Editing Jorge Luis Borges (section)

==Works==
{{Main|Jorge Luis Borges bibliography}}
[[Noah Wardrip-Fruin|Wardrip-Fruin]] and [[Nick Montfort|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."<ref Name="Media">Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, ed. (2003). ''The New Media Reader'', Cambridge: The MIT Press, p. 29; {{ISBN|0-262-23227-8}}</ref> Borges's work has been compared to that of [[Homer]] and [[John Milton|Milton]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Borges: South America's Titan| date=30 January 2017 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNxzQSheCkc| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/bNxzQSheCkc| archive-date=2021-10-30|language=en|access-date=2021-09-03}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Indeed, the critic [[Harold Bloom]] numbers Borges among the key figures of the [[Western canon|Western literary canon]].<ref>Harold Bloom, ''The Western Canon'', 1994, p. 2</ref>

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 1971.<ref Name="LRB"/> His late-onset blindness strongly influenced his later writing. Borges wrote: "When I think of what I've lost, I ask, 'Who know themselves better than the blind?' – for every thought becomes a tool."<ref>Borges, Jorge Luis. (1994) ''Siete Noches''. Obras Completas, vol. III. Buenos Aires: Emecé<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed, if any --></ref> Paramount among his intellectual interests were elements of mythology, mathematics, theology, integrating these through literature, sometimes playfully, sometimes with great seriousness.<ref>''Unthinking Thinking: Jorge Luis Borges, Mathematics, and the New Physics'' (1991) Floyd Merrell, Purdue University Press pxii; {{ISBN|978-1-55753-011-0}}</ref>

Borges composed poetry throughout his life. As his eyesight waned (it came and went, with a struggle between advancing age and advances in eye surgery), he increasingly focused on writing poetry, since he could memorize an entire work in progress.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/31/reviews/borges-brodie.html "The Other Borges Than the Central One"], nytimes.com; accessed 1 April 2016.
</ref> His poems embrace the same wide range of interests as his fiction, along with issues that emerge in his critical works and translations, and from more personal musings. For example, his interest in [[idealism]] runs through his work, reflected in the fictional world of Tlön in "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]]" and in his essay "[[A New Refutation of Time]]".<ref>Kate Jenckes, ''Reading Borges After Benjamin: Allegory, Afterlife, and the Writing of History'' (2008), SUNY Press, pp. 101, 117, 136; {{ISBN|978-0-7914-6990-3}}</ref>

===Translations by Borges===
Borges was a notable translator. He translated works of literature in English, French, German, [[Old English language|Old English]], and [[Old Norse]] into Spanish. His first publication, for a Buenos Aires newspaper, was a translation of [[Oscar Wilde]]'s story "[[The Happy Prince and Other Stories|The Happy Prince]]" into Spanish when he was ten.<ref name="Bloom" /> At the end of his life he produced a Spanish-language version of a part of [[Snorri Sturluson]]'s ''[[Prose Edda]]''. He also translated (while simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, [[Ambrose Bierce]], [[William Faulkner]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Day |first1=Douglas |author-link= Douglas Day | date=1980 |title=Borges,Faulkner,and The Wild Palms|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26436092 |journal=Virginia Quarterly Review |volume=56 |issue=1 |publisher=University of Virginia|jstor=26436092 }}</ref> [[André Gide]], [[Hermann Hesse]], [[Franz Kafka]], [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[Walt Whitman]], and [[Virginia Woolf]].<ref group='Note' name='c'>Notable translations also include work by [[Herman Melville|Melville]], Sir [[Thomas Browne]], and [[G. K. Chesterton]].</ref> Borges wrote and lectured extensively on the art of translation, holding that a translation may improve upon the original, may even be unfaithful to it, and that alternative and potentially contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid.<ref>Jorge Luis Borges, ''This Craft of Verse'', [[Harvard University Press]], 2000. pp. 57–76. ''Word Music and Translation'', Lecture, Delivered 28 February 1968.</ref> Borges employed the devices of literary forgery and the review of an imaginary work, both forms of modern [[Pseudepigraphy|pseudo-epigrapha]].

