Talk:Jorge Luis Borges

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Contents

[edit] Archived talk

[edit] Borges in the Modern and Postmodern Context (linked)

Because the article length exceeded 32kb, this text was moved here from the main body for further discussion. Feel free to "mine" it for content for the article:

I've mined this for the articles George Herbert, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, and The Book of Sand. I doubt there is much of value that has not been taken, but a devotee of Derrida might disagree. -- Jmabel 08:19, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Other archived content

  • Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive: Full content of this page archived 15 March 2004. It was 47KB, and includes a lot of discussion about where we want to take the article, most of which has now been done. Weeding this page down to things that are either recent or unresolved.

[edit] Current questions

[edit] "Borges as Argentine and as World Citizen"

22 August 2004 I moved the staged contribution from this page to the main Borges article. Hopefully, that resolves a lot of old issues and some naive POVs that were dogging the article for more than a year. A little squeamish about how long the article's getting, but I included the subsection about "Martin Fierro" after all. Still, that subsection could be shortened, with parts moved to the linked Borges on Martín Fierro page. In coming weeks I or someone might reorganize this section of the Talk:Borges page to reflect all open issues/questions, separating out older issues, maybe onto an archive page. munge
4 August 2004 Still struggling with how to integrate. Renoved remarks about "Borges on Martin Fierro" from this discussion page and moved to the Talk:Borges on Martín Fierro page. I propose to remove the existing 2 paragrphs on that topic from the Borges article, and add link inside the article to the Borges on Martín Fierro page. Any objections? My reasoning: There's no point being redundant here considering there's an article whose subject is the book El "Martín Fierro". And the current article is 38 kbytes.
I think we should at least have a sentence or two here and an explicit link to that article. It's important that readers find this easily: after all, this is the most important 20th century Argentine writer's reaction to the most important 19th century Argentine work of literature. -- Jmabel 00:57, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
Regarding that article, I have a question: Anyone able to confirm there is/was a tradition of improvised song or poetry contests in the Argentine countryside?

Yes and it's called payada. Usually using the milonga rhythm, usually in six- or ten-verse shots. The Martin Fierro ends with the description of one such payada. For more on that, Google for "payada", "payador", "gabino ezeiza" etc. (Alex, 19/Oct/2004)


Ideally the article will be more concise when the stubby thing is fixed. How serious should I take it when Wikipedia warns us that the article is 38 kbyte, and should be 32 kbyte? (I take it that older browsers have trouble w/editing forms containing >32 kbyte, but I'm not sure that's the real problem, if any.) munge
26 March 2004 I now have something pasted at the bottom of this page, ready for review. Hope that's OK to do that on this page; goal would be to get comments, corrections, formatting, and fill in more examples. Then, move it to the main article in coming weeks. Kind of wish our postmodern predecessor hadn't of brought up the topic, but as long as it's in there I felt the need to correct what I saw as distortions, and to put some context around why any questions about nationality even come up. (Rather than trying to put a postmodern context around Borges, someone should put some Borgesian context around postmodernism someday; cf JLB's "The Nothingness of Personality"; and a cutting remark in one of the Dantesque essays to the effect that contextual diversity is not a new idea; that the ancients too believed there are multiple, equally valid interpretations of texts.) -munge

That was a title this section received when it was first segrgated from the amorphous postmodern thingus we all started with. (It's two separate sections now.) Bottom line for me is that the section(s) did not and still don't reflect the thinking Borges clearly expressed about this matter in "Our Poor Individualism" and elsewhere. Goes back and forth between POVs that he was worldly vs. a product of his time and place, never really goes much of anywhere, then peters out. No criticism intended, my fault as much as anyone's. What should it be, people? Borges contended with the question of what it means to be Argentine. He advised that Argentina's literary identity must be to look to the entire world from the vantage point of an unfinished Argentina--not limit the scope of attention to Hispanic matters, let alone to the Southern Cone, and certainly not to "local color". The page doesn't doesn't reflect that view, nor critique it. Consider also that the "accusation" that he was a Jew probably conveyed in code to racists the smear that he was not a true Argentine. Whereas the original page seemed to me to paint Borges as hopelessly Eurocentric. Because I don't really understand all the prejudices involved, I'm not sure how to rise above them; If I fix it, it risks being insensitive to inter-American rivalries that sometimes portray Argentina itself, favorably or unfavorably, as distinctly Europhile. Borges did strive to rise above ethnicity and there is much to say for his efforts--but at the same time the scope of his attention was filtered--it is true that he didn't spend much research effort on indigenous cultures; and The Book of Imaginary Beings betrays that the fantastic creatures of Chinese lore escaped his pen; and he may have expressed occasional Francophobia. I'm not trying to be petty--he probably knew more literatures and cultures than anybody you or I know; and who knows what languages he would have learned had he escaped blindness--but is there a way to split the difference between the characatures of Borges as (imperfectly) worldly versus Borges the (hoplessly, myopically) Argentine? Be that as it may these two roles--Argentine, and World Citizen--cannot be separated and neither can two subsections convey anything but our ignorance. I hereby threaten to fix it unless someone who's actually qualified steps up to the plate. -munge, 10 March 2004

Well, you may not be ideally qualified, but I don't think any of us are. Judging by the preceding paragraph, you are clearly clueful & have some idea where to take tht part of the article. When I did my major rewrite, I wasn't really focused on this "grand statement" sort of stuff, just ground-clearing and basic facts, but I wholly agree that these grand statements belong here, especially if decently sourced with examples. -- Jmabel 16:45, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
OK, I expect to replace the existing "Borges as Argentine" and "Borges as World Citizen" with the piece below by the end of July. Comments appreciated. I reread "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" a few times recently and frankly, I'm sorry anybody brought the whole thing up. If you read his essay carefully, you'll see that even to ask the question about his nationality is to reveal one's own petty nationalisms. Was he too European and insufficiently worldly (as the original writer of the wiki article seemed to have it)? Is he too worldly and insufficiently Argentine (as Borges' nationalist critics would have it)? Are Argentines too European (as I've heard some racists express)? Who cares! In the end, I find the entire question is almost indisinguishable from soccer hooliganism. I did my best to summarize the rootedness in Argentina, the sources of diversity, and the shortcomings--for those who are keeping score. In the process, I hope I managed to stumble across anything interesting or at least useful. -munge, 7 July 2004

[edit] "compadrito" vs. "matrero"

Past discussion is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current question: "compadrito" vs. "matrero". The issue was the connotations of these two terms in early 20th century Argentina. If you want to revive the discussion, please do so here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Did Borges have Jewish ancestry?

Past discussion is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current question: did Borges have Jewish ancestry?. The conclusion: he did not. If you want to revive the discussion, please do so here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is well nigh impossible to prove whether someone with substantial Iberian ancestry does or does not have Jewish forbears. The reason is that Spain and Portugal in the Middle Ages had substantial Jewish minorities, thanks in part to Moorish protection. As the Moors gradually surrendered their control of Spain, chauvinist Spanish Catholics told the Jews they had 3 choices: convert to Catholicism, leave Spain, or die. Many underwent half-hearted conversions. Once converted, their sons and daughters could intermarry freely with Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese. Hence much of the Iberian middle and upper classes know or suspect that they have some Jewish ancestry. The descendants of those who left Spain and Portugal rather than convert or die became known as the Sephardic Jews. Does Borges feel a bit Jewish by virtue of his bookishness and vast learning, and the sympathy with Judaica occasionally revealed in his nonfiction? I think so.123.255.60.206 (talk) 00:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current questions and remarks relating to list of works

Past discussion of this topic is at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Current questions relating to list of works. Further discussion belongs here, not on the archived page. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Excerpted from my own previous remarks:

  • If anyone knows a good source for an English-language Borges bibliography, please let me know (or start inserting the information yourself: if you do that, I'd appreciate a note here).
  • If anyone can give further brief annotation (ISBN numbers, English-language translation info) to what's already there, please go ahead.
  • The list of works (related to the Premio Cervantes) at http://usuarios.lycos.es/precervantes/bibliografia/borges.html definitely has some errors. For example, there is a novel by his father on the list, some misspelled titles, dates (supposedly of works) that actually apply only to like an artist's illustrated limited edition of 30 copies of a poem already published elsewhere, etc. (& I do mean etc.). Clearly the list was not assembled by someone who know Borges's work well. However, there are a few intriguing entries that I'm wondering if relates to acutal books I've just never encountered:
    • Macedonio Fernández (1961)
      • Fernandez was something of a mentor to Borges, and I know Borges wrote a short eulogy at the time of his death, but I'm unaware of a book by Borges on Fernández. Does anyone know anything solid?
    • Borges: sus mejores páginas (1970)
      • Is there such a book? If so, is it anything more than some minor anthology?
    • Borges para niños (1988)
      • The only other references to this on the web seem to derive from this list. Is there such a book?


[edit] Where do we want to take this article?

This has been weeded down to open issues. The full version as of 15 March 2004 can be found at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#Where do we want to take this article?". -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Borges' life story fills a longish autobiographical essay available in the Dutton edition of The Aleph. His critique of the craft of biography is specified in his essay "On William Beckford's Vathek" (essays cited here are in Selected Non Fictions and/or Other Inquisitions)

Before the big fix, this page had a shallow treatment of race, nationality, and postmodernism, now deleted or moved. If anyone wants to revisit those subjects, notably "Two Books" traces a common thread of racism running through Nazi, Allied, and Communist movements; See also "The Argentine Writer and Tradition" , "Our Poor Individuality", "I a Jew", remarks on Carlyle, his WWII-themed fiction...the sheer number of different cultures he admired and studied. However, I don't claim JLB is pristine on issues of race and nationality.

If someone who really knows the postmodern canon cares to, one could give us an account of Borges' relationship, if any, with 20th century European criticism, Again, the earlier entry omitted to account for JLB's remarks about biography in his essay on "Vathek", "On the Nothingness of Personality", "Narrative Art and Magic", lectures on Buddhism, remarks about translation, his translations into Spanish...these would seem to refute any easy answers about his relationship with all things postmodern and also might help in understanding his actual influence on later writers.

(I wrote comments similar to the above a few months ago and I've edited them to reflect the state of the page & discussion as of now. Thanks esp. to JMabel and Viajero for the improvements, and for even keeping one or two sentences I had written. -munge, 24 Dec 2003)

Excerpting some of my own earlier remarks that still seem relevant:

  • Yes, there is much to be said on race, probably even more on his career & on Argentine politics. Discussion of race should certainly include reference to his wonderful, 1-page Yo, judío 1934.
  • Are there any criteria at all for what stories are listed? I find it odd, for example, to include every single story from the "Universal History of Infamy" but none of the "forgeries", and how could we be leaving out "Garden of Forking Paths": among other things, it's rather widely taught in US high school Spanish classes, so it's many Americans' first introduction to Borges, and a damn good one at that. And what about films based on or about Borges?

-- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Viajero considers the following resolved, so I'm leaving it in as I edit down this talk page:

Jmabel: Good work so far! IMO, the article still urgently needs a simple, straightforward summary of biographical details. To give you a gentle nudge in this direction (!), I collected some random bits from the article in a new section at the top called Life, which is still woefully incomplete. If I have time later, I will lend you a hand with this part. Carry on! -- Viajero 13:01, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] 20 Feb 04, edits

A lengthy exchange between Jmabel and Sir Paul can be found at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#20 Feb 04, edits. It includes quite a bit of discussion of the degree to which Borges's father was a writer; we compromised on the wording now in the article. The latter portion of that discussion and the one unresolved issue from our colloquy follows. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Update on Borges's father: perusing a bookstore here in Buenos Aires I came across a title that I had never seen before. It was called Los dos Borges (The Two Borges) and written by a Volodia Teitelboim. Opening the book at random, I noticed a line in which Borges was quoted saying that his father

trató de ser escritor y fracasó en el empeño. Compuso algunos sonetos muy buenos.
tried to become a writer and failed in the attempt. He composed some very good sonnets.

So he was a writer in a sense, but not in another ("failed in the attempt"). We can include the quote in the article, if you agree. Sir Paul 01:54, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

I can't remember where I read this, and a fast skimming through my books didn't reveal the source but I definitely remember reading that his father "had the decency of not publishing" Alexhard 13:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure. -- Jmabel 13:46, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd still be interested in hearing from anyone who actually knows the elder Borges's works. In particular, I remember reading somewhere that he wrote (and published) some poetry, but I have no idea whether it was any good or whether it was anything more than vanity publication. -- Jmabel 18:10, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Excerpted, see Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive#20 Feb 04, edits for full context:

  • You dropped, "Borges's essay "Veinticinco Agosto 1983" announced his intention to commit suicide on August 25, 1983; in the last years of his life, he claimed that it was only through cowardice that he had failed to do so." How can you consider this biographically irrelevant?
It was a somewhat gross assertion: Borges didn't "announce his intention to commit suicide"; he wrote a ficional piece where the narrator did so. That the narrator may have some similarities with Borges does not warrant such a misleading wording. Sir Paul 01:41, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)
I know I've read him saying in a published interview that he really had intended to kill himself on that date and that it was only through cowardice that he had failed to do so. But obviously, my recollection is not adequate sourcing on a disputed matter. I'll try to track this one down. -- Jmabel 06:09, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Your recollection may be accurate --or you may be remembering the comments about his piece "Remorse", where he says that he "wasn't brave [enough]". Either case, it is still misleading to say that he "announced his intention..." in that story, as if he somehow made a commitment to kill himself before some kind of public audience. (Note that I have nothing against suicide, and I wouldn't want to hide the fact that Borges wanted to kill himself if it was properly documented. My objection is based on purely factual grounds.)Sir Paul 17:25, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)
As I said, I'll try to find my documentation on exactly what he said. -- Jmabel 03:01, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Jmabel remarks on state of article 22 Feb 2004

While we're on all of this, as noted in the previous section of this talk page, there is a lot of work to be done in this article other than quibbling over small edits. To reiterate for anyone who'd like to move the article forward (most of this can be found in more detail above or at Talk:Jorge Luis Borges/Archive):

  • If someone can sort out exactly what would have been the connotations of "compadrito" and "matrero" in turn-of-the-century B.A., as against how Borges used them (see discussion above), that would be useful.
  • Can anyone work out if these books (mentioned in the obviously poorly researched list on http://usuarios.lycos.es/precervantes/bibliografia/borges.html) really exist (see notes above)? If so, they merit mention in the article:
    • Macedonio Fernández (1961)
      • apparently, an anthology he edited [1]
    • Borges: sus mejores páginas (1970)
    • Borges para niños (1988)
  • Life - probably could use more on his sister Norah, especially because they colloborated on volumes (she illustrated).
  • Work - could do with extended sections on various aspects of his work, but it's at least a solid overview.
  • Borges as world citizen - Little more than a stub.
  • Works: Quotations - So far there is only one, but it is sure representative!
  • Works: Could use more ISBNs, and I suspect that many of these books have English language translations that merit mention and indication of English-language publication date. I suspect that there are also more posthumously published works worth mentioning.
  • Works: Short Stories: This is an almost-random hodgepodge and should be revisited.
  • Works: Quasi-Fiction: An arbitrary and ill-defined category. I think the topic of Borges's blending of fictional and non-fictional forms deserves an extended discussion rather than a list of four works.
  • We could use sections on:
    • Borges's views on epistemology, philosophical idealism, and personal identity
    • Borges's views on infinity
    • Borges's views on translation
    • Borges's views on biography
    • Borges's views on race and ethnicity
    • Genre writing (detective fiction, fantasy, science fiction)
    • Influence of Borges on other writers and thinkers
    • Should add a filmography, too.

-- Jmabel 03:01, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tlön

Those working on this article may also want to look at Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, into which I've put a lot of effort (maybe more than into the Borges article itself). It is a featured article candidate; I'd love to see the Borges article get there, too, but it has a much longer way to go. -- Jmabel 18:18, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)


[edit] compadrito is not a matrero

Acording to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, Matrero is a fugitive that seeks the countryside to evade Justice.
As correctly noted, Martin Fierro was un gaucho matrero.

On the other hand:
Compadrito is a popular, boastful, quarrelling kind of guy, affected on his manners and attire. The word has a more urban (or at least suburban) bias.

So I think that JorgeLuis 03:12, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC) is right and that the issue is settled.

Regards, ejrrjs

[edit] Borges's influence

The following (not well formatted, and with some typos I've fixed) was anonymously added to the article & almost immediately deleted by Snowspinner. He's probably right that this is a bit of a laundry list (and a bit arbitrary: in fantasy and science fiction, I'd put Stanislaw Lem high on such a list) and that a shorter list with more clarity as to the nature of the influence would be more useful. Still, this may be worth mining for the articles on these various writers, so it should be preserved here on talk, not just in one version of the history. -- Jmabel 21:20, Aug 1, 2004 (UTC)

Hmph. Snowspinner's problem with it is that it's "overwhelming" and insufficiently descriptive. Actually, the list seems fairly sound and can be easily documented. My problem with the list is, it's cribbed, apparently word for word, without credit from http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_influence.html. That page also links to remarks about Borges' influence on Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Joyce Carol Oates...In the sci-fi category, there's Lem, Harlan Ellison, and Poul Anderson. Personally, I'd speculate that Samuel R. Delany, Ursula LeGuin, and maybe Philip K. Dick were influenced by Borges. If there was a non-fiction category, it would have to mention Michael Foucault. (BTW, Gibson's Canadian, not US, well, for the last 35 years or so, anyway. And we don't say "American" when we mean US, esp. when the topic is a South American writer. Sheesh.)
I've edited a couple of these (Danielewski and Eco), omitting certain diacriticals, which I don't know how to do. -munge
My objection was twofold. First, a lengthy list in the middle of an article disrupts the flow of the article. Second, it is over-complete. A general article on Borges doesn't really need this much detail on his influence - especially since the bulk of this list has little to do directly with Borges, in that most of the entries don't mention Borges at all. As I said in the edit summary, what would be helpful would be two, maybe three examples of writers Borges has influenced, and a few sentences on each of them describing that influence. That sould have the advantage of providing nformation that is directly relevent to Borges, of not breaking the flow of the article, and of being more informative on the whole than a simple list that's basically just defining who people are.
As for the copyvio aspect of it, that basically means the list is useless to us, and we ought not modify it and try to repost it or clean it up, as then it's still a derivative work of a copyvio. If there's to be an influence section, someone needs to compose it from scratch. Snowspinner 14:16, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I agree that, as placed, it was disruptive and, as is, a copyright risk. On the basis of Borges' ideas about biography, I disagree on "over-complete". Not random enough is my bigger complaint. I trust that by the time it's fixed, it will be less derivative than the writers that it describes, and closer to the reference section. Note that writers he influenced has been a "to do" item elsewhere on this Talk page. I'm sorry if I was cross. I was aggravated about something else. I sense that you want it to be a much better article someday, and I share that hope. munge 3 Aug 2004

Writers influenced by Borges include, but are not limited to:

Barth, John American postmodern novelist who incorporates Borgesian themes into his fiction.

Danielewski, Mark Z. US author of House of Leaves, which concerns a house having more interior space than would appear possible; contains a book-within-a-book written by the blind scholar of literature and ancient languages, Zampano—clearly a reference to Borges (who is mentioned in footnote #167).

Eco, Umberto Italian thinker and author of The Name of the Rose, whose character Jorge of Burgos, a blind monk whose native language is Spanish, runs a labyrinthine library that's the setting for the search for one of Aristotle's lost works, about the practice of comedy. These themes contain clear references to Borges' "Library of Babel" and "Averroes' Search".

Fuentes, Carlos This Mexican writer -- author of the masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz -- paid tribute to Borges in "Borges in Action."

García Márquez, Gabriel Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Gibson, William Canadian science fiction writer and one of the key founders of the "cyberpunk" genre, author of Neuromancer.

Kis, Danilo A Serbian-Hungarian novelist, poet, and essayist, the late Kis was the author of complex works than mined many Borgesian themes.

Morrison, Grant British comic book author, his postmodern style graced the pages of Animal Man and Doom Patrol and may currently seen in DC's The Invisibles.

Pynchon, Thomas American writer, one of the principle figures in postmodern fiction and author of Gravity's Rainbow.

Shepard, Lucius American science fiction and fantasy writer influenced by latin American magical realism.

Strand, Mark A Canadian poet and critic whose poetry has been influenced by Borges' fiction.

Useche, Andrés Colombian filmmaker and graphic artist, Useche's films merge dream and reality in a labyrinth of identity.

VanderMeer, Jeff American writer of fantasy and science fiction with an often ironic, postmodern bent; author of the "Ambergris" stories.

Veitch, Rick American comic book writer, worked on Swamp Thing during its most psychedelic period.

Wolfe, Gene American science fiction and fantasy writer, author of the "Book of the New Sun" series.

