博尔赫斯重要作品有诗集《布宜诺斯艾利斯的激情》（1923）、《面前的月亮》（1925）、《圣马丁牌练习簿》(《圣马丁手册》)（1929）、《阴影颂》（1969）(《影子的颂歌》)、《老虎的金黄》（1972）、《深沉的玫瑰》（1975）、《铁皮》（1976）、《黑夜的故事》（1979）等，短篇小说集《恶棍列传》（1937）、《小径分岔的花园》（1941）、《阿莱夫》（1949）、《死亡与罗盘》（1951）、《布罗迫埃的报告》（1970）等。还译有卡夫卡、福克纳等人的作品。其作品文体干净利落，文字精炼，构思奇特，结构精巧，小说情节常在东方异国情调的背景中展开，荒诞离奇且充满幻想，带有浓重的神秘色彩。
阿根廷诗人、小说家兼翻译家。生于布宜诺斯艾利斯一个有英国血统的律师家庭。在日内瓦上中学，在剑桥读大学。掌握英、法、德等多国文字。中学时代开始写诗。1919年赴西班牙，与极端主义派及先锋派作家过从甚密，同编文学期刊。1923年出版第一部诗集，1935年出版第一本短篇小说集，从此奠定了在阿根廷文坛上的地位。1946年因在反对庇隆的宣言上签名，被革除图书馆中的职务，派任市场家禽稽查员，但作家拒绝任职并发表公开信表示抗议。1950年至1953年间任阿根廷作家协会主席。1955年任国立图书馆馆长、布宜诺斯艾利斯大学哲学文学系教授。1950年获阿根廷国家文学奖，1961年获西班牙的福门托奖，1979年获西班牙的塞万提斯奖。 他少年时期的热爱是蒙得维的亚。与布市隔着宽广迟缓的拉普拉塔河，乌拉圭的首都。“你属于我们，你像一次聚会，如水中映出的星星。在错误的时间出口处，你的街道注视着最明亮的过去。”博尔赫斯诗人毫不掩饰他的贬低，“你那低低的太阳尚未照亮我的窗帘，已给你的别墅带来了快乐”；虽然博尔赫斯后来也写过类似于“难以相信布宜诺斯艾利斯竟有开端，我感到它如同空气和水一般永恒”的诗作，但他私下却谈论那是他的败笔。在晚年，博尔赫斯仍说“像布宜诺斯艾利斯大得不可思议，谁也无法了解它”。1955 年，庇隆政府下台后，他被新政府任命为阿根廷国家图书馆馆长。不幸的是，他当时因严重的眼疾双目已近乎失明。他自嘲他说:“命运赐予我 80 万册书，由我掌管，同时却又给了我黑暗。”但失明并没有夺去博尔赫斯的艺术生命，在母亲和友人的帮助下，他以无穷的毅力继续创作，并修订和整理出版丁一些早期作品。与此同时，他还 多次应邀前往欧美大学讲学。
这个时期的主要作品有： 《迷宫》 （1964）、 《布罗迪埃的报告》 （1971）、 《沙子集》 （1975）， 《老虎的金子》 （1977）。
博尔赫斯[作家]-生平简介
阿根廷诗人、小说家兼翻译家。生于布宜诺斯艾利斯一个有英国血统的律师家庭。在日内瓦上中学，在剑桥读大学。掌握英、法、德等多国文字。中学时代开始写诗。1919年赴西班牙，与极端主义派及先锋派
文坛风云作家过从甚密，同编文学期刊。1923年出版第一部诗集，1935年出版第一本短篇小说集，从此奠定了在阿根廷文坛上的地位。1946年因在反对庇隆的宣言上签名，被革除图书馆中的职务，派任市场家禽稽查员，但作家拒绝任职并发表公开信表示抗议。1950年至1953年间任阿根廷作家协会主席。1955年任国立图书馆馆长、布宜诺斯艾利斯大学哲学文学系教授。1950年获阿根廷国家文学奖，1961年获西班牙的福门托奖，1979年获西班牙的塞万提斯奖。
他少年时期的热爱是蒙得维的亚。与布市隔着宽广迟缓的拉普拉塔河，乌拉圭的首都。“你属于我们，你像一次聚会，如水中映出的星星。在错误的时间出口处，你的街道注视着最明亮的过去。”诗人毫不掩饰他的贬低，“你那低低的太阳尚未照亮我的窗帘，已给你的别墅带来了快乐”；虽然博尔赫斯后来也写过类似于“难以相信布宜诺斯艾利斯竟有开端，我感到它如同空气和水一般永恒”的诗作，但他私下却谈论那是他的败笔。在晚年，博尔赫斯仍说“像布宜诺斯艾利斯大得不可思议，谁也无法了解它”。
1955 年，庇隆政府下台后，他被新政府任命为阿根廷国家图书馆馆长。不幸的是，他当时因严重的眼疾双目已近乎失明。他自嘲他说:“命运赐予我 80 万册书，由我掌管，同时却又给了我黑暗。”
但失明并没有夺去博尔赫斯的艺术生命，在母亲和友人的帮助下，他以无穷的毅力继续创作，并修订和整理出版丁一些早期作品。与此同时，他还 多次应邀前往欧美大学讲学。
这个时期的主要作品有： 《迷宫》 （1964）、 《布罗迪埃的报告》 （1971）、 《沙子集》 （1975）， 《老虎的金子》 （1977）。
博尔赫斯[作家]-婚姻家庭
博尔赫斯成功的另一个条件是，他背后有着两位伟大女性的真挚的爱情和长期而有力的支持。称这两位女性为作家的两条臂膀或两根支柱，恐不为过。
首先是比博尔赫斯更为高寿的母亲、享年99秩的莱昂诺尔·阿塞韦多（1876－1975）女士。她出身望族，婚后操持家务，但也博览群书，学识丰富，且通晓英语。博尔赫斯家族有失明病史。作家父亲豪尔赫·吉列尔莫·博尔赫斯先生（1874－1938）就是因为在1914年双目几乎完全失明，才决定退休（是年仅40岁），举家迁往欧洲定居的。
博尔赫斯自幼眼力不佳，青年时期高度近视。1938年，祸不单行，眼睛严重撞伤，开始逐渐失明。从此，他就由母亲帮助，从事文学活动。
J.L博尔赫斯1956年，眼科大夫严禁博尔赫斯读书写作。不得已，作家逐渐学习凭记忆写作，然后口授。从1938年到1975年阿塞韦多女士谢世这37年时间内，博尔赫斯就是依靠母亲无微不至的关爱和帮助，才得以完成其一生中最重要的文学创作活动的。伟大的母亲不但以惊人的爱心照料他的起居生活，以惊人的耐心为作家儿子读书、念报、记录及整理文稿，还以惊人的体力（出于对儿子的热爱，体力似有神助），不顾七八十岁的高龄，陪作家上街散步，甚至上班、出国访问。1955年，博尔赫斯听到自己被任命为阿根廷国立图书馆馆长，不胜兴奋。深夜，由母亲陪同，步行至国立图书馆门前驻足观望；1961年，母亲陪同博尔赫斯出访美国得克萨斯大学讲学。其时，阿塞韦多女士已分别为79岁和85岁之耄耋之年。行文至此，深为阿塞韦多女士崇高而伟大的母爱感动，不禁潸然泪下。
在失明而母亲健在的这段期间，他创作并面世的有短篇小说集《小径分岔的花园》 （1941）、 《杜撰录》 （1944）、《阿莱夫》 （1949）、 《布罗迪报告》 （1970）、《沙之书》（1975），诗歌散文集《诗人》（1960）、《为六弦琴而作》（1965）、《影子的颂歌》（1969）、《另一个，同一个》（1969）、《老虎的金黄》（1972）、《深沉的玫瑰》（1975），评论集《探讨别集》（1952）、《布宜诺斯艾利斯的语言》（1963）、《序言集成》（1971），译品《卡夫卡短篇小说集》（1935）、《野棕榈》（1940）、 《一个野蛮人在亚洲》（1940）、《巴特贝》（1944）、 《草叶集》 （1969）等。此外，博尔赫斯还与人合作，创作或编辑出版了大量的小说、散文、评论或文学教程。其文学生活极为丰富活跃。所有这一切，无不倾注着母亲的辛劳和心血。
