When was ficciones published

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More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges's Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy.

To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. Read more Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Save Cancel.

Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century. Reviews Editorial reviews. The halls are filled with mirrors and the library is interminable.

He proceeds to describe the arrangement of the books in this library: four of the walls of each hexagon have books while the other two are empty. Each wall have five shelves, containting 32 books, each of which has pages with 40 lines. Each line contains 80 characters. This library universe, deduces the speaker, could only have been created by a god.

Also, the books on the shelves contain every possible combination of the 25 orthographic symbols - no two books in the entire library are identical. They all differ from each other on the scale of single characters and thus the library is total and contains every possible book in every possible language, along with many nonsensical books that simply contain letters in every possible arrangement which could possibly be another undecipherable language.

The quest for finding the meaningful books in this library has largely been futile as people have sought to find the volumes that could explain humanity and the origins of the library itself.

In despair at the inability to find any meaningful texts, many people resort to destroying books by burning them as a form of purgation. The narrator takes on a very different view: he harbors the hope that at least one person - a great librarian - has had the honor of finding and reading the 'total book,' the book that explains and justifies the library.

Furthermore, the narrator explains that all combinations of letters must bear some significance in an as-of-yet unknown language or code that is also explained somewhere in the library.

All is a matter is being able to find the right books. The speaker then explains that every possible combination of letters would produce a finite number of books, but the library is infinite because it is periodic and repeats itself endlessly.

He is able to find a measure of hope in the macroscopic order of the library. In a final footnote, the 'editor' of the story inverts the concept of the infinite library, explaining how a woman named Letizia Alvarez de Toledo conceives of the infinite nature of the library to be contained in one book with infinitely many pages that are infinitely thin.

Only the impossible page in the middle has no duplicate. One of the major ideas that Borges presents in the story is that of the concept or idea of a book.

The narrator notes that a book only need be possible in order for it to exist, and so the imagining of every book possible using the 25 possible orthographic symbols, in a sense, creates them. The creation of books that are nonsensical combinations of these 25 orthographic symbols, in one interpretation, points out how arbitrary is the process of writing if it is simply different combinations of letters written on a page.

In a different but related interpretation, every 'nonsensical' combination of letters can contain meaning if meaning is assigned to them. Written language is, after all, the process of assigning sound and meaning to symbols and, more importantly, to different combinations of symbols. Eternity and Time : The concept of eternity is a powerful and recurrent theme throughout the stories of Ficciones.

Intimately related to eternity is the concept of time. Time is of central importance to all characters in Ficciones. It is both an instrument of hope and despair.

It can simultaneously foster a sense of hope and despair as in The Garden of Forking Paths where every possible action is taken as time forks into alternate, parallel versions of reality.

It is terrifying in the sense that fate is inescapable because every possible course of events exists, but it is also hopeful because this incarnation or experience of reality is singular, and we can only experience one of them. Furthermore, time in the face of something timeless, such as a person's life in comparison with the life of the library universe in The Library of Babel, is strikingly transient and insignificant.

These themes are intimately tied to one's perspective and the way a person perceives their surroundings and their own place in the context of those surroundings. For example, in The South, is Dahlmann's trip into the south a relapse into a hallucinatory state of insanity that sets in with the shock of his eminent death in the hospital?

Is Lonnrot a madman or a genius for finding and believing clues that were beyond the reach of the rest of his colleagues? Despite individual interpretations, the stories of Ficciones seem to suggest that different contexts and surroundings give rise to differing definitions of sanity and insanity.

Madness and insanity are fluid, relative constructs that 'afflict' different characters in different ways and for different reasons, but madness is fundamentally rooted in perspective. Books and Intertextuality : Intertextuality is one of the foremost characteristics of Ficciones.

Borges' expansive literary knowledge allows for the characters within the stories to interact with both real and fake literature.

For example, Don Quijote and The Thousand and One Nights both make appearances: the characters physically interact with these books and contemplate them.

Furthermore, the characters in Ficciones are also authors of fake books and interact with fake texts. Borges repeatedly creates the concepts of books, with which both readers and the characters then interact.

Interestingly, both real books and fake books have the same effect on the characters within the novel: in fact, the reader sometimes cannot even distinguish what is real and what is fake. This realization leads to a crucial Borgesian concept: the idea that the concept of a book is enough for it to be real, or for it to exert an influence in the lives of various characters, and even in our own lives.

In order for a book to exert its influence, the book must be real, and in order for the book to be real, Borges seems to suggest that only the concept of the book needs to exist.