<end recovered text>

[edit] Borges not the first at fake reviews

At least one person pionered the use of imaginary reviews before Borges. Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus was a book length review of a pretend German transcendentalist philisophical work and biography of its author. It was considered for a while a real book by some. It was I think Carlyle's first well known book. It is considered one of his best and most lasting today. It dealt with a supposed philosophy of clothes. Thomas Carlyle although neglected recently has been considered to be one of the greatest writers in english so he can't really be ignored. He played a large role in spreading the works of the German trancendentalist and romantics early in English. Both by this work and his still read translations of Goethe. Some of his other works are a "History of The French revolution" and "On Hero's and Hero Worship". I dont know if Borges had read him but I imagine he would have at least been familiar with him and this work. Carlyle was or is considered both a great literary man and a great historian so he would have been right up Borges alley. It's book length of course not an essay. Still should maybe be noted.--Case 09:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't familiar with this piece by Carlyle, but I'm sure Borges would have been. Borges wrote often about Carlyle and I would imagine he probably had read his works in their entirety (which I haven't). I'll edit the article accordingly. -- Jmabel 18:31, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

I found a quote that addresses this influence in Borges' This Craft of Verse. pg 104. (2000). Borges is speaking of those authors that most influenced him and the formulation of his poet's creed.

"At the same time [1916, in Geneva], I also discovered a very different writer. I also discovered -- and was overwhelmed by -- Thomas Carlyle. I read Sartor Resartus, and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart. Carlyle sent me to the study of German. I remember I bought Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo and a German-English dictionary. After a while I found I could dispense with the dictionary and go on reading..." -- Euthydemos 19:43, Sep 9, 2004

Great, I'll use that. -- Jmabel 23:50, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

  • This comes from the introduction to The Garden of Forking Paths. The traslation is from Andrew Hurley published by Viking Penguin so I don't know about the legal issues with quoting it in the article. Maybe theirs a public domain version or someone could use their own translation. I don't know how you would want to chop it up for the article either. Its the second of the two paragraphs.


"It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books-setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle's procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler's in The Fair Haven-though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books."


I've googled Fair Haven. It is by Samuel Butler. He was an interesting and neglected writer. He was one of the early secular critics of darwinism and an ideosyncratic christian apologist and anti-materialist. He wrote "The Way of All Flesh" I think it is one of Modern Librarys top books of the century. Theirs a decent article in Wiki that refreshed me on him. Project Gutenberg has an edition of the book with a nice little introduction from someone that sums it up. It was subtitled: "A work in defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry upon Earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain Orthodox Defenders, by the late John Pickard Owen, with a Memoir of the Author by William Bickersteth Owen". Jaques Barzun has a bio of him in From Dawn to Decadence which introduced me before. He apparently influenced Shaw's and others critique of Dawrinism as having "banished mind from the universe". He has become more respected as time has gone on, moving out of obscurity during life. Carlyle's book obviously was much earlier. I think Butler came up with the idea independently though. Sartor Resartus is probaly more important as a book but who knows what Borges thought so it should maybe be mentioned. This is a great quote anyway that clears it up. Would be great to have at least some of it mentioned in the article.--Case 02:44, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Great, I'll work this in. A passage of that length is well within fair use, if appropriately attributed. -- Jmabel 05:57, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Also, Borges was pretty big on Butler. I've tried to keep this as short as I can in this already long article while doing it justice. Perhaps you'd like to enhande the article on Butler? BTW as for having "banished mind from the universe", have you read Gregory Bateson? Well acquainted with both Darwin and Butler, he argued that from what we now know about mind, Darwinian evolution is closely analogous to a mental process. He wrote a lot of articles and books related to this; the most accessible is a popularizing book at the end of his life, Mind and Nature. A more serious collection of Bateson's work is Steps to an Ecology of Mind. -- Jmabel 06:41, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Maybe this isnt the place to mention this and sorry for taking up space if it is. But would'nt it be the coolest thing ever if someone started an open-source encyclopedia of Tlon. Why hasn't anyone thought of this. A wikipedia of Tlon. The coolest thing ever. Lets destroy the world. Tlon shall take you all.--Case 18:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about Bateson sounds interesting. I think this was the distinction Butler was making. He was pro-evolution but ant-darwinist. Evolution is a very old idea predating Darwin. As Butlers article says he was anoyed that Darwin ignored the contributions his grandfather had already made. Goethe was a major proponent of evolution a century before Darwin. His study of plant adaptions was a major step in evolutionary thought. Biological evolution is an idea as old as the greeks. This played a major role actualy in the theory of spontaneos generation. It was hypothosized that life emerged spontaneosly from the mud of the sea and evolved from there on. Evolution as a cosmological and metiphysical idea was a romanticist notion. Darwin derived his theory in the background of an already evolutionist mindset in the culture. Charles Peirce was also one of the early secular critics of Darwinism. He had a completely evolutionary cosmology but dissagreed with the emphasize on the mechanism of survival of the fittest. He came up with as an alternative Agapeism which emphisized the role of nurturing love. It was the materialism that anoyed Peirce and Butler. They saw a more mind focused universe. The culmination of evolution was inteligence and increasing inteligence, while darwin in their view was too focused on random material and a blind law of averages. The mind was their ruling factor while they saw Darwin as a materialist and cartesian with out concern for the factor of inteligence. At least thats a very rough outline of the differences. I haven't read either very much. Mostly a second hand description. Sorry again if im being irrelevant to the discussion of the article. By the way Tlon will have you all.--Case 19:44, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Confirmed Borges Hoaxes

What hoaxes can we confirm? I have a mind to get rid of that "Quasi-fiction" category, merge it into the fiction, and put parenthetical remarks such as

  • "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" (hoax review of nonexistent book)

This is distinct from works like "Pierre Menard..." and "Tlon...", which to me are obviously not reviews of real books. In contrast, I think that in the Autobiographical Essay, Borges reveals that a friend of his actually tried to order the book The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim from London, and that he did nothing at first to correct the impression that the book was nonexistent.

Is the stuff at the back of Universal History of Infamy also counterfeit?

  • Did Borges falsely attribute "A Theologian in Death" and "Mahomed's Double" to Emmanuel Swedenborg?
  • Did Borges falsely attribute "The Chamber of Statues" and "The Story of Two Dreamers" to 1001 Nights?
  • Did Borges falsely attribute "The Wizard Who Was Made to Wait" to Infante don Juan Manuel et al?
  • Did Borges falsely attribute "The Mirror of Ink" to Richard Francis Burton et al?

I have also encountered the idea that Borgest falsely attributed "On exactitude in Science" to Suarez Miranda, and that the idea was actually cribbed from Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno.

What about "An Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain"? At the time it was published, was it clear there was no such author? Likewise, "Three Versions of Judas"—when published, was it presented as fiction, or was it in a context that could lead readers to believe in an author named Nils Runeberg?

Those are the ones I can think of right off. Other known hoaxes or possible hoaxes that you may know of?

It's hard to prove that something doesn't exist. So I'm proposing, in the list of works, to put a parenthetical like

  • "On Exactitude in Science" (apparent hoax that Borges falsely attributes to nonexistent author Suarez Miranda)

-munge 17 Sept 2004

Yes, everything at the back of Universal History of Infamy is counterfeit. For original publication info, browse the Aarhus bibliography. I'm pretty sure most (maybe all) of these come from a column he did for a while with short reviews, translations of passages he came upon in his reading, I think even some literary gossip...
As for "On exactitude in Science", I already did an article. Pseudonymous original publication in Los Anales de Buenos Aires -- a literary magazine that I believe (but I'm not sure of this) he was editing at the time -- combined with the fact that he collaborated with Bioy Casares, who shared his sense of humor, suggests it was originally passed off as real.

Offhand, I don't know the history of "An Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain" or "Three Versions of Judas"; again, the Aarhus bibliography is the first place to start. -- Jmabel 05:37, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

Tough site to navigate. Aarhus seems to say, "...Quain" appeared originally in Sur #79, April 1941, pp44-48, but also appeared that year in 1st ed. of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (Garden of Forking Paths), month not specified. Page seems to show that JLB did lots of nonfiction in Sur that year, including in #78 and #80, so if it wasn't marked clearly, it could have confused people into thinking "...Quain" was also nonfiction. Got back issues?
Another Aarhus pageseems to indicate "...Judas" originally appreared in Sur #118 August 1944 pp7-12, and seems to indicate it was not included in Ficciones until the 1956 edition, when the Artificios section was added. (However, the 1956 date for Artificios contradicts the table of contents of the Penguin Collected Fictions, which says it was 1944.) Anyway, JLB wrote various fictions and non-fictions for Sur in 1944, so again, if not marked clearly...
"Museum" (apparently in 1946, according to my edition of Dreamtigers includes "On Rigor in Science" as well as the following poems and fragments. Were they intended to deceive? How to label them in a bibliography?
  • "Quatrain", supposedly "From Divan of Almoqtadir El Magrebi (12th century)"
  • "Limits", supposedly by "Julio Platero Haedo: Inscriptiones (Montevideo, 1923)"
  • "The Poet Declares His Renown", supposedly "From the Divan of Abulcasim El Hadrami (12th century)"
  • "The Magnanimous Enemy", supposedly "From H. Gering: Angang zur Heimskringla (1893)" and ostensibly a quotation from "Muirchertach, King in Dublin" (1102) who seems to have really existed
  • "The Regret of Heraclitus", supposedly from "Gaspar Camerarius, in Delciae poetarum Borussinae, VII, 16" (which is almost certainly not about Heraclitus, unless the latter had a crush on someone named Mathilde Urbach, which seems highly unlikely)
user:munge 06:21 UTC 15 December 2004

[edit] Recent edits

1) Please stop re-inserting "foremost "South American" writer". It is condescending and typical of an Anglo-American POV. 2) Borges is widely considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American lit; it is silly to ask for a quotation/etc to back this up as any quick survey of essays by well-known Latin American writers will tell you, but offhand I can only remember that Carlos Fuentes is said to have remarked that "without Borges, the modern Latin American novel simply would not exist." 3) The whole article needs to be reviewed for grammar and concision, I haven't found the time + I moved the redundant "quasi-fiction" section to Short Stories, but it needs to be chronologically arranged. -- Simonides 21:30, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Have you got a citation on the Fuentes quotation? It would be perfect.
I agree on the removal of "quasi-fiction" as a separate category. I believe the list of individual pieces is completely arbitrary, just seems to be whatever anyone chose to dump there. I did about five days of careful research to try to do a comprehensive listing of book-length publications; no one has done anything comparable at the level of individual stories and essays. I have little idea what would make a valid principle of inclusion. I wish we could just link to a first-rate bibliography elsewhere, but there isn't much on line that's particularly good. The Aarhus bibliography is the best, but it is concerned only with original-language publication, it pretty much ignores posthumous publication, and it definitely has a few holes (as I found out in putting together the list of book-length publications). -- Jmabel | Talk 23:26, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Any reason for saying "fictional" short story in introduction is there another kind? (anon)

Nope, I'll strike it. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:45, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "foremost writers"

