Difference between revisions of "Jorge Luis Borges" - New World Encyclopedia

Jorge Luis Borges
	File:Borges.jpg Argentine writer
	Born
	August 24, 1899; Buenos Aires, Argentina
	Died
	June 14, 1986; Geneva, Switzerland

Revision as of 04:24, 6 July 2006

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899—June 14, 1986) was an Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story author who is considered one of the foremost figures in world literature of the 20th century. One of the most thoroughly inventive and creative writers to have ever lived, Borges' fame rests primarily on his notoriously complex and original short-stories. Borges' stories are dream-like, where fantastic events happen, and they often take the form of a thought-experiment. Borges is a tremendously philosophical writer, and many of his stories begin with a proposition or philosophical question—What would it be like to be immortal? What would it be like if there were a library containing every possible book?—which he then pursues through the events of the story to conclusions that are often paradoxical and incredibly profound.

Borges, it is important to note however, was not just an author of short-stories. In the Spanish-speaking world, Borges is known more as a poet and essayist, than he is as a fiction-writer and it has only been in recent decades that Borges' formidable talents as a poet have come to light in the world at large. In regards to his literary reception abroad, Borges has gained, perhaps unfairly, a reputation as a "miniaturist" among many critics due to the fact that he never wrote a piece of any substantial length. However, Borges often revisited the same motifs across his poetry and prose again and again (occasionally repeating entire paragraphs in stanzas in new works written decades after the originals); hence in some respects, all of Borges' works are part of a fragmentary whole. Certainly, Borges possesses one of the most unique and unmistakeable voices in all of modern literature; he is, as he would say of a number of poets and writers he deeply admired, a "literature unto himself", and the immensity of his intellectual undertaking is clear even in the absence of an immense novel or epic.

Life

Youth

Borges was born in Buenos Aires. His father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, was a lawyer and psychology teacher, who also had literary aspirations ("he tried to become a writer and failed in the attempt", Borges once said. "He composed some very good sonnets"). Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, came from an old Uruguayan family. His father was part Spanish, part Portuguese, and half British; his mother was Spanish, and possibly Portuguese. At his home, both Spanish and English were spoken and from earliest childhood Borges was effectively bilingual.

Jorge Guillermo Borges was forced into early retirement from the legal profession owing to the same failing eyesight that would eventually afflict his son; and in 1914, the family moved to Geneva, where Borges, senior, was treated by a Geneva eye-specialist while Borges and his sister Norah (born 1902) attended school. There Borges learned French, which he apparently had initial difficulties with, and taught himself German, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève 1918.

After World War I ended, the Borges family spent three years variously in Lugano, Barcelona, Majorca, Seville, and Madrid. In Spain, Borges became a member of the avant-garde Ultraist literary movement. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea," written in the style of Walt Whitman, was published in the magazine Grecia ("Greece", in Spanish). While in Spain Borges frequented such notable Spanish writers as Rafael Cansinos Assens and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.

Early writing career

In 1921, Borges returned with his family to Buenos Aires where he imported the doctrine of Ultraism and launched his career as a writer by publishing poems and essays in literary journals. Borges' first collection of poetry was Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923). He contributed to the avant-garde review Martín Fierro, co-founded the journals Prisma (1921–1922) and Proa (1922–1926). He was, from the first issue, a regular contributor to Sur, founded in 1931, by Victoria Ocampo, which became Argentina's most important literary journal. Ocampo herself introduced Borges to Adolfo Bioy Casares, who was to become Borges's frequent collaborator and Ocampo's brother-in-law, and another well-known figure of Argentine literature.

In 1933 Borges was appointed editor of the literary supplement of the newspaper Crítica, and it was there that the pieces later published in Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) appeared. These pieces lay somewhere between non-fictional essays and fictional short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories, and literary forgeries, which typically claimed to be 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 wrote weekly columns for El Hogar, which appeared from 1936 to 1939.

Starting in 1937, friends of Borges found him work at the Miguel Cané branch of the Buenos Aires Municipal Library as a first assistant. When Juan Perón came to power in 1946, Borges was effectively fired by being "promoted" to the position of poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market, from which he immediately resigned. Borges' offenses against the Peronistas up to that time had apparently consisted of little more than adding his signature to pro-democratic petitions; but shortly after his resignation he addressed the Argentine Society of Letters saying, in his characteristic style, "Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy."

Borges's father died in 1938, a great blow because the two were very close. On Christmas Eve 1938, Borges suffered a severe head wound in an accident; during treatment for that wound, he nearly died of septicemia. (He based his 1941 short story El Sur on this event.) While recovering from the accident, he began writing in the hyper-learned and complex style he became famous for, and his first collection of short stories, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths) appeared in 1941. Though generally well received, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan failed to garner the literary prizes many in his circle expected for it. Ocampo dedicated a large portion of the July 1941 issue of Sur to a "Reparation for Borges"; numerous leading writers and critics from Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world contributed writings in praise of Borges' neglected volume. El jardin has since gone on to become one of Borges' most beloved volumes.

Maturity

Left without a job, his vision beginning to fade, and unable to fully support himself as a writer, Borges began a new career as a public lecturer. Despite a certain amount of political persecution, he was reasonably successful, and became an increasingly public figure, obtaining appointments as President of the Argentine Society of Writers (1950–1953) and as Professor of English and American Literature (1950–1955) at the Argentine Association of English Culture. His short story Emma Zunz was turned into a film (under the name of Días de odio, which in English became Days of Wrath) in 1954 by Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.

In 1955, and after the initiative of Ocampo, the new anti-Peronist military government appointed him head of the National Library.[1] By that time, he had become fully blind. Neither coincidence nor the irony escaped Borges and he commented on them in his work:

Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche

esta demostración de la maestría

de Dios, que con magnífica ironía

me dio a la vez los libros y la noche.

Let nobody debase into tear or reproach

This demonstration of the skill

Of God, who with excellent irony

Gave me at once books and darkness.

The following year he received the National Prize for Literature and the first of many honorary doctorates, this one from the University of Cuyo. From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, while frequently holding temporary appointments at other universities.

International recognition

Borges's international fame dates from the early 1960s. In 1961, he received the Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. The prize helped Borges to gain the attention of an English-speaking audience. Shortly thereafter, Borges commenced his first lecture tour of the United States. The first translations of his work into English were to follow in 1962, with lecture tours of Europe and the Andean region of South America in subsequent years.

Though a contender since at least the late 1960s, Borges did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Especially in the late 1980s, when Borges was clearly growing old and infirm, the failure to award him the prize became a glaring omission. It was speculated at the time and since that it was his support for (or at least failure to condemn) the coup d'etat and subsequent dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile which ultimately led to his not receiving the award. Borges joined a distinguished list of non-winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which includes Graham Greene, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Leo Tolstoy, among others.

Later Life

When Perón returned from exile and was re-elected president in 1973, Borges immediately resigned as director of the National Library.

