I am not sure whether we learn much about the CRAFT of verse from these lectures. But one thing that we do learn from Borges is what a pleasure it is to be able to find beauty in poetry (and prose). Borges was an amazing man - he was almost seventy when he delivered these six lectures, and he did it without the help of notes since his poor eyesight made it impossible for him to read.

For Borges, poetry is essentially undefinable. It flows like Heraklit's river - the meaning of words shifts with time, and readers' appreciation changes over the years. Poetry as he understands it is a riddle because it is beyond rational understanding; it is 'true' in a higher (magical) sense. And what is true in a higher sense remains unfathomable, a riddle: "we KNOW what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words [to define what poetry is]?"(18)

Metaphors, according to Borges, are the core of poetry, closer to the magic source of words than any other artistic means of expression. Metaphors are so powerful because for him "anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments."(31)

My favorite lecture is the fourth, 'Word-Music and Translation.' It is a real gem. I will not quote Borges on how word-music can be rendered in translation; just a short quote to illustrate how magnificently language can be translated by an inspired translator of genius. When Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century translated 'ars longa, vita brevis,' (art is long, life is short) he chose a stunning interpretation with 'the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.' Borges comments that here we get "not only the statement but also the very music of wistfulness. We can see that the poet is not merely thinking of the arduous art and of the brevity of life; he is also feeling it. This is given by the apparently invisible, inaudible keyword - the word 'so.' 'The lyf SO short, the craft SO long to lerne.'"(62) One small word, and it makes all the difference.

And since I prefer translations true to the spirit over translations true to the letter, I was pleased to learn from Borges that all through the Middle Ages, people thought of translation not in terms of a literal rendering but in terms of something being re-created.

I do believe that these lectures speak of the wisdom of Borges; not in spite of, but because of the contradictions in the text. Here we meet a man in full; a man who stresses the irrational in poetry and the immediacy of experiencing it, yet proves by his own example how the experience of poetry grows with the plain, rational knowledge about poetry that we gather over the years. Borges is also a man who lives in literature. He finds new beauty in poetry because he continues to change every day. And this is perhaps the most inspiring message of his lectures: people who continue to enjoy changing with the new things they learn 'turn not older with years, but newer every day,' as Emily Dickinson phrased it.

I've long been a fan of Borges the short fiction writer. But this little book has made me an instant fan of Borges the reader and Borges the literary critic. I have to admit that so much of petry mystifies me, but within the pages of this book, I felt as if Borges' insight was finally allowing me to understand poetry in a way I hadn't considered before. Witty, modest and polymathic, Borges shines through the pages of this book. You can read it in an hour, but if you read it for 1 week straight, you still wouldn't be able to appreciate all the gems of wisdom in it. Great stuff!

This would be a strong candidate for the only book you need to read about poetry. Of course, it contains numberous signposts and pointers to other books that you will want to look at right away.

Borges was a great soul and a great mind. We were lucky to have him among us. Even though the book finally concludes that poetry is like time -- we have no problem using either concept until someone tries to make us define them! -- and that Borges can only recognize it when he sees it, he gives invaluable teaching in the art of recognition.

I am fascinated by the mind, by the genius of Jorge Luis Borges. "Seven Nights" is a short collection (121 pages) of seven lectures given over seven evenings in the summer of 1977 in Buenos Aires. Borges was almost fully blind and spoke informally, without notes of course. He exercised his great memory with skill; he shifted effortlessly across literary genre, across the centuries, across languages, occasionally making unexpected connections that utterly surprised me. Each lecture can stand alone, but references to prior topics abound.

I first encountered "Seven Nights" some years ago. Having just read Dante's Inferno for the first time, I was having difficulty articulating the powerful impact that Dante's great work had made on me. In his first lecture, "The Divine Comedy", Borges provided the words.

He says, the Middle Ages "gave us, above all, the Divine Comedy, which we continue to read, and which continues to astonish us, which will last beyond our lives, far beyond our waking lives." He describes the joy of reading Dante's work as a narrative, ignoring - at least during the first reading - the extensively documented literary and historical criticism. "The Commedia is a book everyone ought to read. Not to do so is to deprive oneself of the greatest gift that literature can give us."