I personally don't have a problem with "considered to be one of the foremost writers of the 20th century" -- he's one of my favorite writers, and I wrote almost half of this article, plus more about him elsewhere, so I am certainly not biased against him -- but I'd really rather see us find a reputable source that calls him something like that and quote it, rather than put such a POV statement in the narrative voice of the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:19, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Some excellent work has gone into this and other articles on Borges and if you were responsible for at least some of it, kudos to you. I do not think you or anyone who writes even in "formal" encyclopediae like the Britannica are necessarily "biased" against non-Anglo-American personalities, but the language itself betrays a strong POV that I've always found objectionable, as if, for ex., Orwell will always be a "major writer" whereas Proust will have to be content with being a "major French writer" - I hope you see what I mean. While all such statements are necessarily generalisations and POV of a sort, I don't think one can produce any real sources where reputation in the arts is concerned - they usually create the false impression that one has to rely on another well-known voice for recognition, and in such cases generalisations are probably the safest/ best option (i.e. imagine trying to attribute Plato's reputation to one or two quotes.) -- Simonides 08:20, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, if one of those quotes were another prominent philosopher talking about how 2500 years later the questions he asked still largely define the scope of philosophy... Similarly, the Fuentes quote, if we can find it, would carry that kind of weight. Again, I don't really have a problem with your wording, but in matters like this, I almost always prefer an apropos quotation to a blind assertion in the narrative voice of the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:31, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, in the case of Plato you have A. N. Whitehead's line, and such quotes do sound very potent, but that's precisely my complaint - they're rather empty generalisations, but instead of coming from the man on the street, they issue from a "figure of authority", when in fact there's no inherent difference, and in quoting them we reduce a very broad reputation/ complex body of work to a sound bite. I understand people like sound bites, but I think it's more consistent and fair (to the writer, to history, etc) to resist them unless there's a very appropriate passage within the article, or a section like "influence", where one can insert such a quote. -- Simonides 10:33, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My $0.02. I wager that Borges would have been the first to say—and not just from modesty—that these sorts of statements, "considered to be one of the foremost..." "...among the greatest..." etc are meaningless. To show proper respect for Borges would be to let his work stand without begging the questions "considered by whom?" and "foremost among whom?" To invoke this imaginary congress of critics, this fictional process for establishing priority, reveals insecurity of we who are editors, not the importance of the subject. No skeptic is convinced when an editor invokes superlatives in the passive voice, or implies that some nameless authority nominated an author for a nonexistent award. That makes it all the more important that we make progress on the section outlining how Borges influenced other authors and cultural figures. It amuses and pains me to note that the editors of Wikipedia's James Joyce and Shakespeare (and no doubt others) likewise undermine their beloved subjects. user:munge 03:28 UMT 6 December 2004
Borges did win the Prix Goncourt, a fact omitted by the article. No he did not. My mistake user:munge 07:36 UMT 8 Dec 2004
I'm glad I was lazy about following up on that! -- Jmabel | Talk 08:00, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

The bibliography was recently and anonymously moved out "to reduce size of main article". This strikes me as completely wrongheaded. All it is likely to do is make the bibliography less well maintained and more subject to vandals (because it will be on fewer watchlists). Unless there is clear consensus against me within 48 hours, I intend to revert. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:19, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image

For me, at least, the image at the start of the article is showing up horizontally stretched. Does anyone know how to fix this? -- Jmabel | Talk July 3, 2005 23:58 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious see-alsos

  • The Glass Bead Game
    • What does this have to do with Borges? (It also references back to this article in its see-also, again without clear motivation.)
  • Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Recognition
    • a fictional encyclopedia in a Borges story. So what? We have a Borges category, stick it in the category, but this article needn't link to it.

Barring that someone can make a good case for keeping these, I intend to delete them. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:Eequor:

Why did you interlink Jorge Luis Borges and The Glass Bead Game? It doesn't seem unimaginable to draw some kind of connection between the two, but just putting them in each other's "see also" list seems useless. I'd be comfortable saying that I'm pretty expert on Borges, and I read "The Glass Bead Game" some 30 years ago, and while I can see a certain intuitive connection, it seems more the type that is made by categories than by "see also".
Anyway, I'm inclined to delete this from the Borges article (which I have on my watchlist), but thought I'd ask you first in case there is a good explanation I'm missing. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:57, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
I might point out that this sort of interconnection is entirely in line with the game. Doesn't it sound a lot like sth Borges would have written? It isn't a particularly surprising connection if one knows Borges translated some of Hermann Hesse's work, most likely including The Glass Bead Game, but it's a striking similarity that may be of interest to people who are familiar with Borges or with Hesse but not both.
It's difficult to think of a categorization that would capture the similarities between works analagous to The Glass Bead Game. What would appear natural and convey the subtle differences between these and other works? ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 00:20, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Gaps in the Borges article are not as urgent as are the surpluses...be that as it may, if there is reason to believe B. translated it, there's a place for that in the article (International Themes table). That information is probably in Efraín Kristal's book on Borges & translation, which I don't have. Otherwise, the meta-category seems to be intertextuality. To oversimply only a little, literature about literature. Borges and koans are both "natural" references for that stub. I'd say Hesse normally is not but the Glass Bead Game (which I recently reread) is a clear exception. -user:munge 27 Nov 2004
I saw these links, too, and was puzzled. I wondered: what exactly is the connection here? If it can't be described -- even in a few words in the See Also sections -- it should, I think, be deleted.--Macrakis 23:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

<End material copied from Talk:Eequor>

I'm not sure how established the term is, but I remember a term from my undergraduate days "cosmographic fiction", which Khachig Tololyan used, and which would embrace these (and much of the work of Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov). It doesn't seem to have come into common use, though, so I'm not sure it would be an acceptable category, might be considered a neologism. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:49, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

In any case, nothing in the foregoing convinces me that either link is appropriate, and I will remove them. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:11, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Islamic and Sufic, or Islamic/Sufic?

Question is, for purposes of this article, should the table of religious themes include a "Sufic" category, as it now does, separate from "Islamic"? Or not? Any support for adding the word "Syncretic" to the subtitle of the table, namely "Religious themes in Borges: Mainline, Mystical, Syncretic, and Heretical".?

Did Borges make a distinction or did he not see Sufic sources as Islamic mystics, much as he saw Bloy and Swedenborg as Christian mystics? My first choice is to add Sufic references, such as Farid Al Din Attar (Conference of the Birds), to the Islamic category, not have a separate Sufic category. After all, we don't have a separate category for Cabala or Zen, both of which people usually associate with their "parent" religions, but still sometimes consider as syncretic and unaffiliated with those "parents". Whatever we do, someone's going to consider it POV...so my attitude was, what was Borges' POV on this? Anybody read de Garayalde on this topic? Find it convincing? (Is she justified in listing Burton and Fitzgerald in her bibliography of Sufic sources?)

--Munge 07:55, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

  • About my only contribution to this is on Burton and Fitzgerald: these would seem justified, as translators. Borges, although very multilingual, did not read Arabic or Persian. He would have come to any Arabic or Persian works in translation. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:02, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Notes toward resolution. In "The Simurgh and the Eagle" Borges wrote that "Behind the Eagle is the personal God of Israel and Rome; behind the magical Simurgh is pantheism" (as distinct from the monotheism that mainline Islam preaches). Similar remark in his film review, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Transformed". Also supporting the idea that Borges saw Sufic literature as syncretic there is a clue if you Google the phrase "Borges was familiar with Palacios's study of the Sufi", namely a 1931 book titled El Islam Cristianizado ("Christianized Islam"?). The remark asserting he was familliar with it apparently appears in "Borges the Post-Orientalist: Images of Islam from the Edge of the West", Ian Almond, Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 2004, v50 n2, pp. 435-459; abstract on this page but no access without password.

For that matter, maybe there should be a "Pagan" theme category, "House of Asterion", "The Circular Ruins", "The Immortals"?. You know, if one could justify a Sufi them category, maybe one might equally justify an Alchemical theme category, "The Wizard Who Was Made to Wait" and "A Rose for Paracelsus".

Still thinking about a solution. "Ones that belong to the emperor", "innumerable ones"...Interestingly, Averroes himself wrote, in his criticism of one Abu Hamid, "he adhered to no one doctrine in his books but was an Ash’arite with the Ash’arites, a Sufi with the Sufis and a philosopher with the philosophers...The imams of the Muslims ought to forbid those of his books which contain learned matter to all save the learned", according to this page. (I believe the Ash'arites were what we would now call pagans, worshippers of the goddess Asherah; see The Hebrew Goddess, Patai.) --Munge 07:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, been a while. Here is my decision. Despite apparently contrary views by an author I respect (Idries Shah), whose publishing company produced the critical work in question (Jorge Luis Borges: Sources and Illumination by Giovanna de Garayalde, 1978, Octagon Press), most other sources including the Sufi wiki appear to hold that Sufism's origins are indeed Islamic. Moreover, any reason we did have for separating out Sufi would also seem to apply to other sects, leading to separate categories for Cabala/Hasidism, mystical Chrsitianity, and Zen. So in addition to having a dubious reason, it's also an impractical approach. Thus I can't justify or support a separate Sufi category at this time. I'm always open to a different line of reasoning. But I feel that any counter-claims (that Sufism predates Islam and that Borges clearly separated the two in his mind) are extraordinary and call for cites.
However, I am going to propose on the Bibliography of Jorge Luis Borges discussion page that we include a list of critical works such as that of de Garayalde, as well as stuff like Signs of Borges by Sylvia Molloy (another book I have doubts about, but is probably a good book for people who like that kind of book).
On the other issues that came up in the course of this: Pagan was an obvious omission that I will remedy. Other issues that came up: I don't know that alchemical practices were a religion, so no Alchemy category at this time. And I lean away from making the title of the table any more unweildy than it already is, so I'm not adding the word syncretic to it at this time. --Munge 06:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
So I did that, and have one more comment. I deleted the category "Mystical" because I find that B's interests in religion were very heavily weighted toward the mystical aspects of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and maybe Buddhism. As it stood, the article formerly implied that somehow Swedenborg was more deserving of the term mystical than Erigena or Attar or the Cabalists...A can of worms. Also, this way, the categories correspond to actual religions, except for the one "Fictional" religions category. --Munge 07:35, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kat Walsh

Posted to Jorge Luis Borges:Talk by 200.42.95.188 2005-08-28 12:58:46

Estimada Kat Walsh: ¡Muchas gracias por su contestación! Quisiera saber si hay artículos sobre Jorge Luis Borges en español, because my english is not good... De cualquier manera, me gustaría leer y/o contactar a usuarios de Wikipedia que se especialicen en Jorge Luis Borges. Quisiera saber también si alguno de ellos conoce un trabajo de él, tercero de igual nombre, cuyo título es "La Espera" El primero es un cuento publicado en "El Aleph" El segundo es un poema publicado en "Historia de la noche". Pero existe un tercer poema de J.L.Borges también titulado "La Espera". ¿Alguien lo conoce y tiene su texto? De ser así, me gustaría que me lo enviara o me dijera donde puedo leerlo. Muchas gracias. nuncstanc2005 Mi dirección electrónica es nuncstanc2005.@.yahoo.com.ar

¿Sabe Vd. de cual año (aproximadamente)? ¿Hay un frase desde el poema? Y ¿como sabe Vd. que exista un tercer poema distinto con el mismo título? (Pregunto porqué un bibliografía típicamente se da solamente títulos.) Creo que será dificíl buscarlo sin estos datos. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:57, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Borges and Uruguay

This article is very good, but it lacks the mention of the special affect that Borges had for Uruguay, country where several of his tales and poetry took place (eg. "Funes el Memorioso") and country where he was conceived.

