Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Many of the greatest lights of Argentine literature called Buenos Aires home and all but one had been
extinguished by the end of the 20th century. The light that burned brightest was without doubt Jorge
Luis Borges (1899-1986), one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. A prolific author and an in-
satiable reader, Borges possessed an intellect that seized on difficult questions and squeezed answers
out of them. Though super-erudite in his writing, he was also such a jokester that it's a challenge to
tell when he's being serious and when he's pulling your leg (though often it's a case of both at once).
From early on one of his favorite forms was the scholarly analysis of nonexistent texts, and more than
once he found himself in trouble for perpetrating literary hoaxes and forgeries. A few of these are con-
tained in his
Universal History of Iniquity
(1935), a book that some point to as the origin of magic
realism in Latin American literature.
Borges' dry, ironic wit is paired (in his later work) with a succinct, precise style that is a delight to
read. His paradoxical
Ficciones
(1944) - part parable, part fantasy - blurs the line between myth and
truth, underscoring the concept that reality is only a matter of perception and the number of possible
realities is infinite. Other themes that fascinated Borges were the nature of memory and dreams,
labyrinths, and the relationship between the reader, the writer and the written piece.
Collected Fictions
(1999) is a complete set of his stories.
Though he received numerous honors in his lifetime - including the Cervantes Prize, the Legion of
Honor and an OBE - Borges was never conferred the Nobel. He joked of this in typical fashion: 'Not
granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition. Since I was born they have not
been granting it to me.'
Pilgrims can head to his last residence in BA: a private apartment building near the corner of Flor-
ida and Santa Fe in Retiro. Look for a plaque on the wall.