Borges was twice married. In 1967 his mother, then over 90 years old and fearing her own death, wanted to find someone to care for her blind son. Thus she and his sister Norah arranged for Borges to marry the recently widowed Mrs Elsa Astete Millán. The marriage lasted less than three years. After legal separation, Borges moved back in with his mother, with whom he lived all his life until her death at 99. Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her and was cared for by their housekeeper of many decades.

Although he had done quite a bit of travelling previously, after 1975, the year his mother died, Borges started a series of extensive visits to countries all over the world, continued until the time of his death. In these travels, he was often accompanied by his amanuensis and research assistant, María Kodama, an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. This companionship soon developed into a very close personal relationship. The two would eventually mary quite late in Borges' life, and Kodama would be made Borges' sole literary executor, a position she continues to fulfill to this day.

Jorge Luis Borges died of liver cancer in Geneva and is buried in the Cimetière des Rois in Plainpalais.

Work

In addition to his short stories for which he is most famous, Borges also wrote poetry, essays, several screenplays, and a considerable volume of literary criticism, prologues, and reviews, edited numerous anthologies, and was a prominent translator of English-, French- and German-language literature into Spanish. His blindness (which, like his father's, developed in adulthood) strongly influenced his later writing. Borges had to dictate all of his stories and poems to an amamneunsis after he became blind, and the results are quite striking: while the early Borges' prose is often florid and exuberantly verbose, the later Borges' writing is remarkably spare and focused.

Borges lived through most of the twentieth century, and so was rooted in the Modernist period of literature. His fiction is profoundly learned, and always concise. Unlike many other Modernists with whom Borges contemporary, such as James Joyce or Ezra Pound, Borges veered dramatically away from what he called "the baroque"—poetry and fiction that has been made so complicated as to be unreadable. His poetry, always, remained bound to the strictures of conventional meter and rhyme and his stories—even though the are often confoundingly diffuclt—can nevertheless be unraveled if one is patient enough to follow all of the details. Borges, particularly in his old age, perhaps has more in common with other semi-anacrhonistic Modernists like Robert Frost than any of the more revolutionary-minded English- and Spanish-language writers with whom Borges often associated with.

Many of his most popular stories concern the nature of time, infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality, and identity. A number of stories focus on fantastic themes, such as a library containing every possible text ("The Library of Babel"), a man who cannot forget ("Funes, the Memorious"), an artifact through which the user can see everything in the universe ("The Aleph"), and a year of time standing still, given to a man standing before a firing squad so that he can finish the epic poem he had been working on all his life ("The Secret Miracle"). The same Borges also wrote more ror less realistic stories of South American life: stories of folk heroes, streetfighters, soldiers, gauchos, (Argentinian cowboys) all deeply imbued in the gruff history of his native homeland.

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), Borges increasingly focused on writing poetry, because he could memorize an entire work in progress. 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. This breadth of interest can be found in his fiction, nonfiction, and poems. For example, his interest in philosophical idealism is reflected in the fictional world of Tlön in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", in his essay "New Refutation of Time", and in his poem "Things." Similarly, a common thread runs through his story "The Circular Ruins" and his poem "El Golem" ("The Golem").

At times, confronted with an idea for a work that bordered on the conceptual, Borges chose — instead of following through with the idea in the obvious way, by writing a piece that fulfilled the concept — to write a review of a nonexistent work, writing as though the work had already been created by some other person. The most famous example of this is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", which imagines a twentieth-century Frenchman who so immerses himself in the world of sixteenth-century Spain that he can sit down and create a large portion of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote verbatim, not by having memorized Cervantes's work, but as an "original" work of his own mind. Borges's "review" of the work of the fictional Menard effectively discusses the resonances that Don Quixote has picked up over the centuries since it was written, by way of overtly discussing how much richer Menard's work is than Cervantes's (verbatim identical) work.

While Borges was certainly the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, it was not his own invention. It is likely that he first encountered the idea in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a book-length review of a non-existent German transcendentalist philosophical work and biography of its equally non-existent author. This Craft of Verse (p. 104), records Borges as saying that in 1916 in Geneva he "discovered — and was overwhelmed by — Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart." 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." [Collected Fictions, p.67]

International themes in Borges

Argentina: Biographer of Evaristo Carriego; earnest reader of Leopoldo Lugones, Almafuerte, others; "History of the Tango", "Our Poor Individualism", "Horse Cart Inscriptions", "Celebration of the Monster", "The South", "The Mountebank"

China: "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate"

Czech Republic: Prague setting for "The Secret Miracle" (part of Czechoslovakia at the time);

strongly influenced by Franz Kafka (born in what was at the time Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian empire)

France: influenced by Leon Bloy; fan of/essay about Guillaume Apollinaire

Germany: Special affinity for Heinrich Heine, influenced by Kurd Lasswitz; earnest reader of Fritz Mauthner, Arthur Schopenhauer; "Deutsches Requiem", "German Literature in the Age of Bach"

India: setting for "Man on the Threshold" and "The Approach to Al Mu'tasim"

Iran (Persia): "The Masked Dyer Hakim of Merv"; "The Simurgh and the Eagle" based on Farid ad-Din Attar; "The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald" who based his most famous work on Omar Khayyam

Ireland: Influenced by John Scotus Erigena, Jonathan Swift George Bernard Shaw, subjective idealist metaphysicist George Berkeley who was also an Irish bishop; translated Oscar Wilde into Spanish; reviews of James Joyce; setting of "The Form of the Sword" and "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero".

Italy: Borges had a special affinity for Dante's The Divine Comedy, the subject of Nine Dantesque Essays

Japan: "The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke"

Mexico: "The Writing of the God" (also translated as "The God's Script")

Spain: Borges makes frequent reference to Don Quixote and to the 17th century writer Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas. Setting for "Averroes' Search"

Portugal: scattered references to Eça de Queiroz.

United Kingdom: Extensive study of English/Anglo Saxon literature; influenced by Samuel Butler, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas de Quincey, David Hume, Rudyard Kipling, Herbert Spencer, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Carlyle; "Everything and Nothing", "Shakespeare´s Memory"

United States: translator of William Faulkner into Spanish; special affinity for Walt Whitman, influenced by/essays about Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne; Mark Twain-inspired "The Dreaded Redeemer Lazarus Morel"; many reviews of films, e.g. Citizen Kane ("An Overwhelming Film");

Scandinavia: setting for "Undr"; lectures on Norse Sagas; learned Old Norse

Uruguay: historical fiction "Avelino Arredondo"

Religious themes in Borges: Mainline, heretical, and mystical

Buddhist: "Theme of the Beggar and the King", lecture on Buddhism in Seven Nights

Christian: Influenced by John Scotus Erigena; "The Mirror of Enigmas" partially based on ideas of Léon Bloy; "A History of Eternity", "Three Versions of Judas", "The Sect of the Thirty", "The Theologians", "The Gospel of Mark", "The Theologian in Death", an early work in imitation of Emanuel Swedenborg

Gnostic: "A Defense of Basilides the False"

Islamic: "Approach to Al Mu'tasim", "Averroes' Search", "Hakim, Masked Dyer of Merv", "The Chamber of Statues"; "The Simurgh and the Eagle" based on Farid ad-Din Attar; "The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald" who based his most famous work on Omar Khayyam; strongly influenced by/studied several translations of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

Jewish: "Death and the Compass", "The Golem", "A Defense of the Cabala", lectures on Cabala and on Shmuel Agnon

Pagan: "The House of Asterion", "The Circular Ruins", "The Immortals"

Fictional: The heresiarchs of Uqbar in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Sect of the Phoenix"

Quotations

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Jorge Luis Borges

"The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." — (dogma of a fictional religion in "Hakim, the masked dyer of Merv").

