Jorge Luis Borges Matt Sidell Mrs. Favin Honors Writing for Publication

Biographical Information Born August 24, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Grew up in Palermo, a suburb of Buenos Aires. Grew up in a bilingual house. Began writing young. Moved to Switzerland in 1914, and Spain in Met poet Rafael Cansinos-Asséns in Spain (Ultraist movement). Returned to Argentina in Prolific period from 1921 through 1930’s. Hereditary blindness, from father to son. In 1938, he hit his head and almost died. Appointed Director of the National Library in “I speak of God’s splendid irony in granting me at one time 800,000 books and darkness.”

Bio info (cont.) Won the National Prize for literature in Jointly won the International Publishers Prize in 1961 with Samuel Beckett. In 1967 spent a year as a visiting professor at Harvard. Married Elsa Astete Millán from , then Maria Kodama in Died June 14, 1986 of liver cancer.

Isms, isms, and more isms! Post-Modernism: “Of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized […] by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)”. –Merriam Webster Magical Realism: “A chiefly literary style or genre originating in Latin America that combines fantastic or dreamlike elements with realism”. -American Heritage Ultraism: “Movement in Spanish and Spanish American poetry after World War I, characterized by a tendency to use free verse, complicated metrical innovations, and daring imagery and symbolism instead of traditional form and content. Influenced by the emphasis on form of the French Symbolists[…]”- Encyclopedia Brittanica

Influenced by... Miguel de Cervantes Jonathon Swift Franz Kafka William Wordsworth Victor Hugo Edgar Allan Poe Robert Louis Stevenson Walt Whitman James Joyce Arthur Schopenhauer

Contemporaries Isak Dineson Federico Garcia Lorca Albert Camus Pablo Neruda Samuel Beckett Vladamir Nabakov (born in the same year as Borges!)

The Stanza A stanza is a unit within a larger poem. It consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme. –Stanzas are not always set off by a space; for example, in traditional sonnets there are 3 stanzas but usually no breaks between lines. They are named by the number of lines they consist of. –Examples: couplet, tercet, quatrain, cinquain, sestet, septet, octave.

But Why? Why Borges? –Borges has a fantastical element in his works that I enjoy, and some of the themes he works with strike a chord with me. I have known his poetry for about a year and I think he has influenced my writing, as well. Why “The Art of Poetry”? –This particular poem, to me, is what poetry is all about. The words are so beautiful and deep, and so right. This poem strengthened my love of poetry over other forms of writing.

“The Art of Poetry”- Info Published: Theme: the convoluted and eternal nature of poetry, as well as its beauty and ability to be unique to every individual. Key Literary Elements: Allusion to The Odyssey in stanza 6 and an ancient Greek philosopher in stanza 7. Extended metaphors for poetry throughout. Strong imagery (green eternity, endless like a river flowing). What Poetic Form Is Used?: It is 7 quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABBA, in which rhyming lines are actually repeated rhymes/end words. The meter changes throughout. How the subject matter relates to Borges/the time period: A lot of Borges’ recurring themes appear. Time (1), River (1, 7), Multiple Aspects of the Self (5), Labrynth (2).

The Art of Poetry To gaze at a river made of time and water And remember Time is another river. To know we stray like a river and our faces vanish like water. To feel that waking is another dream that dreams of not dreaming and that the death we fear in our bones is the death that every night we call a dream. To see in every day and year a symbol of all the days of man and his years, and convert the outrage of the years into a music, a sound, and a symbol. To see in death a dream, in the sunset a golden sadness--such is poetry, humble and immortal, poetry, returning, like dawn and the sunset.

The Art of Poetry Sometimes at evening there's a face that sees us from the deeps of a mirror. Art must be that sort of mirror, disclosing to each of us his face. They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, wept with love on seeing Ithaca, humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, a green eternity, not wonders. Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same and yet another, like the river flowing.