Borges is a profound Postmodern writer from Argentina. He is most famous for the short story collection “Labyrinths”, a book on my fiction shortlist. Although best know for his fiction he thought of himself first as a poet. As he became blind later in life he dedicated himself to the composition of his sonnets, as he could do that work in only his mind and then dictate the words to a typist later. His poems are cryptic but I remember enjoying them. Borges’ work was where I first discovered that artists could create their own language of symbols and images with an initially relative meaning that is gradually established and given to a reader through a whole body of work. I liked getting lost in Borges’ spinning dreams. There were a few of his stories at the back of “Dreamtigers”. They showed why he is so respected in that medium. He is definitely an author I will return to. I’ll probably understand him better next time ( )

L’ARTEFICE (****)

I rumori della piazza restano indietro, entro nella Biblioteca. In modo quasi fisico sento la gravitazione dei libri, l’ambito sereno d’un ordine, il tempo disseccato e conservato magicamente. (13)

Una delle mie insistenti preghiere a Dio e al mio angelo custode era quello di non sognare specchi. So che li sorvegliavo con inquietudine. Temetti, a volte, che cominciassero a divergere dalla realtà; altre, di vedere sfigurato in essi il mio volto da strane avversità. (21)

Il giorno, fedele a vaste leggi segrete, va movendo e confondendo le ombre nel povero recinto… (39)

Lento nella mia notte, la penombra
vana tento con la canna indecisa,
io che mi figuravo il Paradiso
sotto la specie d’una biblioteca. (60)

Dio ha creato le notti che si colmano
di sogni e le figure dello specchio
affinché, l’uomo senta che è riflesso
e vanità. Per questo ci spaventano. (68)

Ariosto m’insegnò che nell’incerta
luna albergano i sogni, l’imprendibile,
il tempo che si perde, l’impossibile
o il possibile, ch’é la stessa cosa. (74)

Guardare il fiume ch’é di tempo e acqua
e ricordare che anche il tempo è un fiume,
saper che ci perdiamo come il fiume
e che passano i volti come l’acqua. (102)

Limiti
Tra i libri della mia biblioteca (ecco, li guardo)
ce n’é qualcuno che non aprirò più. (106)

Epilogo
Un uomo si propone il compito di disegnare il mondo. Trascorrendo gli anni, popola uno spazio con immagini di province, di regni, di montagne, di baie, di navi, d’isole, di pesci, di dimore, di strumenti, di astri, di cavalli e di persone. Poco prima di morire, scopre che quel paziente labirinto di linee traccia l’immagine del suo volto. (110)


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El avance definitivo del a ceguera llevó a Jorge Luis Borges al ejercicio de formas brevísimas, condensadas, que tienden a borrar los límites entre poesía, cuento y ensayo. El presente volumen es un ejemplo acabado de es a clase de escritura. Desde la viñeta sobre historia argentina de "Diálogo de muertos" y el enigmático resumen autobiográfico de "Borges y yo", pasando por la confesión íntima del "Poema de los dones" y la digresión humorística de "La trama" hasta el seño narrativo en el sombrío y magistral "Ragnarök", los textos incluidos reflejan el universo del autor a través de una notoria sucesión de personajes: Homero, Shakespeare, Eva Perón, Ariosto, Macedonio Fernández, Cervantes, Alfonso Reyes, Juan Manuel de Rosas. Por su miscelánea, por la despreocupada felicidad de sus argumentos, El hacedor es un perfecto libro de introducción a la obra de Borges. "De cuantos libros he entregado a la imprenta -declaró-, ninguno, creo es tan personal." ( )

Un libro que alborota. ( )

Strange and prismatic. I wish I could read this forever.

"Islam asserts that on the unappealable day of judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment. As a child, I felt before large mirrors that same horror of a spectral duplication or multiplication of reality... I watched them with misgivings. Sometimes I feared they might begin to deviate from reality; other times I was afraid of seeing there my own face, disfigured by strange calamities. I have learned that this fear is again monstrously abroad in the world. The story is simple indeed, and disagreeable."

"It was at the foot of the next-to-last tower that the poet-- who was as if untouched by the wonders that amazed the rest-- recited the brief composition we find today indissolubly linked to his name and which, as the more elegant historians have it, gave him immortality and death. The text has been lost. There are some who contend it consisted of a single line; others say it had but a single world. The truth, the incredible truth, is that in the poem stood the enormous palace, entire and minutely detailed, with each illustrious porcelain and every sketch on every porcelain and the shadows and the light of the twilights and each unhappy or joyous moment of the glorious dynasties of mortals, gods, and dragons who had dwelled in it from the interminable past. All fell silent, but the Emperor exclaimed, "You have robbed me of my palace!" And the executioner's iron sword cut the poet down.

Others tell the story differently. There cannot be any two things alike in the world; the poet, they say, had only to utter the poem to make the palace disappear, as if abolished and blown to bits by the final syllable. Such legends, of course, amount to no more than literary fiction. The poet was a slave of the Emperor and as such he died. His composition sank into oblivion and his descendants still seek, nor will they find, the one word that contains the universe."

"Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for."

Reading Borges requires a certain faith, a suspension of disbelief, like religion or astrology. If you're not into it I'm sure all this comes off as tedious, pretentious, and overblown. BUT! If you have the patience I promise this book will send you straight down the rabbit hole. If anything, this collection left me sad to live in a world so big and beautiful and to have still never finished Don Quixote (nor even started the Divine Comedy):

"Tradition has it that, on waking, [Dante] felt he had been given-- and then lost-- something infinite, something he would not be able to recover, or even to glimpse, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of man."



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