عالم بورخيس القصصي عجيب
في بعض أحيان بتكون الفانتازيا والغرابة في النص الأدبي طريفة وممتعة وفيها صور خيالية جميلة
وأحيان أخرى تكون غاية في الغموض
بعض القصص في هذه المجموعة الخيال فيها مثير للدهشة, وأخرى أفكارها مفهومة إلى حد ما
وبعضها الكاتب نفسه بيدخل فيها فكأنها أجزاء من حياته.
قراءة مختلفة ومحيرة

The Last Words of Christ the Lord

A friend of my ex-wife’s (it’s not necessary that you know his name or hers), though at the time of his death a committed atheist, was awarded a Doctor of Sacred Theology by an American University after the publication of his biography of the late Pope, which was generally well received, even in Roman Catholic circles.

He was a great frequenter of antiquarian bookshops in Rome, at one of which he encountered and purchased for his future studies a collection of books formerly owned by the subject of his work. In one of these books, he found a photograph of two sentences written in ancient Greek, upon the reverse side of which the late Pope had written a translation in both German and English.

I only know this, because, when he died, my wife’s friend bequested this collection (including the book and the photograph) to her (an otherwise devout believer) in his will, and when she subsequently died, she likewise gave the documents to our son in her will. In fact, it was our son who first drew this photograph to my attention.

As I type these words, I am holding a copy of the photograph (by which I mean that images of both sides of the photo are set out together on the one side of the sheet of paper; I know, because it was I who created this facsimile with my phone camera and some software I had downloaded onto my computer) in my (surgically) gloved hands.

Though I have no knowledge of ancient Greek and cannot verify the Pope’s translation (I leave his translation to trust), what is perhaps more significant is the apparent twist in his translation, for it says “The Last Words of Christ the Lord” and under this heading “Forget me, Father, for I have sinned against you.”

گردش تیره‌گون خونم را دیدم؛ ساز‌وکارِ درهمْبافتِ عشق را دیدم و استحاله‌ی مرگ را؛ الف را دیدم، از هر زاویه‌ای، در الف زمین را دیدم و در زمین از نو الف را و در الف زمین را؛ چهره‌ی خودم و امعاء و احشاء خودم را دیدم؛ چهره‌ی تو را دیدم، و سرم گیج رفت و گریستم

THE IMMORTAL
We have all experienced different dimensions in our life, to name just three: waking, deep sleep and dreaming. Yet when it comes to describing or imagining the afterlife, I’ve read very few accounts postulating how awareness could shift between various levels; rather, life (or lack of life) after death tends to be portrayed as an uninterrupted hum all at one frequency, the three major frequencies: 1) awareness within a specific form, like a light body 2) formless awareness, that is, our consciousness merging with undifferentiated oneness, an ocean of universal conscious 3) complete obliteration without a trace of conscious awareness.

Why is this? Why can’t we think in terms of an alternating between various frequencies or modes of awareness, perhaps even with an occasional shift into oblivion? And these questions are compounded if we also think of our bodily existence on planet earth continuing forever, if we became part of the race of the immortals. Questions such as these pop up, at least for me, after reading this Jorge Luis Borges tale.

Vintage Borges: The Borges-like narrator discloses a verbatim transcription of a document a French princess purchased in an old London bookshop after a conversation she had with the grubby old bookdealer in various languages: French, English, Spanish, Portuguese; she subsequently walked out of the shop with Alexander Pope's rendering of Homer’s Iliad in six volumes and later found this document in the last volume. You have to love how our Borges-like narrator isn’t claiming to invent the story; quite the contrary, he is simply reporting on someone else’s factual account of their extraordinary experience.

The Manuscript: The document’s narrator provides us with his back-story in brief: he is an officer in the Roman army in Egypt, the Roman legions that have recently defeated Egyptian forces; however, since he himself didn’t participate in any of the bloody combat, he was propelled to embark on an adventure through the deserts in quest of the secret City of the Immortals. You also have to love how the narrator, an adventurous soldier, hale, hearty, bold leader of men and lover of the god Mars, functions as an alter-ego to the frail, bookish, solitary Borges.