接替母亲的重任，继续支持博尔赫斯的另一位伟大的女性，便是博尔赫斯夫人玛丽亚·儿玉女士。夫人是日裔阿根廷人，父为日本移民工程师。笔者1992年在阿根廷考察拉美文学时有幸结识夫人。笔者主编的《博尔赫斯全集》中文版已由浙江文艺出版社推出，儿玉女士不日将应邀来华访问，参加《全集》首发式及签名售书等活动，我国博氏作品爱好者将有机会一睹夫人的丰采。在我的印象里，夫人的形象是这样的：
儿玉女士长有一张欧、亚人特征兼而有之的脸庞，长发披肩，但已经花白。夫人不施脂粉，不染指甲，平时也不佩戴首饰，显得随意大方。两只眼睛炯炯有神，像是在博氏书海的迷宫里练就了一对深邃的目光；端正挺拔的鼻子和两片薄薄的嘴唇露出坚毅刚强的气质，不由得让人感到她完成博氏未竟事业的决定与抱负；只有她那骄小的身躯和一头披肩长发方透出女性的妩媚和温柔。
据儿玉女士向报界透露，她是在12岁那年认识博尔赫斯的，当时，博尔赫斯已是一个年近花甲的老人了。夫人由于受父亲的影响，很小便喜欢日本诗歌；而正是因为她对诗歌、对文学满怀激情，才使她跟博尔赫斯有缘连结在一起。儿玉女士在十六七岁的时候，中学毕了业，进入大学哲学文学系，便常常和博尔赫斯在一起研究盎格鲁－撒克逊文学，学习冰岛文。儿玉回忆说，他们常常在一家名叫“三桅船”的咖啡馆里聚会。博尔赫斯带着原版书，儿玉则抱着一本语法书，就这么一点一点地学习双方共同感兴趣的语言。博尔赫斯要儿玉弄明白原文的词意，从最感兴趣的地方入手，而不死抠语法。作家往往引导他的学生像玩七巧板那样拆卸或组装单词。这样，一个个单词、一篇篇文章，也就是一座座文字的迷宫，就被他们闯入了。这一时期，博尔赫斯心情特别愉快舒畅，甚至连眼睛也比以前明亮了，他曾不止一次地深情地望着儿玉，认真地说：“玛丽亚，我看到你的轮廓了，真的！”
博尔赫斯[作家]-相关作品
诗集《铁币》 （1976）、 《夜晚的故事》 （1977）、 《天数》 （1981）、 《密谍》 （1985），短篇小说集《梦之书》（1976）、 《莎士比亚的记忆》 （1985），诗歌散文集《阿德罗格》 （1977），演讲集《博尔赫斯口述》 （1979）、《七夕》（1980）
博尔赫斯[作家]-作品评述
博尔赫斯时时刻刻都在企图赋予作品以形而上学的意义。
博尔赫斯
博尔赫斯小说中的宇宙模型是无限的、混沌的、主观的、相对的、静止的。在阅读这些小说的时候，你总能将它与哲学、神学和数学相联系起来。
《环行废墟》里提供了一个简洁到极至又复杂的难以想象的宇宙模型。小说中的魔法师，在梦里创造了一个男孩。他对于“男孩是存在于我的梦里”这个事实是十分清楚的，而在梦中被创造出的人（虚影）在踏进祭祀的火堆时是不会被灼伤的。荒谬的是他在担心男孩踏进火堆时会发现自己是被创造出的幻影的时候，他自己踏入火堆却安然无恙。最终他发现自己也是一个被创造的影子。（他朝火焰走去。火焰没有吞噬他的皮肉，而是不烫不灼地抚慰他，淹没了他。他宽慰地、惭愧地、害怕地知道他自己也是一个幻影，另一个人梦中的幻影。）
《环行废墟》是非常具有力量的，当你读它的时候你会一下陷入一种存在的荒谬中。因为这篇小说直接指向现实中的本体，而对于宇宙本身的无限，人是一直无法理解的。现实中没有无限，而宇宙却非要是无限向外延伸的不可。这个矛盾会让人感到震惊，人永远也想不清这个问题。
放在数学上， 《环行废墟》里的宇宙模型就像数轴，向两端无限的延伸下去，而原点可以在任意一个位置上。《环行废墟》里的宇宙就是一个梦套一个梦，一个主体既是扮演创造者的上帝又是被另一个上帝所创造的人。就像两面互相照射的镜子，会聚了无穷多个世界。
除了《环行废墟》，另一篇让博尔赫斯着墨颇多的是《巴别图书馆》 （又译作《通天塔图书馆》 ）。这篇小说融合了许多宗教和哲学的观点。比如说开篇的引文“用这种技巧可以悟出二十三个字母的变异”，在文中，博尔赫斯试图将无限拆分成最基本的２５个字符。这种类似于易经，易经用“两仪”、“四象”、“八卦”直到“六十四卦”来描述世界。博尔赫斯读过《易经》以及佛教的书，可以猜测，易经中的归纳思想被博尔赫斯用在这篇小说里，用以描述宇宙的本原。而小说中图书馆（即宇宙）的构造是六角形的回廊，上下无限延伸，而每个回廊里的门又通向另一个六角形。这个时空之间串联的灵感或许来自佛教的“大千、中千、小千世界”。
《巴别图书馆》中的那本“包含了所有书籍的书籍”很明显的是在比喻形而上的本体。而“有人提出逆行的办法：为了确定甲书的位置，先查阅说明甲书的乙书；为了确定乙书的位置，先查阅说明乙书位置的丙书，依此无限的倒推上去……”则是对理性的置疑，很显然的，博尔赫斯否认推理、论证这样的手段可以认识本体。给玄学和宗教留下了一片天地，不让世界整个被狂妄的“罗格斯”所侵吞掉。可以看出，博尔赫斯发现了东方与西方思维方式上的不同，他更倾向于东方的整体式的、隐喻式的、诗化的思维方法，而暗示西方的二元的、Logos的、分岔化的认识手段不适合于认识本体。
博尔赫斯[作家]-社会影响
“作家们的作家”，这是人们对博尔赫斯的至高评价。它在中国的流行，则多少说明了中国作家对博尔赫斯的敬畏。博尔赫斯对中国文学所产生的影响如此巨大，以至于谁不读博尔赫斯，就必定是文学之盲；谁不谈博尔赫斯，也仿佛等于无知浅薄。这样一种带有明显强制性的文学时尚，终于使博尔赫斯在十几亿人口的泱泱大国生根开花，也使中国文学在十余年的时间里不断变化、翻新，一派蓬勃。而这首先要归功于翻译家。他们的功绩远胜于作家的劳动。因为后者获取的，是翻译家拿来的种子。而且，是翻译家的汗珠浇灌了作家的禾苗。但是，在收获的季节里，人们常常微笑着忘却了引进种子、付出汗水的人们。
各种版本
梦幻、迷宫、镜子、玄想、时间、宇宙，这些无可捉摸的意象，风一般掠过你我身旁，只可感悟，不可触摸。许许多多遭遇过博尔赫斯之风的人大约都有这种感觉。一有从众心理。但最终又有几个真正闯进了错综复杂的博尔赫斯迷宫呢?多数人恐怕只有布宜诺斯艾利斯街道的匆匆过客。有的可能刚刚踏进了迷宫的门槛，或者浅尝辄止地在门口逗留一番；有的可能战战兢兢地摸了进去，但稍稍深入也就望而却步了，然后便原路返回。更多的人是站在门口了望、围观，以便从各色打道回府的探险者嘴里按过些感奋的呐喊或扫兴的叹息。而真正闯入迷宫并胜利找到出口者，却是寥寥无几。