El Costado oriental de Borges

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.76.8.212 (talk • contribs) 28 Oct 2005.

[edit] Borges and Nobel Prize

I think, too, the article is good. But I think the issue of the nomination to the Nobel Prize for years is much more important than many others discussed in the biography. For decades Borges was the first choice to be elected for Nobel Prize in Literature, but he never won it (there was an elector who continually denied his vote). At a distance, it turned out to discredit the Academy rather than the author. Some people have argued that Borges's political views (as a conservative) where in conflict with the ideals instituted by Mr. Nobel to his Prizes. So, I believe it should be discussed in his biography (perhaps near the section where it is mentioned other doctorates and prizes he won, as the Cervantes). Nahuel —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.55.119.6 (talk • contribs) .

Borges had conservative views that did not sit well with the Academy. He supported the Revolución Libertadora, and later he made the mistake of endorsing Augusto Pinochet's government when he visited Chile. [2] Borges is claimed to have said "Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me." I haven't found a source for the latter. I leave it to those who've been editing this article for a long time to find a suitable spot to treat this "tradition" and its causes in a suitable part of the article. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I've heard all this, too, including the quotation, but can't remember where. Does someone have a citable source for this? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Let's see:
  • An interview with the Chilean writer Volodia Teitelboim, friend of Neruda and of Salvador Allende, and biographer of Pinochet. He says: Un día visité en su casa, en Suecia, a un gran amigo de Neruda, miembro del jurado que le dio el Premio Nobel y gran escritor. Me dijo: “Quiero explicarle por qué no le dimos el premio a Borges, por su visita y su abrazo a Pinochet”. Y luego añadió: “Si a pesar de esto que le digo se lo hubiéramos dado, tenga la seguridad de que ni un solo sueco lo habría entendido”.
  • Another interview with María Esther Vázquez, biographer of Borges and of Victoria Ocampo, where she mentions the above but denies such a direct relationship.
  • A blog post, very POV, but with a quote from a Borges biographer, Edwin Williamson: “The visit to [Pinochet’s] Chile finished off Borges’s chances of ever winning the Nobel Prize. That year, and for the remaining years of his life, his candidacy was opposed by a veteran member of the Nobel Prize committee, the socialist writer Arthur Lundkvist, a long-standing friend of the Chilean Communist poet Pablo Neruda, who had received the Nobel Prize in 1971. Lundkvist would subsequently explain to Volodia Teitelboim, one of Borges’s biographers and a onetime chairman of the Chilean Communist Party, that he would never forgive Borges his public endorsement of General Pinochet’s regime.”
The biography ("Life of Borges" I think) is reviewed in many other places. The quote about the "Scandinavian tradition" can be found in a million places, but always as an unsourced attribution. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 00:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like if someone wants to add this to the article, they should track down the Williamson biography, verify the quote, and cite it. And it would be great if we had a solid citation for the quote about the "Scandinavian tradition"; even an anecdote told by a citable source would do, as long as we made it clear that it could be apocryphal. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Please, verify the million places: at ten seconds per each source it will take you only a few thousand hours. Jclerman 11:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

So, any primary source cite of Borges "endorsing" Pinochet? (And of similar claims of Borges supporting Jorge Rafael Videla?) Quote (link above) from the Nobel official in question is obviously not a reliable indicator of supposed endorsement. FWIW, I understand Pablo Neruda wrote an ode to a dictator upon his death: "Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride". That would be "endorsement" in my book. Also, can a single Nobel official block an award? (I wonder how it came to be that Mohandas Ghandi never received a Nobel.) --Munge 20:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

While I don't have anything on the Pinochet front (nor anything citable on the Videla front), I'm pretty certain the latter is correct. Remember, Borges was an ardent anti-Peronist. It would have been astounding for him not to initially welcome Videla. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:44, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I am seeking comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) about when, if ever, it is appropriate to mention an alleged nomination for a Nobel prize. My opinion is that, since the list of invited nominators is largely secret (except of course for former prize winners, and in the case of the peace prize, where everyone's half-brother can nominate) and since the deliberations, and even the procedures are secret, there are real verifiability problems with any claim such as this. We can verify that X said he nominated Y, but can we verify that X is a nominator? Can we verify that X is not lying, perhaps politely? Does the committee take seriously nominators who violate their pledge of secrecy? Robert A.West (Talk) 00:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't speak to the internal dynamics of the Nobel Committee itself, but it's widely known that Borges was subjected to obloquy by other members of his field because he did not conform to the doctrinaire socialist or proto-Marxist view that was customarily expected. And that he was denied recognition by this same community for his literary work because of his dissenting political views, while writers whose work, while meritorious, was objectively inferior to his, have received widespread accolades within the world of literary criticism, e.g. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reinaldo Arenas raises this subject in his engrossing, remarkably moving memoir, "Before Night Falls."

Ruthfulbarbarity 02:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela was certainly well to the right of Borges. - Jmabel | Talk 00:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Umberto Eco

I've cut the following recently added sentence: "However, this technique [writing a review of a non-existent work of literature] was most prominently made use of by Umberto Eco in his Name of the Rose. In fact, a character in Eco's book is a blind librarian with a name very similar to Borges." As I remember from reading Name of the Rose some 20 years ago, it is not a review of a non-existent work of literature, and while a presumably non-existent work—a treatise on comedy by Aristotle—drives the plot, that work is never seen by the POV character. Eco's Jorge of Burgos is definitely a nod to Borges, as his William of Baskerville is a nod to both Arthur Conan-Doyle and William of Ockham. It might be worth getting more discussion of Borges's influence on others into the article, and the "Jorge of Burgos" thing could be mentioned there, but I think the remark here on the "technique" is simply wrong. --Jmabel | Talk 19:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

As I recall reading it, the young novice does in fact see the book in the final confrontation with Jorge, and a paragraph or two is read- consistent with Borges' technique, though the book centers more around the detection of the murders, the reason, and the mindset of the medieval monks, so the sentences do not belong anyway. --Maru (talk) Contribs 20:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] FriendsofBorges.net

Does http://www.FriendsofBorges.net really belong in the external links? If so, can someone give a less florid and more informative link caption? My quick impression of the site is that it is slow to load, rather diffuse in its content, and written in poor English. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cut from article

I recently reverted an alternative version of the last few paragraphs of the International recognition section which had motivated the addition of the {{cleanup}} tag to this previously good article. There may well be something in here worth salvaging, but let's work out what and then put it into the article properly; there is clearly nothing here so notable that as to be worth marring the article. All of this material was anonymously added without citation, is gossipy, basically unencyclopedic in style, and seems to me to be quite POV. ("Georgie … the ill treatment given by Elsa to Borges … She is acquiring a fame of her own for her business like grip … an attitude totally in contradiction with … Like out of a Borges fiction …". Need I say more?) Someone should identify what relevant facts reside here, find some citations to back them up, and re-add those facts to the article.

In 1975, after the death of his almost centenary and authoritarian Mother (with whom Georgie lived all his life in a child-like relationship), Borges was often invited to countries all over the world, thus traveling quite often until the end of 1985 when he needed hospitalisation while in Geneva.

Borges was married in 1967 to Elsa Helena Astete Millán, a quite illiterate widow chosen by his Mother, then over 90 years old, because Mrs Leonor wanted to find a substitute who would care for his blind son after her death. Georgie and Elsa never consummated their marriage (Borges has a phobic fear of copulation and mirrors); they lived in separated rooms and the first night Borges stayed with his Mother. Their fake "marriage" last less than three years. Because of the ill treatment given by Elsa to Borges, he asked his then assistant Prof Norman Thomas di Giovanni help to divorce Elsa whom Borges feared so much that he hid far away from Buenos Aires to start his divorce proceedings. Then he returned to live with his Mother. During his last years, Borges knew worldwide recognition. He needed someone to assist him in order to travel but his friends were by then old and married and none of them could assist Georgie in regular trips abroad. Thus a young student from his Anglo-Saxon group, Miss Kodama, had the chance to chaperon Borges in his trips. An account of their journeys was produced in 1984 under the name Atlas, with excellent texts by Borges but poor photographs.

The 26th April 1986, a few weeks before his death of a terminal cancer, Miss Kodama surprised the world and close friends of Borges with an irregular certificate of marriage obtained thanks to the Geneva consul of the Paraguayan dictator Stroessner, Gustavo Gramont Berres, a well known criminal who is now in prison. After a change in Borges´ Will, Miss Kodama also inherited the rights to exploit Borges works (which are now worth millions). She is acquiring a fame of her own for her business like grip on the commercialization of Borges name and works (an attitude totally in contradiction with the selfless behaviour of Borges regarding the marketing value of his works and his generosity with money and towards others). In particular Miss Kodama is building a reputation for her numerous and systematic legal proceedings against anyone who will dissent with her marketing of Borges works and her interpretation. Since 2004 Miss Kodama lost several cases, including in the High Court, an Argentinean Criminal judge has warned her that she has no right to abuse the intellectual property of Borges works. Like out of a Borges fiction, the universal history continues …

Borges died of liver cancer in Geneva in 1986 and, contrary to the will expressed in his poetry, his mortal body is buried in the Cimetière des Rois instead of the pantheon of his illustrious ancestors in La Recoleta.

[end cut passage] - Jmabel | Talk 05:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title of Book in Spanish

The book translated as "Book of Imaginary Beings" was originally published in Spanish as "Manual de zoología fantástica," ("Handbook of Fantastic Zoology") not as "Libro de los seres imaginarios." It was written as a collaborative work with Margarita Guerrero. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marcella g (talk • contribs) 22 Feb 2006.

