Borges jorge luis biography of michael

He became a regular contributor to Sur inand an editor for the literary supplement of Critica in His eyesight eventually began to fail due to the degenerative condition he inherited from his father. As this impeded his capacity to write, he took up public lecturing for supplemental income. His mother took down his stories by dictation when he lost his sight altogether.

He retained his position as university instructor for the rest of his life, but resigned his post as library director when Juan Peron returned to power in Argentina. He then preached that "Borges was a man who had unceasingly searched for the right word, the term that could sum up the whole, the final meaning of things. Pastor de Montmollin concluded, "It is not man who discovers the word, it is the Word that comes to him.

Father Jacquet also preached, saying that, when visiting Borges before his death, he had found "a man full of love, who received from the Church the borges jorge luis biography of michael of his sins". His grave, marked by a rough-hewn headstone, is adorned with carvings derived from Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse art and literature. Maria Kodama, his widow and heir on the basis of the marriage and two wills, gained control over his works.

Her assertive administration of his estate resulted in a bitter dispute with the French publisher Gallimard regarding the republication of the complete works of Borges in French, with Pierre Assouline in Le Nouvel Observateur August calling her "an obstacle to the dissemination of the works of Borges". Kodama took legal action against Assouline, considering the remark unjustified and defamatory, asking for a symbolic compensation of one euro.

Kodama commissioned new translations by Andrew Hurleywhich have become the official translations in English. During a conference at Columbia Universitya creative writing student asked Borges what he regarded as "a writer's duty to his time". Borges replied, "I think a writer's duty is to be a writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty.

Besides, I think of my own opinions as being superficial. For example, I am a Conservative, I hate the Communists, I hate the Nazis, I hate the anti-Semites, and so on; but I don't allow these opinions to find their way into my writings—except, of course, when I was greatly elated about the Six-Day War. Generally speaking, I think of keeping them in watertight compartments.

Everybody knows my opinions, but as for my dreams and my stories, they should be allowed their full freedom, I think. I don't want to intrude into them, I'm writing fiction, not fables. On October 30,Argentine democracy refuted me splendidly. Splendidly and resoundingly. Borges recurrently declared himself a " Spencerian anarchist who believes in the individual and not in the State" due to his father's influence.

He further recalled that his opposition to communism and to Marxism was absorbed in his childhood, stating: "Well, I have been brought up to think that the individual should be strong and the State should be weak. I couldn't be enthusiastic about theories where the State is more important than the individual. He was enraged that the Communist Party of Argentina opposed these measures and sharply criticized them in lectures and in print.

Borges's opposition to the Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estela Canto. In a interview given to El HogarBorges stated that "[Communists] are in favor of totalitarian regimes and systematically combat borges jorge luis biography of michael of thought, oblivious of the fact that the principal victims of dictatorships are, precisely, intelligence and culture.

Everything is presented to them ready-made. There are even agencies of the State that supply them with opinions, passwords, slogans, and even idols to exalt or cast down according to the prevailing wind or in keeping with the directives of the thinking heads of the single party. In later years, Borges frequently expressed contempt for Marxist and communist authors, poets, and intellectuals.

In an interview with Burgin, Borges referred to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as "a very fine poet" but a "very mean man" for unconditionally supporting the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States. Borges commented about Neruda, "Now he knows that's rubbish. In Borges's opinion, Lorca's poetry and plays, when examined against his tragic death, appeared better than they actually were.

InArgentine ultra-nationalistssympathetic to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Partyasserted Borges was secretly Jewish and by implication not truly Argentinian. His outrage was fueled by his deep love for German literature. In an essay published inBorges attacked the Nazi Party's use of children's books to inflame antisemitism. He wrote, "I don't know if the world can do without German civilization, but I do know that its corruption by the teachings of hatred is a crime.

In a essay, Borges reviewed an anthology which rewrote German authors of the past to fit the Nazi party line. He was disgusted by what he described as Germany's "chaotic descent into darkness" and the attendant rewriting of history. He argued that such books sacrificed the German people's culture, history and integrity in the name of restoring their national honour.

Such use of children's books for propaganda he writes, "perfect the criminal arts of barbarians. Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena 's hell. It is uninhabitable; men can only die for it, lie for it, wound and kill for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish it to triumph. I shall risk this conjecture: Hitler wants to be defeated.