博尔赫斯在中国的登陆，应该是上世纪80年代的事情。先有王央乐、陈凯先等人的译介，并由此散播开来，竟一发而不可收了。之后，到了90年代，随着陈众议等人编译的《博尔赫斯文集》的面世以及众多盗版产品的出现，博尔赫斯之名如狂澜席卷中华大地。博尔赫斯也由此完成了对中国作家的精神占有。他的晦涩、神秘连同其梦呓、圈套及至重复与矛盾，统统成了中国作家的写作罗盘。惟一不能化来的是他的西班牙以及他的精短、他的洗练、他的贵族气息。再之后，他的《全集》出版。终于，我们到了该做总结的时候。
于是有了《博尔赫斯》一书。它是中国人自己撰写的一本博尔赫斯批评。它不仅有别于业已译介过来的博尔赫斯评传，也有别于迄今为止我所见到的所有关乎博尔赫斯的文字。此书可以说是国人对博尔赫斯迷宫的一次真正意义上的探询，也是对萦绕在迷宫之上的众多谜团的一次令人服膺的清理和驱逐。它以短短的15万字，包容和解剖了一个大大的谜。它一方面剌博尔赫斯生平与作品于一体，另一方面又应付裕如地超越了一般生平传略和作家作品研究，有点有面，深入浅出。
它虽然没有指出走进博尔赫斯迷宫的路径，也没有留下走出博尔赫斯迷宫的诀窍，却处处显示出一个译家、学者的孜孜探求：博尔赫斯是怎样建筑他的迷宫的，即他何以形成自己的文学罗盘并在世界范围内产生影响。因此，我在《博尔赫斯》中看到了作家建造迷宫的全过程，看到了迷宫的根基和机关陷阱、转角和无数小径，甚至还有断垣残壁和真假标志。我还清晰地看到，博尔赫斯不但有其作为生命个体的一般性和特殊性，而且有其作为一个著名作家的起初的幼稚与盲目以及后来的矛盾与偏见。总之，这是唯物主义对唯心主义的一次清算。它给出的博尔赫斯是一个文人，而非一尊文神。博尔赫斯修建的是他的迷宫，而非普天同归的文学圣殿。博尔赫斯只为自己写作、为少数喜欢形而上学的人写作，却并不负责为中国文学铺路修桥。博尔赫斯只能为一个挑灯夜战的写作者作伴，却决不是每一个作家日落之哀伤和日出之辉煌的任何保证。
而且，《博尔赫斯》文风特别。它给出的对象，是经过解构的重组。在此，读者可以清楚地窥视博尔赫斯迷宫的景色。至于他能否感知迷宫、走出迷宫，则要看他的造化。于是我想，爱好或者怀疑博尔赫斯的人最好都来看一看《博尔赫斯》这本好书。
博尔赫斯[作家]-博尔赫斯的著述数量
综述
评论家张洪浩曾经就博尔赫斯的著述数量做过梳理，并撰文说：很多人认为博尔赫斯作品很少。作家余华在访谈中曾说，博尔赫斯总共也就三本书。其实，这么说是不对的。博尔赫斯尽管不是高产作家，但他的书也不十分少，就纯粹意义的文学作品而《博尔赫斯》全集言，至少比卡夫卡多。我们目前见到的《卡夫卡全集》是10卷330余万字（河北教育出版社1996年第1版），其中随笔、谈话录、书信、日记占了6卷之多，而这些文字严格来说不是作品，只是卡夫卡的思想残片，以及他留下的文献资料（就像《鲁迅全集》一样，实际意义上文学创作能占一半篇幅就不错了）。而由博尔赫斯的夫人玛丽亚·儿玉授权出版的《博尔赫斯全集》（浙江文艺出版社1999年第1版）尽管只有5卷，却全是实打实的作品，没有一篇日记或者书信。
《全集》囊括的集子
《全集》囊括的集子如下：
诗歌卷：《布宜诺斯艾利斯激情》《面前的月亮》《圣马丁札记》《诗人》《另一个，同一个》《为六弦琴而作》《影子的颂歌》《老虎的金黄》《深沉的玫瑰》《铁币》《夜晚的故事》《天数》《图片册》《密谋》《博尔赫斯》全集小说卷：《恶棍列传》《虚构集》《阿莱夫》《布罗迪报告》《沙之书》《莎士比亚的记忆》
散文卷：《埃瓦里斯托·卡列戈》《讨论集》《永恒史》《探讨别集》《序言集成》《博尔赫斯口述》《七夕》《有关但丁的随笔九篇》《文稿拾零》《私人藏书：序言集》 以上计有诗集14部、小说集6部、散文集8部。共28种。
但这并非真正意义的全集。出版前言中说：“遵照博尔赫斯本人的意愿，没有收入《探讨集》（1925）、《我希望的尺度》（1926）和《阿根廷人的语言》（1928）三个集子”。可是，我们看一下书后所附博氏年谱，就会发现没有收入《全集》的，远远不止三个集子。
《全集》中未收的集子
为了弄清博氏究竟写了多少书，我就此做了一番爬梳，整理出一份博尔赫斯全部作品集的书目。以下是浙江版《全集》中未收的集子： 诗集：《红色的旋律》《高乔诗歌》《短篇佳作选》
小说集：《赌徒的纸牌》《梦之书》《布·多梅克短篇小说集》《博尔赫斯》全集散文集：《探讨集》（1925）、《我希望的尺度》（1926）、《阿根廷人的语言》（1928）、《日耳曼语古典文学》《幻想动物学教科书》《天堂与地狱之书》《布宜诺斯艾利斯的语言》
诗与散文的合集：《阿德罗格》
与人合作的小说集：《幻想文学作品选》《伊西德罗·帕罗梅的6个问题》《优秀短篇侦探小说集》《痞子，他的命运》《埃络伊萨的姐妹》《岸边人家》《信徒的天堂》《中世纪日耳曼文学》《布·多梅克纪事》
与人合作编著的书：《美国文学入门》《什么是佛教》《盎－撒克鲁作品简编》
以上计有诗集3部、小说集3部、散文集7部、诗与散文合集1部，与人合作的小说集9部与人合作编辑出版的书3部，共26种。
就是说，博尔赫斯的全部著述（含编著）应在50种以上。
博尔赫斯[作家]-作品评述
博尔赫斯时时刻刻都在企图赋予作品以形而上学的意义。 博尔赫斯小说中的宇宙模型是无限的、混沌的、主观的、相对的、静止的。在阅读这些小说的时候，你总能将它与哲学、神学和数学相联系起来。《环行废墟》里提供了一个简洁到极至又复杂的难以想象的宇宙模型。小说中的魔法师，在梦里创造了一个男孩。他对于“男孩是存在于我的梦里”这个事实是十分清楚的，而在梦中被创造出的人（虚影）在踏进祭祀的火堆时是不会被灼伤的。荒谬的是他在担心男孩踏进火堆时会发现自己是被创造出的幻影的时候，他自己踏入火堆却安然无恙。最终他发现自己也是一个被创造的影子。（他朝火焰走去。火焰没有吞噬他的皮肉，而是不烫不灼地抚慰他，淹没了他。他宽慰地、惭愧地、害怕地知道他自己也是一个幻影，另一个人梦中的幻影。）《环行废墟》是非常具有力量的，当你读它的时候你会一下陷入一种存在的荒谬中。因为这篇小说直接指向现实中的本体，而对于宇宙本身的无限，人是一直无法理解的。现实中没有无限，而宇宙却非要是无限向外延伸的不可。这个矛盾会让人感到震惊，人永远也想不清这个问题。
