Labyrinths
by Jorge Luis Borges
On This Page
Description
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original figures in modern literature. Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, drawn from books published over the years, with one of the most famous being the short story The Library of Babel, in which he imagines an infinite library filled with every book written, not yet written, and every combination of show more words and letters in between. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
LamontCranston "The composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality."
02
LamontCranston "The composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality."
02
by emydid
Member Reviews
"Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon."
I picked this up a couple years ago, read two or three stories, then relegated it to my bookshelf. On this second encounter I'm much more impressed. I came with the wrong mindset before; you can’t expect a great deal of plot or characterization from Borges, but you will find fascinating ideas and elegant, sometimes haunting prose.
My favorite entry is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” which explores a society that has internalized idealist show more philosophy (the belief that the external world does not exist independently of minds). I’m fascinated by Berkeyelan idealism, so it was fun to find it as a recurring theme in this collection.
The implications of possible and actual infinities are another recurring theme. The famous story “The Library of Babel” considers what you might find in a library whose books contained all possible permutations of letters; hidden amongst the gibberish there could be, for example, "Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future.” show less
I picked this up a couple years ago, read two or three stories, then relegated it to my bookshelf. On this second encounter I'm much more impressed. I came with the wrong mindset before; you can’t expect a great deal of plot or characterization from Borges, but you will find fascinating ideas and elegant, sometimes haunting prose.
My favorite entry is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” which explores a society that has internalized idealist show more philosophy (the belief that the external world does not exist independently of minds). I’m fascinated by Berkeyelan idealism, so it was fun to find it as a recurring theme in this collection.
The implications of possible and actual infinities are another recurring theme. The famous story “The Library of Babel” considers what you might find in a library whose books contained all possible permutations of letters; hidden amongst the gibberish there could be, for example, "Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future.” show less
This was my first Borges experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the plunge. For one, as a previous reviewer wrote, "I want to live in his brain." Two, too, to wit: I enjoyed the set up of this collection. It reads like a labyrinth and offers intellectual and philosophical stimulus as a whole and in its parts. I'm also a sucker for the literary reference rabbit hole and found the richness of such in Borges' writing a bit addicting. Forget the tortoise and Achilles, Zeno, let's talk about the fact that I will never quite reach the finish line concerning my hoarded composition books of notes inspired by this collection. Before I finish one sentence I have to complete half, half of the half, and half of the half of the half. If only infinity show more were merely illusory.
Two Carroll references in one review. Let us go for a third - “I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”
The best books are the ones that precipitate change and the best changes of my life have typically been precipitated by such. I think the love I have for Borges' intellect is that I felt the stirrings of change and growth whilst reading his work. show less
Two Carroll references in one review. Let us go for a third - “I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”
The best books are the ones that precipitate change and the best changes of my life have typically been precipitated by such. I think the love I have for Borges' intellect is that I felt the stirrings of change and growth whilst reading his work. show less
Another daunting and dominant collection of stories; the only drawback of Labyrinths is not in the quality of Borges but in the fact that many of the stories reproduced here are already available in the collection known as Fictions (Ficciones). Nevertheless, they – and stories I hadn't read before, such as 'The House of Asterion' – were fantastic and truly memorable.
There's no writer quite like Borges; not only in the originality of his ideas (addressing time, memory, reality and other concepts that in my review of Fictions I summarised as 'quantum occultism'), but in his lucidity and élan. There are some emphatic storytelling constructions and great turns of phrase: for example, "Homer and I separated at the gates of Tangier; I show more think we did not even say goodbye" (pg. 146). Borges is not just an ideas man.