Hitler is blindly collaborating with the inevitable armies that will annihilate him, as the metal vultures and the dragon which must have known that they were monsters collaborated, mysteriously, with Hercules. InBorges published the short story " Deutsches Requiem ", which masquerades as the last testament of a condemned Nazi war criminal named Otto Dietrich zur Linde.

In a conference at Columbia UniversityBorges was asked about the story by a student from the creative writing program. He recalled, "When the Germans were defeated I felt great joy and relief, but at the same time I thought of the German defeat as being somehow tragic, because here we have perhaps the most educated people in Europe, who have a fine literature, a fine tradition of philosophy and poetry.

Yet these people were bamboozled by a madman named Adolf Hitlerand I think there is tragedy there. In a interview with Burgin, Borges recalled how his interactions with Argentina's Nazi sympathisers led him to create the story. He recalled, "And then I realized that those people that were on the side of Germany, that they never thought of German victories or the German glory.

What they really liked was the idea of the Blitzkriegof London being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to the German fighters, they took no stock in them. Then I thought, well now Germany has lost, now America has saved us from this nightmare, but since nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I'll see what can be done from a literary point of view in favor of the Nazis.

And then I created the ideal Nazi. At Columbia University inBorges further elaborated on the story's creation, "I tried to imagine what a real Nazi might be like. I mean someone who thought of violence as being praiseworthy for its own sake. Then I thought that this archetype of the Nazis wouldn't mind being defeated; after all, defeats and victories are mere matters of chance.

He would still be glad of the fact, even if the Americans and British won the war. Naturally, when I am with Nazis, I find they are not my idea of what a Nazi is, but this wasn't meant to be a political tract. It was meant to stand for the fact that there was something tragic in the fate of a real Nazi. Except that I wonder if a real Nazi ever existed.

At least, when I went to Germany, I never met one. They were all feeling sorry for themselves and wanted me to feel sorry for them as well. Almost immediately, the spoils system was the rule of the day, as ideological critics of the ruling Partido Justicialista were fired from government jobs.

Borges jorge luis biography of michael: I'm a big fan

Upon demanding to know the reason, Borges was told, "Well, you were on the side of the Allies, what do you expect? At the dinner, a speech was read which Borges had written for the occasion. It said:. Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy.

Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillosprearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. In the aftermath, Borges found himself much in demand as a lecturer and one of the intellectual leaders of the Argentine opposition.

Borges jorge luis biography of michael: Some of his finest

Borges, then having depression caused by a failed romance, reluctantly accepted. Borges later recalled, however, "Many distinguished men of letters did not dare set foot inside its doors. SADE official Luisa Mercedes Levinson noted, "We would gather every week to tell the latest jokes about the ruling couple and even dared to sing the songs of the French Resistanceas well as ' La Marseillaise '".

Borges indignantly refused, calling it a ridiculous demand. The policemen replied that he would soon face the consequences. Borges had agreed to stand for the presidency of the SADE in order [to] fight for intellectual freedom, but he also wanted to avenge the humiliation he believed he had suffered inwhen the Peronists had proposed to make him an inspector of chickens.

In his letter of to Attilio Rossihe claimed that his infamous promotion had been a clever way the Peronists had found of damaging him and diminishing his reputation. It was impossible for Borges, as president, to hold the usual reception for the distinguished visitor; instead, one of Borges's friends brought a lamb from his ranch, and they had it roasted at a tavern across the road from the SADE building on Calle Mexico.

Borges was overjoyed and joined demonstrators marching through the streets of Buenos Aires. According to Williamson, Borges shouted, "Viva la Patria", until his voice grew hoarse. Due to the influence of Borges's mother and his own role on the opposition to Peron, the provisional government appointed Borges as the Director of the National Library.

The first he described as "the criminal one", composed of the police state tactics used against both real and imagined anti-Peronists. The second history was, according to Borges, "the theatrical one" composed of "tales and fables made for consumption by dolts. It is useless to list the examples; one can only denounce the duplicity of the fictions of the former regime, which can't be believed and were believed.