The concept of a book is enough to move, capture, and motivate readers and the characters within the stories alike. Labyrinths : The labyrinth is the most fundamental, flexible, and prominent of all symbols in Borges' Ficciones. The complexity and flexibility of the labyrinth in the assorted stories allows it to take on many different meanings in each story, and can even represent several different things depending on the perspective. The Garden of Forking Paths, for example, utilizes the visual concept of the labyrinth as an elaborate metaphor to explore the concept of time: Ts'ui Pen's universe is infinitely dividing in many different, dizzying directions as the result of time and the many, many decisions that can be made in that span of time.

Many labyrinths in Borges' stories do not take on literal or physical configurations: they are often constructions of the mind, and as such, they are the most difficult ones to navigate. Many characters conceive of the universe as a labyrinthine structure, treating it as something through which one must find one's way.

Ironically, labyrinths, despite necessitating that one often be lost, often confer a sense of order to Borges' assorted worlds and characters. The labyrinth, after all, is a structure, and as such it does provide a sense of structure in an otherwise amorphous universe.

For example, the speaker in The Library of Babel explains that the library in fact can be infinite because it is periodic.

It is infinite and cannot be successfully navigated, but he ultimately takes comfort in its periodic nature because it provides a sense of order, and possibly more importantly, provides hope of a being that could create such a structure.

Mirrors : Borges' use of mirrors in Ficciones spans a wide range of symbolic meanings. In some cases, they are viewed as frightening symbols: Borges himself feared them and thought of them as abominations because they "multiply the number of men. One of the most striking examples of this quality is in The Library of Babel.

In The Library of Babel, the halls that connect each of the hexagonal chambers possesses mirrors, where they exaggerate, expand, and multiply the space in the library, which is already infinite. By reflecting the library, each mirror is unto itself its own infinite space. Infinite spaces contain within them infinite spaces, converting the universe of the library into a much larger and more complex universe to navigate.

Mirrors are also used to create additional hidden, inaccessible places or elaborate labyrinths that have the power to ensnare and to drive one mad. Libraries : Libraries were important throughout Borges' life: a library served as a shelter in his youth and as a comfort in his old age. Libraries are repositories of knowledge and the story of the Library of Babel expands the idea that they contain incalculable amounts of knowledge.

For Borges, they contain the universe: the universe becomes a physical, visible, and accessible place through the portal of the library. However, Borges shows us through The Library of Babel that the universe is largely an inaccessible place and that libraries, even 'total libraries' that contain all knowledge in the universe, often elicit sadness and despair. Indeed, this is the case for many of the people living inside the universe of the library. In this sense, the library presents contrasting feelings: awe and power as well as futility.

Incalculable amounts of knowledge rests on the shelves of libraries, but by virtue of that sheer volume of knowledge, total knowledge still remains inaccessible. The infinite library questions the notion of total knowledge on an individual and collective level. In the lives of many of Borges' characters, books are always present, but Borges often seems to suggest that there are compromises to be made if one is to spend a whole life in a library.

Dahlmann also uses books in order to suppress his own reality instead of experiencing it; indeed, when Dahlmann is told that he may die, he weeps in desolation, self-pity, and regret for never having left the library in which he works to go to the South. Dreams : Dreaming is a very important function in the stories of Ficciones.

Dreams often take on frightening proportions because an individual's experience of reality is called into question. Dreams often symbolize the differences among character's understanding of what is real and what is not.

As a result, they often question the validity of their own experiences. The stories of Ficciones were published and presented to public audiences in an unusual, haphazard fashion. Both stores were well received by the Argentinian public, and motivated Borges's surge of creativity and desire to continue to writing in this new style: the short story Borges's admirers abroad numbered few and typically came from select intellectual and academic circles.

The people who regarded him as "the great South American writer," were well known to have put in much effort to understand his stories, and considered such effort to be "well worth it" 3.

Borges's stories, however, have obtained enough popular cultural appeal as well as literary significance to have even made it in to various high school and college level curricula to be read, discussed, and appreciated widely in Latin America, the United States, and beyond. Conversely, Borges did elicit accusations of being "a difficult writer An arcane, over-subtle, arrogant intellectual who does not bother to make himself understood" 1.