"Dreams are the genus; nightmares are the species. I will speak first of dreams, and then of nightmares." So begins lecture two. Borges takes us on a journey through history, literature, and poetry in search for understanding of that so common, but so unusual event, that we call dreams.

"A major event in the history of the West was the discovery of the East." And so begins lecture three on that great work that defines the mystery that is Arabia. "These tales have had a strange history. They were first told in India, then in Persia, then in Asia Minor, and finally were written down in Arabic and compiled in Cairo. They became The Book of a Thousand and One Nights."

Borges' lectures travel an elliptical orbit around his topic, sometimes approaching directly, other times looking outward, away from his stated subject. In his lecture on poetry (number five) he comments on literature in general: "A bibliography is unimportant - after all, Shakespeare knew nothing of Shakespearean criticism. Why not study the texts directly? If you like the book, fine. If you don't, don't read it. The idea of compulsory reading is absurd. Literature is rich enough to offer you some other author worthy of your attention - or one today unworthy of your attention whom you will read tomorrow."

His other lectures, "Buddhism", "The Kabbalah", and "Blindness", are equally intriguing. In once more rereading "Seven Nights" I found myself again astounded by Borges, by his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of literature, by his capability to forge unexpected connections, and by his provocative statements. He has obviously given considerable thought to his conclusions, although Borges is anything but dogmatic. I enjoy a quote from a concluding paragraph in "Nightmares". "We may draw two conclusions, at least tonight; later we can change our minds."

Whether you are familiar with Borges or not, I highly recommend "Seven Nights". Borges is simply without peer, and I do not expect to change my mind later.

The seven nights in question are off the cuff essays Borges delivered in Buenos Aires in the late seventies, written down by fans. He clearly did this sort of thing very well, and the regret one has at not being able to appreciate the performance at first hand is vitiated by these excellent transcriptions. Dante, the Thousand and One nights, Buddhism - all dealt with in exquisite thoughtful prose. All quotations are from memory (Borges was by now completely blind) and all conclusions paradoxical, lapidary, Borgesian. A stocking filler. Go ahead, treat yourself.

Estas conferencias que Borges pronunció a lo largo de siete noches diferentes -¿o idénticas?- son una muestra acabada de su maestría verbal.
Quienes hemos leído estas deliciosas apreciaciones borgeanas volvemos a ellas cada noche que necesitamos regocijar nuestro éspiritu. (Entonces, es como comer con champagne)

Speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison was the one who introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his introductions to his story collections, he was saying how he felt unfit to sweep up Borges' shadow, or something like that. He went on further to say that it was a pity that Borges didn't get the Noble Prize for Literature. I agree. As you can probably tell, I'm a HUGE Harlan Ellison fan, but I like Borges just as much. Anyway, this was the first book by Borges that I read, and I was MOST IMPRESSED. Here's what I remember of it: There's a short story in there somewhere where Borges says something to the extent that--the printing press was a bad invention. What! An author, whose very livelyhood depends on the modern methods of printing said THAT?! You'll have to read the story to see his explanation, but I was impressed with it. The Congress is supposed to be one of Borges' favorite stories. Personally, I didn't understand it that well, but I'm not saying that I hate it. My favorite story of the bunch? The Book of Sand. A very well written short story about a book with as many pages as there are grains of sand. The ending reminded me of the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark in a way. If you like Ellison, Tolkien, Spanish history, literature, etc. you will like Borges a lot!

I don't know much about Jorge Luis Borges the man; I'm not an expert on him as a writer either. However, I do know that nobody can write a certain kind of story better than he. His specialty is to describe, in short, succinct sentences of utmost clarity, situations of eerie strangeness, earthy gaucho confrontations, or encounters with arcane religious figures. THE BOOK OF SAND is another volume of such stories that range over many centuries and thousands of miles of geography. Some stories appear to be ancient legends, others to be autobiographical, but all, I would say, are total figments of a superb imagination. If I knew more about the writer, I might know if he had a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor or not. In a few places, just a few, some sentences have the ring of earnest or forced whimsy--a sort of wrong note in a string sonata. But, if intentional, then I have misjudged. "The Night of the Gifts" is a classic gaucho tale combined with the element of coming of age. "Utopia of a Tired Man" is a gem, which would probably grow on readers as they get older, but which at any age packs a punch in its mere seven pages. If you have ever read Borges, you will certainly like this collection. If you haven't, this might be a good place to begin, a vintage selection of the work of one of the 20th century's great writers.

