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García
Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.[5] He dedicated his final work, The
Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland.[6] 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."[7]

Contents

• 1Life and career

o 1.1Early life and education
o 1.2Early writing career
o 1.3Later career
o 1.4International renown
o 1.5Later personal life
• 2Death
• 3Legacy
• 4Political opinions
o 4.1Anti-communism
o 4.2Anti-fascism
o 4.3Anti-Peronism
o 4.4Military junta
• 5Works
o 5.1Hoaxes and forgeries
o 5.2Criticism of Borges' work
o 5.3Sexuality and perception of women
o 5.4Nobel Prize omission
• 6Fact, fantasy and non-linearity
o 6.1Borgesian conundrum
• 7Culture and Argentine literature
o 7.1Martín Fierro and Argentine tradition
o 7.2Argentine culture
o 7.3Multicultural influences
• 8Influences
o 8.1Modernism
o 8.2Mathematics
o 8.3Philosophy
 • 9Notes
• 10References
• 11Further reading
o 11.1Documentaries
• 12External links

Life and career[edit]

Early life and education[edit]
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was born into an educated middle-class
family on 24 August 1899.[8] They were in comfortable circumstances but not wealthy
enough to live in downtown Buenos Aires so the family resided in Palermo, then a
poorer neighbourhood. Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, came from a
traditional Uruguayan family of criollo (Spanish) origin. Her family had been much
involved in the European settling of South America and the Argentine War of
Independence, and she spoke often of their "heroic" actions.[9]
His 1929 book, Cuaderno San Martín, includes the poem "Isidoro Acevedo",
commemorating his grandfather, Isidoro de Acevedo Laprida, a soldier of the Buenos
Aires Army. A descendant of the Argentine lawyer and politician Francisco Narciso de
Laprida, de Acevedo Laprida fought in the battles of Cepeda in 1859, Pavón in 1861,
and Los Corrales in 1880. De Acevedo Laprida died of pulmonary congestion in the
house where his grandson Jorge Luis Borges was born.
Borges's own father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam (24 February 1874 – 14 February
1938)[10] was a lawyer, and wrote the novel El caudillo in 1921. Borges Haslam was born
in Entre Ríos of Spanish, Portuguese, and English descent, the son of Francisco
Borges Lafinur, a colonel, and Frances Ann Haslam, an Englishwoman. Borges Haslam
grew up speaking English at home. The family frequently traveled to Europe. Borges
Haslam wed Leonor Acevedo Suárez in 1898 and their offspring also included the
painter Norah Borges, sister of Jorge Luis Borges.[9]
At age of nine, Jorge Luis Borges translated Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince into
Spanish. It was published in a local journal, but Borges' friends thought the real author
was his father.[11] Borges Haslam was a lawyer and psychology teacher who harboured
literary aspirations. Borges said his father "tried to become a writer and failed in the
attempt", despite the 1921 opus El caudillo. Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "as most of my
people had been soldiers and I knew I would never be, I felt ashamed, quite early, to be
a bookish kind of person and not a man of action."[9]
Jorge Luis Borges was taught at home until the age of 11, was bilingual in Spanish and
English, reading Shakespeare in the latter at the age of twelve. [9] The family lived in a
large house with an English library of over one thousand volumes; Borges would later
remark that "if I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's
library."[12]
His father gave up practicing law due to the failing eyesight that would eventually afflict
his son. In 1914, the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and spent the next decade
in Europe.[9] In Geneva, Borges Haslam was treated by an eye specialist, while his son
and daughter attended school. Jorge Luis learned French, read Thomas Carlyle in
English, and began to read philosophy in German. In 1917, when he was eighteen, he
met writer Maurice Abramowicz and began a literary friendship that would last for the
remainder of his life.[9] He received his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in
1918.[13][Note 2] The Borges family decided that, due to political unrest in Argentina, they
would remain in Switzerland during the war. After World War I, the family spent three
years living in various cities: Lugano, Barcelona, Majorca, Seville, and Madrid.[9] They
remained in Europe until 1921.
At that time, Borges discovered the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Gustav
Meyrink's The Golem (1915) which became influential to his work. In Spain, Borges fell
in with and became a member of the avant-garde, anti-Modernismo Ultraist literary
movement, inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, close to
the Imagists. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea," written in the style of Walt Whitman,
was published in the magazine Grecia.[14] While in Spain, he met such noted Spanish
writers as Rafael Cansinos Assens and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.[15]

Borges in 1921.

Early writing career[edit]

In 1921, Borges returned with his family to Buenos Aires. He had little formal education,
no qualifications and few friends. He wrote to a friend that Buenos Aires was now
"overrun by arrivistes, by correct youths lacking any mental equipment, and decorative
young ladies".[9] He brought with him the doctrine of Ultraism and launched his career,
publishing surreal poems and essays in literary journals. In 1923, Borges first published
his poetry, a collection called Fervor de Buenos Aires and contributed to the avant-
garde review Martín Fierro.
Borges co-founded the journals Prisma, a broadsheet distributed largely by pasting
copies to walls in Buenos Aires, and Proa. Later in life, Borges regretted some of these
early publications, attempting to purchase all known copies to ensure their destruction.[16]
By the mid-1930s, he began to explore existential questions and fiction. He worked in a
style that Argentine critic Ana María Barrenechea has called "irreality." Many other Latin
American writers, such as Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, and Alejo Carpentier, were
investigating these themes, influenced by
the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. In this vein, Borges biographer Edwin
Williamson underlines the danger of inferring an autobiographically inspired basis for
the content or tone of certain of his works: books, philosophy, and imagination were as
much a source of real inspiration to him as his own lived experience, if not more so.[9]

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Victoria Ocampo and Borges in 1935

From the first issue, Borges was a regular contributor to Sur, founded in 1931
by Victoria Ocampo. It was then Argentina's most important literary journal and helped
Borges find his fame.[17] Ocampo introduced Borges to Adolfo Bioy Casares, another
well-known figure of Argentine literature who was to become a frequent collaborator and
close friend. They wrote a number of works together, some under the nom de plume H.
Bustos Domecq, including a parody detective series and fantasy stories. During these
years, a family friend, Macedonio Fernández, became a major influence on Borges. The
two would preside over discussions in cafés, at country retreats, or in Fernandez's tiny
apartment in the Balvanera district. He appears by name in Borges's Dialogue about a
Dialogue,[18] in which the two discuss the immortality of the soul. In 1933, Borges gained
an editorial appointment at Revista Multicolor de los Sábados (the literary supplement of
the Buenos Aires newspaper Crítica), where he first published the pieces collected
as Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) in 1935.[9]
The book includes two types of writing: the first lies somewhere between non-fictional
essays and short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories. The
second consists of literary forgeries, which Borges initially passed off as translations of
passages from famous but seldom-read works. In the following years, he served as a
literary adviser for the publishing house Emecé Editores, and from 1936-39 wrote
weekly columns for El Hogar. In 1938, Borges found work as the first assistant at the
Miguel Cané Municipal Library. It was in a working-class area[19] and there were so few
books that cataloging more than one hundred books per day, he was told, would leave
little to do for the other staff and would make them look bad. The task took him about an
hour each day and the rest of his time he spent in the basement of the library, writing
and translating.[9]
Later career[edit]

Borges in the 1940s

Borges's father died in 1938, shortly before his 64th birthday. On Christmas Eve that
year, Borges suffered a severe head injury; during treatment, he nearly died of sepsis.
While recovering from the accident, Borges began exploring a new style of writing for
which he would become famous. His first story written after his accident, "Pierre
Menard, Author of the Quixote,” came out in May 1939. One of his most famous works,
"Menard" examines the nature of authorship, as well as the relationship between an
author and his historical context. His first collection of short stories, El jardín de
senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), appeared in 1941, composed
mostly of works previously published in Sur.[9]
The title story concerns a Chinese professor in England, Dr. Yu Tsun, who spies for
Germany during World War I, in an attempt to prove to the authorities that an Asian
person is able to obtain the information that they seek. A combination of book and
maze, it can be read in many ways. Through it, Borges arguably invented
the hypertext novel and went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the
structure of such a novel.[20][21]
Composed of stories taking up over sixty pages, the book was generally well received,
but El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan failed to garner for him the literary prizes
many in his circle expected.[22][23] Victoria Ocampo dedicated a large portion of the July
1942 issue of Sur to a "Reparation for Borges." Numerous leading writers and critics
from Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world contributed writings to the
"reparation" project.
With his vision beginning to fade in his early thirties and unable to support himself as a
writer, Borges began a new career as a public lecturer.[Note 3][24][25] He became an
increasingly public figure, obtaining appointments as president of the Argentine Society
of Writers and as professor of English and American Literature at the Argentine
Association of English Culture. His short story "Emma Zunz" was made into a film
(under the name of Días de odio, Days of Hate, directed in 1954 by Leopoldo Torre
Nilsson).[26] Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.
In 1955, he became director of the Argentine National Library. By the late 1950s he had
become completely blind. Neither the coincidence nor the irony of his blindness as a
writer escaped Borges:[9]
Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche N
 esta declaración de la maestría In
de Dios, que con magnífica ironía O
me dio a la vez los libros y la noche. G
His later collection of poetry, Elogio de la Sombra (In Praise of Darkness),[28] develops
this theme. In 1956 the University of Cuyo awarded Borges the first of many honorary
doctorates and the following year he received the National Prize for Literature . [29] From
1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the University of
Buenos Aires and other temporary appointments at other universities.[29] In the fall of
1967 and spring of 1968, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard
University.[30]
As his eyesight deteriorated, Borges relied increasingly on his mother's help.[29] When he
was not able to read and write anymore (he never learned to read Braille), his mother,
to whom he had always been close, became his personal secretary.[29] When Perón
returned from exile and was re-elected president in 1973, Borges immediately resigned
as director of the National Library.[31]
International renown[edit]

