Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, philosophers, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology. Borges’s works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and influenced the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature. His late poems converse with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
(Wikipedia)
Borges on Difference and Repetition
Borges exposes secret complicities, as when apparent oppositions hide more fundamental similarities. But he is also concerned with how novelty and change emerge from repetition, how real difference arises from the most minor of variations.
See also the conversation video with Daniel Balderston.
- Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Trans. James E. Irby et al. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. Revised Edition. New York: New Directions, 2007.
I have set this version of the text as I think it is the easiest to get hold of. NB you only need to read pages 3-105 plus "Borges and I" (246-247). If you wish, you may substitute for this, Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. Ed. Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove, 1962. This is a collection of more or less the same stories (in different translation), but it does not have "Borges and I," and in this case please also read "The South." I believe that the same translation is also published by Penguin Modern Classics as Fictions. The stories can be found in yet another translation on pages 65-189 of Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. London: Penguin, 1999.
On Jorge Luis Borges
A conversation about Labyrinths, with Daniel Balderston (University of Pittsburgh)
Borges videos
Borges Interview – English subtitles – YouTube.m4v:
Jorge Luis Borges – Collected Fictions BOOK REVIEW:
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Borges: South America’s Titan:
Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, and Felisberto Hernández, Selected Stories:
Infinity according to Jorge Luis Borges – Ilan Stavans:
Writing the Impossible | Jorge Luis Borges:
The Legacy of Jorge Luis Borges (2007):
Music for Reading Borges
Listen (and add suggestions) to the entire playlist…
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.
Bruce Cockburn – Lovers In A Dangerous Time:
Barenaked Ladies – Lovers in a Dangerous Time •:
Heard a singer on the radio late last night
He says he’s gonna kick the darkness
‘Til it bleeds daylight
U2- God Part II (Official-Unofficial) Music Video:
Could be wrong, I could be right
Could be wrong, I could be right
I could be wrong, I could be right
I could be black, I could be white
I could be right, I could be wrong
I could be black, I could be white
[. . .]
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Public Image Ltd – Rise (12″Version) (1986/ 2013):
Don’t give up
‘Cause you have friends
Don’t give up
You’re not the only one
Don’t give up
No reason to be ashamed
Don’t give up
You still have us
Don’t give up now
We’re proud of who you are
Don’t give up
You know it’s never been easy
Don’t give up
‘Cause I believe there’s a place
There’s a place where we belong
Peter Gabriel – Don’t Give Up (ft. Kate Bush):
It’s not here
It disappear
I’m all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for the special offer
A guaranteed personality
Lost In The SuperMarket:
When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody’s help in any way
(Now) but now these days are gone (these days are gone)
I’m not so self assured
(And now I find) now I find I’ve changed my mind
And opened up the doors
The Beatles – Help!:
We’re charging our battery
And now we’re full of energy
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
Kraftwerk – The Robots HQ Audio:
Tried to be the Robot King
And settled for the robot boyRing the bells that still can ring
And sing your stupid head off
To the ones who are not listeningBut don’t, don’t don’t, don’t let them go
Don’t don’t, don’t don’t, don’t let them go to waste
Dan Mangan – Robots:
We’re glad it’s all over
We’re glad it’s all over
We’re glad it’s all over
Captain Sensible – Glad its all over (HD):
Steve Reich, “Music for 18 Musicians” – FULL PERFORMANCE with eighth blackbird:
- De Quincey, Thomas. “Judas Iscariot.” Theological Essays and Other Papers. Vol. 1. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854. 147-177.
Borges images
Lynn Valley Centre, North Vancouver:
Borges resources
Other Texts by Borges:
- Borges, Jorge Luis. “Two Kings, Two Labyrinths”. Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. London: Penguin.
- Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Art of Fiction No. 39”. (Archived). Interview with Ronald Christ. The Paris Review 40 (Winter/Spring 1967).
Borges Websites:
- Ciabattari, Jane. “Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?”. BBC. September 1, 2014.
Borges and the Internet:
- Cohen, Noam. “Borges and the Foreseeable Future”. New York Times. Jan. 6, 2008. “A growing number of contemporary commentators–whether literature professors or cultural critics like Umberto Eco–have concluded that Borges uniquely, bizarrely, prefigured the World Wide Web.”
- Redpath, C. T. “On Borges’ Discovery of the Internet Before it Existed”. Medium. May 15, 2016. “I couldn’t help but wonder if Borges was describing our relationship with smartphones and the internet back in 1975.”
- Goodwin, Danny. “Hypertext Visionary Jorge Luis Borges Celebrated with Google Logo”. Search Engine Watch. August 24, 2011. “Before there was the World Wide Web, the Internet, hypertext markup, or even a digital computer, there was Jorge Luis Borges’ idea of ‘forking paths.'”