放在数学上， 《环行废墟》里的宇宙模型就像数轴，向两端无限的延伸下去，而原点可以在任意一个位置上。《环行废墟》里的宇宙就是一个梦套一个梦，一个主体既是扮演创造者的上帝又是被另一个上帝所创造的人。就像两面互相照射的镜子，会聚了无穷多个世界。除了《环行废墟》，另一篇让博尔赫斯着墨颇多的是《巴别图书馆》 （又译作《通天塔图书馆》 ）。这篇小说融合了许多宗教和哲学的观点。比如说开篇的引文“用这种技巧可以悟出二十三个字母的变异”，在文中，博尔赫斯试图将无限拆分成最基本的２５个字符。这种类似于易经，易经用“两仪”、“四象”、“八卦”直到“六十四卦”来描述世界。博尔赫斯读过《易经》以及佛教的书，可以猜测，易经中的归纳思想被博尔赫斯用在这篇小说里，用以描述宇宙的本原。而小说中图书馆（即宇宙）的构造是六角形的回廊，上下无限延伸，而每个回廊里的门又通向另一个六角形。这个时空之间串联的灵感或许来自佛教的“大千、中千、小千世界”。《巴别图书馆》中的那本“包含了所有书籍的书籍”很明显的是在比喻形而上的本体。而“有人提出逆行的办法：为了确定甲书的位置，先查阅说明甲书的乙书；为了确定乙书的位置，先查阅说明乙书位置的丙书，依此无限的倒推上去……”则是对理性的置疑，很显然的，博尔赫斯否认推理、论证这样的手段可以认识本体。给玄学和宗教留下了一片天地，不让世界整个被狂妄的“罗格斯”所侵吞掉。可以看出，博尔赫斯发现了东方与西方思维方式上的不同，他更倾向于东方的整体式的、隐喻式的、诗化的思维方法，而暗示西方的二元的、Logos的、分岔化的认识手段不适合于认识本体。
博尔赫斯[作家]-众说博尔赫斯
读书是博尔赫斯生活中一项具有压倒性优势的活动，而且对于他的写作意义重大。他曾说：“我是一个作家，但更是一个好读者。”他的最初和主要的知识来源可能是他父亲的藏书室，到了开始真正作家生涯时，他已经是一个学贯东西、富有真知灼见的青年学者了。人们想像中那个在宁静幽暗、满是灰尘的的图书馆里坐拥书城，读破万卷、下笔有神的形象，可能是个误解。至少在被任命为国立图书馆馆长的时候，他已经近乎完全失明，所以他不无苦涩地写了一首诗向上帝致敬：“他以如此妙的讽刺／同时给了我书籍和失明……” 读书对于作家博尔赫斯的意义，至少有两条必须强调：一，读书使得他从不将自己的视野局限在阿根廷的现实中，而是以整个西方文明为自己的当然传统和精神源泉，并以它的正宗传人自居(他身上的英国血统更强化了这一倾向)。二，由于读书在生活中的比重之大，与大多数作家不同，是书籍而不是生活成了博尔赫斯的写作素材。以小说为例，博尔赫斯之所以被称作“作家中的作家”，就是因为他的写作从书中来，到书中去，作品带有元小说特征，既具有形而上的艺术思维方式的普适性，又容易模仿，所以后世追随者非常多。博尔赫斯是20世纪现代主义文学与后现代文学的分水岭。从他开始，传统的文学观念发生了很大变化，如文学种类的界限被打破、客观时间被取消、幽默与荒谬结合、写真与魔幻统一等等。 诗歌、散文和短篇小说是博尔赫斯三大创作成果，而且各有千秋，相互辉映。有一种很生动的说法是：“他的散文读起来像小说；他的小说是诗；他的诗歌又往往使人觉得像散文。沟通三者的桥梁是他的思想。”他是与帕斯、聂鲁达齐名的拉美三大诗人之一，他的诗歌语言质朴，风格纯净，意境悠远。他的散文大多非常短小，但构思新颖，结构巧妙，安德烈·莫洛亚：“博尔赫斯是一位只写小文章的大作家。小文章而成大气候，在于其智慧的光芒、设想的丰富和文笔的简洁——像数学一样简洁的文笔。”
尽管是《小径分岔的花园》使博尔赫斯名扬天下，但他写于1939年的一篇名为《特隆，乌克巴尔，奥比斯·特蒂乌斯》的小说也许更值得注意，因为他在其中将模糊真实时间和虚构空间界限的本领发挥到了极致，“虚构”这一美学概念从此在他的艺术世界里占据了最重要的位置，而20世纪的世界文学也将大受裨益。故事从作者同好友比奥伊的对话开始，后者在一部伪托的百科全书里核查一段他认为起源于乌克巴尔的文字，大意是：镜子和男女交媾是可憎的，因为它们使人的数目倍增。由这些本已不可靠的叙述，又引出关于一个虚构的无所不在的国度特隆的叙述，读者被牵引着进入了一个意义、概念、历史、真实和虚幻纠缠在一起的迷宫，终难自拔。博尔赫斯成名后，连家中的女佣也成了报界采访的对象。这位侍奉博尔赫斯家族多年的老女佣称，博尔赫斯创作这篇小说的灵感源于家中图书馆内一套漏页的百科全书。博尔赫斯上中学时，有一次为了完成语言课的作业而查阅了某个条目，发现了百科全书缺页，还在当日的晚餐上向家里人宣布。对这篇小说，有论者作了如下总结：“在一个走向疯狂的世界，知识分子的反应只能是极端的禁欲主义形式，享受文学的情节，除自成体系的文学范畴之外，否定一切秩序。”
作于1941年的《小径分岔的花园》表面上采用了侦探小说的形式：一战中，中国博士余准做了德国间谍，遭到英国军官马登的追踪。他躲入汉学家斯蒂芬·艾伯特博士家中，见到了小径分岔的花园。余准杀害了艾伯特博士，以此通知德军轰炸位于艾伯特的英军炮兵阵地，最后被马登逮捕。实际上博尔赫斯意不在此，他用小径分岔的花园造了一座迷宫，又借角色的口宣布“写小说和造迷宫是一回事”，而下面的话才揭示了小说的主题：“由相互靠拢、分歧、交错或永远不干扰的时间织成的网络包含了所有的可能性。”博尔赫斯将关于时间相对性的深奥、复杂的哲学问题诉诸小说这一艺术形式，充分显示了他过人的智慧和非凡的文学才能。
His work embraces the "chaos that rules the world and the character of unreality in all literature." His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers, religion and God. His works have contributed to the genre of magical realism, a genre that reacted against the realism/naturalism of the nineteenth century. In fact, critic Angel Flores, the first to use the term, set the beginning of this movement with Borges's Historia universal de la infamia (1935). Scholars also have suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.
His international fame was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the "Latin American Boom" and the success of Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."
Early life and education
