Interactive Oral Assignment Ficciones by: Jorge Luis Borges

Overarching Question: To what extent did Borges’ existential and philosophical atmosphere influence his beliefs and ideas throughout the novel, Ficciones?

Biography: * Borges born in Buenos Aires in 1899 to a middle-class family * Father had a massive library, which inspired Borges to be a writer at a young age * Borges in his teens would translate famous literary works from English into Spanish and vice versa (he translated Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oscar Wilde works before he was fifteen) * Family moves to Switzerland in 1914 due to his father’s degenerative eye condition * Family traveled throughout Europe as Borges became fluent in both French and German * Borges studies Arthur Schopenhauer, Gustav Meyrink Guillaume Apollinaire, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (all philosphers) and then joins the Ultraist movement (which opposed Modernismo (romanticism, harmonies, rich music)) * Borges returns to Argentina in 1921 and publishes his first poems in Fervor de Buenos Aires Borges begins to write existential and phenomenological issues due to the study of Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Jean-Paul Sartre

Biography Continued: * Borges’ interest in unreality began with a reoccurring nightmare: “I dream of a mirror. I see myself with a mask, or I see in the mirror somebody who is me but whom I do not recognize as myself. I arrive at a place, and I have the sense of being lost and that all is horrible. The place itself is like any other. It is a room, with furniture, and its appearance is not horrible. What is atrocious is the feeling, not the images. Another frequent nightmare is of being attacked by beings who are children; there are many of them, very little but strong. I try to defend myself, but the blows I give are weak.” * Borges becomes blind due to terrible eyesight so his mother has to be his secretary. He says on his blindness, “…in a certain way, there is a purification in the blindness. It purifies one of visual circumstances. Circumstances are lost, and the external world, which is always trying to grab us, becomes fainter.” * In his fifties, Borges writes screen plays * Borges dies in Geneva in 1986 from liver cancer Facts about Borges that are good to include: * He translated works of Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, Andre Gide, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Wolf * He would publish literary works under the names of other famous authors

The Library of Babel: “Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth. I have journeyed in search of a book, perhaps of the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can scarcely decipher what I write, I am preparing to die a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born” (Borges 80). The library of babel takes place in an unusual library consisting of an infinite amount of books. The library contains every single book written with every combination of words possible and even pieces of literature that have not been written yet. Each book describes predictions about the future, survival skills, biographies, and translations of every book in all languages. Idea of “play inside a play” -Books inside the book -Translation of languages inside a translation Explains how we create reality

Immanuel Kant -German Philosopher -Argued that concepts and our beliefs structure human experience which influences our morality Commentary on The Library of Babel and Reality: -“The rules of reality are intrinsic to the mind and one must decode these rules from their mind.”

Allusions: * An allusion represented in Borges book Ficciones is Babylon. Which is mentioned in chapter 5 the Babylon lottery. Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia. The city earns its fame to many references the bible makes to it. It is mentioned in the book of genesis it also appears in the biblical books of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isiah. This is an important concept because in the book Ficciones by Jorge Borges he makes several references to biblical concepts and ideas. Even though in his book it is pertaining to a lottery, they city of Babylon clearly reveals Borges obsession with religion. He also mentions the Greeks who are an ethnic group native to Greece. There are some Greeks that exist in Babylon which shows that Borges uses relevant and non-fictional references in his fictional stories. An allusion represented in his book is Don Quixote. This is mentioned in chapter 3 of the book Pierre Menard, the author of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is the hero of Don Quixote the novel is written by Miguel de Cervantes. The story of Don Quixote is that of a man who sets out from his village La Mancha to perform acts of chivalry in the name of his grand love Dulcinea. He has a vast imagination, he tilts at windmills and imagines them to be giants, and goes on adventures while still referring to acts of chivalry. This story is indeed fictional as well and perhaps this debate that he had on Cervantes and menard on Don Quixote can reflect on his Hispanic background since this book derived from Spanish background.

Allusions Continued: * Another allusion mentioned in the book is biblical stories such as that of Adam and Eve in the bible. The story of Adam and Eve was that God the creator of all mankind, made a man whose name was Adam. God made a beautiful garden for him to live in which was called the Garden of Eden. He then realized that Adam was lonesome in the garden all by himself with the animals; therefore, he took a rib from Adam’s side and made a woman. The story goes on to say that Eve ate a fruit from the forbidden tree and Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden for eternity. This story connects to the chapter in Ficciones The Circular Ruins because in this chapter Borges mentions a man who dreamt often and he dreamt an entire man, but did not sit up or talk this was his son. This story reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve considering that both God and This wizard created a man but each n separate ways. Reveals that Borges uses allusions to religion to justify his fictions. * The last allusion that is evident in the book is the Tortoise and the Hare. The tortoise and the Hare is a story in which the Hare bragged about how fast he could run. He was in the race with the slow and steady tortoise. He stopped to take a brief nap because he believed that the tortoise would not win. Eventually, the Tortoise ended up winning the race. This was mentioned in the chapter, The Babylon Lottery. This story alludes to Borges’s major motif of time. He used this to emphasize how time can move fast or slow and that’s one of the major motif’s in the book, time.

Quotes About Borges: “I had an accident. You can feel the scar. If you touch my head here, you will see. Feel all those mountains, bumps? Then I spent a fortnight in a hospital. I had nightmares and sleeplessness—insomnia. After that they told me that I had been in danger, well, of dying, that it was really a wonderful thing that the operation had been successful. I began to fear for my mental integrity—I said, “Maybe I can't write anymore.” Then my life would have been practically over because literature is very important to me. Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no? Then I thought I would try my hand at writing an article or a poem. But I thought, “I have written hundreds of articles and poems. If I can't do it, then I'll know at once that I am done for, that everything is over with me.” So I thought I'd try my hand at something I hadn't done: If I couldn't do it, there would be nothing strange about it because why should I write short stories? It would prepare me for the final overwhelming blow: knowing that I was at the end of my tether. I wrote a story called, let me see, I think, “Hombre de la esquina rosada,” and everyone enjoyed it very much. It was a great relief to me. If it hadn't been for that particular knock on the head I got, perhaps I would never have written short stories.” “When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same. I mean you compare time to a road, death to sleeping, life to dreaming, and those are the great metaphors in literature because they correspond to something essential. If you invent metaphors, they are apt to be surprising during the fraction of a second, but they strike no deep emotion whatever.” “Because I have felt [my stories] very deeply. I have felt them so deeply that I have told them, well, using strange symbols so that people might not find out that they were all more or less autobiographical. The stories were about myself, my personal experiences. I suppose it's the English diffidence, no?”