Jorge Luis Borges has been a fountain of inspiration for writers of this past generation including Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Umberto Eco. All, without apology, offer a debt of gratitude to Borges, and this book is as fine a collection of Borges short fiction as any. Beginning with The Other, there are too many favorites here to name them all, but will offer these tonight as strongly recommended: The Mirror and the Mask, The Disk, The Book of Sand, and the awesomely eerie There Are More Things. Enjoy!

Borges, besides being a poet and short-fiction writer, took his ultra-worldly ideas to "non-fiction" pieces as well. As you can imagine, the mind-bending work in fiction is even more thought provoking when Borges remarks on Shakespeare, the clipping of one's toes, or the nature of art.

Perhaps the best part of this collection are the "non-fictions" from The Chronicles of Bustos Domeqc -- a very cheeky collection of essays which are written about fictive subjects: a poet who is doomed to repeat himself, a new wave of cuisine where taste has devolved to elemental proportions -- salty, sweet, tart, etc.

Borges wrote as a literarist: he knew his work would be collected, read, and re-read. These collection "non-fictions" are finely translated, with a fresh breath and fresh pen by a trio of translaters.

Jorge Luis Borges And The Canadian Rebellion Of 1944 That Cut Off Relations With Greece
Many sociologists agree that Jorge Luis Borges is clearly the most monumental event in Roman history. While other powerful scholars may disagree, it became obvious that Jorge Luis Borges was not nearly as monumental as Cuban anthropologists would have us believe. This claim is confirmed by three skillful points: the Marcus Aurelius Coup of 1916 that cut off relations with Ireland, the Roman Doctrine of 1968 that paved the way for the Anarchism Doctrine, and the Abraham Lincoln Revolution of 1945 that improved relations with the Italian citizenry.

In 1781 a member of a reknown group of Japanese historical writers wrote: "Nothing succeeds like success." (King 90) In some circles, this caused revolution; in others, revulsion. This begs the question, was Jorge Luis Borges Colonialism? In 1913 it was thought that "It hath been an opinion that the American elite are wiser than they seem, and the French populace seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so in Jorge Luis Borges." (Gould 120) Obviously sociologists recognize that the two are intertwined.

These days the lessons of Jorge Luis Borges seem outdated and irrelevant. It's easy to forget that, once, Jorge Luis Borges was a reknown force that changed the minds and hearts of the Italian landed gentry. Even as late as 1945, Abraham Lincoln noted, "To the memory of Jorge Luis Borges, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of German countrymen." (Cromwell 121) God bless America.

The End

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One of the most cherished items in my ever-expanding library is my dog-eared copy of "Labyrinths", complete with the coffee-, alcohol-, and bath stains which lend it almost as much character as the words within its covers. This new edition of Borges selected non-fiction will no doubt in the fullness of time reach a position of equal prominence on my bookshelves. The debate will forever rage as to whether Borges deserves that grandest(yet often all too hollow and ephemeral) of epithets - "Great Writer", purely by virtue of the fact that he never wrote anything of more than a few pages in length. But the pellucidity and erudition of his prose raises quality above quantity to an altitude from where we lose sight of the debate, thus rendering it redundant. Along with a number of essays already available elsewhere, including the seminal "New Refutation Of Time", this collection ranges in typical Borges style from film reviews (King Kong, The Petrified Forest etc.), through dispassionate yet condemnatory meditations on Fascism, to his well- ploughed but ever-fruitful ground of literary rumination.His series of essays on Dante opened this reader's eyes-and heart- to the true heartbreaking nature of that poet's relationship with Beatrice, prompting a reappraisal of a book I gave up on fifteen years ago, halfway through "Il Purgatorio"; this summer, I've promised myself, I WILL read the whole of "Il Divina Commedia".Not out of a sense of duty, you understand, but because I WANT to. Therein lies the hub of Borges greatness as a writer: his self-proclaimed greatness as a reader manifests itself on the written page as dizzying eclecticism and enthusiasm for allusion that moves the reader to explore not only new avenues of thought, but also a newer and more verdant landscape of literature than had previously been suspected to even exist. Sail with Borges and new continents, new constellations will rise before you. On a personal note I have Borges to thank for my discovery of Hume, Chesterton, the Pre-Socratics, St Augustine,Flann O'Brien,Thomas Browne, and so many others who would have remained permanently below my horizon otherwise. If you feel that reading a book should an experience of expansion, of glimpsing new vistas,to develop a hunger for exploration, then this is for you.

