Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine
short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in
Spanish-language
Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...
and international literature. His best-known works, () and (), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as
dreams
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5–20 minutes, althou ...
,
labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth () is an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the h ...
s,
chance,
infinity
Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is denoted by \infty, called the infinity symbol.
From the time of the Ancient Greek mathematics, ancient Greeks, the Infinity (philosophy), philosophic ...
,
archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...
s,
mirrors
A mirror, also known as a looking glass, is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror forms an image of whatever is in front of it, which is then focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the ...
, fictional writers and
mythology
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
. Borges's works have contributed to
philosophical literature
''Philosophy and Literature'' is an American academic journal founded in 1977 by Denis Dutton. It explores the connections between literary and philosophical studies by presenting ideas on the aesthetics of literature, critical theory, and the ...
and the
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures.
The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...
genre, and have had a major influence on the
magical realist movement in 20th century
Latin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of Latin America. Latin American literature rose to particular pro ...
.
[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.]
Born in
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the
Collège de Genève
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...
. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in
surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
literary journals. He also worked as a
librarian
A librarian is a person who professionally works managing information. Librarians' common activities include providing access to information, conducting research, creating and managing information systems, creating, leading, and evaluating educat ...
and public
lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...
. In 1955, he was appointed director of the
National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...
. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, Borges came to international attention when he received the first
Formentor Prize, which he shared with
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
. In 1971, he won the
Jerusalem Prize
The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society.
It is awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Forum (previously kn ...
. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the
Latin American Boom
The Latin American Boom () was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world. The Boom is most closely associated with ...
, and by the success of
García Márquez's ''
One Hundred Years of Solitude
''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (, ) is a 1967 in literature, 1967 novel by Colombian people, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the Family saga, multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio ...
''.
[ Masina, Lea. (2001) "Murilo Rubião, o mágico do conto". In: ''O pirotécnico Zacarias e outros contos escolhidos''. ]Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre (, ; , ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian Federative units of Brazil, state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of roughly 1.4 million inhabitants (2022) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, 11th-most p ...
: L & PM, pg. 5. He dedicated his final work, ''The Conspirators'', to the city of
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland. Writer and essayist
J. M. Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee Order of Australia, AC Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL Order of Mapungubwe, OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, and translator. The recipient of the 2003 ...
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."
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine ...
wrote: "The truth, briefly stated, is that Borges is arguably the great bridge between
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
and
post-modernism
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wor ...
in world literature... His stories are inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything."
Life and career
Early life and education
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was born into an educated middle-class family on 24 August 1899. They lived in
Palermo
Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...
, a then-poor area of Buenos Aires. Borges's mother,
Leonor Acevedo Suárez, worked as a translator and came from a family of
criollo
Criollo or criolla (Spanish for creole) may refer to:
People
* Criollo people, a social class in the Spanish colonial system.
Animals
* Criollo duck, a species of duck native to Central and South America.
* Criollo cattle, a group of cattle bre ...
(Spanish) origin. Her family had been much involved in the European settling of South America and the
Argentine War of Independence
The Argentine War of Independence () was a secessionist civil war (until 1816) fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli, Martín Miguel de Güemes, Martin Miguel de Guemes and José de ...
, and she spoke often of their heroic actions.
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
Francisco Narciso de Laprida (October 28, 1786 in San Juan – September 22, 1829) was an Argentine lawyer and politician. He was a representative for San Juan at the Congress of Tucumán, and its president on July 9, 1816, when the Declara ...
, Acevedo Laprida fought in the battles of
Cepeda in 1859,
Pavón in 1861, and
Los Corrales in 1880. Acevedo Laprida died of pulmonary congestion in the house where his grandson Jorge Luis Borges was born. According to a study by Antonio Andrade, Jorge Luis Borges had Portuguese ancestry: Borges's great-grandfather, Francisco, was born in
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...
in 1770, and lived in
Torre de Moncorvo, in the north of the country, before he emigrated to Argentina, where he married Carmen Lafinur.
Borges's own father,
Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, 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 wedded
Leonor Acevedo Suárez in 1898 and their children also included the painter
Norah Borges, sister of Jorge Luis Borges.
At age ten, Jorge Luis Borges translated
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
's ''
The Happy Prince'' into Spanish. It was published in a local journal, but Borges's friends thought the real author was his father.
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...