Jorge Luis Borges was born to an educated middle-class family. They were in comfortable circumstances, but were not wealthy enough to live in downtown Buenos Aires, they resided in Palermo, then a poorer suburb of the city. Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, came from a traditional Uruguayan family of "pure" criollo, (Spanish) descent. Her family had been much involved in the European settling of South America and she spoke often of their heroic actions. Borges's 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, Acevedo fought in the battles of Cepeda in 1859, Pavón in 1861, and Los Corrales in 1880. Isidoro de Acevedo Laprida died of pulmonary congestion in the house where his grandson Jorge Luis Borges was born. Borges grew up hearing about the faded family glory. On the other side, Borges's father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, was part Spanish, part Portuguese, and half English, also the son of a colonel. Haslam, whose mother was English, grew up speaking English at home, and took his own family frequently to Europe. England and English pervaded the family home.
At nine Jorge Luis Borges translated The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde to Spanish and it was published in a local journal, but his friends thought the real author was his father. 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." He 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."
Borges was taught at home until the age of 11, bilingual, reading Shakespeare in English 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 afflict his son. In 1914 the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland and spent the next decade in Europe. Borges Haslam was treated by a Geneva eye specialist, while his son and daughter Norah attended school, where Borges junior learned French. He read Carlyle in English, and began to read philosophy in German. In 1917, when he was 18, he met Maurice Abramowicz and began a literary friendship that would last the rest of his life. He received his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The Borges family decided that, due to political unrest in Argentina, they would remain in Switzerland during the war, staying until 1921. After World War I, the family spent three years living in various cities: Lugano, Barcelona, Majorca, Seville, and Madrid.
At that time Borges discovered the writing of Arthur Schopenhauer and Gustav Meyrink's The Golem (1915) which became influential to his work. In Spain, Borges fell in with and became a member of the avant-garde, anti-Modernist Ultraist literary movement, inspired by Apollinaire and Marinetti, close to the Imagists. His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea," written in the style of Walt Whitman, was published in the magazine Grecia. While in Spain, he met noted Spanish writers, including Rafael Cansinos Assens and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.