A tale of human foolishness and supernatural evil in the form of a beautiful love story. What a novel idea, especially for the eighteenth century. The devil is found in an obscure but fitting role in this surprisingly entertaining book. He has many faces; all deceiving and different; all equally wretched and evil. This book captures some of his essence. Excellent, and to be read again.

A book not to be ignored, this stands as a perfect example of what a book can achieve: beauty, clarity, truth, and the ability to mirror the world we live in while creating a fantastic tale.

The story unfolds in luminous, poetic writing that is a total joy to read, and in the end leaves the reader fully satisfied, yet still longing for more. A book to be read again and again. Wonderful.

this is a master work that is very important if we are to understand ourselves as well as the world in which we live. A fascinating read for the newcomer to such fiction, as well as the seasoned pro. A book to be enjoyed as much as it is to be studyed. Poetic, sad, and often very illuminating, "the devil in love" belongs to that league of literature that works on every level. Not to be ignored.

This beautiful little book contains just a few of Borges' best works from his 1944 work Ficciones (also widely available in the 1964 collection of English translations entitled Labyrinths).

It also includes important later works of Borges, Nightmares and Blindness (transcriptions of two lectures from 1977).

His own worst nightmare involves discovering the King of Norway, with his sword and his dog, sitting at the foot of Borges' bed. "Retold, my dream is nothing; dreamt, it was terrible." Such is the power of describing, of reading this father of modern literature.

In Blindness, he examines his own loss of sight in the context of examining poetry itself. In a story right out of, well, Borges, he discusses his appointment as Director of a library at the very time he has lost his reading sight. (Two other Directors are also blind.)

"No one should read self-pity or reproach
into this statement of the majesty
of God; who with such splendid irony
granted me books and blindness at one touch."

This lecture is a moving (and brief, just 15 pages) ode to poetry . If one wants ironic context, just consider that these lectures on Nightmares and Blindness were delivered in Buenos Aires at the height of the State of Siege of the Argentine Generals.

...

It seems alternately true and false that Jorge Luis Borges lives inside each of his writings in a completely symbiotic or photosynthetic way, feeding off his own product until the man and his work are indistinguishable; the man never seemed to be able to detach himself from his story and simply write, and yet at times his expected voicing disappears and one might believe another author has usurped Borges' pen to complete another metaphysic tale. Borges wore many masks, and that fact is acknowledged by the man himself here, in the tiny, fascinating "Borges and I," in which Stevenson is both invoked and mentioned, crafting a Jekyll-and-Hydean bit of self-awareness with the unmistakable tango twist of Borges' playful Argentinian idiom. Everything and Nothing is a sampler of Borges' finest work from his fiction and nonfiction batteries, which are almost indistinguishable. They overflow with Borges' fascination with logic, labyrinths, language, and the relation between the three (for a fine nonfiction work in this vein, read Poundstone's Labyrinth of Reason) and how they figure in philosophy and metaphysics. For a more whole view of Borges, try the new large collections of his work, but for a tiny glance at the genius of this literary superstar, Everything and Nothing is perfect.