(2004) ''Jorge Luis Borges'', Infobase Publishing. 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."
Jorge Luis Borges was taught at home until the age of 11 and was bilingual in Spanish and English, reading
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
in the latter at the age of twelve.
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."
His father gave up practicing law due to the failing eyesight that would eventually affect his son. In 1914, the family moved to
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland, and spent the next decade in Europe.
In Geneva, Borges Haslam was treated by an eye specialist, while his son and daughter attended school. Jorge Luis learned French, read
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...
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 lasted for the remainder of his life.
He received his
baccalauréat
The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...
from the
Collège de Genève
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...
in 1918.
[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)."] The Borges family decided that, due to political unrest in Argentina, they would remain in Switzerland during the war. After
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, the family spent three years living in various cities:
Lugano
Lugano ( , , ; ) is a city and municipality within the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. It is the largest city in both Ticino and the Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland. Lugano has a population () of , and an u ...
, Barcelona,
Mallorca
Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest of the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, seventh largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The capital of the island, Palma, Majorca, Palma, i ...
, Seville, and Madrid.
They remained in Europe until 1921.
At that time, Borges discovered the writings of
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...
and
Gustav Meyrink
Gustav Meyrink (19 January 1868 – 4 December 1932) was the pseudonym of Gustav Meyer, an Austrian author,
novelist, dramatist, translator, and banker, most famous for his novel ''The Golem (Meyrink novel), The Golem''.
He has been described as ...
's ''
The Golem'' (1915), which became influential to his work. In Spain, Borges became a member of the
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
, anti-
Modernismo Ultraist literary movement, inspired by
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
and
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye de ...
, close to the
Imagist
Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized literary modernism, modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has bee ...
s. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea", written in the style of
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...
, was published in the magazine ''Grecia''. While in Spain, he met such noted Spanish writers as
Rafael Cansinos Assens and
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...
.
Early writing career
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".
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.
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 Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (; 16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel ''Pedro Páramo'', and the ...
,
Juan José Arreola
Juan José Arreola Zúñiga (September 21, 1918 – December 3, 2001) was a Mexican writer, academic, and actor. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the 20th century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Lat ...
, and
Alejo Carpentier, were investigating these themes, influenced by the
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...
of
Husserl and
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art, and language.
In April ...
. 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.
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. Ocampo introduced Borges to
Adolfo Bioy Casares, another well-known figure of
Argentine literature
Argentine literature, i.e. the set of literary works produced by writers who originated from Argentina, is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential in the whole Spanish speaking world, with renowned writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Ju ...
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
Balvanera is a Barrios of Buenos Aires, barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Origin of name and alternative names
The official name, Balvanera, is the name of the ''parroquia'' (parish) centered around the church of ''Nuestra Seño ...
district. He appears by name in Borges's ''Dialogue about a Dialogue'', 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.
The book includes two types of writing: the first lies somewhere between non-fiction 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 to 1939 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 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.
Later career

Borges's father died in 1938, shortly before his 64th birthday. On
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas, the festival commemorating nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus. Christmas Day is observance of Christmas by country, observed around the world, and Christma ...
that year, Borges had a severe head injury; during treatment, he nearly died of
sepsis
Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs.
This initial stage of sepsis is followed by suppression of the immune system. Common signs and s ...
. 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
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentina, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection ''El jardín de senderos que ...
''), appeared in 1941, composed mostly of works previously published in ''Sur''.
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
Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...
novel and went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such a novel.
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. 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.
["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.] 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
Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (5 May 1924 – 8 September 1978), also known as Leo Towers and as Babsy, was an cinema of Argentina, Argentine film director, producer and screenwriter.
Born as Leopoldo Torres Nilsson (he later changed his paternal s ...
). Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.
The American novelist
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
was already a well-known writer in the Spanish-speaking world when Borges translated his novel ''The Wild Palms'' in 1940. Borges was a great admirer of Faulkner, but it is likely that his choice to translate a lesser novel was born out of opportunity and need. The novel had been published in the US in 1939, and Borges may have needed the money such work would bring. Nevertheless, his translation formed an indelible bridge between contemporary Latin American literature and the writer of the southern United States. Borges' intuitive understanding of and ability to render Faulkner's style was an important influence on a later generation of writers such as
Juan Rulfo
Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (; 16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel ''Pedro Páramo'', and the ...
,
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists a ...
, and
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th centur ...