The Spark: One day a stranger, exhausted, covered in blood, rides into camp and, prior to dropping dead that very evening, informs the tribune how he is searching for the river that purifies men of death; and, he goes on to say, on the other side of that river lies the City of the Immortals, a city filled with bulwarks, amphitheaters and temples. With the inclusion of amphitheaters as part of his description of the immortal city, we are given a direct signal that what is contained within its walls shares a common culture with the Greco-Roman world. Anyway, the stranger’s words fire his spirit and imagination, thus primed for an astonishing discovery, off they go, the tribune and two hundred soldiers under his command provided complements of a high-ranking military commander.

Going Solo: As the tribune informs us, the first part of the journey proved harrowing, grueling and strenuous beyond endurance - most of his men were either driven mad or died, while others, attempting desertion, faced torture or crucifixion. Also in this initial phase, the seekers crossed lands and deserts of fantastic tribes, including the Troglodytes who “devour serpents and lack all verbal commerce.” Events reach such a pitch he is told by a soldier loyal to his cause that the remaining men desire to avenge a crucifixion of one of their comrades and plan to kill him. He subsequently flees camp with several soldiers but disaster hits: in the fury of blinding desert whirlwinds he quickly gets separated - from now on, he is on his own.

Turning Point: Our tribune wanders for days in the desert, forever scorched by the sun and parched by thirst until his living nightmare shifts and somehow he finds himself bound hands behind his back and lying in a stone niche the size of a grave on the slope of a mountain. There’s a stream running at the foot of this mountain and beyond the stream he beholds the dazzling structures of the City of the Immortals. Marcus Flaminius Rufus (at this point the tribune lets us know his name) can also see numerous holes riddling the mountain and valley and from those holes emerge grey skinned naked men with scraggly beards, men he recognizes as belonging to the race of Troglodytes. My sense is these Troglodytes represent a mode of being at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from that of a refined aesthete and man of letters like Borges. I suspect Borges perceived (and perhaps dreamed) many of his fellow humans inhabiting a Troglodyte-like existence.

Exploration, One: After many days and having finally freed himself from his bonds, Marcus enters the City of the Immortals. Soon after he explores the periphery, we read, “The force of the day drove me to seek refuge in a cavern; toward the rear there was a pit, and out of the pit, out of the gloom below, rose a ladder. I descended the ladder and made my way through a chaos of squalid galleries to a vast, indistinct circular chamber. Nine doors opened into that cellar-like place; eight led to a maze that returned deceitfully, to the same chamber; the ninth led through another maze to a second circular chamber identical to the first.” Anybody familiar with Jorge Luis Borges will recognized a number of recurrent themes: mazes, caverns, ladders, doors, chaos, circular chambers.

Exploration, Two: Having spent what appears an eternity underground, Marcus spots a series of metal rungs on a wall leading to a circle of sky. He climbs the ladder, sobbing with tears of joy, until he emerges into a type of small plaza within the brilliant City. Marcus senses the city's antiquity and wanders along staircases and inlaid floors of a labyrinthine palace thinking how all what he sees is the work of the gods or, more accurately, gods who have died or, even, perhaps, since much of the architecture appears to lack any trace of practical purpose, gods who were mad. Then, we read, “I had made my way through a dark maze, but it was the bright City of the Immortals that terrified and repelled me.” And this is only the beginning: as Marcus further discovers, there are revelations even more astonishing, including the shocking true identity of one of those Troglodytes.

Universal Questions: The second half of the tale takes a decidedly philosophical turn and, in the spirit of this Borges classic, I will conclude with a series of question posed either directly or indirectly by the narrator:

•tHow does memory relate to immortality? Is the erasure of our memory the first step in achieving immortality?

•tLikewise, how does time relate to immortality and is the erasure of time a critical step in experiencing immortality?

•tIf we were to experience a state free of memory and time in this life, through powerful hallucinogens, deep meditation or otherwise, have we achieved a kind of immortality, at least for a time?

•tWhat part does ecstasy and bliss play in the state or experience of immortality?

•tHow far does the consequences of our action extend? To a subsequent rebirth or afterlife in another state?

