| 波赫士 | |||||||
| 豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯 | |||||||
| 出生地： | 布宜諾斯艾利斯 | ||||||
閱讀博爾赫斯 Jorge Luis Borges在小说之家的作品!!! 閱讀博爾赫斯 Jorge Luis Borges在诗海的作品!!! | |||||||
博尔赫斯重要作品有詩集《布宜諾斯艾利斯的激情》（1923）、《面前的月亮》（1925）、《聖馬丁牌練習簿》(《聖馬丁手册》)（1929）、《陰影頌》（1969）(《影子的頌歌》)、《老虎的金黃》（1972）、《深沉的玫瑰》（1975）、《鐵皮》（1976）、《黑夜的故事》（1979）等，短篇小說集《惡棍列傳》（1937）、《小徑分岔的花園》（1941）、《阿萊夫》（1949）、《死亡與羅盤》（1951）、《布羅迫埃的報告》（1970）等。還譯有卡夫卡、福剋納等人的作品。其作品文體幹淨利落，文字精煉，構思奇特，結構精巧，小說情節常在東方異國情調的背景中展開，荒誕離奇且充滿幻想，帶有濃重的神秘色彩。
阿根廷詩人、小說傢兼翻譯傢。生於布宜諾斯艾利斯一個有英國血統的律師家庭。在日內瓦上中學，在劍橋讀大學。掌握英、法、德等多國文字。中學時代開始寫詩。1919年赴西班牙，與極端主義派及先鋒派作傢過從甚密，同編文學期刊。1923年出版第一部詩集，1935年出版第一本短篇小說集，從此奠定了在阿根廷文壇上的地位。1946年因在反對庇隆的宣言上簽名，被革除圖書館中的職務，派任市場傢禽稽查員，但作傢拒絶任職並發表公開信表示抗議。1950年至1953年間任阿根廷作傢協會主席。1955年任國立圖書館館長、布宜諾斯艾利斯大學哲學文學係教授。1950年獲阿根廷國傢文學奬，1961年獲西班牙的福門托奬，1979年獲西班牙的塞萬提斯奬。 他少年時期的熱愛是蒙得維的亞。與布市隔着寬廣遲緩的拉普拉塔河，烏拉圭的首都。“你屬於我們，你像一次聚會，如水中映出的星星。在錯誤的時間出口處，你的街道註視着最明亮的過去。”博爾赫斯詩人毫不掩飾他的貶低，“你那低低的太陽尚未照亮我的窗簾，已給你的別墅帶來了快樂”；雖然博爾赫斯後來也寫過類似於“難以相信布宜諾斯艾利斯竟有開端，我感到它如同空氣和水一般永恆”的詩作，但他私下卻談論那是他的敗筆。在晚年，博爾赫斯仍說“像布宜諾斯艾利斯大得不可思議，誰也無法瞭解它”。1955 年，庇隆政府下臺後，他被新政府任命為阿根廷國傢圖書館館長。不幸的是，他當時因嚴重的眼疾雙目已近乎失明。他自嘲他說:“命運賜予我 80 萬册書，由我掌管，同時卻又給了我黑暗。”但失明並沒有奪去博爾赫斯的藝術生命，在母親和友人的幫助下，他以無窮的毅力繼續創作，並修訂和整理出版丁一些早期作品。與此同時，他還 多次應邀前往歐美大學講學。
這個時期的主要作品有： 《迷宮》 （1964）、 《布羅迪埃的報告》 （1971）、 《沙子集》 （1975）， 《老虎的金子》 （1977）。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-生平簡介