.
In 1955, Borges 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:
''Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche''
''esta declaración de la maestría''
''de Dios, que con magnífica ironía''
''me dio a la vez los libros y la noche.''
(No one should read self-pity or reproach
Into this statement of the majesty
Of God; who with such splendid irony,
At one touch granted me books and night.)
His later collection of poetry, ''Elogio de la Sombra'' (''In Praise of Darkness''), 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.
[Burgin (1988) p xvii] From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...
and other temporary appointments at other universities.
He received a British
honorary knighthood in 1964. In the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968, he delivered the
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
.
As his eyesight deteriorated, Borges relied increasingly on his mother's help.
When he was not able to read and write anymore (he never learned to read
Braille
Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...
), his mother, to whom he had always been close, became his personal secretary.
When
Perón returned from exile and was re-elected president in 1973, Borges immediately resigned as director of the National Library.
International renown

Eight of Borges's poems appear in the 1943 anthology of Spanish American Poets by H. R. Hays.
[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".] "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
William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher (), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dr ...
. Though several other Borges translations appeared in literary magazines and anthologies during the 1950s (and one story appeared in the fantasy and science fiction magazine ''
Fantastic Universe
''Fantastic Universe'' was a U.S. science fiction magazine which began publishing in the 1950s. It ran for 69 issues, from June 1953 to March 1960, under two different publishers. It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishi ...
'' in 1960), his international fame dates from the early 1960s.
In 1961, Borges received the first ''
Prix International'', which he shared with
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
. 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
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
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
' (in English: "Fictions") is a collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, originally written and published in Spanish between 1941 and 1956. Thirteen stories from ''Ficciones'' were first published by New Direc ...
'' 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
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America which is based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor ...
from the
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is a professional organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City.
The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday.
It presents the E ...
"for distinguished contribution to the mystery genre" (1976), the
Balzan Prize
The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the b ...
(for philology, linguistics and literary criticism) and the
Prix mondial Cino Del Duca
The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (Cino Del Duca World Prize) is an international literary award from France. With an award amount of , it is among the richest literary prizes.
Origins and operations
It was established in 1969 in France by French b ...
, the
Miguel de Cervantes Prize
The Miguel de Cervantes Prize () is awarded annually to honour the lifetime achievement of an outstanding writer in the Spanish language. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls it "most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-languag ...
(all 1980), as well as the French
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...
(1983) and the Diamond
Konex Award for Literature Arts as the most important writer in the last decade in his country.

In 1967, Borges began a five-year period of collaboration with the American translator
Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Norman Thomas di Giovanni (October 3, 1933 – February 16, 2017) was an American-born editor and translator known for his collaboration with Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
Biography
Di Giovanni was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1933, ...
, through whom he became better known in the English-speaking world.
Di Giovanni contended that Borges's popularity was due to his writing with multiple languages in mind and deliberately using Latin words as a bridge from Spanish to English.
Borges continued to publish books, among them ''El libro de los seres imaginarios'' (''
Book of Imaginary Beings
The ''Book of Imaginary Beings'' was written by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero and published in 1957 under the original Spanish title ''Manual de zoología fantástica'' ("Handbook of fantastic zoology"). It contains descriptions of leg ...
'', 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'').
His presence in 1967 on campus at the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
(UVA) in the U.S. mirrored William Faulkner's tenure there ten years earlier as UVa's first writer-in-residence and 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, one of the largest repositories of documents and manuscripts pertaining to Borges's early works. 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
The University of Crete (UoC; Greek: Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης) is a multi-disciplinary, research-oriented institution in Crete, Greece, located in the cities of Rethymno (official seat) and Heraklion.
There are 16 main undergraduate ...
.
Later personal life

In the mid-1960s, Borges became acquainted with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future
Pope Francis
Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936 – 21 April 2025) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 13 March 2013 until Death and funeral of Pope Francis, his death in 2025. He was the fi ...
, who was at the time a young Jesuit priest. In 1979, Borges spoke appreciatively and at some length about Bergoglio to the Argentine poet and essayist Roberto Alifano.
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. Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her, cared for by Fanny, their housekeeper of many decades.
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
Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...
, in what was then a common practice among Argentines wishing to circumvent the Argentine laws of the time regarding divorce. According to Kodama, Borges drank as a young man, but eventually gave up alcohol as he aged and "felt more secure." 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." 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.