Early writing career
Jorge Luis Borges in 1940s, photograph taken from "Historia de la Literatura Argentina Vol II" (1968)
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 1930, Nestor Ibarra called Borges the "Great Apostle of Criollismo," celebrating Latin American regionalism. Borges published his first published collection of poetry, Fervor de Buenos Aires in 1923 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, and attempted 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 Ana María Barrenechea has called "irreality." Many other Latin American writers, such as Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, and Alejo Carpentier, were also investigating these themes, influenced by the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger and the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. In this vein, his biographer Williamson underlines how careful readers must be not to infer a biographical basis for Borges's work as books, philosophy and imagination were as much a source of real inspiration to him as personal experience, if not more so. From the first issue, Borges was a regular contributor to Sur (South), 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, who was to become a frequent collaborator and close friend. Together they wrote a number of works, 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, country retreats, or Fernández' tiny apartment in the Balvanera district.
In 1933, Borges gained an editorial appointment at the literary supplement of the newspaper Crítica, where he first published the pieces later collected as the Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy, 1936). The book included two types of writing. The first lay somewhere between non-fictional essays and short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories. The second consisted 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 wrote weekly columns for El Hogar, which appeared from 1936 to 1939. In 1938, Borges found work as first assistant at the Buenos Aires Municipal Library in Miguel Cané, a working class area. There were so few books, that cataloguing more than one hundred books per day, he was told, would leave little to do for the other staff and so 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 articles, short stories and translations.
Later career
Borges in 1976.
Borges's father died in 1938, a tragedy for the writer, as father and son were very close. On Christmas Eve that year, Borges suffered a severe head wound; during treatment, he nearly died of septicemia. While recovering from the accident, Borges began playing with 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 in May 1939, examining the father-son relationship and the nature of authorship. His first collection of short stories, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), appeared in 1941, composed mostly of works previously published in Sur. The title story concerns a Chinese professor in England, Dr. Yu Tsun, who spies for Germany during World War I, in an attempt to prove to the authorities that an Asian person is able to obtain the information that they seek. A combination of book and maze, it can be read in many ways. Through it, Borges arguably invented the hypertext novel and went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such a novel. Eight stories 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 1941 issue of Sur to a "Reparation for Borges." Numerous leading writers and critics from Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world contributed writings to the "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. [Notes 1] Borges 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 the Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson). Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays.
By the late -1950s, he had become completely blind, as had one of his best known predecessors, Paul Groussac, for whom Borges wrote an obituary. 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.
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch
this declaration of the mastery
of God who, with magnificent irony,
granted me both the gift of books and the night.
The following year Borges was awarded the National Prize for Literature from the University of Cuyo, and the first of many honorary doctorates. From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, while frequently holding temporary appointments at other universities. 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), 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. [Notes 2] "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.[dead link] Though several other Borges translations appeared in literary magazines and anthologies during the 1950s, his international fame dates from the early 1960s. In 1961 he received the first International Publishers' Prize, the Prix Formentor, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. While Beckett had garnered a distinguished reputation in Europe and America, Borges was still largely unknown and untranslated in the English-speaking world and the prize stirred interest in his work. The Italian government named Borges Commendatore and the University of Texas at Austin appointed him for one year to the Tinker Chair. This led to his first lecture tour in the United States. In 1962 two major anthologies of Borges's writings were published in English by New York presses: Ficciones and Labyrinths. In that year, Borges began lecture tours of Europe. In 1980 he was awarded the Balzan Prize (for Philology, Linguistics and literary Criticism) and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca; numerous other honors were to accumulate over the years, such as the French Legion of Honour in 1983, the Cervantes Prize, and a Special Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, "for distinguished contribution to the mystery genre".[dead link]
In 1967, Borges began a five-year period of collaboration with the American translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni, through whom he became better known in the English-speaking world. He also continued to publish books, among them El libro de los seres imaginarios (The Book of Imaginary Beings, (1967, co-written with Margarita Guerrero), El informe de Brodie (Dr. Brodie's Report, 1970), and El libro de arena (The Book of Sand, 1975). He also lectured prolifically. Many of these lectures were anthologized in volumes such as Siete noches (Seven Nights) and Nueve ensayos dantescos (Nine Dantesque Essays).
Later personal life
Quotation by Borges at Buenos Aires Metro station in Madrid: "It smacks of fiction that Buenos Aires was ever founded. I judge her to be as eternal as the sea and the wind."
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.
Jorge Luis Borges died of liver cancer in 1986 in Geneva and was buried there in the Cimetière des Rois. After years of legal wrangling about the legality of the marriage, Kodama, as sole inheritor of a significant annual income, gained control over his works. Her administration of his estate was denounced by the French publisher Gallimard, by Le Nouvel Observateur, and by intellectuals such as Beatriz Sarlo, as an obstacle to the serious reading of Borges's works. Under Kodama, the Borges estate rescinded all publishing rights for existing collections of his work in English, including the translations by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, in which Borges himself cooperated, and from which di Giovanni received fifty percent of the royalties. The estate commissioned new translations by Andrew Hurley.
Political opinions
Anti-Communism
In an interview with Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges stated that his opposition to Marxism and Communism was absorbed in his childhood. "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 by a military coup of the democratically elected second term of Peron 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' opposition to the Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estella Canto. In later years, Borges frequently expressed contempt for Communists within the Latin American intelligentsia. In an interview with Burgin, Borges referred to Chilean Pablo Neruda as "a very fine poet," but a "very mean man" for unconditionally supporting the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States. During the 1970s, Borges' expressed support for Argentina's military junta, but was scandalized by the mass killings of suspected Communists during the Dirty War.
Opposition to Peronism
When President Juan Domingo Perón began transforming Argentina into a populist regime, in 1946, with the assistance of his wife Evita, the spoils system was the rule of the day, as ideological critics of the new order were dismissed 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?" The following day, Borges resigned from Government service in response to an insult he would never forget, or forgive.
Peron's treatment of Borges became a cause célèbre for the Argentine intelligentsia. The Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) held a formal dinner in his honour. At the dinner, a speech was read which Borges had written for the occasion. It said,
"Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue."
In the aftermath, Borges found himself much in demand as a lecturer and one of the intellectual leaders of the Argentine opposition. In 1951 he was asked by Anti-Peronist friends to run for president of SADE. Borges, then suffering from depression caused by a failed romance, reluctantly accepted. He later recalled that he would awake every morning and remember that Peron was President and feel deeply depressed and ashamed. Peron'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 regime. SADE official Luisa Mercedes Levinson noted, "We would gather every week to tell the latest jokes about the ruling couple and even dared to sing the songs of the French Resistance, as well as 'La Marseillaise'."