The indefinability of the self and the multiplicity of personal identity are the main lines of thought connecting these 11 pieces of excellent literature, among the finest of Borges's. An author of short fiction stories, essayist and poet -though perhaps too much of a thinker for poetry-, Borges is, without hesitation, one of the greatest writers of all time. This careful, well-thought selection gives a brilliant account of one of Borges's conspicuous, recurrent themes: the difficulty of defining self-identity, since a man's distinctive features, whether mental, physical or even metaphysical, are not unique to him. As in some of the most noted masterpieces of literature, the philosophical substrate provides the background for fascinating and intriguing stories, frequently trespassing the fantastic or the bizarre. So, we witness the struggle of an early 20th Century French novelist to write The Quixote -not a contemporary version of Cervantes's renowned work, but the original -- and succeeding! We have the occasion to come to terms with the strange world of Tlön and its uncanny understanding of reality, as shown by its diverse, odd languages. The Lottery of Babylon gives every man the opportunity to become rich, powerful and exultant...or appallingly miserable and abject -by chance? The Garden of Forking Paths is a legacy of innumerable futures -which, however, does not include all of them. Death and the Compass displays the confrontation of a detective with his murderer, whom he is chasing, in a labyrinth of clues spread throughout space and time. The brief historical and literary essays concerning the elusive and somewhat contradictory character of the Emperor of China, builder of the Great Wall and destructor of books, and the precursors of Kafka, paving the way for something they ignore and being later re-created, explore the indefinability of man's essence, in much the same way as the previous fiction stories, since one never knows quite what are the limits between fiction and fact, both inside and out of Borges's work. Borges and I and Everything and Nothing -the latter is the original title by the author in English, though the work was written, as the rest of the compilation, in Spanish- express succinctly the core argument of the book, raising an uneasy metaphysical question: Whereas man may not know exactly who he is, does God know? Finally, two conferences given by Borges close the volume, turning to episodes from Borges's own life, in order to resume somehow the book's contents by invoking the fantastic worlds of dreams -rather, of nightmares- and of blindness, that suggest a vaster and more weird reality with perhaps blurrier limits than we can possibly understand. However, there is space for man if we are able to accept what we cannot understand, as a starting point for creating our own-made life.

While only a slim volume of about 100 pages, Jorge Luis Borges' FICCIONES is one of the 20th century's most original and influential works. A set of two collections of short stories, ''The Garden of Forking Paths" and ''Artifices", FICCIONES was the world's first exposure to the Argentinian writer and Borges' all-around best work.

The nature of the stories which Borges crafted is so unique and subtle that it defies description. He portrayed unusual occurrences, and peppered his stories, narrated in a faux-scholastic style, with references to colourful sources that, while sounding plausible, are of Borges' own invention and can be found in no library. In the first story of FICCIONES, ''Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius," he imagines an encyclopedia mysteriously containing a entry for a country that is not to be found - at least not in our reality. ''The Approach to Al-Mutasim" is a review of a book which doesn't exist; here, in a reversal of the usual order, the review brings the book into being. ''The Babylon Lottery" and ''The Library of Babel" are both clever metaphors for the human world. In the first, Borges describes an ancient society which lets all things be decided by chance. In the second, which introduced the concept of the infinite library, the story's setting is an unimaginably vast archive whose librarians from birth to death care for books whose meanings cannot be deciphered.

Jorge Luis Borges often used several key motifs in his books, such as mirrors and labyrinths, and it is this reuse of symbols which has created the ''Borgesian" genre. These symbols and the offbeat constructions which Borges almost singlehandedly invented went on to inspire legions of writers, including Gene Wolfe and Salman Rushdie.

The translation of FICCIONES has long been a divisive issue. While some, such as myself, believe that this versions of FICCIONES follows the original Spanish closely and, in any event, Borges' genius is found not as much in his language as in his concepts, others detest this 1962 version. Andrew Hurley has recently translated all of Borges fictional stories, including FICCIONES, in COLLECTED FICTIONS published by Penguin, but even his translation has sparked new battles. Should one wish to read FICCIONES in English, however, I'd suggest getting this translation. It is less expensive than COLLECTED FICTIONS and contains only Borges' finest work. For those who can read Spanish decently, I'd recommend even obtaining the original language, as Borges' stories do not use vocabulary much outside what one gets after four-years of high school Spanish.

While some readers may not "get" Borges (he can be compared to H.P. Lovecraft in possessing great influence on some but total obscurity to others), I'd certainly recommend trying FICCIONES.

After years of running into this name, "Borges," I felt as though I were falling short of my expectations as a reader to ignore this man and his colossal reputation. Ficciones seemed to be his most widely read and critically acclaimed book, and so I inevitably found myself reading it.