===Discography===
Borge’s recorded work includes readings of his poems, a collaboration with Argentine composer [[Astor Piazzolla]], and a series of lectures on a characteristically wide range of topics, from [[Buddhism]] to the nature of poetry.<ref>[https://www.discogs.com/artist/910543-Jorge-Luis-Borges], discogs.com; accessed 18 February 2024.
</ref>

====Music====
* ''El Tango'' (1965) with [[Astor Piazzolla]]
[[Polydor]] – 20291

====Poetry====
* ''Por El Mismo Sus Poemas Y Su Voz'' (1967)
AMB Discografica – 123 – 1
* ''Jorge Luis Borges'' (1968)
Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico – VVAL-13, UNAM-113/114

de Souza, Marcelo Mendes. “Unoriginal Opinions of an Original Man: Jorge Luis Borges’s Views on Race and Brazilian People in His Conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares and His Literary Works.” Latin American research review 56.3 (2021): 668–678. Web.<ref>https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/c0999v/cdi_gale_infotracmisc_A677807095</ref>


====Lectures and other works====
* ''La Divina Comedia'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 955
* ''¿Qué Es La Poesía?'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 959
* ''El Budismo'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 958
* ''La Cabala'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 960
* ''El Libro De Las Mil Y Una Noches'' (1978)
Microfon – SUP 957
* ''Borges Para Millones. Banda Original De Sonido De La Pelicula'' (1978) with [[Luis Maria Serra]]
[[EMI]] – 8569/70

===Hoaxes and forgeries===
Borges's best-known set of [[Literary forgery|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]]<ref group='Note' name='d'/> or '' [[One Thousand and One Nights]]'', originally 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''.<ref group='Note' name='d'/> Several of these are gathered in ''[[A Universal History of Infamy]]''. While Borges was the great popularizer of the review of an imaginary work, he had developed the idea from [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s ''[[Sartor Resartus]]'', a book-length review of a non-existent German [[transcendentalism|transcendentalist]] work, and the biography of its equally non-existent author. In ''This Craft of Verse'', Borges says that in 1916 in Geneva "[I] discovered, and was overwhelmed by, Thomas Carlyle. I read ''Sartor Resartus'', and I can recall many of its pages; I know them by heart."<ref>Borges ''This Craft of Verse'' (p. 104)</ref>

In the introduction to his first published volume of fiction, ''The Garden of Forking Paths'', Borges 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." He then cites both ''Sartor Resartus'' and [[Samuel "Erewhon" Butler|Samuel Butler]]'s ''The Fair Haven'', remarking, however, that "those works suffer<!-- !  check for tone !--> under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write ''notes'' on imaginary books."<ref>Borges ''Collected Fictions'', p67</ref> On the other hand, some works were wrongly attributed to Borges, like the poem [[Moments (poem)|"Instantes"]].<ref>[http://www.borges.pitt.edu/bsol/iainst.php University of Pittsburgh, Borges Center] ''Jorge Luis Borges, autor del poema "Instantes"'', by Iván Almeida. Retrieved 10 January 2011</ref><ref>[http://www.internetaleph.com/detail/showdetail.asp?objtype=4&objid=4&langid=en&pid=74 Martin Hadis' site on The Life & Works of Jorge Luis Borges], Internetaleph.com; retrieved 10 January 2011.</ref>

===Criticism of Borges's work===
Borges's change in style from regionalist ''[[criollismo]]'' to a more cosmopolitan style brought him much criticism from journals such as ''[[:es:Contorno (revista)|Contorno]]'', a leftist, Sartre-influenced Argentine publication founded by [[David Viñas]] and his brother, along with other intellectuals such as [[Noé Jitrik]] and Adolfo Prieto. In the post-Peronist Argentina of the early 1960s, ''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.<ref Name="Katra">Katra, William H. (1988) ''Contorno: Literary Engagement in Post-Perónist Argentina''. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, pp. 56–57<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed, if any --></ref> The ''Contorno'' writers acknowledged Borges and [[Eduardo Mallea]] for being "doctors of technique" but argued that their work lacked substance due to their lack of interaction with the reality that they inhabited, an [[existentialist]] critique of their refusal to embrace existence and reality in their artwork.<ref name="Katra" />

