Diesel Presents - Jorge Luis Borges
August 24th, 1899 - June 14th, 1986
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,” said poet, short story author, and translator Jorge Luis Borges, who’d been writing from the age
of six. And in 1955, he was appointed Director of the National Library of Argentina, despite the fact that, by that time he was completely blind. In a poem, he put it best:
No one should read self-pity or reproach
Into this statement of the majesty
Of God; who with such splendid irony,
Granted me books and night at one touch
Borges considered his blindness an asset, saying, “When I think of what I've lost, I ask, 'Who know themselves better than the blind?' – for every thought becomes a tool.” He was, however, unable to continue writing in the traditional sense of committing ink to paper, and thus dove more into the realm of poetry, able to compose these shorter pieces entirely in his head while still embracing the wideranging themes of his earlier works: memory, reality, labyrinths, mirrors, gardens, animals, scholars, fictitious works, imaginary places, kings, bandits, knife-fights, assassins... Such is the breadth of Borges’ interests and so dizzying are the scope of his ideas that in the space of a few paragraphs, stanzas, and sentences, he packed more twists and turns than could most authors in an entire book. Crucial to this talent was a profound realization he hit upon while attending school in Geneva, Switzerland: inventing the idea of a book is just as effective as writing it; many of his stories deal with the effects of and reactions to fictitious works.
Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he surely deserved as perhaps “the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes.” However, in his final years, he at last realized a childhood dream: he was able to stroke the fur of a living, breathing tiger.
At the age of 86, he died of liver cancer.