Borges, Jorge Luis - Dominique Jullien (essay date 1995)

Dominique Jullien (essay date 1995)

SOURCE: “Biography of an Immortal,” in Comparative Literature, Vol. 47, No. 2, Spring, 1995, pp. 136-59.

[In the following essay contrasting Borges with several literary predecessors, Jullien explores the process by which Borges moves his characters from “existence to essence,” and what the meaning of “immortality” is for him.]

“El hacedor,” Jorge Luis Borges's two-page story about Homer, is a biography paradoxically devoid of biographical data. Names and dates—the elements that make up an individual's specificity—are missing. The Maker could be, and for that matter is, anyone. The reader identifies the character as Homer only when the Iliad and the Odyssey are mentioned at the end of the text: “el rumor de las Odiseas e Ilíadas que era su destino cantar y dejar resonando cóncavamente en la memoria humana” (Obras 2:160). Quite appropriately, the author's...

[The entire page is 11214 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass