Jorge Luis Borges

1
Jorge Luis Borges

• Allusions and References

2
Background on Borges

• Born August 24, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1906 Translation of Oscar Wildes The Happy
  Prince appears in a local newspaper.
• 1914 The Borges family moves to Switzerland,
  where Borges taught himself German, French, and
  Latin.

3
Early Writing

• After the end of World War I Borges spent three
  years in Spain where he became a member of the
  avant-garde Ultraist movement.
• 1921 Fervor de Buenos Aires, a book of poems is
  published
• Co-founded the journals Prisma (1921-22) and Proa
  (1922-1926)
• Regular contributor to Sur (1931)

4

• 1933 Borges is appointed editor of the literary
  supplement of the newspaper Critica
• Published pieces that were a cross between
  non-fictional essays and fictional short stories.
  
• Used fictional techniques to tell essentially
  true stories and literary forgeries (things that
  claimed to be translations of passages from
  famous, but seldom read works)

5
Borges and Politics

• Dictatorships foster oppression , dictatorships
  foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty
  more abominable is the fact that they foster
  idiocy.

6
The Relationship Between Fact and Fiction The
Garden of Forking PathsEl jardin de senderos que
se bifurcan

• Published in 1941
• Included eight stories
• El Sur
• Loosely autobiographical
• Relationship between fact and fiction

7
Themes and Symbols

• Time
• Reality vs. Dreams
• labyrinths
• The game of chess
• Philosophy
• Religion

8
Time

• Time is the substance from which I am made.
  Time is a river it is a tiger that devours me,
  but I am the tiger it is a fire that consumes
  me, but I am the fire.
• --essay A New Refutation of Time
  1946

9
Symbols

• Through the years, a man peoples a space with
  images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays,
  ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars,
  horses and people. Shortly before his death, he
  discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines
  traces the image of his own face.

10
RealityReality is not always probable or
likely

• Every novel is a plane inserted into the realm
  of reality.
• -- Borges in his essay Partial Magic in the
  Quixotic

11
Further Resources

• Borges, Jorge Luis. Selected Poems. Ed. Elliot
  Weinberger. New York Penguin, 1999.
• Borges, Jorge Luis. Selected Non-Fictions. Ed.
  Alexander Coleman. New York Penguin, 1999.
• Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Trans.
  Andrew Hurley. New York Penguin, 1998.
• Williamson, Edwin. Borges A Life. New York
  Penguin, 2004.