1951

Eight of Borges's poems appear in the 1943 anthology of Spanish American Poets by
H.R. Hays.[32][Note 4] "The Garden of Forking Paths", one of the first Borges stories to be
translated into English, appeared in the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery
Magazine, translated by Anthony Boucher.[33] Though several other Borges translations
appeared in literary magazines and anthologies during the 1950s (and one story
appeared in the science fiction magazine Fantastic Universe in 1960),[34] his international
fame dates from the early 1960s.[35]
In 1961, Borges received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel
Beckett. While Beckett had garnered a distinguished reputation in Europe and America,
Borges had been largely unknown and untranslated in the English-speaking world and
the prize stirred great interest in his work. The Italian government named
Borges Commendatore and the University of Texas at Austin appointed him for one
year to the Tinker Chair. This led to his first lecture tour in the United States. In 1962,
two major anthologies of Borges's writings were published in English by New York
presses: Ficciones and Labyrinths. In that year, Borges began lecture tours of Europe.
Numerous honors were to accumulate over the years such as a Special Edgar Allan
Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America "for distinguished contribution to the
mystery genre" (1976),[36] the Balzan Prize (for Philology, Linguistics and literary
Criticism) and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (all 1980),
as well as the French Legion of Honour (1983) and the Diamond Konex Award for
Literature Arts as the most important writer in the last decade in his country.

At L'Hôtel, Paris, 1968

In 1967, Borges began a five-year period of collaboration with the American

translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni, through whom he became better known in the
English-speaking world.[citation needed] Di Giovanni contended that Borges' popularity was due
to his writing with multiple languages in mind and deliberately using Latin words as a
bridge from Spanish to English.[37]
Borges continued to publish books, among them El libro de los seres imaginarios (Book
of Imaginary Beings, 1967, co-written with Margarita Guerrero), El informe de
Brodie (Dr. Brodie's Report, 1970), and El libro de arena (The Book of Sand, 1975). He
lectured prolifically. Many of these lectures were anthologized in volumes such as Siete
noches (Seven Nights) and Nueve ensayos dantescos (Nine Dantesque Essays).[citation
needed]

His presence in 1967 on campus at the University of Virginia (UVA) in the U.S.
influenced a group of students among whom was Jared Loewenstein, who would later
become founder and curator of the Jorge Luis Borges Collection at UVA, [38] one of the
largest repositories of documents and manuscripts pertaining to Borges's early
works.[39] In 1984, he travelled to Athens, Greece, and later to Rethymnon, Crete, where
he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the School of Philosophy at the University
of Crete.[40]
Later personal life[edit]

María Kodama at the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair

In 1967, Borges married the recently widowed Elsa Astete Millán. Friends believed that
his mother, who was 90 and anticipating her own death, wanted to find someone to care
for her blind son. The marriage lasted less than three years. After a legal separation,
Borges moved back in with his mother, with whom he lived until her death at age
99.[41] Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her, cared for by
Fanny, their housekeeper of many decades.[42]
From 1975 until the time of his death, Borges traveled internationally. He was often
accompanied in these travels by his personal assistant María Kodama, an Argentine
woman of Japanese and German ancestry. In April 1986, a few months before his
death, he married her via an attorney in Paraguay, in what was then a common practice
among Argentines wishing to circumvent the Argentine laws of the time regarding
divorce. On his religious views, Borges declared himself an agnostic, clarifying: "Being
an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is
so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen."[43] Borges was taught to read
the Bible by his English Protestant grandmother and he prayed the Our Father each
night because of a promise he made to his mother. He also died in the presence of a
priest.[44]

Death[edit]
Borges' grave, Cimetière des Rois, Plainpalais, Geneva.

During his final days in Geneva, Borges began brooding about the possibility of
an afterlife. Although calm and collected about his own death, Borges began probing
Kodama as to whether she inclined more towards the Shinto beliefs of her father or
the Catholicism of her mother. Kodama "had always regarded Borges as an Agnostic,
as she was herself", but given the insistence of his questioning, she offered to call
someone more "qualified".[45] Borges responded, "You are asking me if I want a priest."
He then instructed her to call two clergymen, a Catholic priest, in memory of his mother,
and a Protestant minister, in memory of his English grandmother. He was visited first by
Father Pierre Jacquet and by Pastor Edouard de Montmollin.[45]
Borges died of liver cancer on 14 June 1986, aged 86, in Geneva. His burial was
preceded by an ecumenical service at the Protestant Cathédrale de Saint Pierre on 18
June. With many Swiss and Argentine dignitaries present, Pastor de Montmollin read
the First Chapter of St John's Gospel. He then preached that "Borges was a man who
had unceasingly searched for the right word, the term that could sum up the whole, the
final meaning of things." He said, however, that no man can reach that word through his
own efforts and in trying becomes lost in a labyrinth. Pastor de Montmollin concluded, "It
is not man who discovers the word, it is the Word that comes to him."[46]
Father Jacquet also preached, saying that, when visiting Borges before his death, he
had found "a man full of love, who received from the Church the forgiveness of his
sins".[46][47] After the funeral, Borges was laid to rest in Geneva's Cimetière de Plainpalais.
His grave, marked by a rough-hewn headstone, is adorned with carvings derived from
Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse art and literature.[48]

Legacy[edit]
Kodama, his widow and heir on the basis of the marriage and two wills, gained control
over his works. Her assertive administration of his estate resulted in a bitter dispute with
the French publisher Gallimard regarding the republication of the complete works of
Borges in French, with Pierre Assouline in Le Nouvel Observateur (August 2006) calling
her "an obstacle to the dissemination of the works of Borges". Kodama took legal action
against Assouline, considering the remark unjustified and defamatory, asking for a
symbolic compensation of one euro.[49][50][51]
Kodama also rescinded all publishing rights for existing collections of his work in
English, including the translations by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, in which Borges
himself collaborated, and from which di Giovanni would have received an unusually high
fifty percent of the royalties. Kodama commissioned new translations by Andrew Hurley,
which have become the official translations in English.[52]

Political opinions[edit]
During the 1920s and 1930s, Borges was a vocal supporter of Hipólito Yrigoyen and the
social democratic Radical Civic Union.[53] In 1945, Borges signed a manifesto calling for
an end to military rule and the establishment of political liberty and democratic
elections.[54] By the 1960s, he had grown more skeptical of democracy. During a 1971
conference at Columbia University, a creative writing student asked Borges what he
regarded as "a writer's duty to his time". Borges replied, "I think a writer's duty is to be a
writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty. Besides, I think of my own
opinions as being superficial. For example, I am a Conservative, I hate the Communists,
I hate the Nazis, I hate the anti-Semites, and so on; but I don't allow these opinions to
find their way into my writings—except, of course, when I was greatly elated about
the Six-Day War. Generally speaking, I think of keeping them in watertight
compartments. Everybody knows my opinions, but as for my dreams and my stories,
they should be allowed their full freedom, I think. I don't want to intrude into them, I'm
writing fiction, not fables."[55] In the 1980s, towards the end of his life, Borges regained
his earlier faith in democracy and held it out as the only hope for Argentina. [54] In 1983,
Borges applauded the election of the Radical Civic Union's Raúl Alfonsín and welcomed
the end of military rule with the following words: "I once wrote that democracy is the
abuse of statistics...On October 30, 1983, Argentine democracy refuted me splendidly.
Splendidly and resoundingly."[56][57]
Anti-communism[edit]