Labyrinths also contains numerous essays in addition to its short stories (it is part of Borges' feat of verisimilitude that it's hard to tell the difference), and in one of these essays, Borges writes that "our language is so saturated and animated by time that it is quite possible there is not one statement in these pages which in some way does not demand or invoke the idea of time" (pg. 253). Part of the joy of witnessing Borges play with language comes from this; that he is writing about the complexities and paradoxes of time and consciousness by taking our imperfect, mortal language to its tensile limits. The stories here are often difficult to wrap your head around, possessing an intimidating "metaphysical perplexity" (pg. 253), but Borges is bringing us sight rather than shade. "A labyrinth is a structure compounded to confuse men; its architecture, rich in symmetries, is subordinated to that end," he writes on page 141. It is part of this writer's genius that he creates labyrinths, not to confuse us, but so that we can better understand. show less
There's no writer quite like Borges; not only in the originality of his ideas (addressing time, memory, reality and other concepts that in my review of Fictions I summarised as 'quantum occultism'), but in his lucidity and élan. There are some emphatic storytelling constructions and great turns of phrase: for example, "Homer and I separated at the gates of Tangier; I show more think we did not even say goodbye" (pg. 146). Borges is not just an ideas man.
Labyrinths also contains numerous essays in addition to its short stories (it is part of Borges' feat of verisimilitude that it's hard to tell the difference), and in one of these essays, Borges writes that "our language is so saturated and animated by time that it is quite possible there is not one statement in these pages which in some way does not demand or invoke the idea of time" (pg. 253). Part of the joy of witnessing Borges play with language comes from this; that he is writing about the complexities and paradoxes of time and consciousness by taking our imperfect, mortal language to its tensile limits. The stories here are often difficult to wrap your head around, possessing an intimidating "metaphysical perplexity" (pg. 253), but Borges is bringing us sight rather than shade. "A labyrinth is a structure compounded to confuse men; its architecture, rich in symmetries, is subordinated to that end," he writes on page 141. It is part of this writer's genius that he creates labyrinths, not to confuse us, but so that we can better understand. show less
When book lovers from Harold Bloom to Michael Dirda praise a writer as highly as they do Jorge Luis Borges, I approach the author with trepidation. So it was with Labyrinths. I’m sorry I waited this long.
The stories, essays, and parables collected here deal with a few central ideas: God, shared consciousness, Xeno’s paradox, the identity of a person and his nemesis, and something I’ll helplessly describe as the idea that each single act is eternal and universal: Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it; any man is all men.
Yet Borges works out the implications of this small inventory of ideas in rich variations that seem limitless. Two recurrent images are “mirror” and “labyrinth”. These are fitting, given his show more underlying philosophy. They are apt metaphors for consciousness—especially the mind trying to examine itself.
I should also mention one more feature, something you don’t expect from a book on one of those intimidating “you must read this” lists: namely, how often I laughed out loud. I savored the narrative voice, the voice of a pedant, writing with ironical distance. This voice—both in its pedantry and its irony—seems apt because I felt Borges has indeed made his way through the infinite library—not the frightening library of Babel he invents, but the existing one that stands in part on my shelves as well. I recognized myself in his story, “The Theologians”: “Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy (Aurelian’s current project) enabled him to fulfill his obligations to many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect.”
I suspect this is one of those books I will not neglect, but reread. show less
The stories, essays, and parables collected here deal with a few central ideas: God, shared consciousness, Xeno’s paradox, the identity of a person and his nemesis, and something I’ll helplessly describe as the idea that each single act is eternal and universal: Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it; any man is all men.
Yet Borges works out the implications of this small inventory of ideas in rich variations that seem limitless. Two recurrent images are “mirror” and “labyrinth”. These are fitting, given his show more underlying philosophy. They are apt metaphors for consciousness—especially the mind trying to examine itself.
I should also mention one more feature, something you don’t expect from a book on one of those intimidating “you must read this” lists: namely, how often I laughed out loud. I savored the narrative voice, the voice of a pedant, writing with ironical distance. This voice—both in its pedantry and its irony—seems apt because I felt Borges has indeed made his way through the infinite library—not the frightening library of Babel he invents, but the existing one that stands in part on my shelves as well. I recognized myself in his story, “The Theologians”: “Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy (Aurelian’s current project) enabled him to fulfill his obligations to many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect.”