Death

During his final days in Geneva, Borges began brooding about the possibility of an
afterlife
The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's Stream of consciousness (psychology), stream of consciousness or Personal identity, identity continues to exist after the death of their ...
. Although calm and collected about his own death, Borges began probing Kodama as to whether she inclined more towards the
Shinto
, also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...
beliefs of her father or the
Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
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". 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.
Borges died of
liver cancer
Liver cancer, also known as hepatic cancer, primary hepatic cancer, or primary hepatic malignancy, is cancer that starts in the liver. Liver cancer can be primary in which the cancer starts in the liver, or it can be liver metastasis, or secondar ...
on 14 June 1986, aged 86, in Geneva. His burial was preceded by an ecumenical service at the Protestant
St. Pierre Cathedral 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."
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". 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.
Legacy
Maria 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
(), previously known as (2014–2024), (1964–2014), (1954–1964), (1953–1954), and (1950–1953), is a weekly French news magazine. Based in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, ' is one of the three most prominent French news magazines ...
'' (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. Kodama also rescinded all publishing rights for existing collections of his work in English, including the translations by
Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Norman Thomas di Giovanni (October 3, 1933 – February 16, 2017) was an American-born editor and translator known for his collaboration with Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
Biography
Di Giovanni was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1933, ...
, in which Borges himself had 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. At the time of her death, Kodama left no will and the status of the Borges estate is in limbo.
Political opinions
During the 1920s and 1930s, Borges was a vocal supporter of
Hipólito Yrigoyen and the social democratic
Radical Civic Union
The Radical Civic Union (, UCR) is a major political party in Argentina. It has reached the national government on ten occasions, making it one of the most historically important parties in the country. Ideologically, the party has stood for r ...
. In 1945, Borges signed a manifesto calling for an end to military rule and the establishment of political liberty and democratic elections.
By the 1960s, he had grown more skeptical of democracy. During a 1971 conference at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, 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
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...
. 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." 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.
In 1983, Borges applauded the election of the Radical Civic Union's
Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín (; 12 March 1927 – 31 March 2009) was an Argentine lawyer and statesman who served as President of Argentina from 10 December 1983 to 8 July 1989. He was the first democratically elected president after the 7-yea ...
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."
Anti-communism
Borges recurrently declared himself a "
Spencerian anarchist who believes in the individual and not in the State" due to his father's influence.
In an interview with
Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges described himself as a "mild" adherent of
classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited governmen ...
. He further recalled that his
opposition to communism and to
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
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." After the overthrow via coup d'état of President
Juan Domingo Perón
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. The name is of Hebrew origin and has the meaning "God has been gracious." It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world and in the Philip ...
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.
In a 1956 interview given to ''El Hogar'', Borges 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." He 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
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system. In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or en ...
."
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
Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
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." In the same interview, Borges also criticized famed poet and playwright
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...
, who was abducted by
Nationalist
Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...
soldiers and executed without trial during the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
. In Borges's opinion, Lorca's poetry and plays, when examined against his tragic death, appeared better than they actually were.
Anti-fascism
In 1934, Argentine
ultra-nationalists, sympathetic to
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
and the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
, asserted Borges was secretly
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
and by implication not truly Argentinian. Borges responded with the essay "
Yo, Judío" ("I, a Jew"), a reference to the old phrase "Yo, Argentino" ("I, an Argentine") uttered by potential victims during
pogrom
A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...
s against Argentine Jews to signify one was not Jewish.
[De Costa, René (2000) ''Humor in Borges (Humor in Life & Letters)''. Wayne State University Press p. 49 ] 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.
Both before and during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Borges regularly published essays attacking the Nazi police state and its racist ideology. His outrage was fueled by his deep love for
German literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...
. 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."
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." In a 1944 essay, Borges postulated,
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
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, 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
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
, and I think there is tragedy there."
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
''Blitzkrieg'(Lightning/Flash Warfare)'' is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with ...
, 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."
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
The concept of an archetype ( ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, philosophy and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main mo ...
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."
Anti-Peronism
In 1946, Argentine President
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón (, , ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine military officer and Statesman (politician), statesman who served as the History of Argentina (1946-1955), 29th president of Argentina from 1946 to Revolución Libertad ...
began transforming Argentina into a
one-party state
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system. In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or en ...
with the assistance of his wife,
Evita. Almost immediately, the
spoils system
In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a rewar ...