Borges and Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato

Borges recurrently declared himself a "Spencerian anarchist who believes in the

individual and not in the State" due to his father's influence.[58][59][60] In an interview
with Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges described himself as a "mild"
adherent of classical liberalism. He further recalled that his opposition to
communism and to Marxism was absorbed in his childhood, stating: "Well, I have been
brought up to think that the individual should be strong and the State should be weak. I
couldn't be enthusiastic about theories where the State is more important than the
individual."[61] After the overthrow via coup d'état of President Juan Domingo Perón in
1955, Borges supported efforts to purge Argentina's Government of Peronists and
dismantle the former President's welfare state. He was enraged that the Communist
Party of Argentina opposed these measures and sharply criticized them in lectures and
in print. Borges's opposition to the Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift
with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estela Canto.[62]
In a 1956 interview given to El Hogar, he stated that "[Communists] are in favor of
totalitarian regimes and systematically combat freedom of thought, oblivious of the fact
that the principal victims of dictatorships are, precisely, intelligence and
culture."[63] Borges elaborated: "Many people are in favor of dictatorships because they
allow them to avoid thinking for themselves. Everything is presented to them ready-
made. There are even agencies of the State that supply them with opinions, passwords,
slogans, and even idols to exalt or cast down according to the prevailing wind or in
keeping with the directives of the thinking heads of the single party."[64]
In later years, Borges frequently expressed contempt for Marxist and Communist
authors, poets, and intellectuals. In an interview with Burgin, Borges referred to Chilean
poet Pablo Neruda as "a very fine poet" but a "very mean man" for unconditionally
supporting the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States. Borges commented
about Neruda, "Now he knows that's rubbish."[65]
In the same interview, Borges also criticized famed Marxist poet and
playwright Federico García Lorca, who was abducted by Nationalist soldiers and
executed without trial during the Spanish Civil War. In Borges' opinion, Lorca's poetry
and plays, when examined against his tragic death, appeared better than they actually
were.[66]
Anti-fascism[edit]
In 1934, Argentine ultra-nationalists, sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party,
asserted Borges was secretly Jewish, and by implication, not truly Argentinian. Borges
responded with the essay "Yo, Judío" ("Me, I'm a Jew"), a reference to the old phrase
"Yo, Argentino" ("Me, I'm Argentine") uttered by potential victims
during pogroms against Argentine Jews, to signify one was not Jewish.[67] In the essay,
Borges declares he would be proud to be a Jew, and remarks that any pure Castilian is
likely to come from ancient Jewish descent, from a millennium ago.[67]
Both before and during the Second World War, Borges regularly published essays
attacking the Nazi police state and its racist ideology. His outrage was fueled by his
deep love for German literature. In an essay published in 1937, Borges attacked the
Nazi Party's use of children's books to inflame antisemitism. He wrote, "I don't know if
the world can do without German civilization, but I do know that its corruption by the
teachings of hatred is a crime."[68]
In a 1938 essay, Borges reviewed an anthology which rewrote German authors of the
past to fit the Nazi party line. He was disgusted by what he described as Germany's
"chaotic descent into darkness" and the attendant rewriting of history. He argued that
such books sacrificed the German people's culture, history and integrity in the name of
restoring their national honour. Such use of children's books for propaganda he writes,
"perfect the criminal arts of barbarians."[69]
In a 1944 essay, Borges postulated,
Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena's hell. It is uninhabitable; men can only die
for it, lie for it, wound and kill for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish
it to triumph. I shall risk this conjecture: Hitler wants to be defeated. Hitler is blindly
collaborating with the inevitable armies that will annihilate him, as the metal vultures and
the dragon (which must have known that they were monsters) collaborated,
mysteriously, with Hercules."[70]
In 1946, Borges published the short story "Deutsches Requiem", which masquerades
as the last testament of a condemned Nazi war criminal named Otto Dietrich zur Linde.
In a 1971 conference at Columbia University, Borges was asked about the story by a
student from the creative writing program. He recalled, "When the Germans were
defeated I felt great joy and relief, but at the same time I thought of the German defeat
as being somehow tragic, because here we have perhaps the most educated people in
Europe, who have a fine literature, a fine tradition of philosophy and poetry. Yet these
people were bamboozled by a madman named Adolf Hitler, and I think there is tragedy
there."[71]
In a 1967 interview with Burgin, Borges recalled how his interactions with Argentina's
Nazi sympathisers led him to create the story. He recalled, "And then I realized that
those people that were on the side of Germany, that they never thought of German
victories or the German glory. What they really liked was the idea of the Blitzkrieg, of
London being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to the German fighters, they
took no stock in them. Then I thought, well now Germany has lost, now America has
saved us from this nightmare, but since nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I'll see
what can be done from a literary point of view in favor of the Nazis. And then I created
the ideal Nazi."[72]
At Columbia University in 1971, Borges further elaborated on the story's creation, "I
tried to imagine what a real Nazi might be like. I mean someone who thought of violence
as being praiseworthy for its own sake. Then I thought that this archetype of the Nazis
wouldn't mind being defeated; after all, defeats and victories are mere matters of
chance. He would still be glad of the fact, even if the Americans and British won the
war. Naturally, when I am with Nazis, I find they are not my idea of what a Nazi is, but
this wasn't meant to be a political tract. It was meant to stand for the fact that there was
something tragic in the fate of a real Nazi. Except that I wonder if a real Nazi ever
existed. At least, when I went to Germany, I never met one. They were all feeling sorry
for themselves and wanted me to feel sorry for them as well."[73]
Anti-Peronism[edit]
In 1946, Argentine President Juan Perón began transforming Argentina into a one-party
state with the assistance of his wife, Evita. Almost immediately, the spoils system was
the rule of the day, as ideological critics of the ruling Partido Justicialista were fired from
government jobs. During this period, Borges was informed that he was being
"promoted" from his position at the Miguel Cané Library to a post as inspector of poultry
and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market. Upon demanding to know the reason,
Borges was told, "Well, you were on the side of the Allies, what do you
expect?"[74] Borges resigned the following day.
Perón's treatment of Borges became a cause célèbre for the Argentine intelligentsia.
The Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) held a formal dinner in his honour. At the
dinner, a speech was read which Borges had written for the occasion. It said:
Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty;
more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, portraits
of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous
ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking ... Fighting these sad
monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín
Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue.[75]
In the aftermath, Borges found himself much in demand as a lecturer and one of the
intellectual leaders of the Argentine opposition. In 1951 he was asked by anti-Peronist
friends to run for president of SADE. Borges, then suffering from depression caused by
a failed romance, reluctantly accepted. He later recalled that he would awake every
morning and remember that Perón was President and feel deeply depressed and
ashamed.[76] Perón's government had seized control of the Argentine mass media and
regarded SADE with indifference. Borges later recalled, however, "Many distinguished
men of letters did not dare set foot inside its doors."[77] Meanwhile, SADE became an
increasing refuge for critics of the regime. SADE official Luisa Mercedes Levinson
noted, "We would gather every week to tell the latest jokes about the ruling couple and
even dared to sing the songs of the French Resistance, as well as 'La Marseillaise'".[77]
After Evita Perón's death on 26 July 1952, Borges received a visit from two policemen,
who ordered him to put up two portraits of the ruling couple on the premises of SADE.
Borges indignantly refused, calling it a ridiculous demand. The policemen replied that he
would soon face the consequences.[78] The Justicialist Party placed Borges under 24-
hour surveillance and sent policemen to sit in on his lectures; in September they
ordered SADE to be permanently closed down. Like much of the Argentine opposition to
Perón, SADE had become marginalized due to persecution by the State, and very few
active members remained.[citation needed]
According to Edwin Williamson,
Borges had agreed to stand for the presidency of the SADE in order [to] fight for
intellectual freedom, but he also wanted to avenge the humiliation he believed he had
suffered in 1946, when the Peronists had proposed to make him an inspector of
chickens. In his letter of 1950 to Attilio Rossi, he claimed that his infamous promotion
had been a clever way the Peronists had found of damaging him and diminishing his
reputation. The closure of the SADE meant that the Peronists had damaged him a
second time, as was borne out by the visit of the Spanish writer Julián Marías, who
arrived in Buenos Aires shortly after the closure of the SADE. It was impossible for
Borges, as president, to hold the usual reception for the distinguished visitor; instead,
one of Borges' friends brought a lamb from his ranch, and they had it roasted at a tavern
across the road from the SADE building on Calle Mexico. After dinner, a friendly janitor
let them into the premises, and they showed Marías around by candlelight. That tiny
group of writers leading a foreign guest through a dark building by the light of guttering
candles was vivid proof of the extent to which the SADE had been diminished under the
rule of Juan Perón.[79]
On 16 September 1955, General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu's Revolución
Libertadora toppled the ruling party and forced Perón into exile. Borges was overjoyed
and joined demonstrators marching through the streets of Buenos Aires. According to
Williamson, Borges shouted, "Viva la Patria", until his voice grew hoarse. Due to the
influence of Borges' mother and his own role on the opposition to Peron, the provisional
government appointed Borges as the Director of the National Library.[80]
In his essay L'Illusion Comique, Borges wrote there were two histories of Peronism in
Argentina. The first he described as "the criminal one", composed of the police
state tactics used against both real and imagined anti-Peronists. The second history
was, according to Borges, "the theatrical one" composed of "tales and fables made for
consumption by dolts." He argued that, despite their claims to detest capitalism, Juan
and Eva Perón "copied its methods, dictating names and slogans to the people" in the
same way that multi-national corporations "impose their razor blades, cigarettes, and
washing machines." Borges then listed the numerous conspiracy theories the ruling
couple dictated to their followers and how those theories were accepted without
question.[81]
Borges concluded:
It is useless to list the examples; one can only denounce the duplicity of the fictions of
the former regime, which can't be believed and were believed. It will be said that the
public's lack of sophistication is enough to explain the contradiction; I believe that the
cause is more profound. Coleridge spoke of the "willing suspension of disbelief," that is,
poetic faith; Samuel Johnson said, in defense of Shakespeare, that the spectators at a
tragedy do not believe they are in Alexandria in the first act and Rome in the second but
submit to the pleasure of a fiction. Similarly, the lies of a dictatorship are neither
believed nor disbelieved; they pertain to an intermediate plane, and their purpose is to
conceal or justify sordid or atrocious realities. They pertain to the pathetic or the
clumsily sentimental. Happily, for the enlightenment and security of the Argentines, the
current regime has understood that the function of government is not to inspire
pathos.[82]
In a 1967 interview, Borges said, "Perón was a humbug, and he knew it, and everybody
knew it. But Perón could be very cruel. I mean, he had people tortured, killed. And his
wife was a common prostitute."[83]
When Perón returned from exile in 1973 and regained the Presidency, Borges was
enraged. In a 1975 interview for National Geographic, he said "Damn, the snobs are
back in the saddle. If their posters and slogans again defile the city, I'll be glad I've lost
my sight. Well, they can't humiliate me as they did before my books sold well." [84]
After being accused of being unforgiving, Borges quipped, "I resented Perón's making
Argentina look ridiculous to the world ... as in 1951, when he announced control
over thermonuclear fusion, which still hasn't happened anywhere but in the sun and the
stars. For a time, Argentines hesitated to wear band aids for fear friends would ask, 'Did
the atomic bomb go off in your hand?' A shame, because Argentina really has world-
class scientists."[84]
After Borges' death in 1986, the Peronist Partido Justicialista declined to send a
delegate to the writer's memorial service in Buenos Aires. A spokesman for the Party
said that this was in reaction to "certain declarations he had made about the
country."[85] Later, at the City Council of Buenos Aires, Peronist politicians refused to
honor Borges as an Argentine, commenting that he "chose to die abroad." When
infuriated politicians from the other parties demanded to know the real reason, the
Peronists finally explained that Borges had made statements about Evita Perón which
they called "unacceptable".[85]
Military junta[edit]
During the 1970s, Borges at first expressed support for Argentina's military junta, but
was scandalized by the junta's actions during the Dirty War. In protest against their
support of the regime, Borges ceased publishing in the newspaper La Nación.[86]
In 1985, he wrote a short poem about the Falklands War called Juan López y John
Ward, about two fictional soldiers (one from each side), who died in the Falklands, in
which he refers to "islands that were too famous". He also said about the war: "The
Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb." [87]
Borges was an observer at the trials of the military junta in 1985 and wrote that "not to
judge and condemn the crimes would be to encourage impunity and to become,
somehow, its accomplice."[56] Borges added that "the news of the missing people, the
crimes and atrocities [the military] committed" had inspired him to return to his earlier
Emersonian faith in democracy.[56]