I suspect this is one of those books I will not neglect, but reread. show less
Ah, Borges. My habit is only rarely to re-read, but the short stories of Borges have good reasons to be an exception. I'm nearly sure I've read everything in this collection before, many times in some cases (e.g 'The Library of Babel', always a favourite). There is something special about Borges stories, however, that makes the reading experience significantly different depending on the order you read them in. I'm pretty sure this is a metaphysical effect rather than differences in translation. The analogy that occurs to me is a collection of differently coloured beads, each beautiful on its own yet capable of forming strikingly different patterns depending on the order in which they are strung. Of course such ontological slipperiness show more is a major theme; rereading 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' and finding it new each time proves the story's point. After quoting precisely the same sentence twice, Borges notes:
More than any other writer, Borges acknowledges and explores the space between the written word and reader comprehension thereof. I think this makes his stories exceptionally compelling to keen readers, as well as his talents for resonant imagery and memorable ideas. He never wrote a whole novel, perhaps because he could explain his ideas so succinctly that there was no need. Or perhaps because had he done so it would have destabilised reality in dangerous ways. (Did Borges ever feature in Doom Patrol? If not, he should have.)
I wonder what GPT-4 would produce if trained on nothing but Borges fiction repeated over and over on shuffle. Funnily enough, on this occasion 'Funes the Memorious' struck me as foreshadowing machine learning. This tale treats a man's extremely precise memory as an impediment to life and a totally different way of existing in the world to the majority of forgetful humanity. This could be a comment on the difficulties of training neural networks to classify images:
Perhaps imprecision is vital to communication and the need for mnemonic shortcuts enables thought and ideas, so perhaps accelerating data processing speed cannot not improve the approximation of what we call intelligence.
I was also particularly struck by 'Death and the Compass', the sharpest and most effective mockery of private detective stories I've ever read. It was far more memorable than during any prior encounter, while a previous favourite 'The Circular Ruins' proved less impactful this time. From 'The Immortal' I learned two new words that I must surely have read before then forgotten:
Exiguous means very small and nitid shiny. I commend the translator ('J.E.I') for choosing such flamboyantly obscure synonyms. [b:Labyrinths|34660217|Labyrinths|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490162410l/34660217._SY75_.jpg|376514] also includes essays and parables. I'm unsure whether I've previously read 'Kafka and his precursors' - surely it was in [b:The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986|30712|The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331495549l/30712._SY75_.jpg|31055]? If so, though, it seemed entirely new in the light of [a:Walter Benjamin|1860|Walter Benjamin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651512562p2/1860.jpg]'s complicated Kafka essay in [b:Illuminations|52213|Illuminations|Walter Benjamin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348396316l/52213._SY75_.jpg|440208]. Borges' commentary was much easier to follow, indeed I cannot help but think he made similar points much more succinctly. The central point is this:
This seems entirely intuitive to me. While reviewing a book, I am deciding where to place it in my mental library. As such a library is not constrained by actual shelves, this process involves locating the book between its precursors and successors, among those I found similar to read, and opposite books that contradict it. As another book is added, the whole library shifts slightly so new connections can form. Moreover, events or conversations may inspire adjustments (to what I consider a dystopia, for example). This mental process is articulated best by Borges and one of his successors, [a:Alberto Manguel|3602|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1227041892p2/3602.jpg]. Both writers are not only a joy to read, but have made me a better reader. Every time I read a Borges story, I can feel the structures and interconnections in my mental library becoming stronger. show less
The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard - quite foreign, after all - suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.
There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless.
More than any other writer, Borges acknowledges and explores the space between the written word and reader comprehension thereof. I think this makes his stories exceptionally compelling to keen readers, as well as his talents for resonant imagery and memorable ideas. He never wrote a whole novel, perhaps because he could explain his ideas so succinctly that there was no need. Or perhaps because had he done so it would have destabilised reality in dangerous ways. (Did Borges ever feature in Doom Patrol? If not, he should have.)