As we indicate (accurately, I believe) at Bibliography of Jorge Luis Borges, the Libro de los seres imaginarios (1967) is an expansion of the Manual de zoología fantástica (1957). To the best of my knowledge, all published English-language translations are of the latter expanded work. References for these dates: [3] and [4], respectively. And, yes, Margarita Guerrero should be listed as a co-author; she is appropriately credited at Bibliography of Jorge Luis Borges; I'll add mention of her here.. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Friends of Borges link

I'm sorry about this as I'm new here (I'm not sure if I'm posting this correctly), but I changed the link for Friends of Borges because the old link was dead. The new one is correct.

[edit] IPA pronunciation of the name

Since this happens for the second time, let me state it here: the IPA pronunciation is [ˈxɔɾ.xe ˈlwis ˈbɔɾ.xɛs]. This is a phonetic, not phonemic transcription. In Spanish, /e/ and /o/ are realized lax when the syllable is closed (i. e. ends in a consonant), and tense when the syllable is open (i. e. ends in the vowel). See tenseness, phoneme, allophone, etc. and please don't change ɔ and ɛ back! --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 19:18, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] anarchism

borges is listed in Nihilist anarchism. maybe be more specific here. —This unsigned comment was added by Unixer (talk • contribs) 24 March 2006.

Sounds inappropriate to me. He was not an anarchist, and I wouldn't consider him a nihilist, except insofar as he certainly entertained extreme notions of solipsism. - Jmabel | Talk 04:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Borges was not that kind of anarchist. He said: "I am a Spencerian anarchist who deplores violence, from Cain's stone to nuclear weapons" (Interviú magazine, Madrid 1984, p. 32-34, quoted in El Otro Borges, by Fernando Mateo, Ed. Equis, Buenos Aires 1997, ISBN 9879647505). Many times he said his father was also a Spencerian anarchist, meaning the The Man Versus the State type. Feel free to add this idea to the article. --Filius Rosadis 14:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
No, he wasn't really much of a spencerian at all...--Buridan 00:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say he was. I only quoted and referenced his own words. --Filius Rosadis 13:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

At age 86, he proudly proclaims himself "a poet, an anarchist, and a cosmopolitaan", from the dust jacket of Atlas, Jorge Luis Borges, in collaboratoin with Maria Kodama, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Dutton, 1985 --munge 09:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mirrors and paternity

Last editions have removed a reference to the double source of the (fictional) dogma of paternity and mirrors. I'll fix that. "La tierra que habitamos es un error, una incompetente parodia. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables porque la multiplican y afirman" / "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." ("Hakim, the masked dyer of merv" / "El tintorero enmascarado Hakim de Merv"). Borges later used the same idea in his "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". --Filius Rosadis 16:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Library cataloging

I do not understand the significance of this. Why did the other employees forbid him to catalogue more than 100 books a day? What does this mean? 14:22, May 13, 2006 User:Panzer raccoon!

It means that if he did the work of a dozen of other staff, they could be dismissed. The unwritten code of state employees is firs to work as to keep the status quo. Jclerman 21:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sexuality references

The issue of Borges' sexuality contains some conjecture, but this article would be incomplete without some small mention of the issue. All new statements in this subsection are taken from (and attributed to) Brant's essay, which is mentioned by its full title and hyperlinked. What more is needed? Bhumiya (said/done) 05:04, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Can we get a citation for This is shown in his short story "The Sect of The Phoenix", which focuses entirely on sex yet never names the act otherwise than under the signifier "Secret"? I have never seen that in my life. Re-reading the story, I guess I can understand where it comes from, but I can just as easily refute it... And this is not the place for original research. edit: forgot to tag this: CKnapp 00:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi CKnapp, I read it around ten years ago in a literary critics book whose name I cannot recall. In the web, I was only able to find a mention about the theory in a Spanish language blog, where another reference is quoted to that effect. See this. I will translate for you:

Emir Rodríguez Monegal in his book Borges, hacia una lectura poética. (Guadarrama, Madrid, 1976) tells an anecdote from Ronald Christ, who implored Borges for him to reveal the secret of The Sect of the Phoenix. Instead of giving him a straight answer, Borges asked Christ to spend a night longer thinking on the secret in order to discover about it on his own. Next day, Christ had still not found any answer. Borges finally replied to him using these words: “Well, the act is what Whitman says ‘the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood’. When I first heard about this act, when I was a boy, I was shocked, shocked to think that my mother and my father had performed it. It is an amazing discovery, no? But then too is an act of inmortality, a rite of inmortality, isn’t it?” (74-75)

I am still not adding it to the article as it does not feel right, being this a quote of a quote. Regards, Asteriontalk 02:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that quote. Although I agree not to add it (for the same reasoning), I like knowing where that comes from. Thanks for the help, Son of Minos ;) CKnapp 04:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Despite Borges' marriage to Maria Kodama, the Wikipedia Gay Lobby made their usual attempt at insinuation and smear. So far, however, they haven't been successful with this man. I'm sure that they will try again in their attempt to attribute their juvenile, immature orientation to another famous person.Lestrade 23:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Lestrade


Here's what we know.

  • Borges's fiction and nonfiction are not prim and asexual. If they had been, he simply could not have done justice to the roughness of traditional Argentine life, a roughness that evolved the tango.
  • He lived with his mother throughout his life, and she died at age 99.
  • He married for the first time after his mother was 90 years of age. This marriage lasted 3 years. We all makes mistakes in our dealings with the opposite sex.
  • He married Maria Kodama after his mother's death, and when he was past 80.

I see a Mama's boy, but not a latent homosexual.

It can be quite difficult to be married to a man as brainy and as cerebral as Borges, especially one of his psychological and metaphysical insight. His writings never generated large royalties. Has any work of his been filmed? A man as intelligent as Borges would be very cautious about giving reign to his carnal instincts, in a society as brutal and carnal as that of Argentina. Borges detested Peronism and Argentine demagoguery in all its forms. But he did not do so coming from the Left, but as a 19th century liberal under strong Anglo-Saxon influence. I bet his fellow Argentines deemed his politic stance eccentric and dated.

In the English speaking world, Borges would have become a comp lit prof. He would have found it fairly easy to marry, in his 30s or 40s, one of his admiring bright students. He would have had the two children that propriety permits, and there would be no whispering about his "orientation." But Borges was the product of harsher and ruder world, where one gaucho would murder another for real or alleged slights spoken to a teenage girl who tempted fate by hanging out in trashy pubs.123.255.60.206 (talk) 01:00, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Women in Borges' stories

I've removed the following statments:

It is undeniable that women are almost entirely absent from his stories. Wrong. There are many female characters in his stories, such as Beatriz Viterbo (El Aleph), the English woman (Historia del guerrero y la cautiva), Emma Zunz (Emma Zunz), Ulrica (Ulrica).

Whenever they appear, most notably in El Muerto and La Intrusa, they never speak, serving as symbols or utilitarian objects. Wrong. Ulrica speaks quite a lot, in an unusually long dialogue for a Borges' tale. Emma Zunz speaks with Loewenthal (indirect speech) and then with the police (direct speech).

Either female and male Borges' characters think more than they speak. --Filius Rosadis 15:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I can't parse it & it lacks sources

This recent edit:

It was speculated at the time and since that it was Borges' support for (or at least failure to condemn) the coup d'etat and subsequent dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile which ultimately led to his not receiving the award.

Jclerman 07:22, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any trouble parsing it, but it is, indeed unsourced. To paraphrase, "It was speculated at the time (and has been speculated at other times since then) that—ultimately—Borges' support for the coup d'etat and subsequent dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile (or, not to overstate the matter, Borges' failure to condemn the coup d'etat and subsequent dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet) led to his not receiving the award." The thread of the statement is "It was speculated… that it was Borges' support… which ultimately led to his not receiving the award."

[edit] Quotations section

Why is there a quotations section when the article links to Wikiquote anyway? Nysin 20:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unnecessary links?

I'm not sure about the last four links on this page. The annotations site seems to be down, and the other three appear to be articles or web pages which are related to Borges, but don't necessarily bear mentioning on this page. I mean, I wrote a paper on Borges, but I'm not posting a link to it here. I'm going to delete them (Be bold!) but if anyone disagrees, please feel free to bring it up. I'm happy to discuss it. MrCheshire 19:32, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


There is an inappropriate link at the bottom of section 2.6 to "Andrew Hurley". The Andrew Hurley referenced is a translator (Spanish to English) of Borges work. He was (not sure if he remains) a professor of English Literature in the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. He is not the drummer for the alternative rock band "Fall Out Boy". [Steph 18:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)]

[edit] Sexuality, redux

There's an awful lot of recently added material about sexuality that seems weakly cited and/or semi-attributed. Among what has recently been added:

  • That his 90-year-old mother "forced" him to marry. While I'm sure she pressured him, just how does a 90-year-old woman force her adult son to do anything?
  • Previously we had the clearly true statement that "The story 'Ulrica' from The Book of Sand tells a romantic tale of heterosexual desire, love, trust and actual sex, though it may have been only a dream" now we have (without attribution; I'm guessing this draws on Brant, but it doesn't say so):
    The story "Ulrica" from The Book of Sand tells a romantic tale of homosexual desire, though disguised for ingenuous or homophobic readers as heterosexual unless you notice that "Ulrica = the queen of wolves" has every Amazonian male characteristics. In other words, Ulrica is an image, a sort of narcissistic mirror inspired by Ulrike von Kulmann who was an intimate friend of the famous Greta Garbo, both much admired by Borges (the true Ulrike was a friend of Jorge Luis) and both lesbians, as was also Silvina Ocampo the "wife" of his beautiful intimate friend Adolfito Bioy Casares.
Brant is entitled to believe that a man being in love with a somewhat mannish woman is now defined as "homosexual". Last I heard, being a man attracted to a lesbian did not make you gay any more than a predeliction for effeminate young men would make you straight. Insofar as this is Brant's opinion, if Brant's opinion is considered notable, this should be here attributed as Brant's.
  • Then we have the very odd paragraph that begins with the remarkable sentence:
    It is no notice that Borges let several confessions "hidden in a corner of his works, certain that no one will discover them" as he says in Everything and nothing regarding a similar technique by Shakespeare whom Borges believed, as Oscar Wilde did, that become the greatest Poet of all times out of a sexual desire for one of his young male actors.
This and what follows is so incoherent that I hardly know what to say. Among other things, it orders us to "Read again the famous Two English Poems (without letting you distract by the false and changing dedications… [etc.]" Wikipedia is not normally engaged in the business of telling people how to read something. The upshot again seems to be that Borges was a deeply closeted gay man.