Thus, a large portion of the popular negative reviews and reception of his work were accusations of this nature. Borges's Ficciones are typically confined to academic realms, as opposed to the realms of general popular reading. Critical Reception of Ficciones was overwhelmingly positive among scholars and members of important literary circles in Argentina and abroad Borges's work was initially only recognized in elite literary and critical circles of Argentina, and his friends of acquaintances were the first to truly appreciate his ironic, eclectic style However, American critic Alastair Reid retrospectively notes about critics' reaction to Borges's popularity:.

He became distortingly fashionable and, as in Spanish, there sprang up around him a thicket of criticism far exceeding the small compass of his own writing. His work did not become widely recognized until receiving the International Publishers Prize in , after which Ficciones was translated in English many times over Once again, reception of the translated Ficciones was mostly positive in the most distinguished literary circles in United States and elsewhere.

In a review of Ficciones the same year it was first published in English , critic Mildred Adams reinforces the notion that Ficciones is a work largely appreciated in academic or literary circles, explaining the lack of popular appreciation for the stories as a symptom of "the ordinary" man 1. The translation of any text into another language is always a distinct challenge. The translation of Ficciones is no exception, but perhaps the most interesting part about this translation is that Borges did not complete it, but he certainly could read and understand it.

As a bilingual author, Borges stood in a unique position to understand the shortcomings of translations in a way that few authors can. For bilingual readers who have read both Spanish and English versions of the Ficciones, the experience of the same text in different languages yields different experiences of that text and of those ideas. Borges beautifully explained in a interview the fundamentally non-synonymous nature of langue when contemplating his own works in Ficciones and their translations 2.

Borges explains that languages differ in the same way that traditions differ: they differ in that different experiences give rise to them 2. Language, after all, is the most fundamental of all traditions, and since no two experiences can be synonymous, then it follows that no two languages can be synonymous either. Another difference that translation sometimes necessitates is the difference in the emphasis or constitution of words, which also necessitates a change in meaning.

Enter Email Address Related Books. October Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke. January Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. In any case, the seventeenth story is packed with I've just finished the seventeenth and final story in this volume.

In any case, the seventeenth story is packed with many of the elements I had noticed in the earlier stories which makes it the perfect one to end the volume as well as to use as a launch pad for my thoughts on this first Borges reading experience. The South , for that is the name of the seventeenth story, begins in a typical as I now realise Borges manner with a factual sounding paragraph that could be straight out of an essay or a history book.

Precise dates and place names and other historical references add weight to this impression, and the reader might feel overwhelmed by the amount of detail packed into that first paragraph. Which details will be useful ones to remember later, I wondered, as my mind reeled from the concentration of facts. The dates themselves destabilised me because one minute the story seemed to be set in and the next in Borges often uses numbers, shapes, places and compass points in his stories, and that numerical, spatial, geometrical and temporal data, combined with uncertainty about whether the 'facts' are historical or fictional, made me feel as if the ground was shifting beneath my feet, as in the twelfth story, Death and the Compass : …the second crime occurred on the night of the third of January But just when I might abandon a story in confusion as you might abandon this review , Borges offers an axiom that has the effect of a strong coffee, setting me back on solid ground, able to pay complete attention and avoid being slapped in the face by any further red herrings: destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction.

This is the stage when the story proper begins, or perhaps continues, since Borges likes to drop us into the middle of a story from time to time.

Or indeed the 'story' might not 'begin' at all leaving the narrative to continue in the mode of an essay. That's only one of the games Borges likes to play with his readers, and when I understood how playful his writing could be, I enjoyed his stories much more. I also learned to look out for the signs that I shouldn't take everything literally as in the story called The Sect of the Phoenix which seems to be about a secret activity known only to an obscure group but instead turns out to be about something we all do instinctively and without which life couldn't go on.

The story is very funny especially as Borges inserts corks and sealing wax into the scenario! However humour is generally not so apparent in Borges's writing, and certainly not in the ninth story about Ireneo Funes who is cursed with a phenomenal memory, not only of every word he had read but every transient pattern on water or in the sky, every scrap of dream he ever had.

The oddest thing about that odd story is that, as I read it, I remembered reading it before though I had been certain that this volume of stories was my first experience of reading Borges! By stressing the weightiness of Borges's stories, and the red herrings that distracted me sometimes, I may have given the impression that the stories are long.

The opposite is true. The South might well be one of the longest, at only eight pages while The End is one of the shortest at a mere four pages, and is an example of Borges's ability, when he so chooses, to make every word count: the setting, the timing, the oblique view of the action are precise and perfect. As I said earlier, those two stories are mirror images of each other, and, what's more, The South is divided into two halves which are mirror images of themselves.