•tHow much weight should we give to history or a specific epoch of history? To our own personal history? How much of history is so much smoke and mirrors?

•tWhat role does transformation on any level, physical, mental, artistic, spiritual, play in our life?





When I read the work of Jorge Luis Borges I feel like my universe is expanding a thousand-fold. And for good reason - my universe is, in fact, expanding a thousand-fold! This is especially true as I read The Aleph and Other Stories. Such sheer imaginative power. Fantastic! There are nearly fifty stories and brief tales collected here and every tale worth reading multiple times.

For the purposes of continuing this review, I will focus on 4 stories, the first 3 being no longer than 2 pages. (4,3,2 . . . moving down to the infinity of the Borges 0, which happens to be the shape of the Aleph). Sorry, I am getting too carried away.

THE TWO KINGS AND THE TWO LABYRINTHS
The king of Babylonia builds a labyrinth ". . . so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way." Although the king of Babylonia tricked the king of the Arabs into entering his diabolical labyrinth, the king, with the help of God, manages to find the secret exit. After claiming victory in a bloody war, the king of the Arabs leads the king of Babylonia, in turn, into a different kind of labyrinth, and says, " . . . the Powerful One has seen fit to allow me to show thee mine, which has no stairways to climb, nor doors to force, not wearying galleries to wander through, nor walls to impede thy passage." Then, the king of the Arabs abandoned the king of Babylonia in the middle of the desert. These two images of a labyrinth, one intricate, convoluted, infinitely confusing and the other an endless desert, have remained with me since I first read this tale some thirty years ago and will remain with me as long as there is a `me' with a memory.

THE CAPTIVE
A tale of identity where a young boy with sky-blue eyes is kidnapped in an Indian raid. The parents recover their son who is now a man and bring him back to their home. The man remembers exactly where he hid a knife. Not long thereafter, the man, now an Indian in spirit, returns to the wilderness. The story ends with a question, "I would like to know what he felt in that moment of vertigo when past and present intermingled; I would like to know whether the lost son was reborn and died in that ecstatic moment, and he ever managed to recognize, even as a baby or a dog might, his parents and the house." For Borges, memory and identity are ongoing themes. After reading Borges, I can assure you, memory and identity have become ongoing themes for me also.

THE PLOT
How many volumes have been written pondering and philosophizing over fate and free will? In two short paragraphs Borges gives us a tale where we are told, "Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries." How exactly? Let's just say life is always bigger than human-made notions of life.

THE ALEPH
Around the universe in fifteen pages. There is a little something here for anybody who cherishes literature - a dearly departed lover named Beatriz, a madman and poet named Carlos Argentino Daneri, who tells the first person narrator, a man by the name of Borges, about seeing the Aleph, and, of course, the Aleph. What will this Borges undergo to see the Aleph himself? We read, "I followed his ridiculous instructions; he finally left. He carefully let down the trap door; in spite of a chink of light that I began to make out later, the darkness seemed total. Suddenly I realized the danger I was in; I had allowed myself to be locked underground by a madman, after first drinking down a snifter of poison." Rather than saying anything further about the Aleph, let me simply note that through the magic of literature we as readers are also given a chance to see what Borges sees. I dare anybody who has an aesthetic or metaphysical bone in their body to read this story and not make the Aleph a permanent part of their imagination.

Go ahead. Take the risk. Be fascinated and enlarged. Have the universe and all its details spinning in your head. Read this book.

En los relatos de Borges siempre se conjugan todo tipo de elementos dispares que crean un cosmos de irrealidad y fantasía, que con tanto misticismo logran cautivar al lector. Pero es en este libro de relatos fantásticos, así como en Ficciones, donde se vuelven más palpables las concepciones borgianas del tiempo y el espacio. Borges era un lector ávido e instruido en las profundas cuestiones filosóficas del Ser, que sabía, sin embargo, abordar sin vanas pretensiones academicistas. En relatos como «El inmortal», «Los téologos» o «La biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz» están presentes las concepciones de la filosofía presocrática de Heráclito y Parménides, los filosófos del Ser; está presente la idea de la duplicidad del Ser y también la idea del eterno retorno, expresada en el símbolo de la rueda del tiempo, tal como Nietzsche la expresó en Zaratustra. Es, en fin, un libro lleno de cosmogonías, de cosmologías y teologías maravillosamente complicadas, que Borges expresa con simpleza magistral mediante sutiles inflexiones de la narración. Recomendadísimo.

