Jan 6, 2010

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote | Themes

Memory
Memory is what is retained (or created, in Borges' terms) in the mind from experience. The theme of memory fascinated Borges, who wrote "Pierre Menard" as a test of his own mental ability after a minor head injury turned serious and gave him hallucinations. Borges' concept of memory roughly parallels that of Marcel Proust, a writer whom Borges introduced to literature circles in Argentina. Proust's landmark seven-volume novel about memory, Remembrance of Things Past (1917), exemplifies the theory of French philosopher Henri Bergson that humans do not experience...