Borges, Jorge Luis (Vol. 3) - Borges, Jorge Luis 1899–

Borges, Jorge Luis 1899–

Borges, an Argentinian short story writer, poet, and essayist, creator of hallucinatory and magical dream-parables, is now one of the world's most celebrated writers of fiction. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 21-22.)

If, as Wittgenstein thought, "philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language," then Borges' prose, at least, performs a precisely similar function, for there is scarcely a story which is not built upon a sophistry, a sophistry so fanatically embraced, so pedantically developed, so soberly defended, it becomes the principal truth in the world his parables create (puzzles, paradoxes, equivocations, and obscure and idle symmetries which appear as menacing laws); and we are compelled to wonder again whether we are awake or asleep, whether we are a dreamer or ourselves a dream, whether art imitates nature or nature mirrors art instead; once more we are required...

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