What is there to say about Jorge Luis Borges that hasn't been said before?

Not much. Borges is a wonderful story-teller. His world is one of mysticism and magic, and paradoxically, of raw realism. It's a world of serious philosophical thoughts and of detective plots. The Aleph is a window for everything that the world contains; perhaps that is the perfect description of Borges's stories.

I must admit, however, that some of the stories didn't awe me that much. I infinitely prefer when Borges writes about Arabs within the atmosphere of One Thousand Nights or about Jews and the Kabbalah. I prefer the stories that have a supernatural element, or that suffered the clear influence of Conan Doyle. The stories about gauchos and Argentine folk if we can call it that, leave me strangely unimpressed. Perhaps because I cannot connect to that world as I connect to others. I must mention the exception: the story about the death of Pedro Damián which I thought was truly extraordinary. As Borges says in his commentaries at the end of the book, "all theologians have denied God one miracle - that of undoing the past". (One can argue that this story fits more the "supernatural" category than the Argentine gaucho category but no matter).

The stories where Borges dissociates from himself and sees himself through a mirror are some of my favourite as well. The blind Homer which isn't Homer at all but Borges, was unexpectedly moving, as though Borges was revealing one of his inner secrets.

Still, apart from the Aleph and another couple of stories, I found that the most interesting writing of this volume is Borges's autobiography. It is always refreshing and comforting to read the thoughts of a man who has learned much about life and is willing to share that knowledge. Despite being 71, he wrote of his future plans with the enthusiasm of youth. And he was right: he went on to live more 15 years.

I finish this review with the final lines of his autobiography:

"In a way, youthfulness seems closer to me today than when I was a young man. I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did. Now I know that it may occur at any moment but that it should never be sought after. As to failure or fame, they are quite irrelevant and I never bother about them. What I'm out for now is peace, the enjoyment of thinking and of friendship, and, though it may be too ambitious, a sense of loving and of being loved."

Borges's book had the gift of revealing an idea to me, which, after all, I already had, somewhere in the corners of my mind.
Literature repeats endlessly the same few themes, the only thing that changes is the time of writing and reading. The main themes used by Homer are found in contemporary works too. Though, the perspective is different. Borges is fascinated by this idea of the text that is written endlessly, that only by getting lost in this re-reading of the text - will we come to understand the supreme text.
These 17 fantastic stories contained in " Aleph" - folow this obsession of finding the symbol that most accurately depicts the divinity. His prose has a fantastic air, and this fantastic is the means by which Borges invites us to know the divinity. Of course, this knowledge cannot be rational, because the human mind is limited, it is rather one of trust, of acceptance of the existence of the state of miracle.
And Borges's miracle is manifested in purely holistic images. What has his prose in addition to the mystical texts is precisely the astonishment that encompasses the one who saw the unseen. The author finds a very strong connection between dream and revelation. The symbol of the labyrinth is perhaps the most present in the book, along with that of the double. Borges's God has as many faces as there are religions, he is the Text that brings together the texts of the whole world, from all times, he is a God who changes from reading to reading, always keeping the same features, but with a different face.
Although difficult to decipher, Borges's prose is fascinanting, the only problem with this writer is that once you read it, you are left with the desire to re-read it, endlessly.

Heavy going in places, but lovely short stories just the same.

What is divine, terrible, and
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.

Borges has always been there for me. That strange name I encountered a lifetime ago in a book about nihilism. The marvel of those stories, that surfeit of wisdom. The different configurations and yet I return to these stories like the coins and mirrors in the tales themselves. The infinite pairings: barbarians and those that go native. The theologians and the cyclical. The gauchos and the poets. It is the sly tales of revenge and despair which still surprise me, even if I have read them a half dozen times before.