"The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry."

"I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as 'The Masses'. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time." — Introduction to The Book of Sand

Critical bibliography

You might be able to get there from here: reconsidering Borges and the postmodern / Frisch, Mark F., 2004
Jorge Luis Borges (Bloom's BioCritiques) / Bloom, Harold., 2004
Jorge Luis Borges as writer and social critic / Racz, Gregary Joseph., 2003
The lesson of the master: on Borges and his work / Di Giovanni, Norman Thomas., 2003
Borges, the passion of an endless quotation / Block de Behar, Lisa., 2003
Jorge Luis Borges (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers) / Bloom, Harold., 2002
Invisible work: Borges and translation / Kristal, Efraín., 2002
Borges and his fiction: a guide to his mind and art / Bell-Villada, Gene., 1999
Jorge Luis Borges: thought and knowledge in the XXth century / Toro, Alfonso de., 1999
The secret of Borges: a psychoanalytic inquiry into his work / Woscoboinik, Julio., 1998
Borges and Europe revisited / Fishburn, Evelyn., 1998
Nightglow: Borges' poetics of blindness / Yudin, Florence., 1997
The Borges tradition / Di Giovanni, Norman Thomas., 1995
Signs of Borges / Molloy, Sylvia., 1994
Cervantes and the modernists: the question of influence / Williamson, Edwin., 1994
Out of context: historical reference and the representation of reality in Borges / Balderston, Daniel., 1993
Jorge Luis Borges: a writer on the edge / Sarlo, Beatriz., 1993
Borges revisited / Stabb, Martin S., 1991
The contemporary praxis of the fantastic: Borges and Cortázar / Rodríguez-Luis, Julio., 1991
Borges and his successors: the Borgesian impact on literature and the arts / Aizenberg, Edna., 1990
Jorge Luis Borges: a study of the short fiction / Lindstrom, Naomi., 1990
Borges and the Kabbalah: and other essays on his fiction and poetry / Alazraki, Jaime., 1988
The meaning of experience in the prose of Jorge Luis Borges / Agheana, Ion Tudro., 1988
Critical essays on Jorge Luis Borges / Alazraki, Jaime., 1987
Jorge Luis Borges (Modern Critical Views) / Bloom, Harold., 1986
Jorge Luis Borges, life, work, and criticism / Yates, Donald A., 1985
The prose of Jorge Luis Borges: existentialism and the dynamics of surprise / Agheana, Ion Tudro., 1984
The aleph weaver: biblical, kabbalistic and Judaic elements in Borges / Aizenberg, Edna., 1984
Borges and his fiction: a guide to his mind and art / Bell-Villada, Gene H., 1981
Jorge Luis Borges / McMurray, George R., 1980
Paper tigers: the ideal fictions of Jorge Luis Borges / Sturrock, John., 1977
The Cardinal points of Borges / Dunham, Lowell., 1971

External links

The Modern Word: The Garden of Forking Paths. A comprehensive Web site dedicated to exploring Borges and his work, including pages that discuss writers that Borges influenced.

The Borgesian Cyclopaedia. "Being a Virtual Reference to the World of Jorge Luis Borges".

Internetaleph. Fully bilingual (English/Spanish) portal dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges. Links, recent news, reading suggestions and an introduction for beginners.

Jorge Luis Borges: a first introduction to the author's prose work.

The Jorge Luis Borges Center for Studies and Documentation

The Friends of Jorge Luis Borges Worldwide Society & Associates A non-Governmental and not for profit organization with four distinctive entities that aim to promote artistic and intellectual talents along with civic virtues in new generations of mankind. Borges's works ("a writer of writers" for his extensive and insightful readings) are celebrated as a thread of Ariadne to walk the labyrinths of Philosophy and Literature and all fields of knowledge in quest of wisdom.
Three stories by Borges

Borges Stories Annotations

Don’t abandon me Colm Tóibín writes about Edwin Williamson's 2005 biography of Borges