阿根廷詩人、小說傢兼翻譯傢。生於布宜諾斯艾利斯一個有英國血統的律師家庭。在日內瓦上中學，在劍橋讀大學。掌握英、法、德等多國文字。中學時代開始寫詩。1919年赴西班牙，與極端主義派及先鋒派
文壇風雲作傢過從甚密，同編文學期刊。1923年出版第一部詩集，1935年出版第一本短篇小說集，從此奠定了在阿根廷文壇上的地位。1946年因在反對庇隆的宣言上簽名，被革除圖書館中的職務，派任市場傢禽稽查員，但作傢拒絶任職並發表公開信表示抗議。1950年至1953年間任阿根廷作傢協會主席。1955年任國立圖書館館長、布宜諾斯艾利斯大學哲學文學係教授。1950年獲阿根廷國傢文學奬，1961年獲西班牙的福門托奬，1979年獲西班牙的塞萬提斯奬。
他少年時期的熱愛是蒙得維的亞。與布市隔着寬廣遲緩的拉普拉塔河，烏拉圭的首都。“你屬於我們，你像一次聚會，如水中映出的星星。在錯誤的時間出口處，你的街道註視着最明亮的過去。”詩人毫不掩飾他的貶低，“你那低低的太陽尚未照亮我的窗簾，已給你的別墅帶來了快樂”；雖然博爾赫斯後來也寫過類似於“難以相信布宜諾斯艾利斯竟有開端，我感到它如同空氣和水一般永恆”的詩作，但他私下卻談論那是他的敗筆。在晚年，博爾赫斯仍說“像布宜諾斯艾利斯大得不可思議，誰也無法瞭解它”。
1955 年，庇隆政府下臺後，他被新政府任命為阿根廷國傢圖書館館長。不幸的是，他當時因嚴重的眼疾雙目已近乎失明。他自嘲他說:“命運賜予我 80 萬册書，由我掌管，同時卻又給了我黑暗。”
但失明並沒有奪去博爾赫斯的藝術生命，在母親和友人的幫助下，他以無窮的毅力繼續創作，並修訂和整理出版丁一些早期作品。與此同時，他還 多次應邀前往歐美大學講學。
這個時期的主要作品有： 《迷宮》 （1964）、 《布羅迪埃的報告》 （1971）、 《沙子集》 （1975）， 《老虎的金子》 （1977）。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-婚姻家庭
博爾赫斯成功的另一個條件是，他背後有着兩位偉大女性的真摯的愛情和長期而有力的支持。稱這兩位女性為作傢的兩條臂膀或兩根支柱，恐不為過。
首先是比博爾赫斯更為高壽的母親、享年99秩的萊昂諾爾·阿塞韋多（1876－1975）女士。她出身望族，婚後操持傢務，但也博覽群書，學識豐富，且通曉英語。博爾赫斯傢族有失明病史。作傢父親豪爾赫·吉列爾莫·博爾赫斯先生（1874－1938）就是因為在1914年雙目幾乎完全失明，纔决定退休（是年僅40歲），舉傢遷往歐洲定居的。
博爾赫斯自幼眼力不佳，青年時期高度近視。1938年，禍不單行，眼睛嚴重撞傷，開始逐漸失明。從此，他就由母親幫助，從事文學活動。
J.L博爾赫斯1956年，眼科大夫嚴禁博爾赫斯讀書寫作。不得已，作傢逐漸學習憑記憶寫作，然後口授。從1938年到1975年阿塞韋多女士謝世這37年時間內，博爾赫斯就是依靠母親無微不至的關愛和幫助，纔得以完成其一生中最重要的文學創作活動的。偉大的母親不但以驚人的愛心照料他的起居生活，以驚人的耐心為作傢兒子讀書、念報、記錄及整理文稿，還以驚人的體力（出於對兒子的熱愛，體力似有神助），不顧七八十歲的高齡，陪作傢上街散步，甚至上班、出國訪問。1955年，博爾赫斯聽到自己被任命為阿根廷國立圖書館館長，不勝興奮。深夜，由母親陪同，步行至國立圖書館門前駐足觀望；1961年，母親陪同博爾赫斯出訪美國得剋薩斯大學講學。其時，阿塞韋多女士已分別為79歲和85歲之耄耋之年。行文至此，深為阿塞韋多女士崇高而偉大的母愛感動，不禁潸然淚下。