Works[edit]
Main article: Jorge Luis Borges bibliography
Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort argue that Borges "may have been the most important
figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes. He was clearly of tremendous
influence, writing intricate poems, short stories, and essays that instantiated concepts of
dizzying power."[88]
In addition to short stories for which he is most noted, Borges also wrote poetry, essays,
screenplays, literary criticism, and edited numerous anthologies. His longest work of
fiction is a fourteen-page story, "The Congress", first published in 1971.[9] His late-onset
blindness strongly influenced his later writing. Borges wrote: "When I think of what I've
lost, I ask, 'Who know themselves better than the blind?' – for every thought becomes a
tool."[89]
Paramount among his intellectual interests are elements of mythology, mathematics,
theology, integrating these through literature, sometimes playfully, sometimes with great
seriousness.[90]
Borges composed poetry throughout his life. As his eyesight waned (it came and went,
with a struggle between advancing age and advances in eye surgery), he increasingly
focused on writing poetry, since he could memorize an entire work in progress. [91]
His poems embrace the same wide range of interests as his fiction, along with issues
that emerge in his critical works and translations, and from more personal musings. For
example, his interest in idealism runs through his work, reflected in the fictional world of
Tlön in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and in his essay "A New Refutation of Time".[92] It
also appears as a theme in "On Exactitude in Science" and in his poems "Things" and
"El Golem" ("The Golem") and his story "The Circular Ruins".[citation needed]
Borges was a notable translator. He translated works of literature in English, French,
German, Old English, and Old Norse into Spanish. His first publication, for a Buenos
Aires newspaper, was a translation of Oscar Wilde's story "The Happy Prince" into
Spanish when he was nine.[93] At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language
version of a part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. He also translated (while
simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, Ambrose
Bierce, William Faulkner, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Rudyard
Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.[Note 5] Borges wrote and
lectured extensively on the art of translation, holding that a translation may improve
upon the original, may even be unfaithful to it, and that alternative and potentially
contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid.[94] Borges employed the
devices of literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work, both forms of
modern pseudo-epigrapha.
Hoaxes and forgeries[edit]
Borges's best-known set of literary forgeries date from his early work as a translator and
literary critic with a regular column in the Argentine magazine El Hogar. Along with
publishing numerous legitimate translations, he also published original works, for
example, in the style of Emanuel Swedenborg[Note 6] or One Thousand and One Nights,
originally claiming them to be translations of works he had chanced upon. In another
case, he added three short, falsely attributed pieces into his otherwise legitimate and
carefully researched anthology El matrero.[Note 6] Several of these are gathered in the A
Universal History of Infamy.
While Borges was the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, he had
developed the idea from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a book-length review of a
non-existent German transcendentalist work, and the biography of its equally non-
existent author. In This Craft of Verse, Borges says that in 1916 in Geneva "[I]
discovered, and was overwhelmed by, Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I
can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart."[95]
In the introduction to his first published volume of fiction, The Garden of Forking Paths,
Borges remarks, "It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of
composing vast books, setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly
related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those
books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them." He then cites
both Sartor Resartus and Samuel Butler's The Fair Haven, remarking, however, that
"those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a
whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy
man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books."[96]
On the other hand, Borges was wrongly attributed some works, like the
poem "Instantes".[97][98]
Criticism of Borges' work[edit]

Monument in Buenos Aires

Borges's change in style from regionalist criollismo to a more cosmopolitan style

brought him much criticism from journals such as Contorno, a leftist, Sartre-influenced
Argentine publication founded by David Viñas and his brother, along with other
intellectuals such as Noé Jitrik and Adolfo Prieto. In the post-Peronist Argentina of the
early 1960s, Contorno met with wide approval from the youth who challenged the
authenticity of older writers such as Borges and questioned their legacy of
experimentation. Magic realism and exploration of universal truths, they argued, had
come at the cost of responsibility and seriousness in the face of society's problems. [99]
The Contorno writers acknowledged Borges and Eduardo Mallea for being "doctors of
technique" but argued that their work lacked substance due to their lack of interaction
with the reality that they inhabited, an existentialist critique of their refusal to embrace
existence and reality in their artwork.[99]
Sexuality and perception of women[edit]
The story "The Sect of the Phoenix" is famously interpreted to allude to the ubiquity of
sexual intercourse among humans[100] – a concept whose essential qualities the narrator
of the story is not able to relate to.
With a few notable exceptions, women are almost entirely absent from Borges'
fiction.[101] However, there are some instances in Borges' later writings of romantic love,
for example the story "Ulrikke" from The Book of Sand. The protagonist of the story "El
muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo
Bandeira[102] and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair".[103] Although they do not
appear in the stories, women are significantly discussed as objects of unrequited love in
his short stories "The Zahir" and "The Aleph".[104][page needed] The plot of La Intrusa was based
on a true story of two friends. Borges turned their fictional counterparts into brothers,
excluding the possibility of a homosexual relationship.[105]
Nobel Prize omission[edit]
Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, something which continually
distressed the writer.[9] He was one of several distinguished authors who never received
the honour.[106] Borges commented, "Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a
Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me".[107]
Some observers speculated that Borges did not receive the award in his later life
because of his conservative political views, or, more specifically, because he had
accepted an honour from Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.[108][109]
Borges was however among the short-listed candidates several times. In 1965 he was
considered along with Vladimir Nabokov, Pablo Neruda and Mikhail Sholokhov, and in
1966 a shared prize to Borges and Miguel Ángel Asturias was proposed.[110] Borges was
nominated again in 1967, and was among the final three choices considered by the
committee, according to Nobel records unsealed on the 50th anniversary, in 2017. The
committee considered Borges, Graham Greene and Miguel Ángel Asturias, with the last
chosen winner.[111]

Fact, fantasy and non-linearity[edit]