Credits

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@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
   | image_name    = Borges.jpg
   | image_caption  = Argentine writer
-  | date_of_birth  = [[August 24]], [[1899]]
+  | date_of_birth  = August 24, 1899
-  | place_of_birth = [[Buenos Aires]], [[Argentina]]
+  | place_of_birth = Buenos Aires, Argentina
   | dead          = dead
-  | date_of_death  = [[June 14]], [[1986]]
+  | date_of_death  = June 14, 1986
-  | place_of_death = [[Geneva]], [[Switzerland]]
+  | place_of_death = Geneva, Switzerland
 }}
-'''Jorge Luis Borges''' (born [[August 24]], [[1899]] in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Argentina]]; died [[June 14]], [[1986]] in [[Geneva]], [[Switzerland]]) was an [[Argentina|Argentine]] [[writer]] who is considered one of the foremost literary figures of the [[20th century]]. Best-known in the English speaking world for his [[short story|short stories]] and fictive [[essays]], Borges was also a [[poet]], [[literary criticism|critic]], and man of letters.
+'''Jorge Luis Borges''' (August 24, 1899&mdash;June 14, 1986) was an [[Argentina|Argentine]] poet, essayist, and short-story author who is considered one of the foremost figures in world literature of the 20th century. One of the most thoroughly inventive and creative writers to have ever lived, Borges' fame rests primarily on his notoriously complex and original short-stories. Borges' stories are dream-like, where fantastic events happen, and they often take the form of a thought-experiment. Borges is a tremendously philosophical writer, and many of his stories begin with a proposition or philosophical question&mdash;What would it be like to be immortal? What would it be like if there were a library containing every possible book?&mdash;which he then pursues through the events of the story to conclusions that are often paradoxical and incredibly profound.
+Borges, it is important to note however, was not just an author of short-stories. In the Spanish-speaking world, Borges is known more as a poet and essayist, than he is as a fiction-writer and it has only been in recent decades that Borges' formidable talents as a poet have come to light in the world at large. In regards to his literary reception abroad, Borges has gained, perhaps unfairly, a reputation as a "miniaturist" among many critics due to the fact that he never wrote a piece of any substantial length. However, Borges often revisited the same motifs across his poetry and prose again and again (occasionally repeating entire paragraphs in stanzas in new works written decades after the originals); hence in some respects, all of Borges' works are part of a fragmentary whole. Certainly, Borges possesses one of the most unique and unmistakeable voices in all of modern literature; he is, as he would say of a number of poets and writers he deeply admired, a "literature unto himself", and the immensity of his intellectual undertaking is clear even in the absence of an immense novel or epic.
 == Life ==
@@ Line 16: / Line 18: @@
 === Youth ===
-Borges was born in [[Buenos Aires]]. His father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, was a [[lawyer]] and [[psychology]] teacher, who also had literary aspirations ("he tried to become a [[writer]] and failed in the attempt", Borges once said. "He composed some very good [[sonnet]]s"). Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, came from an old Uruguayan family. His father was part [[Spain|Spanish]], part [[Portugal|Portuguese]], and half [[United Kingdom|British]]; his mother Spanish, and possibly Portuguese. At his home, both Spanish and [[English language|English]] were spoken and from earliest childhood Borges was effectively [[bilingual]]. He grew up in the then-distant and not very prosperous neighborhood of [[Palermo, Buenos Aires|Palermo]], in a large house with an extensive library.
+Borges was born in Buenos Aires. His father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, was a lawyer and psychology teacher, who also had literary aspirations ("he tried to become a writer and failed in the attempt", Borges once said. "He composed some very good sonnets"). Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, came from an old Uruguayan family. His father was part Spanish, part Portuguese, and half British; his mother was Spanish, and possibly Portuguese. At his home, both Spanish and English were spoken and from earliest childhood Borges was effectively bilingual.
-Borges's full name was '''Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo''' but, following Argentine custom, he never used the entire name.
-Jorge Guillermo Borges was forced into early retirement from the legal profession owing to the same failing eyesight that would eventually afflict his son, and in 1914, the family moved to [[Geneva]], where Borges senior was treated by a Geneva eye specialist while Borges and his sister [[Norah Borges|Norah]] (born [[1902]]) attended school. There Borges learned [[French language|French]], which he apparently had initial difficulties with, and taught himself [[German language|German]], receiving his ''baccalauréat'' from the Collège de Genève 1918.
+Jorge Guillermo Borges was forced into early retirement from the legal profession owing to the same failing eyesight that would eventually afflict his son; and in 1914, the family moved to Geneva, where Borges, senior, was treated by a Geneva eye-specialist while Borges and his sister Norah (born 1902) attended school. There Borges learned French, which he apparently had initial difficulties with, and taught himself German, receiving his ''baccalauréat'' from the Collège de Genève 1918.
-After [[World War I]] ended, the Borges family spent three years variously in [[Lugano]], [[Barcelona]], [[Majorca]], [[Seville]], and [[Madrid]]. In Spain, Borges became a member of the [[avant-garde]] [[Ultraism|Ultraist]] literary movement. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea," written in the style of [[Walt Whitman]], was published in the magazine ''Grecia'' ("Greece", in Spanish). There he frequented such notable Spanish writers as [[Rafael Cansinos Assens]] and [[Ramón Gómez de la Serna]].
+After [[World War I]] ended, the Borges family spent three years variously in Lugano, [[Barcelona]], [[Majorca]], [[Seville]], and [[Madrid]]. In Spain, Borges became a member of the [[avant-garde]] Ultraist literary movement. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea," written in the style of [[Walt Whitman]], was published in the magazine ''Grecia'' ("Greece", in Spanish). While in Spain Borges frequented such notable Spanish writers as [[Rafael Cansinos Assens]] and [[Ramón Gómez de la Serna]].
 === Early writing career ===
-In 1921, Borges returned with his family to Buenos Aires where he imported the doctrine of [[Ultraism]] and launched his career as a writer by publishing poems and essays in literary journals. Borges's first collection of poetry was ''Fervor de Buenos Aires'' (1923). He contributed to the avant-garde review ''[[Martín Fierro (magazine)|Martín Fierro]]'' (whose "[[art for art's sake]]" approach contrasted to that of the more politically-involved [[Boedo]] group), co-founded the journals ''Prisma'' (1921–1922, a broadsheet distributed largely by pasting copies to walls in Buenos Aires) and ''Proa'' (1922–1926). He was, from the first issue, a regular contributor to ''[[Sur]]'', founded in 1931, by [[Victoria Ocampo]], which became Argentina's most important literary journal. Ocampo herself introduced Borges to [[Adolfo Bioy Casares]], who was to become Borges's frequent collaborator and Ocampo's brother-in-law, and another well-known figure of Argentine literature.
+In 1921, Borges returned with his family to Buenos Aires where he imported the doctrine of Ultraism and launched his career as a writer by publishing poems and essays in literary journals. Borges' first collection of poetry was ''Fervor de Buenos Aires'' (1923). He contributed to the avant-garde review ''Martín Fierro'', co-founded the journals ''Prisma'' (1921–1922) and ''Proa'' (1922–1926). He was, from the first issue, a regular contributor to ''Sur'', founded in 1931, by [[Victoria Ocampo]], which became Argentina's most important literary journal. Ocampo herself introduced Borges to [[Adolfo Bioy Casares]], who was to become Borges's frequent collaborator and Ocampo's brother-in-law, and another well-known figure of Argentine literature.
-In 1933 Borges was appointed editor of the literary supplement of the [[newspaper]] ''Crítica'', and it was there that the pieces later published in ''Historia universal de la infamia'' (''A Universal History of Infamy'') appeared. These pieces lay somewhere between non-fictional essays and fictional short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories, and literary forgeries, which typically claimed to be 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 wrote weekly columns for ''[[El Hogar]]'', which appeared from 1936 to 1939.