Immenso Borges

Se leggendo “Finzioni” non si può fare a meno di ammirare Borges per l’originalità inventiva e il geniale virtuosismo, leggendo “L’Aleph” si impara ad amarlo incondizionatamente. O almeno a me è successo così.
A chi si accostasse per la prima volta a questo scrittore, consiglierei pertanto di iniziarne la conoscenza da quest’opera, che a mio avviso ne rivela più intensamente ed esaustivamente le eccezionali qualità narrative e il singolarissimo profilo intellettuale.
Ciascuno dei diciassette racconti che compongono la raccolta è un universo a sé stante, perfetto e concluso in sé: un piccolo grande capolavoro. E il loro insieme è qualcosa di unico e irripetibile, che dà vita a un’opera-cardine della letteratura universale, destinata a fissarsi in maniera indelebile nella memoria e nell’esistenza stessa del lettore.
Se si rilegge uno qualunque di questi racconti, poi, ci si accorge che ogni volta si aprono nuovi significati, nuove possibili interpretazioni, nuovi orizzonti e percorsi logici. Come appunto succede per i grandi capolavori dell’arte di ogni tempo.
I temi trattati sono quelli universali – il tempo, il destino, la divinità, il mistero della vita e della la morte; l’amore, l’odio e la solitudine; il dolore, la guerra, la vendetta, l’abisso insondabile della mente umana e la pazzia... – Borges però li sviluppa in maniera del tutto personale, sovrapponendo a evidenti citazioni erudite (da letterati, filosofi, storici, matematici, ecc. del passato) il prodotto della sua sconfinata immaginazione. Fatti e personaggi inventati sono così accostati a quelli reali, risultando spesso più concreti e credibili, o addirittura necessari a meglio interpretare teorie e vicende.
La prosa di Borges, potente e inafferrabile, contribuisce in maniera determinante alla fruizione del racconto, in quanto le descrizioni (di personaggi, animali, architetture, luoghi, gesti...) e la formulazione dei concetti si avvalgono di termini densi, sofisticati e fortemente evocativi, che ad una analisi approfondita suggeriscono all’intelletto e alla creatività del singolo lettore infinite immagini e infinite interpretazioni.
“Considerai che anche nei linguaggi umani non c’è proposizione che non implichi l’universo intero” (da: La scrittura del dio)

Sono molteplici le classificazioni attribuite dalla critica a questo autore: chi ha posto l’accento sul carattere metafisico dei suoi scritti, chi sul suo mondo fantastico governato dalla logica, chi sul suo “umanesimo”, chi sulla distruzione della letteratura moderna da lui operata... Ognuna di esse è allo stesso tempo vera e limitativa, in quanto catalogare una personalità tanto grandiosa, complessa e sfaccettata è praticamente impossibile.
Novello Omero, novello Dante... Borges è Borges, ed è immenso.

Lettura edificante, se con la ragione non si comprendono alcuni concetti ,a livello inconscio si esce comunque arricchiti da una scrittura profonda e visionaria.

This was my first attempt with Jorge Luis Borges. I had heard of him for years, but never managed to actually read him.

As with any short story collection, there were some I liked, others I was indifferent about, and others I could not get interested in at all. There was a wide variety of stories here, not all were the 'magical realism' style that Borges is so famous for, although the title story El Aleph is supposed to be his masterpiece of that genre (according to the back cover of my edition). The stories were all connected in some way with certain themes such as labyrinths, dreams, and philosophy.

Reading the book in its original Spanish was lovely, it is such a beautiful language. And I was surprised that Borges did not use too many 'fancy' words. Usually I have a hard time in high-toned Spanish literature because the words used are more formal than those used in everyday speech. I did have to visit my Spanish/English dictionary a few times, but not nearly as much as I had expected.

As I said, I liked some of the stories, such as Emma Zunz (in which a woman gets revenge for what she sees as her father's murder), El Inmortal, El Muerto, and La Casa De
Asution.

But even though I did mostly enjoy this visit with Borges, I am not sure I liked his work enough to try anything else. Of course having said that, I might have one or two others by this author out in my Haven't Read These Yet bookcase, so if I do I will give them a good try Someday.