在失明而母親健在的這段期間，他創作並面世的有短篇小說集《小徑分岔的花園》 （1941）、 《杜撰錄》 （1944）、《阿萊夫》 （1949）、 《布羅迪報告》 （1970）、《沙之書》（1975），詩歌散文集《詩人》（1960）、《為六弦琴而作》（1965）、《影子的頌歌》（1969）、《另一個，同一個》（1969）、《老虎的金黃》（1972）、《深沉的玫瑰》（1975），評論集《探討別集》（1952）、《布宜諾斯艾利斯的語言》（1963）、《序言集成》（1971），譯品《卡夫卡短篇小說集》（1935）、《野棕櫚》（1940）、 《一個野蠻人在亞洲》（1940）、《巴特貝》（1944）、 《草葉集》 （1969）等。此外，博爾赫斯還與人合作，創作或編輯出版了大量的小說、散文、評論或文學教程。其文學生活極為豐富活躍。所有這一切，無不傾註着母親的辛勞和心血。
接替母親的重任，繼續支持博爾赫斯的另一位偉大的女性，便是博爾赫斯夫人瑪麗亞·兒玉女士。夫人是日裔阿根廷人，父為日本移民工程師。筆者1992年在阿根廷考察拉美文學時有幸結識夫人。筆者主編的《博爾赫斯全集》中文版已由浙江文藝出版社推出，兒玉女士不日將應邀來華訪問，參加《全集》首發式及簽名售書等活動，我國博氏作品愛好者將有機會一睹夫人的丰采。在我的印象裏，夫人的形象是這樣的：
兒玉女士長有一張歐、亞人特徵兼而有之的臉龐，長發披肩，但已經花白。夫人不施脂粉，不染指甲，平時也不佩戴首飾，顯得隨意大方。兩衹眼睛炯炯有神，像是在博氏書海的迷宮裏練就了一對深邃的目光；端正挺拔的鼻子和兩片薄薄的嘴唇露出堅毅剛強的氣質，不由得讓人感到她完成博氏未竟事業的决定與抱負；衹有她那驕小的身軀和一頭披肩長發方透出女性的嫵媚和溫柔。
據兒玉女士嚮報界透露，她是在12歲那年認識博爾赫斯的，當時，博爾赫斯已是一個年近花甲的老人了。夫人由於受父親的影響，很小便喜歡日本詩歌；而正是因為她對詩歌、對文學滿懷激情，纔使她跟博爾赫斯有緣連結在一起。兒玉女士在十六七歲的時候，中學畢了業，進入大學哲學文學係，便常常和博爾赫斯在一起研究盎格魯－撒剋遜文學，學習冰島文。兒玉回憶說，他們常常在一傢名叫“三桅船”的咖啡館裏聚會。博爾赫斯帶着原版書，兒玉則抱着一本語法書，就這麽一點一點地學習雙方共同感興趣的語言。博爾赫斯要兒玉弄明白原文的詞意，從最感興趣的地方入手，而不死摳語法。作傢往往引導他的學生像玩七巧板那樣拆卸或組裝單詞。這樣，一個個單詞、一篇篇文章，也就是一座座文字的迷宮，就被他們闖入了。這一時期，博爾赫斯心情特別愉快舒暢，甚至連眼睛也比以前明亮了，他曾不止一次地深情地望着兒玉，認真地說：“瑪麗亞，我看到你的輪廓了，真的！”
博爾赫斯[作傢]-相關作品
詩集《鐵幣》 （1976）、 《夜晚的故事》 （1977）、 《天數》 （1981）、 《密諜》 （1985），短篇小說集《夢之書》（1976）、 《莎士比亞的記憶》 （1985），詩歌散文集《阿德羅格》 （1977），演講集《博爾赫斯口述》 （1979）、《七夕》（1980）