Orbis terrarum est speculum Ludi: The world is mirror to the game , says Borges in the thirteenth story, quoting a sixteenth century Latinist. Indeed mirrors and symmetry seem to be as much a part of his writing tools as games themselves are.

As I began each new story, I never knew where it was going to be situated, south or north, west or east. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that several stories were set in my native country, or at least had characters who came from there. They weren't the most heroic of characters perhaps but I have no illusions about my countrymen so I wasn't perturbed.

In any case, the countries Borges described became entirely new territories for me, places I have never visited or could never visit. He has created his own Orbis Terrarum with its own compass points, and as I read, I felt like an explorer, going where no one has ever gone before. I felt I'd discovered the planet Borges. View all 51 comments. Apr 12, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. To me Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges is the ultimate anthology of short stories… I find in it everything I ever want to find in literature: reality and surreality, realness and surrealness, fables and parables, legends and myths, mysticism and philosophy, history and fantasy and an endless enigma.

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The mirror troubled the far end of a hallway in a large country house on Calle Gaona, in Ramos Mejia; the encyclopedia is To me Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges is the ultimate anthology of short stories… I find in it everything I ever want to find in literature: reality and surreality, realness and surrealness, fables and parables, legends and myths, mysticism and philosophy, history and fantasy and an endless enigma.

The event took place about five years ago. Yes, use a combination of mirrors, labyrinths and books and you too will be capable to live an idyllic, fabulous and mysterious life whenever you wish… With one quick look, you and I perceive three wineglasses on a table; Funes perceived every grape that had been pressed into the wine and all the stalks and tendrils of its vineyard. He knew the forms of the clouds in the southern sky on the morning of April 30,, and he could compare them in his memory with the veins in the marbled binding of a book he had seen only once, or with the feathers of spray lifted by an oar on the Rio Negro on the eve of the Battle of Quebracho.

Nor were those memories simple—every visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, and so on. He was able to reconstruct every dream, every daydream he had ever had. A perfect memory and ability of perfect vision turns into a curse and we understand that our capability to forget is actually a divine gift.

And Death and the Compass is an utmost detective story, an utter post-noir tale for me. I believe that this elaborate maze of misconceptions, false steps and deception was a main influence on Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. View all 7 comments. Greg Vit, oh, I know what you mean! Last night President Hillary Clinton gave me a call it was our regular Monday night bookchat and the subject was, "Wh Vit, oh, I know what you mean!

Then Brad Pitt showed up and we had a threesome. John H. If I were allowed only one book from now on, this would be my "desert island" pick. Mar 28, Michael rated it it was amazing Shelves: recs , A series of laconic, fantastical tales that provoke thought at every turn. The work invites rereading. View all 6 comments. I read and then reread several of these stories some of them for a third time while I was writing my final review for Fantasy Literature , and they keep impressing me more My literary friends will be so proud of me!

Ficciones is a classic collection of seventeen short stories by acclaimed Argentine 4. Ficciones is a classic collection of seventeen short stories by acclaimed Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, originally published in the s in Spanish, and winner of the International Publishers Prize. These stories and mock essays are a challenging mixture of philosophy, magical realism, fantasy, ruminations on the nature of life, perception and more. There are layers of meaning and frequent allusions to historic figures, other literary works, and philosophical ideas, not readily discernable at first read.

Reading Ficciones, and trying to grasp the concepts in it, was definitely the major mental workout of the year for me. My brain nearly overloaded several times, but reading some critical analyses of these works helped tremendously with my understanding and appreciation of these works … well, at least most of them.

The first six stories in Part Two, Artifices , were added in , and the collection was named Ficciones at that time. Borges added the final three stories to Ficciones in the edition. For them, the world is not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is serial and temporal, but not spatial. Heady stuff! This twenty page story the longest in the book is so abstruse and heavily laden with philosophical ideas and allusions that I found it almost completely impenetrable.

Brain cell verdict: no response. They totally shorted out on this one. When he perceives a note of tenderness and clarity in one of these vile men, he concludes that it is the reflection of a perfect man who exists somewhere. We have met the divine and it is us. My brain cells concluded that, although some of the allusions are obscure, this tale is far more readily grasped than the first one. There is hope! The brain cells were getting restive again.

A lucky drawing might lead you to be elevated to the council of wizards or reunite you with a long-lost love; a losing ticket might land you in jail, or get your tongue burned, or lead to infamy or death. The ubiquitous lottery seems to be a symbol of the capriciousness of chance in life and the story in general seems to be taking an ironic view of the questionable role of deity in human life.