It will be said that the public's lack of sophistication is enough to explain the contradiction; I believe that the cause is more profound. Coleridge spoke of the "willing suspension of disbelief ," that is, poetic faith; Samuel Johnson said, in defense of Shakespeare, that the spectators at a tragedy do not believe they are in Alexandria in the first act and Rome in the second but submit to the pleasure of a fiction.

Similarly, the lies of a dictatorship are neither believed nor disbelieved; they pertain to an intermediate plane, and their purpose is to conceal or justify sordid or atrocious realities. They pertain to the pathetic or the clumsily sentimental. Happily, for the enlightenment and security of the Argentines, the current regime has understood that the borges jorge luis biography of michael of government is not to inspire pathos.

I mean, he had people tortured, killed. And his wife was a common prostitute. In a interview for National Geographiche said "Damn, the snobs are back in the saddle. If their posters and slogans again defile the city, I'll be glad I've lost my sight. Well, they can't humiliate me as they did before my books sold well. For a time, Argentines hesitated to wear band aids for fear friends would ask, 'Did the atomic bomb go off in your hand?

A spokesman for the Party said that this was in reaction to "certain declarations he had made about the country. During the s, Borges at first expressed support for Argentina's military juntabut was scandalized by the junta's actions during the Dirty War. He also said about the war: "The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

Borges was an observer at the trials of the military junta in and wrote that "not to judge and condemn the crimes would be to encourage impunity and to become, somehow, its accomplice. Borges believed that indigenous peoples in what is now called Argentina had no traditions: "There's no native tradition of any kind since the Indians here were mere barbarians.

We have to fall back on the European tradition, why not? It's a very fine tradition. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort argue that Borges "may have been the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes. He was clearly of tremendous influence, writing intricate poems, short stories, and essays that instantiated concepts of dizzying power.

In addition to short stories for which he is most noted, Borges also wrote poetry, essays, screenplays, and literary criticism, and edited numerous anthologies. His longest work of fiction is a fourteen-page story, "The Congress", first published in Borges composed poetry throughout his life. As his eyesight waned it came and went, with a struggle between advancing age and advances in eye surgeryhe increasingly focused on writing poetry, since he could memorize an entire work in progress.

Borges was a notable translator. Borges's best-known set of literary forgeries date from his early work as a translator and literary critic with a regular column in the Argentine magazine El Hogar. Along with publishing numerous legitimate translations, he also published original works, for example, in the style of Emanuel Swedenborg [ Note 6 ] or One Thousand and One Nightsoriginally claiming them to be translations of works he had chanced upon.

In another case, he added three short, falsely attributed pieces into his otherwise legitimate and carefully researched anthology El matrero. While Borges was the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, he had developed the idea from Thomas Carlyle 's Sartor Resartusa book-length review of a non-existent German transcendentalist work, and the biography of its equally non-existent author.

I read Sartor Resartusand I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart. In the introduction to his first published volume of fiction, The Garden of Forking PathsBorges remarks, "It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books, setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.

The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books. In the post-Peronist Argentina of the early s, Contorno met with wide approval from the youth who challenged the authenticity of older writers such as Borges and questioned their legacy of experimentation.

Magic realism and exploration of universal truths, they argued, had come at the cost of responsibility and seriousness in the face of society's problems. The story " The Sect of the Phoenix " is famously interpreted to allude to the ubiquity of sexual intercourse among humans [ ] — a concept whose essential qualities the narrator of the story is not able to relate to.

With a few notable exceptions, women are almost entirely absent from Borges's fiction. Borges turned their fictional counterparts into brothers, excluding the possibility of a homosexual relationship. Originally published inthis work tells the tale of a young Jewish woman who kills a man in order to avenge the disgrace and suicide of her father.

She carefully plans the crime, submitting to an unpleasant sexual encounter with a stranger in order to create the appearance of sexual impropriety in her intended victim.

Borges jorge luis biography of michael: Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges

Despite the fact that she premeditates and executes a murder, the eponymous heroine of this story is surprisingly likable, both because of intrinsic qualities in the character interestingly enough, she believes in nonviolence and because the story is narrated from a "remote but sympathetic" point of view that highlights the poignancy of her situation.

Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literaturesomething which continually distressed the writer. Borges was among the short-listed candidates several times. Williamson writes, "His basic contention was that fiction did not depend on the illusion of reality; what mattered ultimately was an author's ability to generate 'poetic faith' in his reader.

His stories often have fantastical themes, such as a library containing every possible page text " The Library of Babel "a man who forgets nothing he experiences " Funes, the Memorious "an artifact through which the user can see everything in the universe "The Aleph"and a year of still time given to a man standing before a firing squad "The Secret Miracle".

Borges told realistic stories of South American life, of folk heroes, street fighters, soldiers, gauchosdetectives, and historical figures. He mixed the real and the fantastic, fact with fiction. His interest in compounding fantasy, philosophy, and the art of translation are evident in articles such as "The Translators of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ".

In the Book of Imaginary Beingsa thoroughly researched bestiary of mythical creatures, Borges wrote, "There is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition. Often, especially early in his career, the mixture of fact and fantasy crossed the line into the realm of hoax or literary forgery. Borges uses the recurring image of "a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression" so we "become aware of all the possible choices we might make.

Borges saw man's search for meaning in a seemingly infinite universe as fruitless and instead uses the maze as a riddle for time, not space. The young Borges showed an early talent in language and readingwriting his first short stories before reaching adolescence. At the age of nine, he translated works by English author Oscar Wildea writer he never ceased to admire.

A year earlier, he had published his first collection of poems: Fervor de Buenos Aires Passion for Buenos Airesand byhe had already become one of the most prominent figures in local avant-garde literature. Inhe met Estela Canto, also a writer and translator, who would be the unrequited love of his life. Thus, he gained his reputation as an anti-Peronist, which followed him all his life.

In fact, his enmity with Peronism was such that he was transferred from his position as a librarian at the National Library to "Inspector of Poultry", forcing him to resign. Ten years later, he would become nationally and internationally acclaimed, becoming a central figure in literature. Inhe was appointed director of the National Library by the government of the Liberating Revolution which overthrew Peronism.

Between the s and s, Borges published his best storiesestablishing himself in the Argentine and American academia. Borges also had a close friendship with writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, with whom he co-wrote several books. Despite his lack of romantic relationships, Borges was known for his charm and wit, and he had many close friends and admirers throughout his life.

Borges jorge luis biography of michael: Bioy, born in , was

Jorge Luis Borges was known for his political views and activism throughout his life. He was a staunch anti-fascist and spoke out against the rise of authoritarianism in Argentina and around the world. Borges was also a vocal advocate for human rights and was involved in various organizations that fought for social justice. Despite his political beliefs, Borges was often criticized for his perceived elitism and detachment from the struggles of the working class.

However, his legacy as a writer and activist continues to inspire generations of readers and activists alike. Jorge Luis Borges is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His unique style of writing, which blended elements of fantasy, philosophy, and literature, has earned him international recognition and numerous awards.

Inhe was awarded the Formentor Prize, which was considered one of the most prestigious literary awards at the time. He was also awarded the Jerusalem Prize inwhich is given to writers who have made a significant contribution to the freedom of the individual in society. Borges was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times, although he never won the award.

Despite this, his impact on literature and culture continues to be felt around the world, and his legacy as a writer and thinker remains strong. One of the most prominent themes in his work is the concept of time and its relationship to memory and identity. He often explores the idea of how our memories shape who we are and how we perceive the world around us.

Another recurring theme in his writing is the concept of infinity and the infinite possibilities that exist within it. In terms of style, Borges is known for his use of intricate and complex narrative structures, as well as his ability to seamlessly blend elements of fantasy and reality. His writing is often characterized by a sense of intellectual playfulness and a deep appreciation for the power of language.

His unique style of writing, which often blended reality and fantasy, has inspired countless authors and filmmakers. His use of magical realism, a literary style that blends the fantastical with the real, has become a hallmark of Latin American literature. His unique style and imaginative storytelling continue to captivate readers and inspire new generations of writers.

In his later years, Borges continued to write and publish, but his health began to decline. He suffered from a variety of ailments, including heart problems, diabetes, and failing eyesight. Despite these challenges, he remained active in the literary world, attending conferences and giving lectures. Inhe was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary honor in the Spanish-speaking world.