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Labyrinths (short Story Collection)
''Labyrinths'' (1962, 1964, 1970, 1983) is an anthology of short stories and essays by the writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was translated into English, published soon after Borges won the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. It includes, among other stories, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Garden of Forking Paths", and "The Library of Babel", three of Borges's most famous stories. The edition, published only in English, was edited by James E. Irby and Donald A. Yates, with a preface by André Maurois of the Académie française and an introduction by Irby. Contents Besides the different stories and essays by Borges mentioned below, the book also contains a preface and introduction, an elegy for Borges, a chronology of Borges's life, and a bibliography. Stories #"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" #"The Garden of Forking Paths" #"The Lottery in Babylon" #"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" #" The Circular Ruins" #"The Library of Babel" #" Funes the Memorious" #" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books, ''Ficciones'' (''Fictions'') and '' El Aleph'' (''The Aleph''), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring themes of dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges' works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and majorly influenced the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.Theo L. D'Haen (1995) "Magical Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers", in: Louis P. Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, ''Magical Realism: Theory, History and Community''. Duhan and London, Duke University Press, pp. 191–208. Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote
"Pierre Menard, Author of the ''Quixote''" (original Spanish title: "Pierre Menard, autor del ''Quijote''") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. It originally appeared in Spanish in the Argentine journal '' Sur'' in May 1939. The Spanish-language original was first published in book form in Borges's 1941 collection ''El jardÃn de senderos que se bifurcan'' (''The Garden of Forking Paths''), which was included in his much-reprinted ''Ficciones'' (1944). Plot summary "Pierre Menard, Author of the ''Quixote''" is written in the form of a review or literary critical piece about Pierre Menard, a fictional eccentric 20th-century French writer and polymath. It begins with a brief introduction and a listing of Menard's work. Borges' "review" describes Menard's efforts to go beyond a mere "translation" of ''Don Quixote'' by immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actually "re-create" it, line for line, in the original 17th-century Spanish. Thus, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The House Of Asterion
"The House of Asterion" (original Spanish title: "") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in 1947 in the literary magazine ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'' and republished in Borges's short story collection ''The Aleph'' in 1949. It is based on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and is told from the perspective of Asterion, the Minotaur. One of Borges's shortest stories, it was written over a period of two days and received generally positive reviews from contemporary critics and authors. The story explores themes of death, redemption, and the nature of monstrosity. Its narrative style has been referred to as a "literary puzzle", with the narrator's identity not fully revealed until the end of the story. Literary critic Gene H. Bell-Villada noted that "there is no instance of a major author so inverting the hero–monster relationship" prior to "The House of Asterion". Plot summary Asterion begins the story by suggesting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emma Zunz
"Emma Zunz" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The tale recounts how its eponymous heroine avenges the death of her father. Originally published in September 1948 in the magazine ''Sur'', it was reprinted in Borges' 1949 collection '' The Aleph''. The story deals with the themes of justice and revenge, and of right and wrong. As in several other short stories, Borges illustrates the difficulty in understanding and describing reality. The story relies on issues of deceit, self-deception and inauthenticity to illustrate this. Plot Emma Zunz, a worker at a textile mill, returns home and finds a letter indicating that her father has died in hospital after an accidental Veronal overdose. Emma, overwhelmed by grief, believes that her father has in fact committed suicide. She recalls how her father told her that the textile mill owner Aaron Loewenthal was guilty of an embezzlement charge which led to his arrest, and she plots revenge. On the following weekend, Emm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Story Of The Warrior And The Captive
"Story of the Warrior and the Captive" (original Spanish "Historia del Guerrero y la cautiva") is a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It first appeared in 1949 in the short story collection '' El Aleph'' and later appeared in '' Labyrinths''. Plot summary The story compares two figures who eschewed their culture in favor of a foreign culture. The narrator first tells the story of Droctulft, a barbarian who, according to the historical writings of Paul the Deacon, abandoned the barbarian Lombards to join the Byzantine Army and defend the city of Ravenna. The narrator then identifies himself as Borges (one of Borges's many forays into metafiction), and recounts a story that his grandmother had told him. He tells how his grandmother, an Englishwoman living in Buenos Aires in 1872, was introduced to another Englishwoman who, fifteen years earlier, had been taken captive by an indigenous tribe and wed to the chieftain. Borges's grandmother offers to protect he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Theologians
"The Theologians" (original title: "Los teólogos") is a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was featured in the collection '' Labyrinths''. It was originally published in ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'' in April 1947 and appears in the 1949 short story collection '' The Aleph''. Plot The story follows Aurelian and John of Pannonia, who compete with one another as theologians. Though much of their work is a thinly veiled criticism of one another, the topic of their writing is regarding the heretical factions that appear around them such as the Monotoni, whose heresy is to preach that "history is a circle, and that all things have existed and will exist again", and the Histrioni, who argue that all individuals occupy dual forms – one on earth and one in heaven – and that actions on earth influence heaven. Though at first, he struggles to put to words the nature of their heresy, he is surprised when a subconscious sentence springs forward that efficiently desc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Immortal (short Story)