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?" Borges resigned the following day. Perón's treatment of Borges became a
cause célèbre
A ( , ; pl. ''causes célèbres'', pronounced like the singular) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning, and heated public debate. The term is sometimes used positively for celebrated legal cases for th ...
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:
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 having 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. 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." Meanwhile, SADE became an increasing refuge for critics of the Perón government. 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
The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...
, as well as '
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. It was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg after the declaration of war by the First French Republic against Austria, and was originally titled "".
The French Na ...
'".
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. 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. According to Edwin Williamson,
On 16 September 1955, General
Pedro Eugenio Aramburu's ''
Revolución Libertadora
The ''Revolución Libertadora'' (; ''Liberating Revolution'') as it named itself, was the civic-military dictatorship that ruled the Argentine Republic after overthrowing President Juan Domingo Perón, shutting down the National Congress of Ar ...
'' 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's mother and his own role on the opposition to Peron, the provisional government appointed Borges as the Director of the
National Library
A national library is a library established by a government as a country's preeminent repository of information. Unlike public library, public libraries, these rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, ...
.
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
A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the exec ...
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
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
...
the ruling couple dictated to their followers and how those theories were accepted without question. Borges concluded:
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." When Perón returned from exile in 1973 and regained the Presidency, Borges was enraged. In a 1975 interview for ''
National Geographic
''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...
'', 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."
[''National Geographic'', p. 303. (March 1975).]
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
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nuclei, nuclei/neutron by-products. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of ener ...
, 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."
After Borges's 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." 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".
Military junta
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
The Dirty War () is the name used by the military junta or National Reorganization Process, civic-military dictatorship of Argentina () for its period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983. During this campaign, military and secu ...
. In protest against their support of the regime, Borges ceased publishing in the newspaper ''
La Nación
''La Nación'' () is an Argentine daily newspaper. As the country's leading conservative newspaper, ''La Nación''s main competitor is the more liberal ''Clarín (Argentine newspaper), Clarín''. It is regarded as a newspaper of record for Argen ...
''. In 1985, he wrote a short poem about the
Falklands War
The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...
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."
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."
Borges added that "the news of the missing people, the crimes and atrocities
he militarycommitted" had inspired him to return to his earlier Emersonian faith in democracy.
Indigenous cultures
Borges believed that indigenous peoples in what is now called Argentina had no traditions: "There's no native tradition of any kind since the Indians here were mere barbarians. We have to fall back on the European tradition, why not? It's a very fine tradition."
Works
Wardrip-Fruin and
Montfort argue that Borges "may have been the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since
Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his no ...
. He was clearly of tremendous influence, writing intricate poems, short stories, and essays that instantiated concepts of dizzying power."
[Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, ed. (2003). ''The New Media Reader'', Cambridge: The MIT Press, p. 29; ] Borges's work has been compared to that of
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
and
Milton. Indeed, the critic
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...
numbers Borges among the key figures of the
Western literary canon.
In addition to short stories, for which he is most noted, Borges also wrote poetry, essays, screenplays, and literary criticism, and edited numerous anthologies. His longest work of fiction is a fourteen-page story, "The Congress", first published in 1971.
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." Paramount among his intellectual interests were elements of mythology, mathematics, theology, integrating these through literature, sometimes playfully, sometimes with great seriousness.
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. 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
Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, Spirit (vital essence), spirit, or ...
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".
Translations by Borges
Borges was a notable translator. He translated works of literature in English, French, German,
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, and
Old Norse
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...
into Spanish. His first publication, for a Buenos Aires newspaper, was a translation of
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
's story "
The Happy Prince" into Spanish when he was ten.
At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language version of a part of
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of th ...
's ''
Prose Edda
The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' () or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some exten ...
''. He also translated (while simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others,
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book '' The Devil's Dictionary'' was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the ...
,
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
,
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his begi ...
,
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
,
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
,
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...
,
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...
,
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...
, and
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
.
[Notable translations also include work by Melville, Sir ]Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a d ...
, and G. K. Chesterton. 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. Borges employed the devices of literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work, both forms of modern
pseudo-epigrapha.
Discography
Borges’ recorded work includes readings of his poems, a collaboration with Argentine composer
Astor Piazzolla, and a series of lectures on a characteristically wide range of topics, from
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
to the nature of poetry.