Two Writers of Introductions to Labyrinths:
“Maurois was born on 26 July 1885 in Elbeuf and educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen, both in Normandy. A member of the Javal family, Maurois was the son of Ernest Herzog, a Jewish textile manufacturer, and his wife Alice Lévy-Rueff. [. . .] During World War I he joined the French army and served as an interpreter for Lieutenant Colonel Winston Churchill (according to Martin Gilbert in Churchill and the Jews, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2007) and later a liaison officer with the British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty and socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. [. . .] In 1938 Maurois was elected to the prestigious Académie française. He was encouraged and assisted in seeking this post by Marshal Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowledging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, Call no man happy – though by the time of writing their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of Vichy France. [. . .] He died in 1967 in Neuilly-sur-Seine after a long career as an author of novels, biographies, histories, children’s books and science fiction stories. He is buried in Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.” (Wikipedia)
“William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a “combination of lowlife and high tech”—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” for “widespread, interconnected digital technology” in his short story “Burning Chrome” (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson’s have been credited with “renovating” science fiction literature in the 1980s.” (Wikipedia)
Two Libraries on Screen:
The Name of the Rose – Labyrinth Library Part (1986):
Interstellar – The Watch and Closing Tesseract Full Scene:
Fractals:
Eye of the Universe – Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom (e1091) (4k 60fps):
Fractals in Nature:
Mate is the quintessential drink of Argentina, Uruguay, and (prepared slightly differently) Paraguay. In “Funes the Memorious,” the farmboy-turned-savant, Ireneo Funes, is holding “a mate gourd bearing the Uruguayan coat of arms” (59), as though to stamp the drink, and by association Funes himself, with the claims of nationality. But as well as a national drink (albeit one, like many such symbols, that is not the unique preserve of a single nation), mate is also very much a social drink. Though people do drink it alone—while reading, while studying, relaxing or taking a walk in the park—they also tend to do so in groups. The gourd of dried yerba mate, into which hot water is poured from a kettle or thermos, is typically shared, passed from hand to hand: one person sips from the steel straw into the steeping mixture before passing it either to the next person or back to whoever has the hot water, who refreshes the drink and hands it out again. As well as symbol, then, mate is an embodied practice of unusual intimacy.
Borges questions
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On Your Reactions
Why do you think Borges was chosen as one of the mandatory authors?
Did you enjoy this read? Was there a trick to understanding it?
And, if you enjoyed this reading…why? What about it pulled you in and held your attention? And if you didn’t enjoy it, why not?
Which was your favorite story from the collection? Which one did you like least?
What about it was so intriguing to you? Otherwise, why don’t you think none of these resonated with you?
Did you get lost in Borges’s stories? Did you dislike or like not fully understanding?
Did you reject or embrace the maze-like confusion within the stories? Were you able to engage in Borges’ playfulness?
What story made the biggest impression on you and why?
What emotions did you feel while reading Borges’ stories? Did these stories intrigue you or confuse you?
And which topic was your favourite?
Have you read Borges before?
Was there a story you think you fully grasped?
Was it a challenging book to continue reading?
Some Philosophical Issues
Did the book affect your perception of the world—or of language or temporality—in any way? If so, how? For you, did the book feel confusing and overwhelming, or creative and imaginative?
Do you think there was an underlying message behind these short stories? And if so what was it?
Do you believe that “existence precedes essence”? This is a central question in Pierre Menard, and I would love to hear what you have to say. Put another way, do you believe that you can “create yourself,” or do you believe that there is a you, a Self, that can be discovered?
In what ways do you all see, feel, or understand this relationship between dreams and reality. Is there an example in Labyrinths that stood out to you?
Where else do people see the concept of infinity in Borges’s writing?
(Dis)orientations
What was an idea or concept that you found particularly interesting (or weird)?
Which themes did you find the most interesting in Borges’ stories?
To what extent does Jorge Borges appeal to the reader’s instinct to solve problems and think critically about meaning; and by contrast, what does the obstruction of our understanding represent?
What metaphorical message did you get from The Lottery of Babylon? Is it wrong to compare modern examples within these metaphors to writings of the past?
What is a genre that you noticed throughout the reading or did you notice any at all?
I do wonder however, if I am alone in feeling an “up and down” pattern throughout the text, whereby some stories fly by and others seem overly complicated and disorienting. Might this have been on purpose? And if so – why?
I personally had to take some time reading some of these short stories, as I found the inconsistencies Borges purposefully creates can be difficult to comprehend. So, what was the most confusing short story you read and why?
Which story from “Labyrinths” do you think will leave the longest-lasting impression on you? It doesn’t have to be your favourite- just the one you think you will remember the most. Why is that story so memorable?
Were there any stories that made you stop and reflect on how it may be relevant within your own life or feelings about the world we create? Can you make any personal connections to his writings that made you look at the memory or information in a different light?
Throughout the story of the Lottery in Babylon, the theme of chance was also present. Chance being someone tightly related to the game and play too. “This doctrinal item observed that the lottery is an interpolation of chance in the order of the world and that to accept errors is not to contradict chance: it is to corroborate it”(43). This line stood out to me because I think it’s saying that unfortunate things in life are inevitable, yet sometimes good things randomly happen too (by chance) and there’s something special about accepting both. My question is what meaning or message do you take from that line?
Why do you think Borges never won the Nobel Peace Prize in literature?
Do you think his stories are outdated? Why or why not?
What does this sense of imagination, irony, and confusion add to the book’s themes?
Do you enjoy magical realism? What is it about this genre that connects it so closely with “lesser” genres like fantasy or sci-fi but at the same time is always associated with literary merit?
Did you connect with the author’s thoughts about human life and agreed with his idea on “the consequences of our actions and decisions”? Why or why not?
Why do you think Borges inserts himself into his writing only to later separate himself from his literary self?
As a reader, do you return to a work if you feel you did not fully grasp the message/theme/plot? Or accept your perception for what it is?
Do you think Borges could have achieved the same maze-like reading journey in a single narrative arc rather than across multiple short stories/essays?