To try to capture the essence of Borges in a handful of words is like trying to capture the Lochness Monster on film: impossible, but frequently attempted. With that understanding in mind, here's my assessment:

All of Borges's stories are very different, and yet they all share a common sensibility, one of understated but very deeply felt anguish. This is not the anguish of an ordinary writer feeling sorry for himself and his fate. This anguish is deep, metaphysical. You get the sense that Borges views life and his fellow human beings at a distance, and yet is able to see more and understand more from this distance. He does not attempt to explain; he simply wants to impart his sense of awe, wonder, and inevitability.

The subject matter varies widely: an infinite library, a scholarly review of the life's work of a fictional writer, a boy with a perfect memory. Some of his stories are Kafka-esqe in a nightmarish sense, while others have the intellectual playfulness of an M.C. Escher drawing: what you thought was 'up' is really 'down,' and yet once you see the big picture you realize that this is the only way it can be. The endings are as inevitable as death, and yet you rarely see them coming.

I'm not so sure that Borges wrote his stories with a specific point or message, although many of them seem to have one. I believe that most of these stories are simply meant to inspire thought and contemplation of the very issues that Borges had been thinking of when he wrote them. One could do a lot worse than to see things through the eyes of this great thinker.

My only complaint is that his stories are not as accessible as they could be, and his scholarly manner may be problematical for some. But the most effective pills are often the hardest to swallow...

Es un consuelo y, sin embargo, un profundo alivio manantial de pensar que el hombre es solamente una nueva invencion, una figura sin haber cumplido todovia dos siglos en existencia, una nueva arruga en nuestro conocimiento, y volvera ha desaparecer una vez que nuestro conocimiento haya sido discubierto." Foucault, en The Order of Things.

Ademas del obvio, esta claro que Foucault haya leido Borges poco mas o menos completamentecomensando The Order of Things con: "Este libro primeramente provino de pasajes de Borges, sale de la risa que desmenuza mientras leiya el pasaje, todos los mojones familiares de mi pensamiento - nuestro pensar, el pensamiento que lleva la stampa de nuestra edad y nuestra geografia - destrosando toda orden superficial y todo los planos con que acostumbramos a domar la profusion salvaje de cosas que existen y continuan mucho despues para estorbar y amenazar el colapso de la eterna diferencia entre el Mismo y el Otro." Foucault se referia al "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" por Jorge Luis Borges. Sin embargo hubiese estado mejor leyendo fuera de las paginas de Ficciones. Borges nos advierte no leer tanto sobre las cosas pero simplemente gozar o sentir gusto y alegria. En su intempestivo clasico de diez y siete piezas, se manifesta Borges a su mejor. En esta seleccion y precisamente en "The Library of Babel", Borges juega con el mundo en realidad y en vano y nos enseÔa la naturaleza precaria de esa

distincion. El dirige su obra a una epistemologia que queda fuera del centro enseÔandonos la naturalesa tentativa del mundo en realidad. No tiene clasificacion del universo que es arbitrario o conjectural. Aqui es donde empiesa el enlaze con Foucault ..... Semejante a Kafka en ciertos pasajes, el llama attencion a estas zonas imaginarias y vemos que toda sabiduria, seÔas y simbolos tanto como conocimiento interior, es solo ficcion o fabricacion - fundado en construciones de palabra a palabra sea o no sea ficcion. El labirinto que es el "Library of Babel" con su forma repettitiva y topografica, y la entretexualidad que es el hex«gono carnesÍ.

"I have squandered and consumed my years in adventures of this type. To me, it does not seem unlikely that on some shelf of the universe lies a total book." Borges, "The Library of Babel".

Yo pienso que lo hemos allado aqui, en Ficciones. Todas cosas desde "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius" a "The South", nos obsequian a una mezcla de surrealismo mundial y semillas de la desmantelacion Francesa. Si Foucault ha leido Borges, el ha reconocido la contribucion de Borges en su estudio de poder y la edficada naturaleza de "The Order of Things". Ficciones no es facil leer pero es muy recompensable. A mi me impresiono la extension de los temas y propuse hacer muchas investigaciones para alcansar lo que you sentia, a mi parecer, un trabajo poco mas o menos impenetrable. Sin embargo, a pesar de la naturalesa de un trabajocompareciente a un laberinto, como Kafka, con un poco de exfuerso llegamos a ver el humor y realizamos que ambos no quedan infinitamente incomprendible.