博爾赫斯[作傢]-作品評述
博爾赫斯時時刻刻都在企圖賦予作品以形而上學的意義。
博爾赫斯
博爾赫斯小說中的宇宙模型是無限的、混沌的、主觀的、相對的、靜止的。在閱讀這些小說的時候，你總能將它與哲學、神學和數學相聯繫起來。
《環行廢墟》裏提供了一個簡潔到極至又復雜的難以想象的宇宙模型。小說中的魔法師，在夢裏創造了一個男孩。他對於“男孩是存在於我的夢裏”這個事實是十分清楚的，而在夢中被創造出的人（虛影）在踏進祭祀的火堆時是不會被灼傷的。荒謬的是他在擔心男孩踏進火堆時會發現自己是被創造出的幻影的時候，他自己踏入火堆卻安然無恙。最終他發現自己也是一個被創造的影子。（他朝火焰走去。火焰沒有吞噬他的皮肉，而是不燙不灼地撫慰他，淹沒了他。他寬慰地、慚愧地、害怕地知道他自己也是一個幻影，另一個人夢中的幻影。）
《環行廢墟》是非常具有力量的，當你讀它的時候你會一下陷入一種存在的荒謬中。因為這篇小說直接指嚮現實中的本體，而對於宇宙本身的無限，人是一直無法理解的。現實中沒有無限，而宇宙卻非要是無限嚮外延伸的不可。這個矛盾會讓人感到震驚，人永遠也想不清這個問題。
放在數學上， 《環行廢墟》裏的宇宙模型就像數軸，嚮兩端無限的延伸下去，而原點可以在任意一個位置上。《環行廢墟》裏的宇宙就是一個夢套一個夢，一個主體既是扮演創造者的上帝又是被另一個上帝所創造的人。就像兩面互相照射的鏡子，會聚了無窮多個世界。
除了《環行廢墟》，另一篇讓博爾赫斯着墨頗多的是《巴別圖書館》 （又譯作《通天塔圖書館》 ）。這篇小說融合了許多宗教和哲學的觀點。比如說開篇的引文“用這種技巧可以悟出二十三個字母的變異”，在文中，博爾赫斯試圖將無限拆分成最基本的２５個字符。這種類似於易經，易經用“兩儀”、“四象”、“八卦”直到“六十四卦”來描述世界。博爾赫斯讀過《易經》以及佛教的書，可以猜測，易經中的歸納思想被博爾赫斯用在這篇小說裏，用以描述宇宙的本原。而小說中圖書館（即宇宙）的構造是六角形的回廊，上下無限延伸，而每個回廊裏的門又通嚮另一個六角形。這個時空之間串聯的靈感或許來自佛教的“大千、中千、小千世界”。
《巴別圖書館》中的那本“包含了所有書籍的書籍”很明顯的是在比喻形而上的本體。而“有人提出逆行的辦法：為了確定甲書的位置，先查閱說明甲書的乙書；為了確定乙書的位置，先查閱說明乙書位置的丙書，依此無限的倒推上去……”則是對理性的置疑，很顯然的，博爾赫斯否認推理、論證這樣的手段可以認識本體。給玄學和宗教留下了一片天地，不讓世界整個被狂妄的“羅格斯”所侵吞掉。可以看出，博爾赫斯發現了東方與西方思維方式上的不同，他更傾嚮於東方的整體式的、隱喻式的、詩化的思維方法，而暗示西方的二元的、Logos的、分岔化的認識手段不適合於認識本體。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-社會影響