Monument in Lisbon
Many of Borges's best-known stories deal with themes of time ("The Secret Miracle"),
infinity ("The Aleph"), mirrors ("Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius") and labyrinths ("The Two
Kings and the Two Labyrinths", "The House of Asterion", "The Immortal", "The Garden
of Forking Paths"). Williamson writes, "His basic contention was that fiction did not
depend on the illusion of reality; what mattered ultimately was an author's ability to
generate "poetic faith" in his reader."[9]
His stories often have fantastical themes, such as a library containing every possible
410-page text ("The Library of Babel"), a man who forgets nothing he experiences
("Funes, the Memorious"), an artifact through which the user can see everything in the
universe ("The Aleph"), and a year of still time given to a man standing before a firing
squad ("The Secret Miracle"). Borges told realistic stories of South American life, of folk
heroes, streetfighters, soldiers, gauchos, detectives, and historical figures. He mixed the
real and the fantastic, fact with fiction. His interest in compounding fantasy, philosophy,
and the art of translation are evident in articles such as "The Translators of The Book of
One Thousand and One Nights". In the Book of Imaginary Beings, a thoroughly
researched bestiary of mythical creatures, Borges wrote, "There is a kind of lazy
pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition."[112] Borges's interest in fantasy was
shared by Bioy Casares, with whom he coauthored several collections of tales between
1942 and 1967.[citation needed]
Often, especially early in his career, the mixture of fact and fantasy crossed the line into
the realm of hoax or literary forgery.[Note 6]
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941) presents the idea of forking paths through
networks of time, none of which is the same, all of which are equal. Borges uses the
recurring image of "a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression" so we
"become aware of all the possible choices we might make."[113] The forking paths have
branches to represent these choices that ultimately lead to different endings. Borges
saw man's search for meaning in a seemingly infinite universe as fruitless and instead
uses the maze as a riddle for time, not space.[113] He examined the themes of universal
randomness ("The Lottery in Babylon") and madness ("The Zahir"). Due to the success
of the "Forking Paths" story, the term "Borgesian" came to reflect a quality of
narrative non-linearity.[Note 7]
Borgesian conundrum[edit]
The philosophical term "Borgesian conundrum" is named after him and has been
defined as the ontological question of "whether the writer writes the story, or it writes
him."[114] The original concept was put forward by Borges in Kafka and His Precursors.
After reviewing works that were written before those of Kafka, Borges wrote:
If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have enumerated resemble Kafka; if I
am not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. The second fact is the more
significant. In each of these texts we find Kafka's idiosyncrasy to a greater or lesser
degree, but if Kafka had never written a line, we would not perceive this quality; in other
words, it would not exist. The poem "Fears and Scruples" by Browning foretells Kafka's
work, but our reading of Kafka perceptibly sharpens and deflects our reading of the
poem. Browning did not read it as we do now. In the critics' vocabulary, the word
'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotation of polemics or
rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our
conception of the past, as it will modify the future."[115]

Culture and Argentine literature[edit]

Martín Fierro and Argentine tradition[edit]
Main article: Borges on Martín Fierro

Borges in 1976

Along with other young Argentine writers of his generation, Borges initially rallied around
the fictional character of Martín Fierro. Martín Fierro, a poem by José Hernández, was a
dominant work of 19th century Argentine literature. Its eponymous hero became a
symbol of Argentine sensibility, untied from European values – a gaucho, free,
poor, pampas-dwelling.[116]
The character Fierro is illegally drafted to serve at a border fort to defend it against the
indigenous population but ultimately deserts to become a gaucho matrero, the
Argentine equivalent of a North American western outlaw. Borges contributed keenly to
the avant garde Martín Fierro magazine in the early 1920s.[citation needed]
As Borges matured, he came to a more nuanced attitude toward the Hernández poem.
In his book of essays on the poem, Borges separates his admiration for the aesthetic
virtues of the work from his mixed opinion of the moral virtues of its protagonist.[117] In his
essay "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" (1951), Borges celebrates how Hernández
expresses the Argentine character. In a key scene in the poem, Martín Fierro and El
Moreno compete by improvising songs on universal themes such as time, night, and the
sea, reflecting the real-world gaucho tradition of payadas, improvised musical dialogues
on philosophical themes.[116][118] Borges points out that Hernández evidently knew the
difference between actual gaucho tradition of composing poetry versus the
"gauchesque" fashion among Buenos Aires literati.[citation needed]
In his works he refutes the arch-nationalist interpreters of the poem and disdains others,
such as critic Eleuterio Tiscornia, for their Europeanising approach. Borges denies that
Argentine literature should distinguish itself by limiting itself to "local colour", which he
equates with cultural nationalism.[118] Racine and Shakespeare's work, he says, looked
beyond their countries' borders. Neither, he argues, need the literature be bound to the
heritage of old world Spanish or European tradition. Nor should it define itself by the
conscious rejection of its colonial past. He asserts that Argentine writers need to be free
to define Argentine literature anew, writing about Argentina and the world from the point
of view of those who have inherited the whole of world literature.[118] Williamson says
"Borges's main argument is that the very fact of writing from the margins provides
Argentine writers with a special opportunity to innovate without being bound to the
canons of the centre, ... at once a part of and apart from the centre, which gives them
much potential freedom".[116]
Argentine culture[edit]
Borges focused on universal themes, but also composed a substantial body of literature
on themes from Argentine folklore and history. His first book, the poetry
collection Fervor de Buenos Aires (Passion for Buenos Aires), appeared in 1923.
Borges's writings on things Argentine, include Argentine culture ("History of the Tango";
"Inscriptions on Horse Wagons"), folklore ("Juan Muraña", "Night of the Gifts"), literature
("The Argentine Writer and Tradition", "Almafuerte"; "Evaristo Carriego"), and national
concerns ("Celebration of the Monster", "Hurry, Hurry", "The Mountebank", "Pedro
Salvadores"). Ultranationalists, however, continued to question his Argentine identity. [119]
Borges's interest in Argentine themes reflects, in part, the inspiration of his family tree.
Borges had an English paternal grandmother who, around 1870, married
the criollo Francisco Borges, a man with a military command and a historic role in
the Argentine Civil Wars in what is now Argentina and Uruguay.[citation needed]
Spurred by pride in his family's heritage, Borges often used those civil wars as settings
in fiction and quasi-fiction (for example, "The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz," "The Dead
Man," "Avelino Arredondo") as well as poetry ("General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a
Carriage"). Borges's maternal great-grandfather, Manuel Isidoro Suárez, was another
military hero, whom Borges immortalized in the poem "A Page to Commemorate
Colonel Suárez, Victor at Junín".[citation needed]
His non-fiction explores many of the themes found in his fiction. Essays such as "The
History of the Tango" or his writings on the epic poem "Martín Fierro" explore Argentine
themes, such as the identity of the Argentine people and of various Argentine
subcultures. The varying genealogies of characters, settings, and themes in his stories,
such as "La muerte y la brújula", used Argentine models without pandering to his
readers or framing Argentine culture as "exotic".[119]
In fact, contrary to what is usually supposed, the geographies found in his fictions often
do not correspond to those of real-world Argentina.[120] In his essay "El escritor argentino
y la tradición", Borges notes that the very absence of camels in the Qur'an was proof
enough that it was an Arabian work (despite the fact that camels are, in fact, mentioned
in the Qur'an). He suggested that only someone trying to write an "Arab" work would
purposefully include a camel.[119] He uses this example to illustrate how his dialogue with
universal existential concerns was just as Argentine as writing about gauchos and
tangos.[citation needed]
Multicultural influences[edit]
At the time of the Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816, the population was
predominantly criollo (of Spanish ancestry). From the mid-1850s on waves of
immigration from Europe, especially Italy and Spain, arrived in the country, and in the
following decades the Argentine national identity diversified.[9][121] Borges was writing in a
strongly European literary context, immersed in Spanish, English, French, German,
Italian, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature. He also read translations of Near Eastern
and Far Eastern works. Borges's writing is also informed by scholarship of Christianity,
Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, including prominent religious figures, heretics, and
mystics.[122]
Religion and heresy are explored in such stories as "Averroes's Search", "The Writing of
the God", "The Theologians", and "Three Versions of Judas". The curious inversion of
mainstream Christian concepts of redemption in the last story is characteristic of
Borges's approach to theology in his literature.[123]
In describing himself, he said, "I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers
that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the
cities that I have visited, all my ancestors."[107] As a young man, he visited the
frontier pampas which extend beyond Argentina into Uruguay and Brazil. Borges said
that his father wished him "to become a citizen of the world, a great cosmopolitan," in
the way of Henry and William James.[124]
Borges lived and studied in Switzerland and Spain as a young student. As Borges
matured, he traveled through Argentina as a lecturer and, internationally, as a visiting
professor; he continued to tour the world as he grew older, finally settling
in Geneva where he had spent some of his youth. Drawing on the influence of many
times and places, Borges's work belittled nationalism and racism.[119] However, Borges
also scorned his own Basque ancestry and criticised the abolition of slavery in America
because he believed black people were happier remaining uneducated and without
freedom.[125] Portraits of diverse coexisting cultures characteristic of Argentina are
especially pronounced in the book Six Problems for don Isidoro Parodi (co-authored
with Bioy Casares) and Death and the Compass. Borges wrote that he considered
Mexican essayist Alfonso Reyes to be "the best prose-writer in the Spanish language of
any time."[126]
Borges was also an admirer of some Oriental culture, e.g. the ancient Chinese board
game of Go, about which he penned some verses,[127] while The Garden of Forking
Paths had a strong oriental theme.