Miguel Llora y Barrios

Jorge Borges, (1899-1986) was born in Beunos Aires and educated in Geneva, and was a prominent figure in the avant-garde Ultraist movement in the late teens and early 1920's. This book, a slim and highly cerebral volume which uses a theoretical library as a metaphor for the universe, with each volume a soul, each shelf an ideal, and perhaps curated by The Divine Ethereal, is a magnificent tour-de-force, yes, but is also highly accessible and certainly a viable choice for those of you who are new to Borges. His other fictional and non-fictional work can be very meaty and sometimes too complex. This particular edition, illustrated with gorgeous plates by the Moroccan printmaker Erik Desmazieres, is a marvelous addition to any serious library.

"The Library of Babel" is one of Borges' finest short fictions -- a meditation on the possible, the infinite, the nature of hope and the creation of meaning. The Library contains all possible books, all possible combinations of the 25 orthographic symbols in all possible languages, and therefore everything man is capable of knowing and expressing -- but it appears to have no order, no organization. It contains the true catalogue of the Library, as well as innumerable false catalogues, books proving the falsity of the false catalogue, and books proving the falsity of the true catalogue. Yet from chaos arises meaning: "There is no combination of characters one can make . . . that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance. There is no syllable one can speak that is not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages, the mighty name of a god." (35)

This volume is intended for the lover of fine books and contains "only" this single, quite short, fantasy by Borges, beautifully illustrated with duotone etchings by Erik Desmazieres. The etchings are not particularly consistent with Borges' description of the Library, although they are plainly inspired by it. Although Desmazieres' Library appears to be physically bounded in a way that Borges' Library is not (there is no "outside" for Borges), the etchings present a magisterial universe that by the overwhelming size and fine detail of its rooms evokes a sense of the infinite in the same way that High Gothic cathedrals function. My only real quarrel with Desmazieres is that his Library is too populated. He captures the sense of infinite space, but misses the fundamental loneliness of the librarian.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in fine printing or as an addition to an existing collection of Borges' fiction. If you are new to Borges, I would recommend buying a more substantial collection of his work first, then buying this volume as a beautifully realized vision of one aspect of his universe.

This unique compelling story is beautifully supported by the remarkable illustrations. Borges in any format is worth time and reflection as he leads you through his wonderful labyrinths.

A strange and unaccountable gift to translators. If "habitación" means "room" and "departamento" apartment, "sentenciosas calles" are streets as sententious as night is unanimous. As if in response to his world fame, Borges rests his intricate and detailed labyrinths on a legerdemain that extends from "Invocation to Joyce" (a poem whose jest relies on a simple allusion: "I am the other ones"-the lesser moderns who sing this ode) to "The weft" ("La trama", not "La telaraña", "The web"); the delicacy of construction hinges on the isolation of "weft" as the middle term between a tacit principal and a stated ultima, which is the grandest example of Nabokov's critique:

A poet's death is, after all,
a question of technique, a neat
enjambment, a melodic fall.

The later poems also admit an unheard-of rage in "The accomplice", which begins, "They crucify me. I have to be the cross, the nails", ending with "My fortune or misfortune does not matter./I am the poet."

Borges, for whom Stravinsky meant a sort of senseless hilarity, records a musical impression in "Music box" and writes a poem "To Johannes Brahms", of all people. A characteristic drollery is made into "Nostalgia for the present":

At that precise moment to himself the man said:
What would I not give
to be with you in Iceland
under the grand immobile daytime
and share this now
like sharing music
or the taste of fruit.
At that precise moment
the man was together with her in Iceland.

The reader will note that "La cifra" ("The cipher") is given an entirely suppositional translation as "The limit", that a general melancholy prevails on the English side that masks a vagary rivaling Fowlie's Rimbaud, which is the only Rimbaud we have. This is not an improvement on the 1972 edition; its advantage is an extended selection. Florid paraphrase, inaccuracy and a few howlers punctuate it. It is overpriced and not particularly well-manufactured. Sixty years of poetic labor are represented. The last poem here, "The weft" (translated as "The web") is his finest. The mirrors and labyrinths of "The cypress leaves" are real and functional. He visits Spain without "myths and masks", and in Japan sees the face of Buddha in a dream. Mexico is a delicate nightmare:

...The yard filled
With slow slight moonlight no-one sees, the sere
Violet in forgotten Nájera's pages...

