Borges, Jorge Luis - Marcelo Abadi (essay date 1989)

Marcelo Abadi (essay date 1989)

SOURCE: “Spinoza in Borges' Looking-Glass,” translated by Leila Yael, Borges Studies On Line. J. L. Borges Center for Studies & Documentation. January 13, 2000, pp.1–13

[In the following essay, originally published in 1989, Abadi compares Borges's two sonnets about the philosopher Benedict de Spinoza.]

In the same tongue in which Spinoza refuted the Jewish authorities who brought about his expulsion from the Amsterdam Synagogue, three centuries later an Argentinean writer, long since blind, dictated a sonnet entitled “Baruch Spinoza”. Some years earlier he had dictated another sonnet, called, simply, “Spinoza”. The poet—Jorge Luis Borges, of course—is one of the most prominent writers in any tongue. He produced no famous novel, no successful play; he created no character comparable to Don Quixote, or Hamlet, or even Father Brown. But in his poems, stories and essays our century can detect a voice...

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