I wonder what GPT-4 would produce if trained on nothing but Borges fiction repeated over and over on shuffle. Funnily enough, on this occasion 'Funes the Memorious' struck me as foreshadowing machine learning. This tale treats a man's extremely precise memory as an impediment to life and a totally different way of existing in the world to the majority of forgetful humanity. This could be a comment on the difficulties of training neural networks to classify images:
They permit us to glimpse or infer the nature of Funes' vertiginous world. He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it impossible for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (see from the front). [...] He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform, instantaneous, and almost intolerably precise world.
Perhaps imprecision is vital to communication and the need for mnemonic shortcuts enables thought and ideas, so perhaps accelerating data processing speed cannot not improve the approximation of what we call intelligence.
I was also particularly struck by 'Death and the Compass', the sharpest and most effective mockery of private detective stories I've ever read. It was far more memorable than during any prior encounter, while a previous favourite 'The Circular Ruins' proved less impactful this time. From 'The Immortal' I learned two new words that I must surely have read before then forgotten:
Intolerably, I dreamed of an exiguous and nitid labyrinth: in the centre was a water jar; my hands almost touched it, my eyes could see it, but so intricate and perplexed were the curves that I knew I would die before reaching it.
Exiguous means very small and nitid shiny. I commend the translator ('J.E.I') for choosing such flamboyantly obscure synonyms. [b:Labyrinths|34660217|Labyrinths|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490162410l/34660217._SY75_.jpg|376514] also includes essays and parables. I'm unsure whether I've previously read 'Kafka and his precursors' - surely it was in [b:The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986|30712|The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331495549l/30712._SY75_.jpg|31055]? If so, though, it seemed entirely new in the light of [a:Walter Benjamin|1860|Walter Benjamin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651512562p2/1860.jpg]'s complicated Kafka essay in [b:Illuminations|52213|Illuminations|Walter Benjamin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348396316l/52213._SY75_.jpg|440208]. Borges' commentary was much easier to follow, indeed I cannot help but think he made similar points much more succinctly. The central point is this:
In the critic's vocabulary, the word 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotation of polemics or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
This seems entirely intuitive to me. While reviewing a book, I am deciding where to place it in my mental library. As such a library is not constrained by actual shelves, this process involves locating the book between its precursors and successors, among those I found similar to read, and opposite books that contradict it. As another book is added, the whole library shifts slightly so new connections can form. Moreover, events or conversations may inspire adjustments (to what I consider a dystopia, for example). This mental process is articulated best by Borges and one of his successors, [a:Alberto Manguel|3602|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1227041892p2/3602.jpg]. Both writers are not only a joy to read, but have made me a better reader. Every time I read a Borges story, I can feel the structures and interconnections in my mental library becoming stronger. show less
A delight. Each piece hovers a different lens across the remarkable erudition of its author. Borges’ deep, dreamlike prose is difficult to read but highly re-readable.
Using myriad allusions to science and the western canon as tools, Borges writes fictions that takes apart ideas in human thought. Many stories follow an encounter with the philosophical or esoteric unknown. The tension comes as much from the intellectual implications as from the protagonists’ apprehension. For example, in Funes the Memorious, a meditation on a boy with perfect memory, Borges concludes that the gift destroys cognition. Other stories feature concepts like a world where Berkelian idealism is literally true, a library of every possible book, or an show more immortal city in the era of Rome.
Borges’ literary criticism sheds light on the origins of his ideas as it deconstructs the western canon. One thing that sets these essays apart is that Borges is learned in mathematics as well as literature, and his logical tendencies distinguish him from other pansophic critics like Harold Bloom. In particular, Zeno’s infinitesimal paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise shows itself again and again in Labyrinths, and finally receives a full treatment in the essay Avatars of the Tortoise.
The parables show Borges at his purest, unconstrained by the demands of form. Though short, their exotic ideas leave the reader with a strange and singular aftertaste, like waking from a dream.