Whatever conclusion one may draw from Rimbaud in English to Jim Morrison, Poet, one is likely to miss a certain crucial subtlety here. There is something new in Borges' poetry after "El oro de los tigres", which I think is announced in the last lines of "Susana Bombal":

Behind myth and mask
her soul alone.

The Spanish originals allow the reader to judge for himself the peformance of this capital poet. Noted names have given us a translation for reworking.

Although in the beginning I ignored the Spanish, the English should serve as little more than a crutch for those who study Spanish. Heck, I'm a lowly second-year student and as I'm plugging away at the book, I'm amazed at how great the translations are on their own -- and how little they show Borges' style to an English audience. The poems are great in either language -- but if you have a knowledge of Spanish, you'd be best off buying a completely Spanish volume if you could find it for less.

i got this wonderful book as a very unexpected christmas gift. i don't speak spanish, so can't address the claims that the translations are inadequate.

what is here in english, taken on those terms alone, is till great. recurring themes of tigers, mirrors, his beloved hometown, the history of literature, the bible, memory, distortions in time & space, heaven and hell weave themselves through over six decades of dazzling images and heartbreaking tenderness.

it's also playful- filled with bits from imagined histories and books which i almost find myself wanting to locate, as these little bits are too beautiful to be unreal.

El Aleph es un libro bastante interesante, recopilación de 18 breves narraciones, muy analíticas. Borges, nos muestra la variedad de su pensamiento y de sus ideas;nos enséña la mitología, la religión, la conciencia, la historia universal enfocada en los siglos mas remotos, la muerte, y en la última de sus narraciones, la que le da el nombre al libro, "El Aleph", término desconocido para mi hasta entonces, exposición de un mensaje filosófico muy complejo desde el punto de su vivencia personal. Para todos los que desean conocer la obra de Borges, este libro puede ser un buen comienzo para tener la noción de sus escritos.

creo que las palabras no bastan para describir la hermosa sensacion de perfeccion en esta pequena gran obra de Borges, lo mejor sera ser breve como sus cuentos, son pequenas piezas de erudiccion, entretenidas, profundas, dramaticas. quien iba a pensar que el universo se podia ver mejor desde un sotano? en realidad me sorprendio con cada cuento y esa palabra, laberinto que puebla sus cuentos, laberintos para protegerse, para observar, laberintos para hombrese inmortales. no hay nada que pueda decir para aumentar su grandeza, lo mejor que puedo hacer es recomendar que cada uno la lea ,la atesore y la disfrute a plenitud.. LUIS MENDEZ

Cuando uno descubre a un escritor como Borges se arrepiente del tiempo perdido divagando en la literatura, intentando encontrar un libro que te haga retener el aire en cada párrafo leído para finalizarlo con una exhalación de complacencia. Borges es de los personajes al que muchos de nosotros debemos agradecerles esa bendita adicción a la lectura.

Jorge Luis Borges juega con sus lectores, especialmente con aquellos -y me considero uno de ellos- que olvidan que están leyendo cuentos fantásticos y tratamos de encontrar alguna relación con nuestro mundo real o buscamos simbolismos que no existen. Esto se debe a que este escritor tiene la facilidad de sumergirnos en cada una de sus historias haciéndonos partícipes de sus invenciones y logrando abstraernos de nuestra realidad.

El Aleph reúne una serie de cuentos cuyos episodios se desarrollan en "dimensiones paralelas" a la nuestra -por decirlo de algún modo -. Dimensiones habitadas por seres inmortales que mueren dos veces y pueden recorrer el mundo a través de un punto ubicado en un lugar secreto de una vivienda en vísperas de ser derruida. No hay un cuento que podamos considerarlo como el mejor; cada uno de ellos tiene un encanto especial desarrollado en un tiempo desconocido y en un mundo irreal.