The brain cells were quite amused. Borges playfully explores the labyrinth concept in different ways in each of these works. Each book contains pages, with 40 lines of 80 letters each. There are 25 letters and punctuation marks in the alphabet. The Library contains every possible combination of those letters.

But life for the people dwelling in this library is profoundly frustrating, even depressing, since only a vanishingly small percentage of the books make any sense at all. Borges explores the ways that people react to this, with several nods to religion and philosophy. Yu discovers that an MI5 agent, Richard Madden an Irishman who also has equivocal feelings about the nation he is serving, due to his nationality has captured another German spy and is on the verge of finding him.

Yu goes on the run. The plot is thickened by the fact that Dr. Yu has just found out the location of a new British artillery park. This is the first story in this book that has a substantial plot to go along with the play of ideas; hence, I enjoyed reading it more than the previous tales.

The concepts in it are not as mentally challenging, although the labyrinth imagery and philosophical conjectures resurface toward the end. When Borges returns to this village three years later, Funes is now crippled from being thrown by a wild horse, but his mind is unimpaired. The narrator realizes that Funes also now has an infallible memory, with perfect recall.

To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details. This tale was, again, a little too opaque and short on plot for me to really enjoy. The brain cells were grumbling a little. The Irishman tells a story of his involvement in the battle for Irish independence, and his dealings with a disagreeable, cowardly man named John Vincent Moon. The house is not this large, he thought.

It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the years, my ignorance, the solitude. All he wants is the ability to finish up a play he has been working on, his masterpiece. A divine voice tells him that he will be granted the time to do this — even though he is set to die the next day. Borges-as-Runeberg recasts the character and nature of Judas in three different, heretical ways, including as a righteous man who knowingly accepted his role as the person who would force Jesus to declare his divinity, and even as another incarnation of God Himself.

He challenges our comfortable religious views. Their conversation makes it clear that the black man has been waiting seven years for this meeting. In a famous scene in the poem, Fierro crudely provokes a black man and then kills him in the resulting knife fight.

Several years later, in this story, Fierro is an aging man with some regrets for the life he has lived, and whose free and lawless gaucho way of life is passing. Once I really grasped the connection between the poem and this story, it became one of my favorites in this collection. Is it sexual intercourse? Or perhaps more particularly, homosexual sex? The main character is Juan Dahlmann, a mixture of German and Spanish ancestry, whose life is mundane but who dreams vaguely of a more romantic life, inspired by the Flores side of his heritage and the Flores ranch in the South that he owns but has never visited.

One day Dahlmann brushes his forehead against something in a dark stairway and realizes afterwards that he is bleeding. He develops a life-threatening infection and is taken to a sanitarium for treatment. After many excruciatingly painful and feverish days, he recovers, and decides that he will take a trip to his ranch to convalesce. He travels out of the city on a train, feeling as though he is traveling into the past, and has an unexpected confrontation as he nears his final destination.

Or does he? Repeated labyrinth imagery, scenes of deception, and challenges to our perceptions of what is real echo throughout the stories of Ficciones. Even the lightest stories have several layers and hidden meanings to unpack. The English translation by Anthony Kerrigan and other translators is excellent. View all 18 comments. Feb 06, Steven Godin rated it really liked it Shelves: short-stories , latin-america , fiction.

Or even just the way that you read it. This is one of those very occasion where I will undoubtedly benefit reading again. It's clear to see why Jorge Luis Borges is regarded as one of the 20th century's most inventive writers, and Ficciones is a collection of small stories that are on a grand scale, but my overall problem was going through three or four at a time and finding them hard to digest, jumping fro 3.

It's clear to see why Jorge Luis Borges is regarded as one of the 20th century's most inventive writers, and Ficciones is a collection of small stories that are on a grand scale, but my overall problem was going through three or four at a time and finding them hard to digest, jumping from one to another just didn't work for me. And only read the last few days apart giving me a chance to fully think about about them, this worked so much better, but still left me feeling a bit dumbfounded.

Also was not reading the best translated version, so that didn't help either. Borges never compromised himself by writing a novel but instead left a whole library of delicately structured maze-like speculations. Each one is like the Tardis — little time-machines of the imagination and far bigger within than they appear on the outside, and there is certainly plenty to keep one occupied: writers, dreamers, heretics, young men with impossible memories, other worlds revealed by secret encyclopedias, traitors transformed by betrayal, conspirators that plot their own downfall: 17 pieces, none longer than 25 pages; none shorter than a lifetime.

