Consultant Dan
24 August 2011
Happy Birthday Borges
Today is the 112th birthday of Borges.
I only just realised this because a friend noted on his Facebook wall that Google’s homepage is bearing a tribute graphic. It is such an un-Borges situation that I think Borges would find it amusing.
Jorge Luis Borges is one of the great discoveries that you can make in the life of your mind. You should give him a go, even if you are not a fan of Latin American Magical Realism, which he essentially invented.
Borges was a prominent Argentine intellectual, writer, critic and librarian. He lived in Buenos Aires and Switzerland. He spoke several languages and read heavily across centuries of English, German and French literature and even translated tales from Old Norse. He had a thing for red heads and an issue with swords and daggers.
I first read some Borges short stories when I was 15, from the English-language anthology Labyrinths (1962). It was a profound experience to see how confidently this writer would invent realities and philosophies and propagate hoaxes about history, language, people, ideas and time.
His knowledge was Encyclopaedic and his passions idiosyncratic.
Borges writes about the world as if it is a story and created stories as if they were worlds.
He doubted time, the concept of the self, as well as his own self and seemed to see literature as the ultimate form of human freedom. His works can be irritatingly heavy for many people but there is much lightness, or at least adroitness, in everything he penned. You just need to let go and experience the fantasies, tangents and obsessions.
Lovers of poetry should delve into his poetry. Its not something I read often but there are some gems to be found.
Borges also wrote about the contemporary struggles of Argentina. He was prodigiously active as a cultural figure, sometimes siding with political forces I would have feared and opposed if I had been there, I think.
His essays and reviews are wonderful, pithy gems. Borges could be equally obtuse, insightful and poetic about seemingly any topic: Hollywood films, Hinduism, technology, fascism, the Tango, zero, Argentine literature, narrative in the Eddas, modernism, the Simurgh, war, forgery and Golems.
The biography Borges by Edwin Williamson is a good introduction to his work, history and family. Williamson gives a compelling and appropriately psychoanalytic reading of the life that was Borges.
Hey Melissa, I am so glad you know Borges. His work is such a treasure isn’t it?
I’ve not read ‘Dreamtigers’, I’ll look for it. Thanks for the recommendation.
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Hey Dan, thanks for letting me know about this auspicious day. Borges holds such a special place in my heart. One of my all-time favourite lines from one of my all-time favourite books, “Dreamtigers”, by Jorge Luis: “In the course of time there was a day that closed the last eyes to see Christ.” So beautifully expressed and profoundly moving.