Music
* ''El Tango'' (1965) with
Astor Piazzolla
Polydor
Polydor Limited, also known as Polydor Records, is a British record label that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a close relationship with Universal's Interscope Geffen A&M Records label, which distributes Polydor's releases in ...
– 20291
Poetry
* ''Por El Mismo Sus Poemas Y Su Voz'' (1967)
AMB Discografica – 123 – 1
* ''Jorge Luis Borges'' (1968)
Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico – VVAL-13, UNAM-113/114
de Souza, Marcelo Mendes. “Unoriginal Opinions of an Original Man: Jorge Luis Borges’s Views on Race and Brazilian People in His Conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares and His Literary Works.” Latin American research review 56.3 (2021): 668–678. Web.
Lectures and other works
* ''La Divina Comedia'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 955
* ''¿Qué Es La Poesía?'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 959
* ''El Budismo'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 958
* ''La Cabala'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 960
* ''El Libro De Las Mil Y Una Noches'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 957
* ''Borges Para Millones. Banda Original De Sonido De La Pelicula'' (1978) with
Luis Maria Serra
EMI – 8569/70
Hoaxes and forgeries
Borges's best-known set of
literary forgeries
Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir o ...
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
Emanuel Swedenborg (; ; born Emanuel Swedberg; (29 January 168829 March 1772) was a Swedish polymath; scientist, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, Christian theologian, philosopher, and mysticism, mystic. He became best known for his book on the ...
or ''
One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...
'', 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''.
Several of these are gathered in ''
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
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...
's ''
Sartor Resartus
''Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books'' is a novel by the Scottish people, Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in ''Fraser's Magazine'' in November 1833 ...
'', 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 "
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." On the other hand, some works were wrongly attributed to Borges, like the poem
"Instantes".
Criticism of Borges's work
Borges's change in style from regionalist ''
criollismo
''Criollismo'' () is a literary movement that was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century throughout Hispanic America. It is considered the Hispanic counterpart to American literary regionalism. Using a realis ...
'' 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
Noé Jitrik (23 January 1928 – 6 October 2022) was an Argentine literary critic.
Jitrik was born in Argentina on 23 January 1928. He was director of the ''Instituto de literatura hispanoamericana'' at the University of Buenos Aires, and was ...
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.
[Katra, William H. (1988) ''Contorno: Literary Engagement in Post-Perónist Argentina''. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, pp. 56–57] 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
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value ...
critique of their refusal to embrace existence and reality in their artwork.
Sexuality and perception of women
The story "
The Sect of the Phoenix
"The Sect of the Phoenix" (original Spanish title: "La secta del Fénix") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in ''Sur'' in 1952. It was included in the 1956 edition of '' Ficciones'', part two (''Artifices'' ...
" is famously interpreted to allude to the ubiquity of sexual intercourse among humans – 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's fiction. However, there are some instances in Borges's later writings of romantic love, for example the story "
Ulrikke
Ulrikke is a feminine given name found primarily in Denmark and Norway. It is a feminine form of the masculine name Ulrik. Notable people named Ulrikke include:
* Ulrikke Brandstorp (born 1995), Norwegian singer
* Ulrikke Dahl (1846–1923), Norwe ...
" from ''
The Book of Sand''. The protagonist of the story "El muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira
and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair".
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".
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.
"
Emma Zunz" is a story with an eminent female protagonist. Originally published in 1948, this work tells the tale of a young Jewish woman who kills a man in order to avenge the disgrace and suicide of her father. She carefully plans the crime, submitting to an unpleasant sexual encounter with a stranger in order to create the appearance of sexual impropriety in her intended victim. Despite the fact that she premeditates and executes a murder, the eponymous heroine of this story is surprisingly likable, both because of intrinsic qualities in the character (interestingly enough, she believes in nonviolence) and because the story is narrated from a "remote but sympathetic" point of view that highlights the poignancy of her situation.
Nobel Prize omission
Borges was never awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
, something which continually distressed the writer.
He was one of several distinguished authors who never received the honour. 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."
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
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...
.
Borges was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature over thirty times, and was among the short-listed candidates several times. In 1965 he was considered along with
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
,
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
, and
Mikhail Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...
, and in 1966 a shared prize to Borges and
Miguel Ángel Asturias was proposed. 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
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...
and
Miguel Ángel Asturias, choosing Asturias as the winner.