+In 1933 Borges was appointed editor of the literary supplement of the newspaper ''Crítica'', and it was there that the pieces later published in ''Historia universal de la infamia'' (''A Universal History of Infamy'') appeared. These pieces lay somewhere between non-fictional essays and fictional short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories, and literary forgeries, which typically claimed to be 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 wrote weekly columns for ''El Hogar'', which appeared from 1936 to 1939.
-Starting in 1937, friends of Borges found him work at the Miguel Cané branch of the Buenos Aires Municipal Library as a first assistant. The other employees immediately forbade Borges from cataloging more than 100 books each day, a task which would take him about one hour. The rest of his days he would spend in the basement of the library, writing articles and short stories. When [[Juan Perón]] came to power in 1946, Borges was effectively fired; "promoted" to the position of poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market (from which he immediately resigned; when he told this story, he would always embellish this to "Poultry and Rabbit Inspector"). His offenses against the [[Peronism|Peronistas]] up to that time had apparently consisted of little more than adding his signature to pro-[[democracy|democratic]] petitions, but shortly after his resignation he addressed the [[Argentine Society of Letters]] saying, in his characteristic style, "Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy."
+Starting in 1937, friends of Borges found him work at the Miguel Cané branch of the Buenos Aires Municipal Library as a first assistant. When [[Juan Perón]] came to power in 1946, Borges was effectively fired by being "promoted" to the position of poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market, from which he immediately resigned. Borges' offenses against the Peronistas up to that time had apparently consisted of little more than adding his signature to pro-[[democracy|democratic]] petitions; but shortly after his resignation he addressed the Argentine Society of Letters saying, in his characteristic style, "Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy."
-Borges's father died in 1938, a great blow because the two were very close. On Christmas Eve 1938, Borges suffered a severe head wound in an accident; during treatment for that wound, he nearly died of [[septicemia]]. (He based his 1944 short story "[[The South (Borges story)|The South]]" on this event.) While recovering from the accident, he began writing in a style he became famous for, and his first collection of short stories, ''El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan'' (''[[The Garden of Forking Paths]]'') appeared in 1941. The book included ''El sur''<!--SUR, not sud—>, a piece that incorporated some autobiographical elements, notably the accident, and which the writer regarded as his personal favorite. Though generally well received, ''El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan'' failed to garner the literary prizes many in his circle expected for it. Ocampo dedicated a large portion of the July 1941 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 project.
+Borges's father died in 1938, a great blow because the two were very close. On Christmas Eve 1938, Borges suffered a severe head wound in an accident; during treatment for that wound, he nearly died of septicemia. (He based his 1941 short story ''El Sur'' on this event.) While recovering from the accident, he began writing in the hyper-learned and complex style he became famous for, and his first collection of short stories, ''El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan'' (''The Garden of Forking Paths'') appeared in 1941. Though generally well received, ''El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan'' failed to garner the literary prizes many in his circle expected for it. Ocampo dedicated a large portion of the July 1941 issue of ''Sur'' to a "Reparation for Borges"; numerous leading writers and critics from Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world contributed writings in praise of Borges' neglected volume. ''El jardin'' has since gone on to become one of Borges' most beloved volumes.
 === Maturity ===
-Left without a job, his vision beginning to fade, and unable to fully support himself as a writer, Borges began a new career as a public lecturer. Despite a certain amount of political [[persecution]], he was reasonably successful, and became an increasingly public figure, obtaining appointments as President of the Argentine Society of Writers (1950–1953) and as Professor of English and American Literature (1950–1955) at the Argentine Association of English Culture. His short story ''Emma Zunz'' was turned into a film (under the name of ''Días de odio'', which in English became ''Days of Wrath'') in [[1954 in film|1954]] by Argentine director [[Leopoldo Torre Nilsson]]. Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.
+Left without a job, his vision beginning to fade, and unable to fully support himself as a writer, Borges began a new career as a public lecturer. Despite a certain amount of political persecution, he was reasonably successful, and became an increasingly public figure, obtaining appointments as President of the Argentine Society of Writers (1950–1953) and as Professor of English and American Literature (1950–1955) at the Argentine Association of English Culture. His short story ''Emma Zunz'' was turned into a film (under the name of ''Días de odio'', which in English became ''Days of Wrath'') in 1954 by Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.
+In 1955, and after the initiative of Ocampo, the new anti-Peronist military government appointed him head of the National Library.[http://www.bibnal.edu.ar/paginas/galeriadirec.htm#borges] By that time, he had become fully blind. Neither coincidence nor the irony escaped Borges and he commented on them in his work:
-In 1955, and after the initiative of Ocampo, [[Revolución Libertadora|the new anti-Peronist military government]] appointed him head of the [[Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina|National Library]].[http://www.bibnal.edu.ar/paginas/galeriadirec.htm#borges] By that time, he had become fully blind, like one of his best known predecessors, [[Paul Groussac]] (for whom Borges wrote an [[obituary]]). Neither coincidence nor the irony escaped Borges and he commented on them in his work:
-[[Image:Jorge Luis Borges Hotel.jpg|thumb|right|Borges at the Hotel Beaux, 1969.]]
 ::''Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche''
 ::''esta demostración de la maestría''
@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 ::This demonstration of the skill
 ::Of God, who with excellent irony
-::Gave me at once the books and the night.
+::Gave me at once books and darkness.
-The following year he received the National Prize for Literature and the first of many honorary doctorates, this one from the [[University of Cuyo]]. From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the [[University of Buenos Aires]], while frequently holding temporary appointments at other universities.
-Being unable to read and write (he never learned the [[Braille]] system), he relied on his mother, with whom he had always been personally close, and who began to work with him as his personal secretary.
+The following year he received the National Prize for Literature and the first of many honorary doctorates, this one from the University of Cuyo. From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, while frequently holding temporary appointments at other universities.
 === International recognition ===
-Borges's international fame dates from the early 1960s. In 1961, he received the [[Formentor Prize]], which he shared with [[Samuel Beckett]]. Because Beckett was well-known and respected in the English-speaking world, where Borges at this time remained unknown and untranslated, English-speakers became curious about who the person was who shared the prize with him. The Italian government named him ''Commendatore''; and the [[University of Texas at Austin]] appointed him for one year to the Tinker chair. This led to his first lecture tour of the United States. The first translations of his work into English were to follow in 1962, with lecture tours of Europe and the [[Andes|Andean]] region of [[South America]] in subsequent years. In 1965, [[Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom|Queen Elizabeth II]] of the [[United Kingdom]] appointed him [[O.B.E.]]. Dozens of other honors were to accumulate over the years, such as the French [[Légion d'honneur|Legion of Honour]] in 1983, or the [[Cervantes Prize]].
+Borges's international fame dates from the early 1960s. In 1961, he received the Formentor Prize, which he shared with [[Samuel Beckett]]. The prize helped Borges to gain the attention of an English-speaking audience. Shortly thereafter, Borges commenced his first lecture tour of the United States. The first translations of his work into English were to follow in 1962, with lecture tours of Europe and the Andean region of [[South America]] in subsequent years.