Influences[edit]
Modernism[edit]

Plaque, 13 rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Borges was rooted in the Modernism predominant in its early years and was influenced
by Symbolism.[128] Like Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce, he combined an interest in
his native culture with broader perspectives, also sharing their multilingualism and
inventiveness with language. However, while Nabokov and Joyce tended toward
progressively larger works, Borges remained a miniaturist. His work
progressed away from what he referred to as "the baroque": his later style is far more
transparent and naturalistic than his earlier works. Borges represented the humanist
view of media that stressed the social aspect of art driven by emotion. If art represented
the tool, then Borges was more interested in how the tool could be used to relate to
people.[88]
Existentialism saw its apogee during the years of Borges's greatest artistic production. It
has been argued that his choice of topics largely ignored existentialism's central tenets.
Critic Paul de Man notes, "Whatever Borges's existential anxieties may be, they have
little in common with Sartre's robustly prosaic view of literature, with the earnestness of
Camus' moralism, or with the weighty profundity of German existential thought. Rather,
they are the consistent expansion of a purely poetic consciousness to its furthest
limits."[129]
Mathematics[edit]
Main article: Borges and mathematics
The essay collection Borges y la Matemática (Borges and Mathematics, 2003) by
Argentine mathematician and writer Guillermo Martínez, outlines how Borges used
concepts from mathematics in his work. Martínez states that Borges had, for example,
at least a superficial knowledge of set theory, which he handles with elegance in stories
such as "The Book of Sand".[130] Other books such as The Unimaginable Mathematics of
Borges' Library of Babel by William Goldbloom Bloch (2008) and Unthinking Thinking:
Jorge Luis Borges, Mathematics, and the New Physics by Floyd Merrell (1991) also
explore this relationship.
Philosophy[edit]
Fritz Mauthner, philosopher of language and author of the Wörterbuch der
Philosophie (Dictionary of Philosophy), had an important influence on Borges. Borges
always recognized the influence of this German philosopher.[131] According to the literary
review Sur, the book was one of the five books most noted and read by Borges. The
first time that Borges mentioned Mauthner was in 1928 in his book The language of the
Argentines (El idioma de los argentinos). In a 1962 interview Borges described
Mauthner as possessing a fine sense of humor as well as great knowledge and
erudition.[132]
In an interview,[133] Denis Dutton asked Borges who were the “…philosophers who have
influenced your works, in whom you’ve been the most interested….” In reply, Borges
named Berkeley and Schopenhauer. He was also influenced by Spinoza, about whom
Borges wrote a famous poem[134]
It is not without humour that Borges once wrote “Siempre imaginé que el Paraíso sería
algún tipo de biblioteca.” (I always imagined Paradise to be some kind of a library.)[135]
Notes[edit]
1. ^ In short, Borges' blindness led him to favour poetry and
shorter narratives over novels. Ferriera, Eliane Fernanda C.
"O (In) visível imaginado em Borges". In: Pedro Pires Bessa
(ed.). Riqueza Cultural Ibero-Americana. Campus de
Divinópolis-UEMG, 1996, pp. 313–14.
2. ^ Edwin Williamson suggests in Borges (Viking, 2004) that
Borges did not finish his baccalauréat (pp. 79–80): "he cannot
have been too bothered about his baccalauréat, not least
because he loathed and feared examination. (He was never
to finish his high school education, in fact)."
3. ^ "His was a particular kind of blindness, grown on him
gradually since the age of thirty and settled in for good after
his fifty-eighth birthday." From Manguel, Alberto (2006) With
Borges. London: Telegram Books, pp. 15–16.
4. ^ The Borges poems in H. R. Hays, ed. (1943) 12 Spanish
American Poets are "A Patio", "Butcher Shop", "Benares",
"The Recoleta", "A Day's Run", "General Quiroga Rides to
Death in a Carriage", "July Avenue," and "Natural Flow of
Memory".
5. ^ Notable translations also include work by Melville, Faulkner,
Sir Thomas Browne, and G. K. Chesterton.
6. ^ Jump up to:a b c His imitations of Swedenborg and others
were originally passed off as translations, in his literary
column in Crítica. "El teólogo" was originally published with
the note "Lo anterior ... es obra de Manuel Swedenborg,
eminente ingeniero y hombre de ciencia, que durante 27 años
estuvo en comercio lúcido y familiar con el otro mundo." ("The
preceding [...] is the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, eminent
engineer and man of science, who during 27 years was in
lucid and familiar commerce with the other world.") See
"Borges y Revista multicolor de los sábados: confabulados en
una escritura de la infamia" by Raquel Atena Green, Wor(l)ds
of Change: Latin American and Iberian Literature, volume 32,
(2010) Peter Lang Publishing; ISBN 978-0-8204-3467-4
7. ^ Non-linearity was key to the development of digital media.
See Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium" The New Media
Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

