The editions of Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort claim that Borges was arguably the most important figure in Hispanic literature since Cervantes. He clearly had a huge influence, wrote complex poems, short stories and essays, which embodied the concept of dizzying power.
His syllable, fantasy, ability to twist the plot and talk simply about the complex - all this really makes him the master of literature. Today we’ll talk about the best books of Jose Luis Borges, but it’s worth understanding that for such an author the top 10 is very small, so we won’t mention a lot of wonderful works.
10. Aleph
Aleph and Other Stories is a book of short stories by an Argentinean writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Title work "Aleph»Describes a place in space that contains all other spaces at the same time. The paper also presents the idea of infinite time. Complicated? Yes. Interesting? Very.
In the original afterword of May 3, 1949, Borges writes that most of the stories are in the fantasy genre, touching upon topics such as personality and immortality. Borges added four new stories to the collection in a 1952 edition, for which he presented a brief postscript to the afterword.
9. The circles of ruins
«Circles of Ruins"Are a novel by an Argentinean author, first published in the literary magazine Sur in December 1940.
The epigraph of history is taken from the chapter of Alice by Lewis Carroll: “And if he stopped dreaming about you ... ". This comes from a passage in which Tweedlidy points to the sleeping Red King Alice and claims that she is just a character in a dream. Novella Borges has little to do with Carroll, but reading is no less interesting.
8. Praise the darkness
Borges, like his father, gradually began to lose his sight in the 50-60s, which significantly influenced his work. He equates this loss of vision with old age, using the metaphor "the animal is dead or almost. This means that physical desires no longer dominate the life of a man or woman, but the “spirit” remains.
Many would be devastated by loss of vision, but Borges’s line in “Praise the darkness“: «There have always been too many things in my life"Suggests that loss of vision can be a blessing, a way to make the poet see what is important in life.
With loss of vision comes more understanding: "Democritus from Abdera took his eyes out to think; Time was my Democritus", - so the author wrote. Much of what we see distracts us from our own thoughts. It is easy to be so passionate about reading what is “new” that you cannot find the time to sit down and just think about yours. Without this, according to Borges, he had time to think about what he had not paid attention to before.
7. World history of dishonor
«World history of dishonor"Is a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, first published in 1935 and revised by the author in 1954. Most of the stories were published separately in the Crítica newspaper between 1933 and 1934.
Stories, except for one, are fictional stories about real criminals. Sources are listed at the end of the book, but Borges makes many changes to the retelling - arbitrary or otherwise - especially with regard to dates and names, so you cannot rely on the events described as historical facts. In particular, the “Selfless killer” disagrees with the source material in almost everything.
6. Fiction
The book is the most popular collection of short stories by an Argentinean writer and relates to the period between 1941 and 1956. These two volumes elevated Borges to world literary fame in the 1960s, proving to all skeptics his talent.
The labyrinth has been a recurring motif throughout history. It is used as a metaphor for representing many things: the extremely complex nature of worlds and the systems that exist in them; human enterprises, the physical and mental aspects of people, and abstract concepts such as time.
Fiction about Borges can be seen as a kind of labyrinth. The author often gives his first-person narrators the name “Borges”. He gives them many of his own characteristics, but does not idealize them, and also gives them human flaws.
5. The man from the pink cafe
«A man from a pink cafe"(Original Spanish name:" Hombre de la Esquina Rosada ") is the first of several stories that he wrote about fights between knife fighters. Borges acknowledged this as one of his archetypal themes: “Since then, I retell this story, with slight variations. This is a story about a non-motivated or disinterested duel - about courage for oneself ”.
The story is written in the first person by an unnamed narrator who narrates the events of one night at the Villa Santa Rita brothel bar. The clientele, including the narrator, spends the evening drinking and dancing tango. Their celebrations are interrupted by the arrival of a formidable stranger in black.
When the protagonist and some other visitors try to fight him, he easily dismisses them without even sweating. Later it turns out that he arrived in the city in order to fight with the local master of knife fighting, known in narrow circles
4. Seven evenings
The seven lectures that make up this volume were delivered by Borges in Buenos Aires at the Coliseo Theater, with intervals between June and August 1977.
In the afterword to the first Spanish edition “Seven nights“Published in Mexico in 1980, Roy Bartholomew recounts how many lectures were taped, later appeared as pirate records, and were mutilated in a literary supplement to the Buenos Aires newspaper, where the original meaning was distorted.
3. Smoldering, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius
Narrated in a first-person narrative, the story focuses on the author describing the mysterious fictional world of Tlen, whose inhabitants believe in a form of subjective idealism that denies the reality of the world, and speak a language without nouns. A relatively long story for Borges (approximately 5600 words in the original) “Smolder, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius”, which became one of his most amazing inventions.
In this story, many leading intellectual figures are mentioned both in Argentina and in the world as a whole, and a number of topics are touched on that are more typical for the novel than for the story.
Most of the ideas involved relate to the fields of metaphysics, language, epistemology, and literary criticism. It doesn’t matter if you do not understand half of the terms: it will be easy and interesting to read anyway.
2. Garden of diverging trails
It is said that the theme of this story describes the interpretation of quantum mechanics in many worlds. Perhaps she was inspired by the work of the philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapldon.
It is absolutely certain that this is a magnificent work. Borges' vision of "branching paths" was an inspiration to numerous newcomers to the field of literature, especially the science fiction genre. Also called "Garden of Diverging Trails»Often found in music, movies and TV shows. For example, the eponymous park is found in the TV series “Out of Time”.
1. Model killing
We finish the selection with a story written by Borges in collaboration with Adolfo Casares. This is an atypical work for both authors: they departed from their serious manner of storytelling and created an excellent detective story, funny and absurd in places.
The syllable stands out especially “Model Kill” for example, one of the heroes is described by the authors as infallible, “like an endless sequence of identical dummies". Such unusual metaphors are here on every page.