After Evita's death on July 26, 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 told them he would do nothing of the sort and that it was a ridiculous demand. The policemen retorted that he would soon face the consequences. The regime placed Borges under 24-hour surveillance and sent policemen to sit in on his lectures; in September it ordered SADE to be permanently closed down. Like much of the Argentine opposition to Peron, SADE had become marginalized due to persecution by the State and very few active members remained.
According to Edwin Williamson,
Borges had agreed to stand for the presidency of the SADE in order [to] fight for intellectual freedom, but he also wanted to avenge the humiliation he believed he had suffered in 1946, when the Peronists had proposed to make him an inspector of chickens. In his letter of 1950 to Attilio Rossi, he claimed that his infamous promotion had been a clever way the Peronists had found of damaging him and diminishing his reputation. The closure of the SADE meant that the Peronists had damaged him a second time, as was borne out by the visit of the Spanish writer Julián Marías, who arrived in Buenos Aires shortly after the closure of SADE. It was impossible for Borges, as president, to hold the usual reception for the distinguished visitor; instead, one of Borges' friends brought a lamb from his ranch, and they had it roasted at a tavern across the road from the SADE building on Calle Mexico. After dinner, a friendly janitor let them into the premises, and they showed Marías around by candlelight. That tiny group of writers leading a foreign guest through a dark building by the light of gutering candles was vivid proof of the extent to which the SADE had been diminished under the rule of Juan Peron.
In 1955, after General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu's Anti-Peronist coup d'etat, or "Revolución Libertadora", forced Peron into exile, Borges was overjoyed. The new regime appointed Borges as the Director of the National Library.[dead link] However, Peron's fall did not in any way alter Borges' animosity. In an interview with Richard Burgin in 1967, he said "Peron was a humbug, and he knew it, and everybody knew it. But Peron could be very cruel. I mean, he had people tortured, killed. And his wife was a common prostitute."
When Peron returned from exile in 1973 and regained the Presidency, Borges was enraged. In a 1975 interview for National Geographic, he said "Damn, the snobs are back in the saddle. If their posters and slogans again defile the city, I'll be glad I've lost my sight. Well, they can't humilate me as they did before my books sold well." After being accused of being unforgiving, Borges quipped, "I resented Peron's making Argentina look ridiculous to the world... as in 1951, when he announced control over thermonuclear fusion, which still hasn't happened anywhere but in the sun and the stars. For a time, Argentinians hesitated to wear bandaids 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' 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 stated that this was in reaction to, "certain declarations he had made about the country." One Peronist declared that Borges had made statements about Evita Peron which were, "unacceptable." Later, at the City Council of Buenos Aires, a storm raged when Peronist politicians decided to give only conditional support for a condolence on the writer's death.
Works
Main article: Bibliography of Jorge Luis Borges
Borges in L'Hôtel, Paris
Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort argue that Borges "may have been the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes. But whatever his particular literary rank, he was clearly of tremendous influence, writing intricate poems, short stories, and essays that instantiated concepts of dizzying power."
In addition to short stories for which he is most noted, Borges also wrote poetry, essays, screenplays, literary criticism, and edited numerous anthologies. His longest work of fiction was a 14 page story, "The Congress", first published in 1971. He was a prominent translator of English-, French- and German-language literature into Spanish, including works in Old English and Old Norse. His late-onset blindness strongly influenced his later writing. Borges wrote: "When I think of what I've lost, I ask, 'Who knows themselves better than the blind?' - for every thought becomes a tool." Paramount among his intellectual interests are 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 idealism is reflected in the fictional world of Tlön in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", in his essay "A New Refutation of Time", "On Exactitude in Science", and in his poem "Things". Similarly, a common thread runs through his story "The Circular Ruins" and his poem "El Golem" ("The Golem").
Borges was a notable translator. His first publication, for a Buenos Aires newspaper, was a translation of Oscar Wilde's story The Happy Prince into Spanish when he was nine. At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language version of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. He also translated (while simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, Edgar Allan Poe, Kafka, Hesse, Kipling, Faulkner,Gide, Whitman and Woolf. [Notes 3] 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 also employed the devices of literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work, both forms of modern pseudo-epigrapha.
Hoaxes and forgeries
Borges's best-known set of literary forgeries date from his early work as a translator and literary critic with a regular column in the Argentine magazine El Hogar. Along with publishing numerous legitimate translations, he also published original works, for example, in the style of Emanuel Swedenborg[Notes 4] or One Thousand and One Nights, originally claiming them to be translations of works he had chanced upon. In another case, he added three short, falsely attributed pieces into his otherwise legitimate and carefully researched anthology El matrero.[Notes 4] Several of these are gathered in the A Universal History of Infamy.
At times he wrote reviews of nonexistent work, by some other person. The key example of this is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", which imagines a twentieth-century Frenchman who tries to write Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote verbatim, not by having memorized Cervantes' work, but as an "original" narrative of his own invention. Initially the Frenchman tries to immerse himself in sixteenth-century Spain, but dismisses the method as too easy, instead trying to reach Don Quixote through his own experiences. He finally manages to (re)create "the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote and a fragment of chapter twenty-two." Borges's "review" of the work of the fictional Menard uses tongue-in-cheek comparisons to explore the resonances which Don Quixote has picked up over the centuries since it was written. He discusses how much "richer" Menard's work is than that of Cervantes, even though the actual text is exactly the same.
While Borges was the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, Borges developed the idea from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a book-length review of a non-existent German transcendentalist work, and the biography of its equally non-existent author. In This Craft of Verse, Borges says that in 1916 in Geneva "[I] discovered, and was overwhelmed by, Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart." 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."
Criticism of Borges' work
Borges's change in style from regionalist criollismo to a more cosmopolitan style brought him much criticism from journals such as Contorno, a left-of-centre, Sartre-influenced Argentine publication founded by the Viñas brothers, Noé Jitrik, Adolfo Prieto, and other intellectuals. 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. The Contorno writers acknowledged Borges and Eduardo Mallea for being "doctors of technique" but argued that their work lacked substance due to their lack of interaction with the reality that they inhabited, an existentialist critique of their refusal to embrace existence and reality in their artwork.
Sexuality
With a few notable exceptions, women are almost entirely absent from the majority of Borges's fictional output. There are, however, some instances in Borges's writings of romantic love, for example the story "Ulrikke" from The Book of Sand. The protagonist of the story "El muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira. and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair". 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.
Nobel Prize omission
Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 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 because of his conservative political views; or more specifically, because he had accepted an honour from dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Special Argentine two-peso coin featuring Borges, 1999
Fact, fantasy and non-linearity
Many of Borges's most popular stories concern the nature of time ("The Secret Miracle"), infinity "(The Aleph"), mirrors ("Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius") and Labyrinths ("The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths", "The House of Asterion", The Immortal, "The Garden of Forking Paths"). Williamson writes, "His basic contention was that fiction did not depend on the illusion of reality; what mattered ultimately was an author’s ability to generate 'poetic faith' in his reader." 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 also told realistic stories of South American life, of folk heroes, streetfighters, soldiers, gauchos, detectives, historical figures. He mixed the real and the fantastic: fact with fiction. His interest in compounding fantasy, philosophy, and the art of translation are evident in articles such as "The Translators of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights". In The Book of Imaginary Beings, a thoroughly (and obscurely) researched bestiary of mythical creatures, Borges wrote, "There is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition." Borges's interest in fantasy was shared by Adolfo Bioy Casares, with whom Borges coauthored several collections of tales between 1942 and 1967, often under different pseudonyms including H. Bustos Domecq. Often, especially early in his career, the mixture of fact and fantasy, crossed the line into the realm of hoax or literary forgery.[Notes 4]
"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." 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. Borges also examined the themes of universal randomness and madness (The Lottery in Babylon) and (The Zahir). Due to the success of the "Forking Paths" story, the term "Borgesian" came to reflect a quality of narrative non-linearity.[Notes 5]
Multiculturalism and Argentine literature
Martín Fierro and Argentine tradition
Main article: Borges on Martín Fierro
Along with other young Argentine writers of his generation, Borges initially rallied around the fictional character of Martín Fierro. Martín Fierro, a poem by José Hernández, was a dominant work of 19th century Argentine literature. Its eponymous hero became a symbol of Argentine sensibility, untied from European values - a gaucho, free, poor, pampas-dwelling. The character Fierro is illegally drafted to serve at a border fort to defend against the Indians but ultimately deserts to become a gaucho matrero, the Argentine equivalent of a North American western outlaw. Borges contributed keenly to the avant garde Martín Fierro magazine in the early 1920s.
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. 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 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. Racine and Shakespeare's work, he says, looked beyond their countries' borders. Neither, he argues, need the literature be bound to the heritage of old world Spanish or European tradition. Nor should it define itself by the conscious rejection of its colonial past. He asserts that Argentine writers need to be free to define Argentine literature anew, writing about Argentina and the world from the point of view of those who have inherited the whole of world literature. 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. Borges's 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"). Ultra-nationalists, 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 civil wars in what is now Argentina and Uruguay. Spurred by pride in his family's heritage, Borges often used those civil wars as settings in fiction and quasi-fiction (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." The city of Coronel Suárez in the south of Buenos Aires Province is named after him.
His non-fiction explores many of the themes found in his fiction. Essays such as "The History of the Tango" or his writings on the epic poem Martín Fierro explore Argentine themes, such as the identity of the Argentine people and of various Argentine subcultures. The varying genealogies of characters, settings, and themes in his stories, such as "La muerte y la brújula", used Argentine models without pandering to his readers or framing Argentine culture as 'exotic'. In his essay "El escritor argentino y la tradición", Borges notes that the very absence of camels in the Qur'an was proof enough that it was an Arabian work. He suggested that only someone trying to write an "Arab" work would purposefully include a camel. He uses this example to illustrate how his dialogue with universal existential concerns was just as Argentine as writing about gauchos and tangos.
Multiculturalism
Borges's work maintained a perspective that reflected a multi-ethnic Argentina, exposure from an early age to his father's substantial collection of world literature, and lifelong travel experience. At the time of Argentine independence in 1816, the population was predominantly criollo (of Spanish ancestry). The Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816 led to waves of immigration from Europe and Asia and in the following decades and the Argentine national identity diversified. Borges therefore was writing in a heavily multicultural and strongly European literary context, and worked immersed in Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature. He also read translations of Near Eastern and Far Eastern works. Borges's writing is also informed by scholarship of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, including prominent religious figures, heretics, and mystics. Religion and heresy are explored in such stories as "Averroes's Search", "The Writing of the God", "The Theologians" and "Three Versions of Judas". The curious inversion of mainstream Christian concepts of redemption in the latter story is characteristic of Borges's approach to theology in his literature.
In describing himself, he said, "I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors." As a young man, he visited the frontier pampas where the boundaries of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil blurred. He lived and studied in Switzerland and Spain as a young student. As Borges matured, he traveled through Argentina as a lecturer and, internationally, as a visiting professor; he continued to tour the world as he grew older, finally settling in Geneva where he had spent some of his youth. Drawing on the influence of many times and places, Borges's work belittled nationalism and racism. Portraits of diverse coexisting cultures characteristic of Argentina are especially pronounced in the book Six Problems for Don Isidoro Parodi (co-authored with Adolfo Bioy Casares) and the story "Death and the Compass", which may or may not be set in Buenos Aires. Borges wrote that he considered Mexican essayist Alfonso Reyes "the best prose-writer in the Spanish language of any time."
Influences
Modernism
Borges lived through most of the 20th century, and was rooted in the Modernism pre-dominant in its early years. He was especially influenced by Symbolism. Like contemporary novelists Vladimir Nabokov and the older James Joyce, he combined an interest in his native culture with broader perspectives. He also shared their multilingualism and their inventiveness with language. However, while Nabokov and Joyce tended toward progressively larger works as they grew older, Borges remained a miniaturist. Borges's work progressed away from what he referred to as "the baroque", while Joyce's and Nabokov's moved towards it: 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."
Political influences
As a political conservative, Borges "was repulsed by Marxism in theory and practice. Abhorring sentimentality, he rejected the politics and poetics of cultural identity that held sway in Latin America for so long." As a universalist, his interest in world literature reflected an attitude that was also incongruent with the Perónist Populist nationalism. That government's confiscation of Borges's job at the Miguel Cané Library fueled his skepticism of government. He labeled himself a Spencerian anarchist, following his father.
In 1934, extreme Argentine nationalists, sympathetic to the growing Nazi ideology of the time, asserted Borges was secretly Jewish, and by implication, not a full Argentine. Borges responded with the essay "Yo Judío" ("I, a Jew"), a reference to the old "Yo, Argentino" ("I, an Argentine"), a phrase used during nationalistic beatings of Argentine Jews to make it clear to approaching attackers that one was a "true" Argentine, and not a Jew. In the essay he notes, that he would be proud to be a Jew, with a backhanded reminder that any "pure" Castilian might be likely to have Jewish ancestry from a millennium ago.
Mathematics
The essay collection Borges y La Matematica (Borges and Mathematics, 2003) by Argentine mathematician and writer Guillermo Martinez, 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.