References[edit]
1. ^ Troop Software Factory. "Jorge Luis Borges".
2. ^ "Borges". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary;
accessed 1 April 2016.
3. ^ *David Wheatley (Director) (1983). Profile of a Writer:
Borges and I(Feature Documentary). Arena.
4. ^ Theo L. D'Haen (1995) "Magical Realism and
Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers", in: Louis P.
Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, Magical Realism: Theory,
History and Community. Duhan and London, Duke University
Press pp. 191–208.
5. ^ (in Portuguese) Masina, Lea. (2001) "Murilo Rubião, o
mágico do conto". In: O pirotécnico Zacarias e outros contos
escolhidos. Porto Alegre: L & PM, pg. 5.
6. ^ Borges on Life and Death, Interview by Amelia Barili.
7. ^ Coetzee, J.M. "Borges’ Dark Mirror", New York Review of
Books, Volume 45, Number 16. 22 October 1998.
8. ^ Bell-Villada, Gene (1999). Borges and His Fiction. United
States of America: University of Texas Press. pp. 14. ISBN 0-
292-70877-7.
9. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Tóibín, Colm, "Don't
abandon me", London Review of Books, 11 May 20061;
retrieved 19 April 2009.
10. ^ "Biography". Find a Grave. Retrieved 4 July 2013.
11. ^ Harold Bloom (2004) Jorge Luis Borges, Infobase
Publishing. ISBN 9789500711210
12. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis, "Autobiographical Notes", The New
Yorker, 19 September 1970.
13. ^ Gene H. Bell-Villada,Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His
Mind and Art, University of Texas Press (1999), p.
16; ISBN 9780292708785
14. ^ Wilson, Jason (2006). Jorge Luis Borges. Reaktion Books.
p. 37. ISBN 1-86189-286-1.
15. ^ 1944-, Wilson, Jason (2006). Jorge Luis Borges. London:
Reaktion. pp. 45–47. ISBN 1861892861. OCLC 65768057.
16. ^ Borges: Other Inquisitions 1937–1952. Full introduction by
James Irby. University of Texas, ISBN 978-0-292-76002-8;
accessed 16 August 2010.
17. ^ "Ivonne Bordelois, "The Sur Magazine" Villa Ocampo
Website". Villaocampo.org. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
18. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis. Trans. Mildred Boyer and Harold
Morland. Dreamtigers, University of Texas Press, 1985, p. 25.
19. ^ Boldy (2009) p. 32
20. ^ Bolter, Jay David; Joyce, Michael (1987). "Hypertext and
Creative Writing". Hypertext '87 Papers. ACM. pp. 41–50.
21. ^ Moulthrop, Stuart (1991). "Reading From the Map:
Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of 'Forking Paths'". In
Delany, Paul; Landow, George P. (eds.). Hypermedia and
Literary Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London,
England: The MIT Press.
22. ^ "Borges, Jorge Luis (Vol.32)". enotes. Retrieved 3
December 2008.
23. ^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah & Montfort, Nick (2003). The New
Media Reader. MIT Press.
24. ^ Alberto Manguel (2006) With Borges, London:Telegram
Books pp. 15–16.
25. ^ Woodall, J: The Man in Mirror of the Book, A Life of Luis
Borges, (1996) Hodder and Stoughton pxxx.
26. ^ "Days of Hate". Imdb. Retrieved 4 December 2008.
27. ^ Jorge Luis Borges (1984) Seven Nights, A New Directions
Book pp 109–110.
28. ^ Elogio de la Sombra, 1969, poetry. English title In Praise of
Darkness, 1974; ISBN 0-525-03635-0.
29. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Burgin (1988) p xvii
30. ^ "The Craft of Verse: The Norton Lectures, 1967–
68". UbuWeb: Sound. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
31. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis (2013). Jorge Luis Borges: The Last
Interview: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview
Series). Melville House. ISBN 9781612192048.
32. ^ H. R. Hays, ed. (1943) 12 Spanish American Poets. New
Haven: Yale University Press p118-139.
33. ^ Jeffrey Alan Marks, Anthony Boucher: A
Biobibliography McFarland (2008), pg.
77; ISBN 9780786433209
34. ^ "Title: The Rejected Sorcerer". www.isfdb.org.
35. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis (1998) Collected Fictions Viking
Penguin. Translation and notes by Andrew Hurley (editorial
note), pg 517.
36. ^ "Edgar Award Winners and Nominees
Database". theedgars.com.
37. ^ Christ, Ronald (Summer 1971). "A Modest Proposal for the
Criticism of Borges". Books Abroad. 45 (3): 388–
398. doi:10.2307/40125492. JSTOR 40125492.
38. ^ UVA, Special Collections Library. "The Jorge Luis Borges
Collection". Archived from the original on 2 November 2011.
Retrieved 1 April 2016.
39. ^ Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. "Cada pieza es de un valor
incalculable" Cover Article. Revista Ñ, Diario Clarín. Buenos
Aires, 5 September 2011.
40. ^ Kefala, Eleni (1 January 2007). Peripheral (post) Modernity:
The Syncretist Aesthetics of Borges, Piglia, Kalokyris and
Kyriakidis. Peter Lang. ISBN 9780820486390.
41. ^ Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, The Lessons of the Master.
42. ^ "Fanny", El Señor Borges
43. ^ Israel Shenker (31 August 1997). "Borges, a Blind Writer
With Insight". New York Times. Retrieved 30 April 2013. ...
Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic
kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant.
44. ^ Ivereigh, Austen (2014). The Great Reformer: Francis and
the Making of a Radical Pope. New York: Henry Holt and
Company. p. 82.
45. ^ Jump up to:a b Williamson 2004, p. 489.
46. ^ Jump up to:a b Williamson 2004, p. 490.
47. ^ ReL (14 June 2016). "Borges era ateo pero rezaba cada
noche un Avemaría, evoca un sacerdote en un homenaje
ante su tumba". religionenlibertad.com.
48. ^ Borges (2004), pages 490–492.
49. ^ María Kodama demanda a un periodista francés por
difamación y reclama nada más que 1 euro Archived 3 March
2016 at the Wayback Machine, edant.revistaenie.clarin.com,
14 May 2008; accessed 1 April 2016.
50. ^ "Se suspendió un juicio por obras de Borges: reacción de
Kodama". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
Retrieved 14 September2011.
51. ^ (in Spanish) Octavi Martí, Kodama frente a Borges, El
País (Madrid), Edición Impresa, 16 August 2006. Abstract
online; full text accessible online by subscription only.
52. ^ Richard Flanagan, "Writing with Borges", The
Age (Australia), 12 July 2003; accessed 16 August 2010.
53. ^ Salinas, Alejandra M. (2016). Liberty, Individuality, and
Democracy in Jorge Luis Borges. Lexington Books. p. 94.
54. ^ Jump up to:a b Salinas, Alejandra M. (2016). Liberty,
Individuality, and Democracy in Jorge Luis Borges. Lexington
Books. p. 95.
55. ^ Borges on Writing (1973), Edited by Norman Thomas
DoGiovanni, Daniel Halpern, and Frank MacShane. E.P.
Dutton & Co, Inc., New York. Page 59.
56. ^ Jump up to:a b c Salinas, Alejandra M. (2016). Liberty,
Individuality, and Democracy in Jorge Luis Borges. Lexington
Books. p. 108.
57. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis (29 October 2018). "La vuelta de la
democracia: el texto que Jorge Luis Borges escribió para
Clarín en 1983". Clarín. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
58. ^ Yudin, Florence (1997). Nightglow: Borges' Poetics of
Blindness. City: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca.
p. 31. ISBN 84-7299-385-X.
59. ^ Bell-Villada, Gene (1981). Borges and His Fiction. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 13. ISBN 0-8078-
1458-X.
60. ^ Yudin, Florence (1997). Nightglow: Borges' Poetics of
Blindness. City: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca.
p. 31. ISBN 84-7299-385-X.
61. ^ Burgin (1968). p. 104.
62. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 332-333.
63. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 334.
64. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 334-335.
65. ^ Burgin (1968) pp. 95–96
66. ^ Burgin (1969), pages 93-95.
67. ^ Jump up to:a b De Costa, René (2000) Humor in Borges
(Humor in Life & Letters). Wayne State University Press p.
49 ISBN 0-8143-2888-1
68. ^ Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Nonfictions, p 200.
69. ^ Selected Nonfictions, p. 201.
70. ^ Borges, Selected Nonfictions, p. 211.
71. ^ Borges on Writing (1970), pages 60-61.
72. ^ Burgin (1968), pp 331–332.
73. ^ Borges on Writing (1970), page 61.
74. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 292.
75. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 295.
76. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 312.
77. ^ Jump up to:a b Williamson 2004, p. 313.
78. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 320.
79. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 320-321.
80. ^ (in Spanish) Jorge Luis Borges. Galería de Directores,
Biblioteca Nacional (Argentina) at the Wayback
Machine (archived 16 April 2008). (archived from the original,
on 16 April 2008.)
81. ^ Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Nonfictions, pp. 409–10.
82. ^ Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Nonfictions, p. 410.
83. ^ Burgin (1969), p. 121
84. ^ Jump up to:a b National Geographic, p. 303. (March 1975).
85. ^ Jump up to:a b Williamson 2004, p. 491.
86. ^ Willis Barnstone, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in
Buenos Aires, University of Illinois Press, 1993, pp. 30–31.
87. ^ Falkland Islands: Imperial pride, theguardian.com, 19
February 2010.
88. ^ Jump up to:a b Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, ed.
(2003). The New Media Reader, Cambridge: The MIT Press,
p. 29; ISBN 0-262-23227-8
89. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis. (1994) Siete Noches. Obras Completas,
vol. III. Buenos Aires: Emecé
90. ^ Unthinking Thinking: Jorge Luis Borges, Mathematics, and
the New Physics (1991) Floyd Merrell, Purdue University
Press pxii; ISBN 9781557530110
91. ^ "The Other Borges Than the Central One", nytimes.com;
accessed 1 April 2016.
92. ^ Kate Jenckes, Reading Borges After Benjamin: Allegory,
Afterlife, and the Writing of History (2008), SUNY Press, pp.
101, 117, 136; ISBN 9780791469903
93. ^ Kristal, Efraín (2002). Invisible Work. Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt University Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-8265-1408-1.
94. ^ Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse, Harvard University
Press, 2000. pp. 57–76. Word Music and Translation, Lecture,
Delivered 28 February 1968.
95. ^ Borges This Craft of Verse (p. 104)
96. ^ Borges Collected Fictions, p67
97. ^ University of Pittsburgh, Borges Center Jorge Luis Borges,
autor del poema "Instantes", by Iván Almeida. Retrieved 10
January 2011
98. ^ Martin Hadis' site on The Life & Works of Jorge Luis
Borges, Internetaleph.com; retrieved 10 January 2011.
99. ^ Jump up to:a b Katra, William H. (1988) Contorno: Literary
Engagement in Post-Perónist Argentina. Teaneck, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, pp. 56–57
100. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 489, "years later Borges would tell
Ronald Christ that he meant the Secret to refer to sexual
intercourse".
101. ^ "The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges's "El
muerto" and "La intrusa"", XIX Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) Congress(paper), Washington DC,
September 1995
102. ^ Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions, New York:
Penguin, 1988, p. 197
103. ^ Hurley 1988, p. 200.
104. ^ Hurley 1988.
105. ^ Keller, Gary; Van Hooft, Karen S. (1976). "Jorge Luis
Borges' "La intrusa": The Awakening of Love and
Consciousness/The Sacrifice of Love and Consciousness". In
Davis, Lisa E.; Tarán, Isabel C. (eds.). The Analysis of
Hispanic Texts: Current Trends in Methodology. Bilingual P.
pp. 300–19.
106. ^ Feldman, Burton. (2000) The Nobel Prize: a History of
Genius, Controversy and Prestige, Arcade Publishing p57
107. ^ Jump up to:a b Jorge Luis Borges profile, guardian.co.uk,
22 July 2008; accessed 15 August 2010.
108. ^ James M. Markham, "Briton Wins the Nobel Literature
Prize", The New York Times, 7 October 1983; accessed 15
August 2010.
109. ^ Feldman, Burton (2000) The Nobel Prize: a History of
Genius, Controversy and Prestige, Arcade Publishing, pg. 81.
110. ^ Nabokov, Neruda and Borges revealed as losers of 1965
Nobel prizeThe Guardian 6 January 2016
111. ^ Kaj Schueler (January 2018). "Hemliga dokument visar
kampen om Nobelpriset". Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved 3
January 2018.
112. ^ Borges, Luis Borges (1979) Book of Imaginary
Beings Penguin Books Australia, p. 11; ISBN 0-525-47538-9
113. ^ Jump up to:a b Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the
Medium" The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press,
2003.
114. ^ Ella Taylor (18 July 2010). "Book review: 'The Thieves of
Manhattan' by Adam Langer". Los Angeles Times.
115. ^ Jorge Luis Borges (1988). Labyrinths: Selected Stories &
Other Writings. New Direction Books. p. 201.
116. ^ Jump up to:a b c Gabriel Waisman, Sergio (2005) Borges
and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery, Bucknell
University Press, pp. 126–29; ISBN 0-8387-5592-5
117. ^ Borges and Guerrero (1953) El "Martín Fierro ISBN 84-
206-1933-7
118. ^ Jump up to:a b c Borges, Jorge Luis and Lanuza, Eduardo
González (1961) "The Argentine writer and tradition" Latin
American and European Literary Society
119. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Takolander, Maria, (2007) Catching
butterflies: bringing magical realism to ground Peter Lang Pub
Inc pp. 55–60; ISBN 3-03911-193-0
120. ^ David Boruchoff (1985), "In Pursuit of the Detective
Genre: ‘La muerte y la brújula’ of Jorge Luis Borges," Inti:
Revista de Literatura Hispánica no. 21, pp. 13–26.
121. ^ "Velez, Wanda (1990) "South American Immigration:
Argentina"". Yale.edu. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
122. ^ Bell-Villada, Gene Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His
Mind and Art, University of Texas Press; ISBN 978-0-292-
70878-5
123. ^ Stabb, Martin S. (1970). Jorge Luis Borges. New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc. pp. 99–100.
124. ^ Williamson 2004, p. 53.
125. ^ (in Spanish) Rodolfo Braceli (1996) "Borges", in: Caras,
Caritas y Caretas. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana. ISBN 0-7910-7872-8.
126. ^ Borges, Siete Noches, p. 156
127. ^ "El Go". GoBase. Retrieved 26 August 2011.
128. ^ Britton, R (July 1979). "History, Myth, and Archetype in
Borges's View of Argentina". The Modern Language Review.
Modern Humanities Research Association. 74 (3): 607–
16. doi:10.2307/3726707. JSTOR 3726707.
129. ^ de Man, Paul. "A Modern Master", Jorge Luis Borges, Ed.
Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Pub, 1986. p. 22.
130. ^ Martinez, Guillermo (2003) Borges y la
Matemática (Spanish Edition) Editorial Universitaria de
Buenos Aires. ISBN 950-23-1296-1
131. ^ Báez, Fernando "Mauthner en Borges" -nº
19 Espéculo (UCM): [1]
132. ^ Entrevista con Borges publicada en la "Revista de la
Universidad de México", vol. 16, nro. 10, México, junio de
1962, pg. 9
133. ^ "Philosophy and Literature," Volume 1, Number 3, Fall
1977, pp. 337-41.
134. ^ Borges, Poesía completa, Debolsillo, Penguin, Barcelona
2016, p. 461
135. ^ Borges, Jorge Luis (1999) [Lecture the chapter is based
on given in 1977]. "Blindness". In Wienberger, Eliot
 (ed.). Selected Non-Fictions. p. 475. ISBN 0670849472. Little
by little I came to realize the strange irony of events. I had
always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. Others think of
a garden or of a palace. There I was, the center, in a way, of
nine hundred thousand books in various languages, but I
found I could barely make out the title pages and the spines.