-In 1967, Borges began a five-year period of collaboration with the American translator [[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]], thanks to which he became better known in the English-speaking world. He also continued to publish books, among them ''El libro de los seres imaginarios'' (''The 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 also lectured prolifically. Many of these lectures were gathered in volumes such as ''Siete noches'' (''Seven Nights'') and ''Nueve ensayos dantescos''.
 Though a contender since at least the late 1960s, Borges did not win the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]]. Especially in the late 1980s, when Borges was clearly growing old and infirm, the failure to award him the prize became a glaring omission. It was speculated at the time and since that it was his support for (or at least failure to condemn) the coup d'etat and subsequent dictatorship of [[Augusto Pinochet]] in Chile which ultimately led to his not receiving the award. Borges joined a distinguished list of non-winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which includes [[Graham Greene]], [[James Joyce]], [[Vladimir Nabokov]], and [[Leo Tolstoy]], among others.
-=== Later personal life ===
+=== Later Life ===
 When Perón returned from exile and was re-elected president in 1973, Borges immediately resigned as director of the National Library.
-Borges was twice married. In 1967 his mother, then over 90 years old and fearing her own death, wanted to find someone to care for her blind son. Thus she and his sister Norah arranged for Borges to marry the recently widowed Mrs Elsa Astete Millán. It is said that Borges never consummated the marriage. He and his wife slept in separate bedrooms and the marriage lasted less than three years.  After the legal separation, Borges moved back in with his mother, with whom he lived all his life until her death at 99 (see the book "The Lessons of the Master" by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni). Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her and was cared for by their housekeeper of many decades (see the book ''El Señor Borges'' by “Fanny”).
+Borges was twice married. In 1967 his mother, then over 90 years old and fearing her own death, wanted to find someone to care for her blind son. Thus she and his sister Norah arranged for Borges to marry the recently widowed Mrs Elsa Astete Millán. The marriage lasted less than three years.  After legal separation, Borges moved back in with his mother, with whom he lived all his life until her death at 99. Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her and was cared for by their housekeeper of many decades.
-Although he had done quite a bit of travelling previously, after 1975, the year his mother died, Borges started a series of extensive visits to countries all over the world, continued until the time of his death. In these travels, he was often accompanied by his amanuensis and research assistant, [[María Kodama]], an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. This companionship soon developed into a very close personal relationship.
-At some point unknown to his biographers, Borges decided to marry María Kodama and make her his literary executor and sole legatee. In order to do this, he needed to sort out Argentina's antediluvian divorce and inheritance laws. The subject became pressing when he was diagnosed with liver cancer some time in 1983. Accordingly, taking one of his many lecture tours as an excuse, he left Buenos Aires in late 1985 and travelled to Geneva, scene of his formal education and early experiences as an adult. Once there, he announced he was staying, married Ms. Kodama and drafted an entirely new will according to Swiss law.
+Although he had done quite a bit of travelling previously, after 1975, the year his mother died, Borges started a series of extensive visits to countries all over the world, continued until the time of his death. In these travels, he was often accompanied by his amanuensis and research assistant, María Kodama, an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. This companionship soon developed into a very close personal relationship. The two would eventually mary quite late in Borges' life, and Kodama would be made Borges' sole literary executor, a position she continues to fulfill to this day.
-Jorge Luis Borges died of [[liver cancer]] in Geneva and is buried in the Cimetière des Rois (Plainpalais).
+Jorge Luis Borges died of liver cancer in Geneva and is buried in the Cimetière des Rois in Plainpalais.
 == Work ==
-In addition to his short stories for which he is most famous, Borges also wrote [[poetry]], essays, several screenplays, and a considerable volume of literary criticism, prologues, and reviews, edited numerous anthologies, and was a prominent translator of [[English language|English]]-, [[French language|French]]- and [[German language|German]]-language literature into [[Spanish language|Spanish]] (and of [[Old English language|Old English]] and [[Norse language|Norse]] works as well). His blindness (which, like his father's, developed in adulthood) strongly influenced his later writing. Paramount among his intellectual interests are elements of mythology, mathematics, theology, philosophy, and, as a personal integration of these, Borges's sense of literature as recreation &mdash; all of these disciplines are sometimes treated as a writer's playthings and at other times treated very seriously.
+In addition to his short stories for which he is most famous, Borges also wrote poetry, essays, several screenplays, and a considerable volume of literary criticism, prologues, and reviews, edited numerous anthologies, and was a prominent translator of English-, French- and German-language literature into Spanish. His blindness (which, like his father's, developed in adulthood) strongly influenced his later writing. Borges had to dictate all of his stories and poems to an amamneunsis after he became blind, and the results are quite striking: while the early Borges' prose is often florid and exuberantly verbose, the later Borges' writing is remarkably spare and focused.
-Borges lived through most of the twentieth century, and so was rooted in the [[Modernism|Modernist]] period of culture and literature, especially [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolism]]. His fiction is profoundly learned, and always concise. Like his contemporary [[Vladimir Nabokov]] and the somewhat older [[James Joyce]], he combined an interest in his native land with far broader interests. He also shared their multilingualism and their playfulness with language, but while Nabokov and Joyce tended, as their lives went on, toward progressively larger works, Borges remained a miniaturist. Also in contrast to Joyce and Nabokov, Borges's work progressed ''away'' from what he referred to as "the baroque," while theirs moved towards it: Borges's later writing style is far more transparent and naturalistic than his early style.
-Many of his most popular stories concern the nature of time, [[infinity]], mirrors, [[labyrinth]]s, [[reality]], and identity. A number of stories focus on fantastic themes, such as a library containing every possible 410-page text ("[[The Library of Babel]]"), a man who [[Eidetic memory|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 time standing still, given to a man standing before a firing squad ("[[The Secret Miracle]]"). The same Borges told more and less realistic stories of South American life, stories of folk heroes, streetfighters, soldiers, [[gaucho]]s, detectives, historical figures. He mixed the real and the fantastic and fact with fiction. On several occasions, especially early in his career, these mixtures sometimes crossed the line into the realm of hoax or literary forgery.
+Borges lived through most of the twentieth century, and so was rooted in the Modernist period of literature. His fiction is profoundly learned, and always concise. Unlike many other Modernists with whom Borges contemporary, such as [[James Joyce]] or [[Ezra Pound]], Borges veered dramatically away from what he called "the baroque"&mdash;poetry and fiction that has been made so complicated as to be unreadable. His poetry, always, remained bound to the strictures of conventional meter and rhyme and his stories&mdash;even though the are often confoundingly diffuclt&mdash;can nevertheless be unraveled if one is patient enough to follow all of the details. Borges, particularly in his old age, perhaps has more in common with other semi-anacrhonistic Modernists like [[Robert Frost]] than any of the more revolutionary-minded English- and Spanish-language writers with whom Borges often associated with.