I would be inclined to revert this all, but figured I would bring it here first in case someone can rewrite it comprehensibly and with appropriate attribution and citation. - Jmabel | Talk 01:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


I am dismayed to see that my inclusion of Ulrikke has been changed. I think the section is now based on conjecture and does not have enough scholarly support. I freely admit that there could be a valid homoerotic interpretation of the story, but to quash one interpretation to favor the other is poor scholarship and not in harmony with wiki standards. Opinions? Wuapinmon 21:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


Also, the protagonist of "El muerto" clearly relishes and lusts after the "Splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira (Hurley 197). Later he "sleeps with the woman with shining hair" (200). Two examples of definitive gaucho heterosexual lust. I'm sure this could be queered as well, but really what can't? If we're going to get that detailed about symbolism, isn't any form of sex just using someone else to masturbate yourself? I say that both sides of the argument must share the space, but to paint the man as decidedly one way or the other is impossible to prove and, ultimately, pointless.

Hurley, Andrew. Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin, 1998.

Wuapinmon 21:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Some of this has now been removed; we still have his 90-year-old mother "forcing" him to marry, with a citation so vague as to defy verifiability. - Jmabel | Talk 04:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ancestry redux

Recent edit that I reverted (bold is what was added and reverted): "…who, around 1870, married the criollo probably mestizo (see the "dark blooded" description of the Borges in B's biography) Francisco Borges…": No idea what biography is being cited here, "dark blooded" is an odd phrase so I'd want to see it cited and "criollo probably mestizo" is pretty much a contradiction in terms, in the Argentine use of criollo. - Jmabel | Talk 03:49, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] International recognition

The section is largely concerned with recognition by English-speakers. Could someone add something more about others? Didn't French translation play a large part in spreading knowledge of his poetry in Europe? 165.165.219.242 21:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. If someone knows more about this, it would be a great addition. Unsurprisingly, we don't have a lot of people working in the English-language Wikipedia who are familiar with the body of work translated from Spanish into French. - Jmabel | Talk 19:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
The French Wikipedia article is minimal. It seems like a partial translation of the English. - Jmabel | Talk 19:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] O.B.E.

Borges cannot have been awarded the OBE since he was not a British subject. It's possible he was granted an honorary OBE. Citation needed. Richard Pinch 21:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural depictions of Jorge Luis Borges

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 16:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Themes section

While the themes section is pretty accurate and good to have, I see two problems with it as it is structured now:

1) Why only national/religious themes? Especially the national ones seem totally unimportant in a Borges article, as they seem to have been unimportant to him: "As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries." -JLB (on the other hand he might have placed his stories in diverse settings in order to show his belief that countries are countries are harmful myths, although I don't think so). Idealism, dreams, immortality, etc. are themes that seem much more important..

2) An overwhelming number of his texts have (many) more than one themes and it feels wrong to only list them under one of them..of course it's not really possible to list the same book three or four times, so my proposal is to keep the themes here, remove the titles under them, and create a new page listing the themes and texts that relate to them, with the texts appearing under every theme under which they belong.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alexhard (talk • contribs) 28 October 2006.

[edit] Why are so many trying to slander Borges?

All of the speculation on Borges sexuality should be completely absent from the article unless someone has some sort of proof that he was involved in homosexual flings or something of this nature. All "metatextual" analysis of "sexuality" in Borges writings has no place on this page. Borge himself has said that a poem stands on its own, without the author. There should be no entire section on sexuality consisting of perverse speculation by people with no reference or evidence of any homosexual acts or relationships by Borges. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Johnwgoes (talk • contribs) 15 November 2006.

I half agree and half not. I think that on a writer who wrote so little even touching on sexuality, writing about his sexuality is rather beside the point. But if one is going to write about it: orientation and behavior are two different matters. Especially in his generation, it would be very possible for someone of strong homosexual inclinations not to have acted on them. It would precisely be evidence of such orientation in his texts that would be of interest. But (back to the first hand), there is awfully little such evidence, and everything I've read on this seems quite a stretch. - Jmabel | Talk 07:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This belief in sexual orientation, as if it was some sort of physical property of a human being, is absurd. You cannot understand Borges the man by studying his literature, looking for clues about his sexual fantasies by reading his stories, any more than you can understand a father or mother by studying the child. The literature is seperate from the man, as Borges has made clear in his lectures. All of this deconstructionism belongs elsewhere, it has no place in an article on the man, if the goal is objectivity. By all means discuss his life, the events of his life, but these convuluted discussions about his "sexual nature" belong in silly journals and in depraved musings. This garrulous section about Borges sexuality is slanderous and reflects poorly on the objective quality of the article. The section should be removed. --Johnwgoes 01:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not for a moment saying that sexual orientation is "some sort of physical property of a human being": it is precisely a matter of perception and presentation, above all self-perception and self-presentation. From everything I can see, Borges's self-presentation was, in gender terms, absolutely conventionally male, and, in erotic terms, that of a person with no great interest in sex or sexuality. I agree that it is almost a non-topic in his case. It's like trying to write about what he thought about baseball.
Conversely, I don't see any slander here, any more than I would if someone were to conjecture that he preferred left-handed pitchers. - Jmabel | Talk 17:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Please. Johnwgoes 12:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, what can you see about Borges? If this section is to remain, it must at least be rid of speculation and be filled with facts. I would like to state my intent to edit this section and remove the speculation about the meaning of the Sect of the Phoenix (and it's supposed reflection of a fear of homosexuality) and other speculation that has no basis in citation or in direct observation of Borges' life. Johnwgoes 12:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the section some and have removed some of the more speculatory comments and traces of original research. I also removed a quote attributed to Borges that I have been unable to confirm anywhere else. Knowing Borges' work it seems unlikely he would give an easy answer to such a question. I don't think this section is really ideal at the moment, but I think it's somewhat better than it was before. I also added a bit of polish and rephrased a couple of sentences. Johnwgoes 08:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

First of all, a heterosexual context prevails in Hombre de la Esquina Rosada; cf Delia Elena San Marco. Moreover, the theme of heteroromantic obsession arises in The Draped Mirrors and of course in The Aleph. Of Beatriz, Borges says she "really existed and I was very much and hopelessly in love with her." (in the Commentary on The Aleph, in The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, edited and translated by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges, Dutton, 1978, p264). Perhaps I am easily fooled. Many say that Beatriz did not exist and that Borges modeled the story after (or wrote it for) Estele Canto; e.g. see http://www.uiowa.edu/borges/vb1/balder1.htm. Moving right along, the locus of evidence for his homophobia arises in a tirade against the glorification of bullying, found in Nuestras imposibilidades:

Añadiré otro ejemplo curioso: el de la sodomía. En todos los países de la tierra, una indivisible reprobación recae sobre los dos ejecutores del inimaginable contacto. Abominación hicieron los dos; su sangre sobre ellos, dice el Levítico. No así entre el malevaje de Buenos Aires, que reclama una especie de veneración para el agente activo--porque lo embromó al compañero. Entrego esa dialéctica fecal a los apologistas de la viveza, del alacraneo y de la cachada, que tanto infierno encubren. (Discusión 17-18, quoted at http://www.uiowa.edu/borges/bsol/bgay.shtml)

I am accustomed to this translation:

I will add another curious subject of insult: sodomy. In all countries, an indivisible reprobation falls upon the two practitioners of this unimaginable contact. "...both of them have committed an abomination...their blood shall be upon them,", says Leviticus (20:13, Kimg James version). Not so with Buenos Aires' tough guys, who virtually venerate the active partner, because he took advantage of his companion. I hand over this fecal dialectic to the apologists for the wise guy, to those staunch supporters of backbiting and leg-pulling, all of which conceal so much hell. –"Our Inadequacies", Borges, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine (prepared especially for) Borges: A Reader (subtitle) A Selection from the Writings of Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Emir Rodriguez Monegal & Alistair Reid, Dutton, p29.

Finally, as for La Intrusa...

Without my suspecting it, the hint for this story—perhaps the best I have ever written—came out of a chance conversation with my friend don Nicolás Paredes sometime back in the late twenties. Commenting on the decadence of tango lyrics, which even then went in for the "loud self-pity" among sentimental compadritos betrayed by their wenches, Paredes remarked dryly, "Any man who thinks five minutes stright about a woman is no man—he's a queer." –Borges, in the commentary on "The Intruder", ed/tr Di Giovanni, op. cit., p278

--munge 08:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Forgery

Why was this sentence removed: "On several occasions, especially early in his career, these mixtures sometimes crossed the line into the realm of hoax or literary forgery"? Pieces such as his imitations of Swedenborg were originally passed off as translations in his literary column in Crítica. For example, "El Teólogo" was originally published with the note "Lo anterior ... es obra de Manuel Swedenborg, eminente ingeniero y hombre de ciencia, que durante 27 años estuvo en comercio lúcido y familiar con el otro mundo." ("The preceding ... is the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, eminent engineer and man of science, who during 27 years was in lucid and familiar commerce with the other world.") [5] - Jmabel | Talk 06:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Lacking response, I will restore (with the above as a citation). -Jmabel | Talk

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Isidoro Acevedo

In the above AfD, this version of Isidoro Acevedo (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) was decided to be merged into this article. The merging, of course, is left as an exercise to the reader. Sandstein 12:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. - Jmabel | Talk 07:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Political Bias

I think this article is skewed with regard to Borges' political conservatism. It only comes up when talking about why he got snubbed for the Nobel prize!? Come on...he did dedicate one of his works to Richard Nixon, I think maybe that deserves some mention. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kangaru99 (talk • contribs) 17:04, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Citation problems

The sentence "Kodama was denounced by the prestigious French publisher Gallimard, and by intellectuals such as Beatriz Sarlo, as an obstacle to the serious reading of Borges works," was followed by "(see articles in Le Nouvel Observateur, diario El País and diario La Nación among other international media)." (I've taken the liberty of fixing wikisyntax.)

The first of these links simply redirects to a page that does not mention Borges. The second leads to a subscription site, but at least provides an abstract, so I can turn this into a proper citation, and will. The third is also a subscription-only site (La Nación of Buenos Aires), so I cannot even turn this into a generally useful citation. Under the circumstances, I also suspect that the first link leads to a relevant article, but only for subscribers.