“作傢們的作傢”，這是人們對博爾赫斯的至高評價。它在中國的流行，則多少說明了中國作傢對博爾赫斯的敬畏。博爾赫斯對中國文學所産生的影響如此巨大，以至於誰不讀博爾赫斯，就必定是文學之盲；誰不談博爾赫斯，也仿佛等於無知淺薄。這樣一種帶有明顯強製性的文學時尚，終於使博爾赫斯在十幾億人口的泱泱大國生根開花，也使中國文學在十餘年的時間裏不斷變化、翻新，一派蓬勃。而這首先要歸功於翻譯傢。他們的功績遠勝於作傢的勞動。因為後者獲取的，是翻譯傢拿來的種子。而且，是翻譯傢的汗珠澆灌了作傢的禾苗。但是，在收穫的季節裏，人們常常微笑着忘卻了引進種子、付出汗水的人們。
各種版本
夢幻、迷宮、鏡子、玄想、時間、宇宙，這些無可捉摸的意象，風一般掠過你我身旁，衹可感悟，不可觸摸。許許多多遭遇過博爾赫斯之風的人大約都有這種感覺。一有從衆心理。但最終又有幾個真正闖進了錯綜復雜的博爾赫斯迷宮呢?多數人恐怕衹有布宜諾斯艾利斯街道的匆匆過客。有的可能剛剛踏進了迷宮的門檻，或者淺嘗輒止地在門口逗留一番；有的可能戰戰兢兢地摸了進去，但稍稍深入也就望而卻步了，然後便原路返回。更多的人是站在門口了望、圍觀，以便從各色打道回府的探險者嘴裏按過些感奮的吶喊或掃興的嘆息。而真正闖入迷宮並勝利找到出口者，卻是寥寥無幾。
博爾赫斯在中國的登陸，應該是上世紀80年代的事情。先有王央樂、陳凱先等人的譯介，並由此散播開來，竟一發而不可收了。之後，到了90年代，隨着陳衆議等人編譯的《博爾赫斯文集》的面世以及衆多盜版産品的出現，博爾赫斯之名如狂瀾席捲中華大地。博爾赫斯也由此完成了對中國作傢的精神占有。他的晦澀、神秘連同其夢囈、圈套及至重複與矛盾，統統成了中國作傢的寫作羅盤。惟一不能化來的是他的西班牙以及他的精短、他的洗練、他的貴族氣息。再之後，他的《全集》出版。終於，我們到了該做總結的時候。
於是有了《博爾赫斯》一書。它是中國人自己撰寫的一本博爾赫斯批評。它不僅有別於業已譯介過來的博爾赫斯評傳，也有別於迄今為止我所見到的所有關乎博爾赫斯的文字。此書可以說是國人對博爾赫斯迷宮的一次真正意義上的探詢，也是對縈繞在迷宮之上的衆多謎團的一次令人服膺的清理和驅逐。它以短短的15萬字，包容和解剖了一個大大的謎。它一方面剌博爾赫斯生平與作品於一體，另一方面又應付裕如地超越了一般生平傳略和作傢作品研究，有點有面，深入淺出。
它雖然沒有指出走進博爾赫斯迷宮的路徑，也沒有留下走出博爾赫斯迷宮的訣竅，卻處處顯示出一個譯傢、學者的孜孜探求：博爾赫斯是怎樣建築他的迷宮的，即他何以形成自己的文學羅盤並在世界範圍內産生影響。因此，我在《博爾赫斯》中看到了作傢建造迷宮的全過程，看到了迷宮的根基和機關陷阱、轉角和無數小徑，甚至還有斷垣殘壁和真假標志。我還清晰地看到，博爾赫斯不但有其作為生命個體的一般性和特殊性，而且有其作為一個著名作傢的起初的幼稚與盲目以及後來的矛盾與偏見。總之，這是唯物主義對唯心主義的一次清算。它給出的博爾赫斯是一個文人，而非一尊文神。博爾赫斯修建的是他的迷宮，而非普天同歸的文學聖殿。博爾赫斯衹為自己寫作、為少數喜歡形而上學的人寫作，卻並不負責為中國文學鋪路修橋。博爾赫斯衹能為一個挑燈夜戰的寫作者作伴，卻决不是每一個作傢日落之哀傷和日出之輝煌的任何保證。
而且，《博爾赫斯》文風特別。它給出的對象，是經過解構的重組。在此，讀者可以清楚地窺視博爾赫斯迷宮的景色。至於他能否感知迷宮、走出迷宮，則要看他的造化。於是我想，愛好或者懷疑博爾赫斯的人最好都來看一看《博爾赫斯》這本好書。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-博爾赫斯的著述數量
