El Aleph (book)
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| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
|---|---|
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Short stories |
| Publisher | |
| Released | 1949 |
El Aleph (1949) is a book of short stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The title work, called in English "The Aleph", describes an artifact (el Aleph) that can reveal the entire universe at once. The work also presents the idea of infinite time.
The book itself comprises many short stories that tie to Borges's leitmotif of the recapitulation of experience. Borges believed that there was nothing new, and that all present-day experiences are analogs of experiences already lived. Borges's central premise was that while the details may differ, there will always be an essential thread tying any so-called discovery, revelation, et cetera, and one made hundreds or thousands of years before. The Aleph, taken from the Hebrew letter "A", provided the ultimate example of this phenomenon. In Borges's description, it was that point in the universe that contains everything in the universe in a single place. It summed up Borges's belief that all human experiences were not only linked, but identical.
