Jorge Luis Borges

Poet, Author

1899 – 1986

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Who was Jorge Luis Borges?

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, known as Jorge Luis Borges, was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator who was born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His most famous books, Ficciones and The Aleph, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, animals, fictional writers, philosophy, religion and God.

Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to both the fantasy and magical realism genres. The genre of magical realism reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the nineteenth century. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy. Scholars have also suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.

In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of fifty five, and was unable to read from this point on, never learning braille. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first ever Prix International, sharing the award with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. Borges dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland.

Famous Quotes:

  • Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
  • Life itself is a quotation.
  • To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
  • The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
  • Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
  • One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
  • The original is unfaithful to the translation.
  • Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
  • The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
  • I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

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Born
Aug 24, 1899
Buenos Aires
Also known as
  • Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo
  • Jorge Luís Borges
  • J.L. Borges
  • Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges
  • Alex Ander
  • Benjamín Beltran
  • Andrés Corthis
  • Pascual Güida
  • Bernardo Haedo
  • José Tuntar
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Ethnicity
  • Criollo people
  • Argentinian people
Nationality
  • Argentina
Profession
Education
  • Collège Calvin
    ( - 1918)
Employment
  • University of Buenos Aires
  • Director, National Library of the Argentine Republic
    (1955 - )
Lived in
  • Buenos Aires
  • Barcelona
  • Madrid
Died
Jun 14, 1986
Geneva
Resting place
Cimetière des Rois

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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