"The Immortal" (original Spanish title: "El inmortal") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in February 1947, and later in the collection ''El Aleph'' in 1949. The story tells about a character who mistakenly achieves immortality and then, weary of a long life, struggles to lose it and writes an account of his experiences. The story consists of a quote, an introduction, five chapters, and a postscript. "The Immortal" has been described as "the culmination of Borges' art" by critic Ronald J. Christ. Plot summary Borges begins by quoting Francis Bacon's ''Essays'', LVIII. " Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion." The introduction takes place in London in the first part of June 1929. Herein the following five chapters are purported to have been found in the last of six volumes in small quar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sect Of The Phoenix
"The Sect of the Phoenix" (original Spanish title: "La secta del Fénix") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in ''Sur'' in 1952. It was included in the 1956 edition of '' Ficciones'', part two (''Artifices''). The title has also been translated as "The Cult of the Phoenix." Plot summary Borges gives an enigmatic description (or at least, assertion of the existence) of a secret society dating back to ancient times, the members of which "resemble every man in the world" and whose membership consists simply of the performance of a strange ritual. Discussion on meaning Essentially the story is an extended riddle, the mysterious description referring to a commonplace fact (as Borges points out in the prologue to ''Artifices''). The probable and common answer is that the riddle refers to sexual intercourse, and Borges himself confessed as much. However, in relation to the debate on Borges' sexual orientation, it is argued by some that the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Versions Of Judas
"Three versions of Judas" (original Spanish title: "Tres versiones de Judas") is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It was included in Borges' anthology, ''Ficciones'', published in 1944. Like several other Borges stories, it is written in the form of a scholarly article. The story carries three footnotes and quotes many people, some of which are real (like Antônio Conselheiro), some have been concocted from real life (like Maurice Abramowicz, who was once his classmate, and later became a deputy for the Swiss communist party, but is made a French religious philosopher in the story) and some are completely fictitious (like Jaromir HladÃk, who is a character from his own story "The Secret Miracle"). Plot summary The story begins as a critical analysis of works of a fictitious writer Nils Runeberg. Nils Runeberg lives in the city of Lund, where he publishes two books: ''Kristus och Judas'' (1904) 'Christ and Judas''and his magnum opus ''Den hemlige Frà ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Secret Miracle
"The Secret Miracle" (original Spanish title: "El milagro secreto") is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It was first published in the magazine '' Sur'' in February 1943 and was collected in ''Ficciones''. Plot The main character of the story is a playwright named Jaromir HladÃk, who is living in Prague when it is occupied by the Nazis during World War II. HladÃk is arrested and charged with being Jewish as well as opposing the Anschluss, and sentenced to die by firing squad. Although he at first experiences simple terror at the prospect of death, HladÃk's main concern soon turns to his unfinished play, titled ''The Enemies''. His previous works he feels to be unsatisfactory, and wants to complete this play, which he feels to be the one by which history will judge and vindicate him. With two acts left to write and his death sentence to be carried out in a matter of days, however, it seems impossible that he could complete it in time. On the last nigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death And The Compass
"Death and the Compass" (original Spanish title: "La muerte y la brújula") is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Published in ''Sur'' in May 1942, it was included in the 1944 collection '' Ficciones''. It was first translated into English in the ''New Mexico Quarterly'' (Autumn 1954). In the story, a detective, Erik Lönnrot, attempts to solve a mysterious series of murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. Appearances are misleading, however. By following what seem to be clues, the detective falls victim to his belief in abstract reason and to the man whom he presumes to be a criminal mastermind. In this way, "Death and the Compass" both observes and inverts the conventions of detective fiction. Literary critic Harold Bloom named it his favorite story by Borges. Plot summary Lönnrot is a famous detective in an unnamed city that may or may not be Buenos Aires. When a rabbi is killed in his hotel room on the third of Dece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theme Of The Traitor And The Hero
"Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" (original Spanish language, Spanish title: "Tema del traidor y del héroe") is a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, originally published in 1944 in number 112 of the review ''Sur (magazine), Sur''. Plot For the centenary of the death of Fergus Kilpatrick, an Irish nationalist hero who led a group of Irish conspirators, and was assassinated in 1824, a descendant called Ryan is preparing a biography. Kilpatrick was killed in a theatre by unknown assailants, with a letter on his body warning him he faced death and after a soothsayer had predicted his end. Spotting these parallels with William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's plays, Ryan discovers that the oldest of the conspirators, Nolan, was the translator of Shakespeare into Irish language, Gaelic. Eventually, Ryan works out that the nationalists knew they had been betrayed to the British authorities and Kilpatrick admitted he was the informer. After sentencing him to death, Nolan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