-Borges's abundant nonfiction includes astute film and book reviews, short biographies, and longer philosophical musings on topics such as the nature of dialogue, language, and thought, and the relationships between them. In this respect, and regarding Borges's personal pantheon, he considered the mexican essayist of similar topics [[Alfonso Reyes]] "the best prose-writer in the Spanish language of any time" (In: ''Siete Noches'', p. 156). His non-fiction also explores many of the themes that are found in his fiction. Essays such as "The History of the [[Tango (dance)|Tango]]" or his writings on the epic poem [[Martin Fierro|Martín Fierro]] explore specifically Argentine themes, such as the identity of the [[Argentina|Argentinian people]] and of various Argentine subcultures. His interest in fantasy, philosophy, and the art of translation are evident in articles such as "The Translators of ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights|The Thousand and One Nights]]''", while ''[[The Book of Imaginary Beings]]'' is a thoroughly and obscurely researched [[bestiary]] of [[legendary creature|mythical creatures]], in the preface of which Borges wrote, "There is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition." Borges's interest in fantasy was shared by Bioy Casares, with whom Borges coauthored several collections of tales between 1942 and 1967, sometimes under different pseudonyms (see main article: [[H. Bustos Domecq]]).
+Many of his most popular stories concern the nature of time, infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality, and identity. A number of stories focus on fantastic themes, such as a library containing every possible text ("The Library of Babel"), a man who cannot forget ("Funes, the Memorious"), an artifact through which the user can see everything in the universe ("The Aleph"), and a year of time standing still, given to a man standing before a firing squad so that he can finish the epic poem he had been working on all his life ("The Secret Miracle"). The same Borges also wrote more ror less realistic stories of South American life: stories of folk heroes, streetfighters, soldiers, gauchos,  (Argentinian cowboys) all deeply imbued in the gruff history of his native homeland.
 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), Borges increasingly focused on writing poetry, because he could memorize an entire work in progress. 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. This breadth of interest can be found in his fiction, nonfiction, and poems. For example, his interest in philosophical [[idealism]] is reflected in the fictional world of Tlön in "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]]", in his essay "New Refutation of Time", and in his poem "Things." Similarly, a common thread runs through his story "[[The Circular Ruins]]" and his poem "[[El Golem]]" ("The Golem").
-As well as his own original work, Borges was notable as a [[translator]] into [[Spanish language|Spanish]]. He translated Oscar Wilde's story ''[[The Happy Prince and Other Stories|The Happy Prince]]'' into Spanish when he was ten, perhaps an early indication of his literary talent. At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language version of the [[Younger Edda|Prose Edda]]. Borges also translated (whilst simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[Franz Kafka]], [[Hermann Hesse]], [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Herman Melville]], [[André Gide]], [[William Faulkner]], [[Walt Whitman]], [[Virginia Woolf]], Sir [[Thomas Browne]], and [[G. K. Chesterton]]. In a number of essays and lectures, Borges assessed the art of translation and articulated his own view of translation. Borges held the view that a translation may improve upon an original, and that alternative and potentially contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid, and further that an original or literal translation can be unfaithful to the original work.
-Borges also employed two very unusual literary forms: the literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work. Both constitute a form of modern [[apocrypha|pseudo-epigrapha]].
-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 after the style of the likes of [[Emanuel Swedenborg]] or ''The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'', originally passing them off as translations of things he had come upon in his reading. Several of these are gathered in the ''Universal History of Infamy''. He continued this pattern of literary forgery at several points in his career, for example sneaking three short, falsely attributed pieces into his otherwise legitimate and carefully researched anthology ''El matrero''.
 At times, confronted with an idea for a work that bordered on the conceptual, Borges chose &mdash; instead of following through with the idea in the obvious way, by writing a piece that fulfilled the concept &mdash; to write a review of a nonexistent work, writing as though the work had already been created by some other person. The most famous example of this is "[[Pierre Menard (fictional character)|Pierre Menard]], Author of the ''Quixote''", which imagines a twentieth-century Frenchman who so immerses himself in the world of sixteenth-century Spain that he can sit down and create a large portion of [[Miguel de Cervantes]]'s ''Don Quixote'' verbatim, not by having memorized Cervantes's work, but as an "original" work of his own mind. Borges's "review" of the work of the fictional Menard effectively discusses the resonances that ''[[Don Quixote]]'' has picked up over the centuries since it was written, by way of overtly discussing how much richer Menard's work is than Cervantes's (verbatim identical) work.
@@ Line 96: / Line 82: @@
 While Borges was certainly the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, it was not his own invention.
 It is likely that he first encountered the idea in [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s ''[[Sartor Resartus]]'', a book-length review of a non-existent German [[transcendentalism|transcendentalist]] philosophical work and [[biography]] of its equally non-existent author. ''This Craft of Verse'' (p. 104), records Borges as saying that in 1916 in Geneva he "discovered &mdash; and was overwhelmed by &mdash; Thomas Carlyle. I read ''Sartor Resartus'', and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart." 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 &ndash; 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 "Erewhon" Butler|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." [''Collected Fictions'', p.67]
-=== Borges as Argentine and as world citizen ===
-[[Image:Moneda 2 pesos-Argentina-Borges-1999.jpg|thumb|right|Special two-[[Argentine peso]]s coin with a Caricature of Borges, 1999]]
-Borges's work maintained a universal perspective that reflected a multi-ethnic Argentina, exposure from an early age to his father's substantial collection of world literature, and lifelong travel experience: As a young man, he visited the frontier [[pampa|''pampas'']] where the boundaries of Argentina, [[Uruguay]], and [[Brazil]] blurred, and lived and studied in [[Switzerland]] and [[Spain]]; in middle age he traveled through Argentina as a lecturer and internationally as a visiting professor; and he continued to tour the world as he grew older, ending his life in [[Geneva]] where he had attended high school (He never went to university.) Drawing on influences of many times and places, Borges's work belittled nationalism and racism.
-Borges grew acquainted with the literature from Argentine, Spanish, North American, [[English language|English]], [[German language|German]], [[Italian language|Italian]], and [[North Germanic language|Northern European/Icelandic]] sources, including those of [[Old English language|Anglo-Saxon]] and [[Old Norse language|Old Norse]]. He also read many translations of [[Near East|Near Eastern]] and [[Far East|Far Eastern]] works. The universalism that made him interested in world literature &mdash; and interesting to world readers &mdash; reflected an attitude that was not congruent with the [[Juan Perón|Perón]] government's extreme [[nationalism]]. That government's meddling with Borges's job fueled his skepticism of government (he labeled himself a ''[[Herbert Spencer|Spencerian]] [[Anarchism|anarchist]]'' in the blurb of ''Atlas''). When extreme Argentine nationalists sympathetic to the [[Nazism|Nazis]] asserted Borges was [[Judaism|Jewish]] &mdash; the implication being that his Argentine identity was inadequate &mdash; Borges responded in "Yo Judío" ("I, a Jew"), where he indicated he would be proud to be a Jew, but presented his actual [[Christianity|Christian]] [[genealogy]] (along with a backhanded reminder that any "pure [[Castile|Castilian]]" just might have a Jew in their [[Kinship and descent|ancestry]] a [[millennium]] back).
-=== Multicultural influences on Borges's writing ===