綜述
評論傢張洪浩曾經就博爾赫斯的著述數量做過梳理，並撰文說：很多人認為博爾赫斯作品很少。作傢餘華在訪談中曾說，博爾赫斯總共也就三本書。其實，這麽說是不對的。博爾赫斯儘管不是高産作傢，但他的書也不十分少，就純粹意義的文學作品而《博爾赫斯》全集言，至少比卡夫卡多。我們目前見到的《卡夫卡全集》是10330餘萬字（河北教育出版社1996年第1版），其中隨筆、談話錄、書信、日記占了6捲之多，而這些文字嚴格來說不是作品，衹是卡夫卡的思想殘片，以及他留下的文獻資料（就像《魯迅全集》一樣，實際意義上文學創作能占一半篇幅就不錯了）。而由博爾赫斯的夫人瑪麗亞·兒玉授權出版的《博爾赫斯全集》（浙江文藝出版社1999年第1版）儘管衹有5捲，卻全是實打實的作品，沒有一篇日記或者書信。
《全集》囊括的集子
《全集》囊括的集子如下：
詩歌捲：《布宜諾斯艾利斯激情》《面前的月亮》《聖馬丁札記》《詩人》《另一個，同一個》《為六弦琴而作》《影子的頌歌》《老虎的金黃》《深沉的玫瑰》《鐵幣》《夜晚的故事》《天數》《圖片册》《密謀》《博爾赫斯》全集小說捲：《惡棍列傳》《虛構集》《阿萊夫》《布羅迪報告》《沙之書》《莎士比亞的記憶》
散文捲：《埃瓦裏斯托·卡列戈》《討論集》《永恆史》《探討別集》《序言集成》《博爾赫斯口述》《七夕》《有關但丁的隨筆九篇》《文稿拾零》《私人藏書：序言集》 以上計有詩集14部、小說集6部、散文集8部。共28種。
但這並非真正意義的全集。出版前言中說：“遵照博爾赫斯本人的意願，沒有收入《探討集》（1925）、《我希望的尺度》（1926）和《阿根廷人的語言》（1928）三個集子”。可是，我們看一下書後所附博氏年譜，就會發現沒有收入《全集》的，遠遠不止三個集子。
《全集》中未收的集子
為了弄清博氏究竟寫了多少書，我就此做了一番爬梳，整理出一份博爾赫斯全部作品集的書目。以下是浙江版《全集》中未收的集子： 詩集：《紅色的旋律》《高喬詩歌》《短篇佳作選》
小說集：《賭徒的紙牌》《夢之書》《·多梅剋短篇小說集》《博爾赫斯》全集散文集：《探討集》（1925）、《我希望的尺度》（1926）、《阿根廷人的語言》（1928）、《日耳曼語古典文學》《幻想動物學教科書》《天堂與地獄之書》《布宜諾斯艾利斯的語言》
詩與散文的合集：《阿德羅格》
與人合作的小說集：《幻想文學作品選》《伊西德羅·帕羅梅的6個問題》《優秀短篇偵探小說集》《痞子，他的命運》《埃絡伊薩的姐妹》《岸邊人傢》《信徒的天堂》《中世紀日耳曼文學》《·多梅剋紀事》
與人合作編著的書：《美國文學入門》《什麽是佛教》《盎－撒剋魯作品簡編》
以上計有詩集3部、小說集3部、散文集7部、詩與散文合集1部，與人合作的小說集9部與人合作編輯出版的書3部，共26種。
就是說，博爾赫斯的全部著述（含編著）應在50種以上。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-作品評述