Borges is not for the faint of heart, but if you find yourself looking for something tough to chew on, few authors are richer than he. show less
Using myriad allusions to science and the western canon as tools, Borges writes fictions that takes apart ideas in human thought. Many stories follow an encounter with the philosophical or esoteric unknown. The tension comes as much from the intellectual implications as from the protagonists’ apprehension. For example, in Funes the Memorious, a meditation on a boy with perfect memory, Borges concludes that the gift destroys cognition. Other stories feature concepts like a world where Berkelian idealism is literally true, a library of every possible book, or an show more immortal city in the era of Rome.
Borges’ literary criticism sheds light on the origins of his ideas as it deconstructs the western canon. One thing that sets these essays apart is that Borges is learned in mathematics as well as literature, and his logical tendencies distinguish him from other pansophic critics like Harold Bloom. In particular, Zeno’s infinitesimal paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise shows itself again and again in Labyrinths, and finally receives a full treatment in the essay Avatars of the Tortoise.
The parables show Borges at his purest, unconstrained by the demands of form. Though short, their exotic ideas leave the reader with a strange and singular aftertaste, like waking from a dream.
Borges is not for the faint of heart, but if you find yourself looking for something tough to chew on, few authors are richer than he. show less
An aptly named collection of stories, essays, and parables by influential Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges. The stories deal mainly with trippy topics like labyrinths, unreality, multiple selves, infinity, and other metaphysical conundrums. They can get quite far-out, but Borges writes in a formal intelligent style. It’s quite clear that he was some kind of genius with an encyclopaedic memory, as his work is filled with obscure references to literature, philosophy, history, physics- you name it! But don’t let that scare you, as Borges often frames these heavy topics in stories with interesting plots. We encounter magicians, murderers, war criminals, spies, heretics, detectives, minotaurs, immortals, avenging daughters, and all show more sorts of other weirdos. Borges also employs tons of settings. Each story is set in some different location and time period; some are familiar (e.g. Germany in World War II), but others are less recognizable (e.g. the universe of libraries).
Borges uses lots of the fantastic in his writing, as reality is always called into question. Anything can happen- time can stop, doubles exist, coins possess people, and the stories always twist and turn into unexpected directions. Some familiar patterns pop up, especially the idea that one man is all men, the universe is an infinite circle with no circumference, and that being a ‘self’ is more complicated than we imagine. Opposites often end up being the same. Maybe Judas is a reflection of Jesus and just as holy. Maybe philosophical enemies are one and the same person. In Borges’ fiction, life is not as simple as good/evil, civilized/savage, reality/dream. You can see why this guy is revered by postmodern writers/intellectual stoners!
The essays are just as mind-bending. Most of them deal with his usual themes, but I especially enjoyed the ones about literature. He discusses that Argentinean writers need not limit themselves by writing just about their country, but should rather use less obvious means to define their national character. He writes about why Don Quixote creeps us out, why every writer creates own precursors, and how literature is inexhaustible because it is a living exchange with a reader not a random combination of words.
The parables are a curious add-on. They are similar to the stories, just more cryptic due to their extreme brevity. Some of them have to do with writing, with references to Dante, Don Quixote, Shakespeare, and Borges himself. Borges appears in a few of his stories too, or at least a character named Borges. Borges plays with the multiple identity of being an author, a “real” person, and a fictional construct. Who knows where our real identity lies…
This collection has so much heavy duty stuff that I instantly reread after completion. I feel that I could do the same after my second reading, until my life becomes a labyrinth of obsessively reading Borges again and again. It wouldn't be the worst life really. He's got so much to offer the reader- every story/essay/parable contains a world of ideas. Expansive thoughts trapped in a minimalist, short format.
Borges isn’t always easy reading, but he is always thought-provoking. I ended up with seven pages of notes from this book! Lots of ideas to ponder… I think this is a good introduction to his works and I’ll probably go on to read his Collected Fictions someday.