Further reading[edit]
• Agheana, Ion (1988). The Meaning of Experience in the Prose of
Jorge Luis Borges. Frankfurt Am Main: P. Lang. ISBN 0-8204-
0595-7.
• Agheana, Ion (1984). The Prose of Jorge Luis Borges. Frankfurt
Am Main: P. Lang. ISBN 0-8204-0130-7.
• Aizenberg, Edna (1984). The Aleph Weaver: Biblical, Kabbalistic
and Judaic Elements in Borges. Potomac: Scripta
Humanistica. ISBN 0-916379-12-4.
• Aizenberg, Edna (1990). Borges and His Successors. Columbia:
University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-0712-X.
• Alazraki, Jaime (1988). Borges and the Kabbalah. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-30684-1.
• Alazraki, Jaime (1987). Critical Essays on Jorge Luis Borges.
Boston: G.K. Hall. ISBN 0-8161-8829-7.
• Balderston, Daniel (1993). Out of Context. Durham: Duke
University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1316-2.
• Barnstone, Willis (1993). With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in
Buenos Aires. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-
01888-5.
• Barrenechea, Ana María (1965). Borges the Labyrinth Maker.
Edited and Translated by Robert Lima. New York City: New York
University Press. LCCN 65-10764.
• Bell-Villada, Gene (1981). Borges and His Fiction. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1458-X.
• Bioy Casares, Adolfo (2006). Borges. City: Destino
Ediciones. ISBN 978-950-732-085-9.
• Block de Behar, Lisa (2014). Borges. The Passion of an Endless
Quotation. 2nd Ed. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-5031-
5.
• Bloom, Harold (1986). Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Chelsea
House Publishers. ISBN 0-87754-721-1.
• Bulacio, Cristina; Grima, Donato (1998). Dos Miradas sobre
Borges. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone. ISBN 950-
554-266-6. Illustrated by Donato Grima.
• Burgin, Richard (1969) Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations, Holt
Rinehart & Winston
• Burgin, Richard (1998) Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations,
University Press of Mississippi
• Block de Behar, Lisa (2003). Borges, the Passion of an Endless
Quotation. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 1-
4175-2020-5.
• Di Giovanni, Norman Thomas (1995). The Borges Tradition.
London: Constable in association with the Anglo-Argentine
Society. ISBN 0-09-473840-8.
• Di Giovanni, Norman Thomas (2003). The Lesson of the Master.
London: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-6110-7.
• Dunham, Lowell (1971). The Cardinal Points of Borges. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-0983-1.
• Fishburn, Evelyn (2002). Borges and Europe Revisited. City: Univ
of London. ISBN 1-900039-21-4.
• Frisch, Mark (2004). You Might Be Able to Get There from Here.
Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0-8386-4044-
3.
• Kristal, Efraín (2002). Invisible Work. Nashville: Vanderbilt
University Press. ISBN 0-585-40803-3.
• Laín Corona, Guillermo. "Borges and Cervantes: Truth and
Falsehood in the Narration". Neophilologus, 93 (2009): 421–37.
• Laín Corona, Guillermo. "Teoría y práctica de la metáfora en torno
a Fervor de Buenos Aires, de Borges". Cuadernos de Aleph.
Revista de literatura hispánica, 2 (2007): 79–
93. https://web.archive.org/web/20120105024915/http://cuadernos
dealeph.com/revista_2007/A2007_pdf/06%20Teor%C3%ADa.pdf
• Lima, Robert (1993). "Borges and the Esoteric". Crítica Hispánica.
Special issue. Duquesne University. 15(2). ISSN 0278-7261.
• Lindstrom, Naomi (1990). Jorge Luis Borges. Boston: Twayne
Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-8327-X.
• Manguel, Alberto (2006). With Borges. City: Telegram. ISBN 978-
1-84659-005-4.
• Manovich, Lev, New Media from Borges to HTML, 2003
• McMurray, George (1980). Jorge Luis Borges. New York:
Ungar. ISBN 0-8044-2608-2.
• Molloy, Sylvia (1994). Signs of Borges. Durham: Duke University
Press. ISBN 0-8223-1406-1.
• Murray, Janet H., Inventing the Medium, 2003
• Núñez-Faraco, Humberto (2006). Borges and Dante. Frankfurt Am
Main: P. Lang. ISBN 978-3-03910-511-3.
• Racz, Gregary (2003). Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) as Writer
and Social Critic. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-
6904-4.
• Rodríguez, Monegal (1978). Jorge Luis Borges. New York:
Dutton. ISBN 0-525-13748-3.
• Rodríguez-Luis, Julio (1991). The Contemporary Praxis of the
Fantastic. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8153-0101-4.
• Sarlo, Beatriz (2007). Jorge Luis Borges: a Writer on the Edge.
London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-588-3.
• Shaw, Donald (1992). Borges' Narrative Strategy. Liverpool:
Francis Cairns. ISBN 0-905205-84-7.
• Stabb, Martin (1991). Borges Revisited. Boston: Twayne
Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-8263-X.
• Sturrock, John (1977). Paper Tigers. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. ISBN 0-19-815746-0.
• Todorov, Tzvetan (1970). Introduction à la littérature fantastique.
Paris: Seuil.
• Toro, Alfonso (1999). Jorge Luis Borges. Frankfurt Am Main:
Vervuert. ISBN 3-89354-217-5.
• Volek, Emil (1984). "Aquiles y la Tortuga: Arte, imaginación y
realidad según Borges". In: Cuatro claves para la modernidad.
Analisis semiótico de textos hispánicos. Madrid.
 • Waisman, Sergio (2005). Borges and Translation. Lewisburg Pa.:
Bucknell University Press. ISBN 0-8387-5592-5.
• Williamson, Edwin (2004). Borges: A Life. New York:
Viking. ISBN 0-670-88579-7.
• Wilson, Jason (2006). Jorge Luis Borges. London: Reaktion
Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-286-7.
• Woscoboinik, Julio (1998). The Secret of Borges. Washington:
University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-1238-5.
• Mualem, Shlomy (2012). Borges and Plato: A Game with Shifting
Mirrors. Madrid and Frankfurt:
Iberoamericana/Vervuert. ISBN 978-8484895954.
Documentaries[edit]

• Eduardo Montes-Bradley (Writer/Director) (1999). Harto The

Borges (Feature Documentary). USA: Patagonia Film Group, US.
• Ricardo Wullicher (Director) (1978). Borges para millones (Feature
Documentary). Argentina.
• David Wheatley (Director) (1983). Profile of a Writer: Borges and
I (Feature Documentary). Arena.

External links[edit]
Jorge Luis Borgesat Wikipedia's sister projects

• Definitions from Wiktionary

• Media from Wikimedia Commons

• Quotations from Wikiquote

• Data from Wikidata

Library resources about

Jorge Luis Borges

• Resources in your library

• Resources in other libraries

By Jorge Luis Borges

• Resources in your library

• Resources in other libraries

• Jorge Luis Borges at the Encyclopædia Britannica

• Jorge Luis Borges at Curlie
• Works by Jorge Luis Borges at Open Library
 • Ronald Christ (Winter–Spring 1967). "Jorge Luis
Borges, The Art of Fiction No. 39". Paris Review.
• BBC Radio 4 discussion programme from In our
time. (Audio 45 mins)
• The Garden of Forking Paths Borges site from The
Modern Word.
• De Peryton, a work by Dutch composer Theo
Verbey for seven wind instruments inspired
by Borges.
• Borges Center, University of Pittsburgh.
• The Friends of Jorge Luis Borges Worldwide Society
& Associates
• International Foundation Jorge Luis Borges
• Jorge Luis Borges recorded at the Library of
Congress for the Hispanic Division's audio literary
archive on 23 April 1976.

hide

Jorge Luis Borges

Bibliography

xactitude in Science"

, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"

e Menard, Author of the Quixote"

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House of Asterion"

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Writing of the God"

Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths"

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Man on the Threshold"

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Analytical Language of John Wilkins"

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Encounter"

Gospel According to Mark"

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Book of Sand"

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