Life And Career Of Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges – Argentine essayist, a great poet and short-story writer who created incredible fictions and unbelievable dream works. His genius works made the unreal worlds, which mesmerized his readers with the depth of the imagination and his amazing talent. His most famous stories clearly show the essence of time and infinity, life’s labyrinths. They also depict reality and identity. In his stories he touches upon identities of existence, language, culture and dreaming. In his works he underlines the importance of such themes as eternity, time, infinity and personal identity. It’s obvious that in the works of Borges and in the selected fictions, namely “Death and the Compass”, “Shape of the Sword”, ”Everything and Nothing” the author shows his identity behind the words of his characters and he discovers himself by way of showing the attitude of his characters to life and their perception of reality. An amazing fact remains that when Jorge Luis Borges was only 23 he stated that “all literature, in the end, is autobiographical.”

It’s necessary to say that the ‘parable’ or the prose poem named “Everything and Nothing” is obviously about Borges. It’s an amazing story in three paragraphs about Shakespeare’s life. Jorge Luis Borges characterizes peculiar similarity of the two highest creators God and Shakespeare. According to the quotation of “The National Review” – “Without a distinct self of his own, each dreams the world that he creates, and each sounds wistful about what he has sacrificed to his creative genius”. These words can clearly be symbolic, because Borges created the world of fantasies and illusion and by incorporating himself with his characters he definitely showed the ideas and concepts to his readers, dreaming with his creations. Borges work was a borderline between the truth and creativity because he considered story writing to be one of the most honorable things in his life. The poem really shows that fundamental identity for Borges is “Dreaming” and words in the parable “a dream not dreamed by anyone” and “you dreamed your work” can be a good example of the creative spirit of both Borges and Shakespeare. The other important and symbolic idea is sacrifice. These words can clearly show Shakespeare dedicate and sacrificed his life to theatre like Borges devoted his to his creations- “His playacting taught him a singular happiness, perhaps the first he had known; but when the last line was applauded and the last corpse removed from the stage, the hated sense of unreality came over him again. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamburlaine and again became a nobody. Trapped, he fell to imagining other heroes and other tragic tales”. Life of Borges was full of tragedy. He was extremely fond of reading and as every writer his passion for reading brought food for though and fantasies. He enriched himself acting like a sponge, absorbing the information about cultures and people. But in the middle age Borges found out that his family illness – congenital eye defect had major impact on his eyesight. The explanation above clearly shows that through his creations Borges can be characterized as the creator and thus his sacrifice is in his blindness. The created parable shows that from one side fiction deletes an identity of the author but at the same time clearly represents it through the other bright identities. This is true regarding language identity and it can be clearly seen from the following words – “his words… were copious, imaginative, and emotional”.

One more classical short story opens Borges to a reader and characterizes the author as the lover of detective formula is “Death and the Compass”. It also shows that some peculiarities as to the cultural identity. A perfect example could be the unnamed multi-ethnic city depicted in the story “Death and the Compass” and its amazing coexistence of various cultures leading the peculiar Argentine lifestyle. Borges showed ethnic identities forming this mixture in Argentine society. During his life, Borges learned a lot form the cultures of various nations but in his works he explored the identity of people in Argentina and showed it to the reader. One more vivid example is the extract when the detective Lonnrot got in the room with mirrors. The image of mirror can be often seen in the works of Borges. The splendid idea of using the mirror is obvious. The mirror reflects different identities. In the story, the mirror actually reflects the other “I” or it’s better to say the alter ego. I think this can be a good example of the identity of existence – i.e. there’s a detective who tries to solve the case and to find an outlaw through the labyrinths of case puzzles and the author who lives his life in a constant struggle, devoting his life to creation of works for people in the labyrinth of life and state of things in society. And in many works by Borges we can find roads which fork or labyrinths or mazes that can lead you nowhere. “Death and Compass” reveals the identities of existence regarding the absence of hope and the growing pessimism in the society, unwillingness to change the way the things are, the matters of fate and its nature and ongoing violence which has absolutely no meaning. e .g. “of the many problems which exercised the reckless discernment of Lonnrot, none was so strange – so rigorously strange, shall we say – as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the Villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti: It is true that Erik Lonnrot failed to prevent the last murder, but that he foresaw it is indisputable”. The reality revealed turned out to be even darker than it had been considered to be. Thus through the identities of the main characters Borges represents the recurrent facts in the society and this way he opposes himself to the ongoing events. The personality of Lonnrot also reveals the bare truth about justice and law, indirectly asking the society about the problematic issues of social life. And even one of the characters in story “Death and the Compass” namely Black Finnegan clearly shows the struggle against such state of things.

The other great story is the “The shape of the sword” which also implies the use of personal identity and the character – an Irish character. An Irishman, who was a genius in Economics but later on became a coward and turned into a terrific traitor for some money. The story shows the struggle and the rivalry and a conflict between reality and idealism. A story of a hero who had to find a solution, whether to go with the ideas of revolution or to become a coward for the sake of the political compromise. Amidst the rivals there is an image of the other great Irish fighter – James Joyce who also showed the true Irish character in his works. Borges’s stories show that the biography and fiction, historical facts and myths have very fine borderlines.

A man of character and a rival Borges empowers his characters with a devotion and commitment for shaping the future with their great deeds balancing on the subtle line between reality and fiction. Borges’s works make up the world of fantasy in which facts and fictions, the actual real things and the unreal constitute mandatory parts of the same existence.