Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges draws on his vast knowledge of world literature, history and religion, to weave his fictional characters so seamlessly into an historical or scholarly context that one doubts that one is reading fiction. Through the vividly detailed worlds he creates Borges explores issues of causality, reality and appearance, humanity and divinity, death, art, literature and learning, and determination of meaning in human life (have I left anything out?). The first set of stories (Garden of Forking Paths) is more cerebral, whereas the second set, Artifices, most of the stories of which concern death directly or indirectly, explores more emotional elements, and among which I find “The South” to be particularly compelling.

Among the “Garden of Forking Paths” stories, I find The Library of Babel, which explores limits of human knowledge and the limits of human knowledge of the limits of knowledge, interesting and funny. And I find The Lottery of Babylon to be ingenious as Borges’ the Company follows a logical sequence of actions that render the inhabitants lives devoid of logic.

I am more drawn, however, to The Circular Ruins, in which “the man” creates a son via dreaming. Though utilizing many ancient philosophical and religious creation concepts, Borges explores poignantly the emotional ties of the creator towards his created. “Circular Ruin” describes the inner process of the creator all the while incorporating references to more impersonal ancient accounts and concepts of Genesis (“the man”- haadam in Genesis 1; sleep – through which the human being is made male and female in Genesis 2; the opening reference to clay alluding to Genesis 2 and the Mesopotamian Atrahasis creation account, to name just three), gnostic/ neoplatonist type concepts of series of lower and lower orders of creation through emanation (the man dreams his creation but learns that he is the creation of a previous creator), and the Christian allusion of father-son imagery. I find the end of the story very touching. Borges depicts the man fearing for his son off on his own, separated from him; and thereby, I would say, depicts the creator poignantly embracing his finitude.