博爾赫斯時時刻刻都在企圖賦予作品以形而上學的意義。 博爾赫斯小說中的宇宙模型是無限的、混沌的、主觀的、相對的、靜止的。在閱讀這些小說的時候，你總能將它與哲學、神學和數學相聯繫起來。《環行廢墟》裏提供了一個簡潔到極至又復雜的難以想象的宇宙模型。小說中的魔法師，在夢裏創造了一個男孩。他對於“男孩是存在於我的夢裏”這個事實是十分清楚的，而在夢中被創造出的人（虛影）在踏進祭祀的火堆時是不會被灼傷的。荒謬的是他在擔心男孩踏進火堆時會發現自己是被創造出的幻影的時候，他自己踏入火堆卻安然無恙。最終他發現自己也是一個被創造的影子。（他朝火焰走去。火焰沒有吞噬他的皮肉，而是不燙不灼地撫慰他，淹沒了他。他寬慰地、慚愧地、害怕地知道他自己也是一個幻影，另一個人夢中的幻影。）《環行廢墟》是非常具有力量的，當你讀它的時候你會一下陷入一種存在的荒謬中。因為這篇小說直接指嚮現實中的本體，而對於宇宙本身的無限，人是一直無法理解的。現實中沒有無限，而宇宙卻非要是無限嚮外延伸的不可。這個矛盾會讓人感到震驚，人永遠也想不清這個問題。
放在數學上， 《環行廢墟》裏的宇宙模型就像數軸，嚮兩端無限的延伸下去，而原點可以在任意一個位置上。《環行廢墟》裏的宇宙就是一個夢套一個夢，一個主體既是扮演創造者的上帝又是被另一個上帝所創造的人。就像兩面互相照射的鏡子，會聚了無窮多個世界。除了《環行廢墟》，另一篇讓博爾赫斯着墨頗多的是《巴別圖書館》 （又譯作《通天塔圖書館》 ）。這篇小說融合了許多宗教和哲學的觀點。比如說開篇的引文“用這種技巧可以悟出二十三個字母的變異”，在文中，博爾赫斯試圖將無限拆分成最基本的２５個字符。這種類似於易經，易經用“兩儀”、“四象”、“八卦”直到“六十四卦”來描述世界。博爾赫斯讀過《易經》以及佛教的書，可以猜測，易經中的歸納思想被博爾赫斯用在這篇小說裏，用以描述宇宙的本原。而小說中圖書館（即宇宙）的構造是六角形的回廊，上下無限延伸，而每個回廊裏的門又通嚮另一個六角形。這個時空之間串聯的靈感或許來自佛教的“大千、中千、小千世界”。《巴別圖書館》中的那本“包含了所有書籍的書籍”很明顯的是在比喻形而上的本體。而“有人提出逆行的辦法：為了確定甲書的位置，先查閱說明甲書的乙書；為了確定乙書的位置，先查閱說明乙書位置的丙書，依此無限的倒推上去……”則是對理性的置疑，很顯然的，博爾赫斯否認推理、論證這樣的手段可以認識本體。給玄學和宗教留下了一片天地，不讓世界整個被狂妄的“羅格斯”所侵吞掉。可以看出，博爾赫斯發現了東方與西方思維方式上的不同，他更傾嚮於東方的整體式的、隱喻式的、詩化的思維方法，而暗示西方的二元的、Logos的、分岔化的認識手段不適合於認識本體。
博爾赫斯[作傢]-衆說博爾赫斯
讀書是博爾赫斯生活中一項具有壓倒性優勢的活動，而且對於他的寫作意義重大。他曾說：“我是一個作傢，但更是一個好讀者。”他的最初和主要的知識來源可能是他父親的藏書室，到了開始真正作傢生涯時，他已經是一個學貫東西、富有真知灼見的青年學者了。人們想像中那個在寧靜幽暗、滿是灰塵的的圖書館裏坐擁書城，讀破萬卷、下筆有神的形象，可能是個誤解。至少在被任命為國立圖書館館長的時候，他已經近乎完全失明，所以他不無苦澀地寫了一首詩嚮上帝致敬：“他以如此妙的諷刺／同時給了我書籍和失明……” 讀書對於作傢博爾赫斯的意義，至少有兩條必須強調：一，讀書使得他從不將自己的視野局限在阿根廷的現實中，而是以整個西方文明為自己的當然傳統和精神源泉，並以它的正宗傳人自居(他身上的英國血統更強化了這一傾嚮)。