Jorge Shine Borges

Biography

Beginnings

His/her father, Jorge Guillermo Borges, lawyer and professor of psychology, have literary ambitions ( It tried in vain to become writer… He composed of very good sonnets… said of him Borges). His/her mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez, learn English from her husband and work as translator. The family of its father was to some extent Spanish, Portuguese and English; that of his/her Spanish mother and probably Portuguese too. At his place one speaks the Spanish as well as the English and since its more tender childhood, Borges is bilingual, even if he says all his life which he does not have a perfect command of English.

After the First World War, the Borges family spends three years to Lugano, with Geneva where he studies with the college, Barcelona, Majorque, Seville and Madrid. In Spain, Borges is member of a literary movement of avant-garde ultraïste. Its first poem, Anthem with the sea , written in the style of Walt Whitman, is published in the magazine Grecia .

It turns over to Buenos Aires in 1921 and engages in multiple cultural activities: it founds reviews, translates in particular Kafka and Faulkner, publishes poems and tests.

At the end of the years 1930, it starts to write tales and news and publishes the universal Histoire of the infamy , which makes known it as a prosator.

Mainly known for its New S, it writes also poems and publishes a considerable quantity of literary criticisms. It is also one of the authors of the signed parodic police accounts Bustos Domecq, written in collaboration with his friend Adolfo Bioy Casares, and of songs on musics D (Astor Piazzolla. At the end of its life, it is named director of the National library of Buenos Aires.

It is only in the Années 1960 that Borges was discovered by the international critic. If the writer Roger Caillois were one of the first to be spoken about it in France, it is the review Planet which makes known it general public.

International recognition

The international recognition of Borges starts with the beginning of the year 1960. In 1961, it receives the Prix Formentor, which it divides with Samuel Beckett. Whereas Beckett well-known and is respected in the anglophone world, Borges unknown and is not translated -: what does not fail to cause the curiosity of the anglophone speakers. The Italian government called it Commendatore and the Université of Texas to Austin recruits it for one year. The first translation of its English work goes back to 1962, with readings in Europe and in the area of the the Andes the following years. Borges receives many distinctions, such as the Prix Cervantes in 1979 or the Légion of honor in 1983.

When Juan Perón returns from exile and is re-elected president in 1973, Borges gives up its position of director of the national library.

In 1975, after the death of his/her mother, Borges starts to travel everywhere throughout the world and this until the end of its life.

Borges Marie twice. In 1967 he marries an old friend, Elsa Astete Millán, which is widowed recently. The marriage lasts three years. After the divorce, Borges turned over in his/her mother. During its last years, Borges lives with its assistant, María Kodama, with which it studied the Anglo-Saxon during several years. In 1984, they publish extracts of their newspaper, under the name of Atlas , with texts of Borges and photographs of Kodama. They marry in 1986, a few months before its death.

Borges died of a cancer with Geneva in 1986; it had chosen to turn over at the end of its life in the city where it had studied. It was incinerated with the cemetery of the Kings.

Work

Some regard Borges as one of the founders of the Latin-American school of the magic Réalisme. He is considered, just as Gabriel García Márquez, another “realistic magic”, like one of the South American principal authors of fiction of the 20th century. Others see on the contrary a universal writer there in which can recognize all humanity.

Its work is deeply scholar, and on the occasion deliberately misleading ( Tlön uqbar orbis tertius ). It often treats nature of infinite ( the library of Babel , the sand book…), of mirrors, of Labyrinth S, the Reality, the identity or of the ubiquity of the things ( the lottery of Babylon ).

Jorge Luis Borges is one of the ten, can be of the five, modern authors who it is essential to have read. After approachhaving approached it, we are not any more the same ones. Our vision of the beings and the things changed. We are more intelligent. said of him Claude Mauriac

Borges became blind rather young but in a progressive way, which had a strong influence on its writings. In one of its news, it meets itself young person, on a bench, and is devoted to some predictions: You will become blind. But do not fear anything, it is like the long end of a very beautiful evening of summer . On this subject, he tells in the autobiographical Essai that this blindness was probably of hereditary origin and that some of its ascending had known the same infirmity. Not having never learned the Braille, it had to count on his/her mother to help it, then on its assistant Maria Kodama. It was made read newspapers and books and dictated its texts.

In addition to the fictions, its work abundant and is largely appreciated. One finds there film criticisms and books, including a rehabilitation of the Detective novel, regarded as worthier heir to the traditional literature than the Nouveau novel. He only, says it, is located in the continuity of the literature with a plan, an introduction, an intrigue and an end. One also finds among his writings of short biographies and longer philosophical reflections on subjects such as the nature of the dialog, the language, of the thought, as well as their relations. It explores also empirically or rationally number of the topics which one finds in his fictions, for example identity of the Argentinian people. In articles such as the history of the Tango and the translators of the Thousand and One Nights , it writes with clearness on elements which had surely an important place in its life. There exist the same a book which calls seven invaluable conferences in various universities, that one can regard as seven tests, lights, ordered, of a simplicity deriving from their oratorical nature, and deeply enriching. In this small collection of knowing, the Seven Nights (Siete Noches), one finds a text on the nightmares, on Thousand and One Nights, on the Divine comedy of Dante, Buddhism and other simple topics that Borges exploits and divide us with the didactic authority and the teaching simplicity of a true professor, scholar of the literature. In the same way, its poetic work is deeply interesting. Written between 1923 and 1977, its poems find the philosophical topics on which Borges is based to build the plurality of its work. Poems like El Reloj de Arena (the Sand glass ) or El Ajedrez (the Failures ) rebuild the concepts borgiens par excellence, like time, unstable and ineluctably destructor of the world, or the labyrinth like principle of the human existence, but from a poetic point of view, condensed in surprising images. These poems are joined together in Antologia Poética 1923-1977 (Poetic Collection).

Quotations

I cannot agree with a theory which preaches the domination of the State on the individual.

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