“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.” show less
Borges uses lots of the fantastic in his writing, as reality is always called into question. Anything can happen- time can stop, doubles exist, coins possess people, and the stories always twist and turn into unexpected directions. Some familiar patterns pop up, especially the idea that one man is all men, the universe is an infinite circle with no circumference, and that being a ‘self’ is more complicated than we imagine. Opposites often end up being the same. Maybe Judas is a reflection of Jesus and just as holy. Maybe philosophical enemies are one and the same person. In Borges’ fiction, life is not as simple as good/evil, civilized/savage, reality/dream. You can see why this guy is revered by postmodern writers/intellectual stoners!
The essays are just as mind-bending. Most of them deal with his usual themes, but I especially enjoyed the ones about literature. He discusses that Argentinean writers need not limit themselves by writing just about their country, but should rather use less obvious means to define their national character. He writes about why Don Quixote creeps us out, why every writer creates own precursors, and how literature is inexhaustible because it is a living exchange with a reader not a random combination of words.
The parables are a curious add-on. They are similar to the stories, just more cryptic due to their extreme brevity. Some of them have to do with writing, with references to Dante, Don Quixote, Shakespeare, and Borges himself. Borges appears in a few of his stories too, or at least a character named Borges. Borges plays with the multiple identity of being an author, a “real” person, and a fictional construct. Who knows where our real identity lies…
This collection has so much heavy duty stuff that I instantly reread after completion. I feel that I could do the same after my second reading, until my life becomes a labyrinth of obsessively reading Borges again and again. It wouldn't be the worst life really. He's got so much to offer the reader- every story/essay/parable contains a world of ideas. Expansive thoughts trapped in a minimalist, short format.
Borges isn’t always easy reading, but he is always thought-provoking. I ended up with seven pages of notes from this book! Lots of ideas to ponder… I think this is a good introduction to his works and I’ll probably go on to read his Collected Fictions someday.
“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.” show less
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Author Information
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Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1899, Jorge Borges was educated by an English governess and later studied in Europe. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1921, where he helped to found several avant-garde literary periodicals. In 1955, after the fall of Juan Peron, whom he vigorously opposed, he was appointed director of the Argentine National show more Library. With Samuel Beckett he was awarded the $10,000 International Publishers Prize in 1961, which helped to establish him as one of the most prominent writers in the world. Borges regularly taught and lectured throughout the United States and Europe. His ideas have been a profound influence on writers throughout the Western world and on the most recent developments in literary and critical theory. A prolific writer of essays, short stories, and plays, Borges's concerns are perhaps clearest in his stories. He regarded people's endeavors to understand an incomprehensible world as fiction; hence, his fiction is metaphysical and based on what he called an esthetics of the intellect. Some critics have called him a mystic of the intellect. Dreamtigers (1960) is considered a masterpiece. A central image in Borges's work is the labyrinth, a mental and poetic construct, that he considered a universe in miniature, which human beings build and therefore believe they control but which nevertheless traps them. In spite of Borges's belief that people cannot understand the chaotic world, he continually attempted to do so in his writing. Much of his work deals with people's efforts to find the center of the labyrinth, symbolic of achieving understanding of their place in a mysterious universe. In such later works as The Gold of the Tigers, Borges wrote of his lifelong descent into blindness and how it affected his perceptions of the world and himself as a writer. Borges died in Geneva in 1986. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Labyrinths
- Original publication date
- 1962
- Important places
- Uqbar; Tlön; Babylon; Argentina; Babel
- Important events
- World War II
- First words
- I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.
- Quotations
- A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory... (show all).
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Oh destiny of Borges, perhaps no stranger than your own.
- Blurbers
- Updike, John; Barth, John
- Original language
- Spanish
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 868.6209 — Literature & rhetoric Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures Spanish miscellaneous writings 20th Century 1900-1945
- LCC
- PQ7797 .B635 .L3 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Spanish literature Provincial, local, colonial, etc. Spanish America
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 7,607
- Popularity
- 1,491
- Reviews
- 88
- Rating
- (4.43)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 20
- ASINs
- 39