二，由於讀書在生活中的比重之大，與大多數作傢不同，是書籍而不是生活成了博爾赫斯的寫作素材。以小說為例，博爾赫斯之所以被稱作“作傢中的作傢”，就是因為他的寫作從書中來，到書中去，作品帶有元小說特徵，既具有形而上的藝術思維方式的普適性，又容易模仿，所以後世追隨者非常多。博爾赫斯是20世紀現代主義文學與後現代文學的分水嶺。從他開始，傳統的文學觀念發生了很大變化，如文學種類的界限被打破、客觀時間被取消、幽默與荒謬結合、寫真與魔幻統一等等。 詩歌、散文和短篇小說是博爾赫斯三大創作成果，而且各有千秋，相互輝映。有一種很生動的說法是：“他的散文讀起來像小說；他的小說是詩；他的詩歌又往往使人覺得像散文。溝通三者的橋梁是他的思想。”他是與帕斯、聶魯達齊名的拉美三大詩人之一，他的詩歌語言質樸，風格純淨，意境悠遠。他的散文大多非常短小，但構思新穎，結構巧妙，安德烈·莫洛亞：“博爾赫斯是一位衹寫小文章的大作傢。小文章而成大氣候，在於其智慧的光芒、設想的豐富和文筆的簡潔——像數學一樣簡潔的文筆。”
儘管是《小徑分岔的花園》使博爾赫斯名揚天下，但他寫於1939年的一篇名為《特隆，烏剋巴爾，奧比斯·特蒂烏斯》的小說也許更值得註意，因為他在其中將模糊真實時間和虛構空間界限的本領發揮到了極緻，“虛構”這一美學概念從此在他的藝術世界裏占據了最重要的位置，而20世紀的世界文學也將大受裨益。故事從作者同好友比奧伊的對話開始，後者在一部偽托的百科全書裏核查一段他認為起源於烏剋巴爾的文字，大意是：鏡子和男女交媾是可憎的，因為它們使人的數目倍增。由這些本已不可靠的敘述，又引出關於一個虛構的無所不在的國度特隆的敘述，讀者被牽引着進入了一個意義、概念、歷史、真實和虛幻糾纏在一起的迷宮，終難自拔。博爾赫斯成名後，連傢中的女傭也成了報界采訪的對象。這位侍奉博爾赫斯傢族多年的老女傭稱，博爾赫斯創作這篇小說的靈感源於傢中圖書館內一套漏頁的百科全書。博爾赫斯上中學時，有一次為了完成語言課的作業而查閱了某個條目，發現了百科全書缺頁，還在當日的晚餐上嚮傢裏人宣佈。對這篇小說，有論者作了如下總結：“在一個走嚮瘋狂的世界，知識分子的反應衹能是極端的禁欲主義形式，享受文學的情節，除自成體係的文學範疇之外，否定一切秩序。”
作於1941年的《小徑分岔的花園》表面上采用了偵探小說的形式：一戰中，中國博士餘準做了德國間諜，遭到英國軍官馬登的追蹤。他躲入漢學家斯蒂芬·艾伯特博士傢中，見到了小徑分岔的花園。餘準殺害了艾伯特博士，以此通知德軍轟炸位於艾伯特的英軍炮兵陣地，最後被馬登逮捕。實際上博爾赫斯意不在此，他用小徑分岔的花園造了一座迷宮，又藉角色的口宣佈“寫小說和造迷宮是一回事”，而下面的話纔揭示了小說的主題：“由相互靠攏、分歧、交錯或永遠不幹擾的時間織成的網絡包含了所有的可能性。”博爾赫斯將關於時間相對性的深奧、復雜的哲學問題訴諸小說這一藝術形式，充分顯示了他過人的智慧和非凡的文學才能。
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.