-Borges's Argentina, despite its origin as a Spanish colony, is a multi-ethnic country, and Buenos Aires, the capital, a cosmopolitan city. This was even truer during the relatively prosperous era of Borges's childhood and youth than in the present. At the time of Argentine independence in 1816, the population was predominantly ''criollo'' &mdash; which in Argentine usage generally means people of Spanish ancestry, although it can allow for a small admixture of other ancestry. The Argentine national identity diversified, forming over a period of decades after formal independence. During that period substantial immigration came from [[Italy]], [[Spain]], [[France]], [[Germany]], [[Russia]], [[Syria]] and [[Lebanon]] (then parts of the [[Ottoman Empire]]), the [[United Kingdom]], [[Austria-Hungary]], [[Portugal]], [[Poland]], [[Switzerland]], [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], [[North America]], [[Belgium]], [[Denmark]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Sweden]], and [[China]], with the Italians and Spanish forming the largest influx. The diversity of coexisting cultures living characteristic Argentine lifestyles is especially pronounced in ''Six Problems for Don Isidoro Parodi'', co-authored with [[Adolfo Bioy Casares]], and in the unnamed multi-ethnic city that's the setting for "[[Death and the Compass]]", which may or may not be Buenos Aires. Borges's writing is also steeped by influences and informed by scholarship of [[Christianity|Christian]], [[Buddhism|Buddhist]], [[Islam|Islamic]], and [[Judaism|Jewish]] faiths &mdash; including mainline religious figures, heretics, and mystics. For more examples, see the sections below on [[#International themes in Borges|International themes in Borges]] and [[#religious themes in Borges: Mainline, heretical, and mystical|Religious themes in Borges]].
-=== Borges as specialist in the history, culture, and literature of Argentina ===
-If Borges often focused on universal themes, he no less composed a substantial body of literature on themes from Argentine folklore, history, and current concerns. Borges's first book, the poetry collection ''Fervor de Buenos Aires'' (''Passion for Buenos Aires''), appeared in 1923. Considering Borges's thorough attention to all things Argentine &mdash; ranging from 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 current concerns ("Celebration of The Monster", "Hurry, Hurry", "The Mountebank", "Pedro Salvadores") &mdash; it is ironic indeed that ultra-nationalists would have questioned his Argentine identity.
-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 civil wars in what is now Argentina and [[Uruguay]]. Spurred by pride in his family's heritage, Borges often used those civil wars as settings in fiction and quasi-fiction (e.g. "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 was another military hero, whom Borges immortalized in the poem "A Page to Commemorate Colonel Suarez, Victor at Junín."
-=== Borges, ''Martín Fierro'', and tradition ===
-Borges contributed to a few ''avant garde'' publications in the early 1920s, including one called ''[[Martín Fierro (magazine)|Martín Fierro]]'', named after the major work of nineteenth-century Argentine literature, ''Martín Fierro'', a gauchesque poem by [[José Hernández]], published in two parts, in 1872 and 1880. Initially, along with other young writers of his generation, Borges rallied around the fictional Martín Fierro as the symbol of a characteristic Argentine sensibility, not tied to European values. As Borges matured, he came to a more nuanced attitude toward the poem. Hernández's central character, Martín Fierro, is a [[gaucho]], a free, poor, ''[[pampas]]''-dweller, who is illegally drafted to serve at a border fort to defend against the Indians; he ultimately deserts and becomes a ''gaucho matrero'', the Argentinian equivalent of a North American western outlaw. Borges's 1953 [[Borges on Martín Fierro|book of essays on the poem, ''El "Martín Fierro"'']], separates his great admiration for the aesthetic virtues of the work from his rather mixed opinion of the moral virtues of its protagonist. He uses the occasion to tweak the noses of arch-nationalist interpreters of the poem, but disdains those (such as Eleuterio Tiscornia) who he sees as failing to understand its specifically Argentinian character.
-In "The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Borges celebrates how Hernández expresses that character in the crucial scene in which Martin Fierro and El Moreno compete by improvising songs about universal themes such as time, night, and the sea. The scene clearly reflects the real-world gaucho tradition of ''payadas'', improvised musical dialogues on philosophical themes &mdash; as distinct from the type of slang that Hernández uses in the main body of ''Martín Fierro''. Borges points out that therefore, Hernández evidently knew the difference between actual gaucho tradition of composing poetry on universal themes, versus the "gauchesque" fashion among Buenos Aires literati. Borges goes on to deny the possibility that Argentine literature could distinguish itself by making reference to "local color", nor does it need to remain true to the heritage of the literature of Spain, nor to define itself as a rejection of the literature of its colonial founders, nor follow in the footsteps of European literature. 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 someone who has inherited the whole of world literature.
-Borges uses Martin Fierro and El Moreno's competition as a theme once again in "El Fin" ("The End"), a story that first appeared in his short story collection ''Artificios'' (1944). "El Fin" is a sort of mini-sequel or conclusion to ''Martin Fierro''. In his prologue to ''Artificios,'' Borges says of "El Fin," "Everything in the story is implicit in a famous book [''Martin Fierro''] and I have been the first to decipher it, or at least, to declare it."
-=== Limits to universalism ===
-To exaggerate Borges's universalism might be as much a mistake as the nationalists' questioning the validity of his Argentine identity. His writing was evidently more influenced by some literatures than others, reflecting in part the particular contents of his library his father had amassed, and the particular population composition of Argentina during his lifetime. A review of his work reveals far more influences from [[Europe]]an and [[New World]] sources than Asian-Pacific or African ones. Few references to [[African]]s or [[African-American]]s appear in his work; rare mentions include an idiosyncratic inventory of the latter-day effects of the slave trade in "The Dreaded Redeemer Lazarus Morrell" and a number of sympathetic references to a person of African descent killed by the fictional outlaw ''Martin Fierro''. Indigenous [[Native Americans (Americas)|Amerind]] sources are poorly represented, owing to the near-destruction of that population and culture in the [[Southern Cone]] region of South America; rare mentions include a captive [[Aztec]] priest, Tzinacán, in "The God's Script" and Amerinds who capture Argentines in "Story of the Warrior and the Captive" and "The Captive". In contrast to his scholarship in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist sources, Borges's view of Hinduism and Hindus seems to have been formed by peering through the sympathetic lens of the works of [[Rudyard Kipling]], as in Borges's "The Approach to Al Mutasim".
-=== Sexuality and sexual orientation ===
-There has been much discussion of Borges' attitudes to sex and women.{{facts}} Herbert J. Brant, in his essay ''The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges’ "El muerto" and "La intrusa"'' [http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/lasa95/brant.html], has argued that Borges employed women as intermediaries of male affection, allowing men to engage each other romantically without resorting to direct homosexuality. For instance, the plot of ''La Intrusa'' was based on a true story of two friends,{{facts}} but Borges made their fictional counterparts brothers, thus excluding (in his mind) the possibility of a homosexual relationship. Borges had always dismissed these suggestions, though they were common even among his friends. It may be inferred {{facts}}from statements made in the essay "Our Inabilities" that he harbored [[homophobia|homophobic]] views, though this may have arisen from his general abhorrence of carnality. This is shown in his short story "The Sect of The Phoenix", which focuses entirely on sex yet never names the act nor gives any descriptions of it. Due to the virtual absence of any discussion of sexuality from his works, some commentators{{facts}} speculate that he was [[asexuality|asexual]]
-The story "Ulrica" from ''The Book of Sand'' tells a romantic tale of heterosexual desire, love, trust and actual sex, though it may have been only a dream. Not every instance of a woman in Borges is either as an object or as a part of the fecal dialectic.
 === International themes in Borges ===
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 * Paper tigers: the ideal fictions of Jorge Luis Borges / Sturrock, John., 1977
 * The Cardinal points of Borges / Dunham, Lowell., 1971
-== See also ==
-* [[Bibliography of Jorge Luis Borges]]
-* [[Stanisław Lem]] is another author who employed Borges's technique of using imaginary books.
-* [[The Firesign Theatre]] performed an adaptation of "La Muerte y La Brujula" ("Death and the Compass") live during their underground radio show called "Radio Free Oz" sometime in September 1967.
 == External links ==