It's difficult to pick a favourite but 'Death and the Compass' and 'The Sect of the Phoenix' were two that I read twice.

I am sure this collection will grow on me, and multiple readings built up over time will no doubt chance my perception from reading the first time, into something very special indeed! View all 9 comments. There is no logically understanding the mazes Borges creates, but that is what fantastical-realism is all about.

Ficciones is a labyrinth, beautiful and witty, of ideas and feelings that mock and conquers the reader. Borges can speak for himself, who am I to explain his brilliance and imagination? All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon.

The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future.

Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication.

These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad The Vindications exist I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.

View all 15 comments. Mar 22, Steve rated it really liked it. Comprehension somehow boosts us to a higher plane. The ultimate in advancement, if it can be imagined, is the universal infinitude of all experience.

And the more grounded me answers, yes. However, I contend that Borges himself, if asked, might have said the same thing though surely more artfully. For him, I think, it was the mind-bending absurdity of the questions he posed rather than some metaphysical and unattainable truth of the matter that excited him. If we take as a given that time is infinite, then every possible set of realities would have a chance to play out. If in one iteration I typed an O here, I could in another type an X, with all else being the same.

Every single permutation imaginable could occur as each Big Bang and collapse in infinite time came to fruition. Imagine the implications! Borges did, at least in a way. In one story he imagined a near infinite library containing books with every possible letter combination.

In such a place, a man could conceivably find the story of his life, though practically speaking, and without Google, it would be damned difficult. Borges also considered a single book that could contain all knowledge, made possible by pages that were infinitesimally thin.

To Borges, a labyrinth is a similar metaphor of life. Each person has a complex set of turns in a ridiculously intricate path that I think represents every decision we face — right, left, X, O, date, dump — whatever. For instance, his philological references exposed me for the literary dilettante that I am.

He could also come across as a bit too academic for my taste, and at times even tedious. I will not challenge its status as a classic, though. In fact, I truly enjoyed the quasi-logical extremes he went to in pursuit of intellectual entertainment, imaginative possibilities and hard won ah-ha moments.

View all 61 comments. Jul 28, Morgan rated it it was ok. Ok, I'd tried to read Labyrinths years ago and found it dry and dull. I thought that perhaps I just wasn't in the proper state of mind, or perhaps wasn't well read enough to get it. I'd also come off of a Calvino kick, so Borges felt boring.

Fast forward to me thinking that I really should commit to Borges and give him a real chance. I have to say that hard a hard time with this book. I only really like one story The Babylonian Lottery. Most of the time I feel like I'm stuck as some shitty academic after-party listening to the drunken rambling of a self-indulgent lit professor trying to make himself believe that he is the smartest guy in the room.

I get the references, but most of this just isn't that interesting. It all comes across as clinical, with a tone of little Jack Horner self satisfaction staring at his thumb saying "What a good boy am I. He had an experience the likes of which you will never have. Jews are mysterious. He solved a puzzle that he created for himself and figured out that he is Shakespeare and everyone wrote Henry V for it has always existed.

There is a long history of naming a thing, but in reality everything is the same. Perhaps he was in a sanitarium with black circling walls. But, I later found out that he may not have been. View all 21 comments. Are there fictional tales with such philosophical significance somewhere in all of literature? In any case, we swim in these waters there, in excellent company!

The stories arise from all kinds of horizons mystical, fantastic, erudition, news stories, etc. And the ideas as the perspectives employed have taken me to all kinds of spiritual an Are there fictional tales with such philosophical significance somewhere in all of literature? And the ideas as the perspectives employed have taken me to all kinds of spiritual and philosophical depths while entertaining me with high efficiency.

How many times have I come across an evocation of news from this collection? I cannot say! Probably at least as often as on invocations of Aesop's Fables or Andersen's Tales! A reader needs to know certain precise information, to grasp the meaning of what expressing and the impression that must emanate from it, and it is to the word that Borges always delivers the right measure to him. It is possible that the message does not get through to some, but every chance will have been made available to it to keep its attention and interest to their maximum levels.

Yes, for me, Borges writes what he wants, with uncompromising elegance. They have become essentials in the history of Western thought, and he will have had the chance to know it during his lifetime. What a beautiful collection of philosophical novels! View 2 comments. Jun 29, David rated it it was amazing. The peer pressure from my intellectually superior friends finally shamed me into reading this as I had no Borges under my belt.