Fact, fantasy and non-linearity

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 House of Asterion" (original Spanish title: "") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in 1947 in the literary magazine ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'' and republished in Borges's short story ...
", "
The Immortal", and "
The Garden of Forking Paths
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentina, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection ''El jardín de senderos que ...
"). 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."
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, street fighters, soldiers,
gaucho
A gaucho () or gaúcho () is a skilled horseman, reputed to be brave and unruly. The figure of the gaucho is a folk symbol of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, the southern part of Bolivia, and the south of Chilean Patago ...
s, 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
The ''Book of Imaginary Beings'' was written by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero and published in 1957 under the original Spanish title ''Manual de zoología fantástica'' ("Handbook of fantastic zoology"). It contains descriptions of leg ...
'', a thoroughly researched
bestiary
A bestiary () is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beas ...
of mythical creatures, Borges wrote, "There is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition."
[Borges, Luis Borges (1979) ''Book of Imaginary Beings'' Penguin Books Australia, p. 11; ] Borges's interest in fantasy was shared by Bioy Casares, with whom he coauthored several collections of tales between 1942 and 1967.
Often, especially early in his career, the mixture of fact and fantasy crossed the line into the realm of hoax or literary forgery.
[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; ] "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."
[Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium" ''The New Media Reader''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.] 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.
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
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathe ...
.
[Non-linearity was key to the development of ]digital media
In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...
. See Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium" ''The New Media Reader''. Cambridge: MIT Press
The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
, 2003.
Borges and science fiction
John Clute
John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940) is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part ...
writes: "as was earlier the case with
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
, a collection of whose work he translated as ''La Metamorfosis'' (coll. 1938), Borges's influence on twentieth century literature worldwide has been so deep and pervasive that any sf written in English since about 1960 may consciously or subliminally reflect his work. Any sf story whose structure or arguments question or play with the nature of reality – or which makes fantastic use of images of the Labyrinth, the Mirror, the Library, the Map, and/or the Book and/or the Dream to inform the world – will necessarily navigate seas of imagination he has already plumbed, apodictically, in ten or twenty short stories." Clute notes that Borges "revealed a first-hand (if at points inaccurate) knowledge of sf and its authors, including
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Provi ...
,
Robert A Heinlein,
A. E. van Vogt and
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horr ...
" and cites
Philip K. Dick,
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), th ...
,
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut ( ; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his Satire, satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfict ...
and Gene Wolfe as being directly influenced by Borges.
William Gibson recalls "the sensation, both complex and eerily simple", of reading "
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in ''Labyrinths'' as a young man, seated at a writing desk said to have belonged to Francis Marion:
Had the concept of software been available to me, I imagine I would have felt as though I were installing something that exponentially increased what one day would be called bandwidth, though bandwidth of ''what'', exactly, I remain unable to say. This sublime and cosmically comic fable of utterly pure information (i.e. the utterly fictive) gradually and relentlessly infiltrating and eventually consuming the quotidian, opened something within me which has never yet closed... Works we all our lives recall reading for the first time are among the truest milestones, but ''Labyrinths'' was a profoundly singular one, for me, and I believe I knew that, then, in my early adolescence. It was demonstrated to me, that afternoon. Proven. For, by the time I had finished with "Tlön" (though one never finishes with Tlön, nor indeed any story by Borges) and had traversed "The Garden of Forking Paths
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentina, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection ''El jardín de senderos que ...
" and had wondered, literally bug-eyed, at "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Pierre Menaud, Author of the ''Quixote''", I discovered that I had ceased to be afraid of any influence that might dwell within Francis Marion's towering desk."
Borgesian conundrum
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." The original concept was put forward by Borges in his essay "Kafka and His Precursors". After reviewing works that were written before those of Kafka, Borges wrote:
Culture and Argentine literature
''Martín Fierro'' and Argentine tradition
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 (writer), José Hernández, was a dominant work of 19th-century
Argentine literature
Argentine literature, i.e. the set of literary works produced by writers who originated from Argentina, is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential in the whole Spanish speaking world, with renowned writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Ju ...
. Its eponymous hero became a symbol of Argentine sensibility, untied from European values – a
gaucho
A gaucho () or gaúcho () is a skilled horseman, reputed to be brave and unruly. The figure of the gaucho is a folk symbol of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, the southern part of Bolivia, and the south of Chilean Patago ...