If someone who can access these can clarify what is being cited, then these citations can be restored to the article, but blind URLs to subscription-only sites are not useful citations. - Jmabel | Talk 05:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changing "Other Works" to "Works"

The section title "Other Works" makes no sense, because the prior sections concentrate on biography rather than his works. The section should be retitled "Works". I also propose to rearrange it with only small revisions (at least for the present), bringing the description of the stories closer to the top. --munge 04:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

This paragraph:

"The importance of investigations into Borges's sexuality has traditionally been rejected by critics who favour a hermeneutic approach. A quote from Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote" seems to instruct against textual reference on such issues. "There is no intellectual exercise," states the narrator, "which is not ultimately useless." The key to understanding Borges's sexuality then, according to his own writings, would be to not look for it in his writings."

does not make sense to me. The quote has nothing to do with finding a writer's sexual identity hidden in their writings. The fact that every intellectual exercise is ultimately useless implies nothing like the conclusion of whoever put in this paragraph, I would contend.MrCheshire 19:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. One might as well say that Borges's defense of solipsism means that those of us writing about him don't really exist. Or we do, and he didn't. - Jmabel | Talk 18:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influence

What (if anything) is the basis for the list (in the Infobox) of who influenced Borges, and whom he influenced? I'll stay largely out of arguing over the "influenced", but of the "influences":

  • It seems to me that the list is almost entirely focused on his prose. (Ditto for the "influenced".)
  • One of the few poets mentioned—Valéry—does not seem to me to have obviously influenced Borges's poetry, although (1) I am not anything like expert on Valéry and (2) Valéry is, of course, mentioned by Borges in "Pierre Menard".
  • Why bother to include Cervantes and Dante? It's hard to imagine a Spanish-language writer who is not influenced by Cervantes; it is also not obvious to me how Dante was a stronger influence on Borges than he is on Spanish-language literature in general. Conversely: if we are mentioning Cervantes and Dante, why not Shakespeare?
  • For that matter, no Argentines among the listed influences (or "influenced")? Bizarre. Not even José Hernández? or Leopoldo Lugones?
  • Also, what about Luis de Góngora? He would seem to me to be quite an influence on both Borges's poetry and prose.

- Jmabel | Talk 00:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any experience with Borges' poetry to comment on whether Valéry has influenced him there, but having read a number of his non-fiction writings, I think his influence on Borges is indisputable. See "On Poe's Eureka", "Extraneous Remarks", "Eupalinos, or the Architect" for examples.
I agree, though that the list needs a clean up and expansion. Alexhard 23:24, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rather minor wizard

In the section on international settings of his work, is there really any reason to mention the rather minor "The Wizard that Was Made to Wait" (little more than a shaggy dog story) for its setting in Spain? There are no details of place (just placenames, and not all of those in Spain); the story could as easily be set anywhere else. - Jmabel | Talk 00:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Writing style

I think a section on his writing style would be important, since well, he his an unusual writer. This article seem to be all about his life with little about what makes his writing unique. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RobKohr (talk • contribs) 14:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

I agree, it seems strange how little mention there is about the style of his writting--Jsbauer (talk) 05:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Eyesight

Someone has put that Borges's eyesight failed due to "glaucoma". I always thought, and after re-reading Williamson's biography have confirmed, that Borges poor eyesight was from congenital myopia and made worse by cataracts and a detached retina suffered at the beach in La Plata in the 1950s. Am I wrong? Wuapinmon 20:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I found that he suffered from a hereditary predisposition to retinal detachment. The cataracts agravated the problem according to my source (Woodal, J: "The Man in Mirror of the Book, A Life of Luis Borges", pg xxx. Hodder and Stroughton 1996). I edited the page accordingly. Is it possible for retinal detachment to cause myopia? --Jsbauer (talk) 06:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Minor aclaration about the short story "Pierre Menard, autor del quijote"

"The most famous example of this is "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote", which imagines a twentieth-century Frenchman who so immerses himself in the world of sixteenth-century Spain that he can sit down and create a large portion of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote verbatim—-not by having memorized Cervantes' work, but as an "original" narrative of his own invention"

That's partially inaccurate: Pierre Menard originally tries that method but dismisses it as "too easy". He writes the Quixote not from the perspective of a sixteen century Spaniard but from his own perspective. That (according to the story) adds richness to Menard's Quixote. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 189.165.60.185 (talk) 23:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

Fixed. Another inaccuracy comes from the fact that "This work, perhaps the most significant of our time, consists of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote and a fragment of chapter twenty-two." is hardly a "large portion". (fixed that too). While on the topic, it can be argued that Pierre Menard "predicts" reader response theories, maybe there should be something on that in the article. Alexhard 19:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Quite, though "anticipates" is more on the mark than "predicts". - Jmabel | Talk 05:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox influences

Is there a way to cut down on the lists of those who influenced Borges and those influenced by him? Right now each list is the size of a house, and infoboxes are meant to provide a pithy summary of the article. I don't know much about Borges, but if he has certain chief influences who affected his work more than others, those might be the ones to list. Hobbesy3 06:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. First, find sources for the information. Then, create a well-written prose section (not sure where you'll put it, this article needs a lot of work on its formatting). Then list only the biggest influences and influencees in the infobox. Atropos 06:17, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Borges was a writer who was particularly interested in the role influence played in imaginative literature. He himself declared (ironically, no doubt) that he wasn't sure whether he was a great writer or not; the most he granted for himself is that he was a great reader. Borges was in fact an outstanding reader of texts: his works may be seen as a coming to terms with everything that came before him. That said, it is somewhat arbitrary to list a select few writers as his 'influences'; Borges was influenced by the whole of world literature, literally. Either one makes a comprehensive list of influences (by which I mean in the several dozens) or one limits the list to a handful. In my opinion the list should go altogether.--Rubbersoul20 20:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm trying to understand what you're trying to say. I don't see where you're disagreeing with anything I said. Could you explain yourself more clearly? I think I said pretty clearly that it should be limited to a handful, in your words. Atropos 07:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I think five, ten at the extreme maximum should be listed as influenced by or influences upon an author. Clearly Borges has been a force in literature, with many who followed being influenced by him - and he was a prolific reader. The same I am sure can be said by Shakespeare, as arguably he influenced every writer that came after him for example. But the info box area should be more concise than it is. Ryo 18:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] He "frequented" famous authors?

The article has a phrase that states that Borges "frequented" famous authors. I think of "frequenting" as visiting a location. Is it normal to speak of "frequenting" a person?

It would be interesting to have a link to an explanation of how the Argentinians form a child's name from the names of the parents and whether the shortened name in day-to-day use is usually selected by the parents or by the owner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.148.36.138 (talk) 16:54, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of who he influenced (and vice versa)

Obviously, these lists could be any length, but is Mark Z. Danielewski really notable enough to be listed? Also, Carlos Fuentes and Borges's close colleague Adolfo Bioy Casares appear to be the only Spanish-language authors on the list. This seems a bit odd. Surely there were many Spanish-language writers he influenced more than Fuentes.

Similarly, the list of his influences contains almost no Spanish-language writers. Cervantes, Alfonso Reyes, Bioy Casares again, and Macedonio Fernández. The last two were, respectively a collaborator and a mentor; of the four, only Macedonio Fernández was a poet (Cervantes wrote some poetry, but I doubt anyone is claiming that Cervantes poetry influenced Borges.) Are we really saying that Borges was that uninfluenced by Spanish-language poetry? What about José Hernández? What about Luis de Góngora?

For that matter, what (if anything) is the citable basis for these lists? - Jmabel | Talk 05:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

This continues to be a mess. The Bible as influence? Any more so than it influences most writers in the Spanish-speaking world? Similar remarks could be made about listing Homer as an influence: who didn't he influence?

Marcel Schwob? What's the basis for claiming him more than other symbolists (Paul Valéry is already in the list, what is the influence from Schwob distinct from Valéry)?

We still don't list José Hernández, Leopoldo Lugones, or Luis de Góngora. Why not?

As it stands, this list seems to be little more than an exercise in namedropping. There seems to be no basis for who is included or excluded, and without any statement on how someone influenced him, it seems pretty useless in any case.

(The list of who he influenced seems rather better, but is also utterly uncited.) - Jmabel | Talk 05:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] No Nobel

There is a {{fact}} tag on "Though a contender since at least the late 1960s, Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature" (and on several statements that follow). Surely we do not need overt citation for his lack of a Nobel Prize, so I assume that the request is to cite for his having been a contender, and for other related statements.

Most writings on the topic simply take it for granted that he was a contender. Two possibly useful (and certainly citable) online sources are:

I would hope that whoever is currently actively working on this article can make use of these to cite for much of what is there. Other than that, it would be very helpful if someone would be more precise about exactly what they feel needs and lacks explicit citation. - Jmabel | Talk 06:12, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other Works

Is it just me or is this section all over the place? What can we do to fix it? I feel like parts of it are redundant from other sections, that it has no clear goal, and that it's out of place in the article. I'll try and do a little. Wuapinmon (talk) 21:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] El Sur

Although "El sur" is now located in Ficciones, its inclusion didn't happen until 1956, according to the Borges Center's Bibliography. It was first published in 1953 in Sur.

La Nación. 2a secc. Bs.As., 08/02/1953.

BORGES, JORGE LUIS: "El sur". pág. 1. Ficc 1956, 1958, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, etc. - AntPer 1961 [1] Wuapinmon (talk) 21:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

What's the context of why this is mentioned here? In any case, Sur was a periodical, Ficciones a book, so Ficciones would be its first publication in book form. - Jmabel | Talk 05:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The article previously said that the story "el sur" appeared in Ficciones in the 1940's. As it wasn't written until 1953, this would be impossible. I was justifying my reason for removing that information.Wuapinmon (talk) 21:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Stuff

I added some new sections and rejiggered a few others. Anyone who wants to toy with what I've added, please feel free.Wuapinmon (talk) 01:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Limits to Universalism

I think we should consider cutting this whole section, which has no citations. It looks as though someone added a comment about Borges not being completely universalist, and then people came along to mitigate the comment, and now the whole thing is a sort of self-negating distraction. Unless we can cite a source as saying "Borges' writing references every culture in the world in significant ways,' then I think it is completely OR to sit around arguing about how many refernces to Hindus he 'ought' to have included. Ethan Mitchell (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arduino

I just found an exceedingly delightful easter egg inside a programming tool for the open source Arduino microprocessor. I tried to save a folder and was greated with the message

"How Very Borges of You.
you cannot save a sketch into a folder inside itself. That would go on forever"

thought it may be mentionable here, but probably not i guess... Thoughts? --Dylan2106 (talk) 20:47, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original research?

the block about Borges and participation "like wikipedia" etc seems to be original research. Michaelrayw2 (talk) 05:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to delete this block. Not only is it original research, it is also a poor misreading of the text. The Library of Babel is nothing like the internet whatsoever. To say Borges foretold the internet is to take his ideas way out of context and draw conclusions out of coincidence. (Pez Dispens3r (talk) 02:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Borges in Melbourne

I'm curious to see reference to Borges' visit to Melbourne. Borges has been a popular figure here, and the city aspires to status as a bookish capital. One of its most talented writers, Guy Rundle, wrote a piece for The Age newspaper about the influence of Melbourne on his fiction. As far as I saw, there was no qualification on this piece, nor afterwards. The story itself is like a mirror within a mirror of Borges. I'm in favour of it staying, even though it never happened. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dedepol (talk • contribs) 07:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)