Book
review:
COLLECTED FICTIONS (1999) by Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge
Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian writer. Several of his
short stories have proved immensely influential.
This big book
collects his published short stories in English translation, from the
1930s and onward.
There are recurring themes in his
fictions:
- The history of the author's country, its peculiar
customs and legendary historical characters (several of the stories
refer to the bloody civil wars of 19th
century South America).
- Violent men whose machismo
leads them to a violent end.
-
Fantastic places and characters, magical objects.
- Mysteries,
sometimes with a twist, sometimes without any explanation or
answers.
- Labyrinths or other places where the characters get
lost.
- The blurring of reality and fiction.
- The
author sowing doubt whether the events depicted are in fact real,
doubt in official ”history” or personal accounts of events.
-
Metafiction; stories about other stories or about the nature of
fiction itself.
-
Human beings encountering abstractions that have taken on a physical
form, for example mathematical infinity (most famously used in
Borges' story ”The Library of Babel”) or things which are
logically impossible.
As highbrow as this all may seem, I
couldn't find anything obviously pretentious about Borges' writing.
His narrator's voice comes off (at least in this translation) as
detached, fragmentary, ironic, sometimes mocking itself. You often
get a sense that he's not telling you everything, and he admits
it.
In his stories about Argentinian history, Borges can be
caught playing a sly game – even as he elaborates on legends, and
the tendency to paint historical figures as clear-cut villains and
heroes, he undermines the certainty of history. If there is a
”message” to be found – and I'd be a killjoy if I said there
definitely was – it's perhaps that stories should be enjoyed as
stories while the ”truth” remains elusive.
Of all the
stories, one stands out as quite different from the rest: ”Deutsches
Requiem.” Written in the 1940s after World War II, it tries to
look deeper into the warped thinking that led apparently ”cultured”
Germans to embrace Nazism. It's a rare peek into an abyss of the
mind.
I enjoy being mystified by a good story, and I really
did enjoy most of Borges' fictions, but I can imagine he's not
everyone's cup of tea.
COLLECTED FICTIONS is highly
recommended for lovers of short stories and fantastic, unusual
fiction. This is a literary box of chocolate pralines – don't try
to eat all of them in one sitting. Savor them one at a time, and
read them again.
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