===Sexuality and perception of women===
The story "[[The Sect of the Phoenix]]" is famously interpreted to allude to the ubiquity of sexual intercourse among humans{{sfn|Williamson|2004|p=489|loc="years later Borges would tell Ronald Christ that he meant the Secret to refer to sexual intercourse"}} – 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.<ref>{{Citation|title=The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges's "El muerto" and "La intrusa"|type=paper|work=XIX Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress|place=Washington DC|date=September 1995}}</ref> However, there are some instances in Borges's later writings of romantic love, for example the story "[[Ulrikke (short story)|Ulrikke]]" from ''[[The Book of Sand (book)|The Book of Sand]]''. The protagonist of the story "El muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira<ref name="Hurley 1988">{{Citation|translator=[[Andrew Hurley (academic)|Hurley, Andrew]]|year=1988|title=Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions|place=New York|publisher=Penguin}}</ref>{{rp|197}} and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair".<ref name="Hurley 1988" />{{rp|200}} Although they do not appear in the stories, women are significantly discussed as objects of unrequited love in his short stories "The Zahir" and "The Aleph".<ref name="Hurley 1988" />{{Page needed|date=August 2015}} The plot of ''La Intrusa'' was based on a true story of two friends. Borges turned their fictional counterparts into brothers, excluding the possibility of a homosexual relationship.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Keller|first1=Gary|first2=Karen S.|last2=Van Hooft |title= The Analysis of Hispanic Texts: Current Trends in Methodology|editor1-first=Lisa E.|editor1-last=Davis|editor2-first=Isabel C.|editor2-last=Tarán|publisher=Bilingual P|year=1976|pages=300–19|chapter=Jorge Luis Borges' "La intrusa": The Awakening of Love and Consciousness/The Sacrifice of Love and Consciousness}}</ref>

"[[Emma Zunz]]" is a story with an eminent female protagonist. Originally published in 1948, this 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. 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.<ref>Brodzki, Bella. "'She Was Unable Not to Think': Borges' 'Emma Zunz' and the Female Subject." MLN, vol. 100, no. 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, p. 338, https://doi.org/10.2307/2905740.</ref>

===Nobel Prize omission===
Borges was never awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], something which continually distressed the writer.<ref Name="LRB">{{cite web |last=Tóibín |first=Colm |title=Don't abandon me |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/toib01_.html |website=London Review of Books |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090418001719/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/toib01_.html |archive-date=18 April 2009 |date=11 May 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref> He was one of several distinguished authors who never received the honour.<ref>Feldman, Burton. (2000) ''The Nobel Prize: a History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige'', Arcade Publishing p 57</ref> Borges commented, "Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me."<ref name="profile"/> Some observers speculated that Borges did not receive the award in his later life because of his conservative political views, or more specifically because he had accepted an honour from Chilean dictator [[Augusto Pinochet]].<ref>James M. Markham, [https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/07/books/83nobel.html "Briton Wins the Nobel Literature Prize"], ''The New York Times'', 7 October 1983; accessed 15 August 2010.</ref><ref>Feldman, Burton (2000) ''The Nobel Prize: a History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige'',  Arcade Publishing, pg. 81.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref>

Borges was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature over thirty times,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=12287 |title=Nomination archive Jorge Luis Borges |date=21 May 2024 |publisher=nobelprize.org }}</ref> and was among the short-listed candidates several times. In 1965 he was considered along with [[Vladimir Nabokov]], [[Pablo Neruda]], and [[Mikhail Sholokhov]], and in 1966 a shared prize to Borges and [[Miguel Ángel Asturias]] was proposed.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/06/borges-auden-nabokov-neruda-nobel-prize-literature-1965 Nabokov, Neruda and Borges revealed as losers of 1965 Nobel prize] The Guardian 6 January 2016</ref> Borges was nominated again in 1967, and was among the final three choices considered by the committee according to Nobel records unsealed on the 50th anniversary in 2017. The committee considered Borges, [[Graham Greene]] and [[Miguel Ángel Asturias]], choosing Asturias as the winner.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.svd.se/hemliga-dokument-borges-ratades-for-bortglomd-forfattare |title=Hemliga dokument visar kampen om Nobelpriset|newspaper=[[Svenska Dagbladet]]|author=Kaj Schueler|date=January 2018|access-date=3 January 2018}}</ref>