Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose tales of fantasy and dreamworlds are classics of the 20th-century world literature. Borges was profoundly influenced by European culture, English literature, and such thinkers as Berkeley, who argued that there is no material substance; the sensible world consists only of ideas, which exists for so long as they are perceived. Most of Borges's tales embrace universal themes - the often recurring circular labyrinth can be seen as a metaphor of life or a riddle which theme is time.
Borges's fictional universe was born from his vast and esoteric readings in literature, philosophy, and theology. He sees man's search for meaning in an infinite universe as a fruitless effort. In the universe of energy, mass, and speed of light, Borges considers the central riddle time, not space. "He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time." The theological speculations of Gnosticism and the Cabala gave ideas for many of his plots. Borges has told in an interview that when he was a boy, he found an engraving of the seven wonders of the world, one of which portrayed a circular labyrinth. It frightened him and the maze has been one of his recurrent nightmares. (from 'The Garden of Forking Paths') Another recurrent image is the mirror, which reflects different identities. The idea for the short story 'Borges y yo' was came from the double who was looking at him - the alter ego, the other I. There is a well-known man, who writes his stories, a name in some biographical dictionary, and the real person. "So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away - and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man."
In 'La Biblioteca de Babel' the symmetrically structured library represents the universe as it is conceived by rational man, and the library's illegible books refers to man's ignorance. In 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' Borges invented a whole other universe based on an imaginary encyclopedia.
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A collection of resources on Borges, including an annotated bibliography, quotations, online references, and art galleries. www.themodernword.com/borges
Academic organization based at the University of Aarhus in Denmark presents Borges articles, reviews, research aids, bibliography, and links. www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges/english.htm
Describes the University of Virginia's 400-title collection of Borges' manuscripts, some unpublished. Also a biographical sketch of the author. www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/colls/borges.html
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