, free, poor, ''pampas''-dwelling.
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), ''Martín Fierro'' magazine in the early 1920s.
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. 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.
[Gabriel Waisman, Sergio (2005) ''Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery'', Bucknell University Press, pp. 126–29; ][Borges, Jorge Luis and Lanuza, Eduardo González (1961) "The Argentine writer and tradition" Latin American and European Literary Society] Borges points out that Hernández evidently knew the difference between actual gaucho tradition of composing poetry versus the "gauchesque" fashion among Buenos Aires literati.
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.
Jean Racine, Racine and
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
'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.
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".
Argentine culture
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.
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 are 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 (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".
His nonfiction explores many of the themes found in his fiction. Essays such as "The History of the Tango (dance), 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".
In fact, contrary to what is usually supposed, the geographies found in his fictions often do not correspond to those of real-world Argentina. 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 Arabs, Arabian work, despite the fact that camels are mentioned in the Qur'an. He suggested that only someone trying to write an "Arab" work would purposefully include a camel.
[Takolander, Maria, (2007) ''Catching butterflies: bringing magical realism to ground'' Peter Lang Pub Inc pp. 55–60; ] He uses this example to illustrate how his dialogue with universal existential concerns was just as Argentine as writing about gauchos and tangos. Borges detested Association football, football.
Multicultural influences
At the time of the Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816, the population was predominantly ''
criollo
Criollo or criolla (Spanish for creole) may refer to:
People
* Criollo people, a social class in the Spanish colonial system.
Animals
* Criollo duck, a species of duck native to Central and South America.
* Criollo cattle, a group of cattle bre ...
'' (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.
Borges was writing in a strongly European literary context, immersed in Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Old English language, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse language, 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.
[Bell-Villada, Gene, ''Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art''](_blank)
University of Texas Press; . 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 (theology), redemption in the last story is characteristic of Borges's approach to theology in his literature. In describing himself, Borges 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."
[Jorge Luis Borges profile](_blank)
guardian.co.uk, 22 July 2008; accessed 15 August 2010. 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 James, Henry and William James.
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
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, where he had spent some of his youth. Drawing on the influence of many times and places, Borges's work belittled nationalism and racism.
However, Borges also scorned his own Basques, Basque ancestry and criticised the abolition of slavery in America because he believed black people were happier remaining uneducated and without freedom. 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 writer Alfonso Reyes to be "the best prose-writer in the Spanish language of any time." Borges was also an admirer of Asian culture, e.g. the ancient Chinese board game of Go (game), Go, about which he penned some verses, while "
The Garden of Forking Paths
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentina, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection ''El jardín de senderos que ...
" had a strong Chinese theme.
Influences
Modernism
Borges was rooted in the Literary modernism, Modernism predominant in its early years and was influenced by Symbolism (arts), Symbolism. Like
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
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.
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."
Mathematics
The essay collection ''Borges y la Matemática'' (Borges and Mathematics, 2003) by Argentine mathematician and writer Guillermo Martínez (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". 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
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. 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.
In an interview, 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 George Berkeley, Berkeley and Arthur Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer. He was also influenced by Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza, about whom Borges wrote a famous poem. 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.")
Notes
References
Further reading
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* 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
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*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://cuadernosdealeph.com/revista_2007/A2007_pdf/06%20Teor%C3%ADa.pdf
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*Manovich, Lev
New Media from Borges to HTML, 2003*Mackay, Neil, ''Borges and Argentina: A Relocation'', in ''Cencrastus'' No. 9, Summer 1982, pp. 17–19,
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*Murray, Janet H.
Inventing the Medium, 2003*
* Pérez, Rolando. "Borges and Bruno Schulz on the Infinite Book of the Kabbalah." Confluencia. Volume 31. Spring 2016. https://www.academia.edu/25252312/Borges_and_Bruno_Schulz_on_the_Infinite_Book_of_the_Kabbalah.
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Documentaries
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External links
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BBC Radio 4 discussion programmefrom In Our Time (BBC Radio 4), ''In our time''. (Audio 45 mins)
The Garden of Forking PathsBorges 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 PittsburghThe Friends of Jorge Luis Borges Worldwide Society & AssociatesInternational Foundation Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borgesrecorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division's audio literary archive on 23 April 1976.
Six Norton Lectures(1967–68; audio; 4h13m)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Borges, Jorge Luis
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