Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Clarin (2000), Edition: 1st
Description
"Presents a collection of short stories by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges including the title story about an artifact that can see the entire universe at once."--
User reviews
LibraryThing member thorold
This was Borges's third major collection of short stories, and like all the others has appeared in several different versions with different contents - the one I read was based on the 1952 edition, containing seventeen stories and a short Epilogue.
The stories pick up a good range of the famous
Women, as usual in Borges, are mostly absent or in the background. Only the story "Emma Zunz" has a female protagonist. Borges makes a point of telling us that its plot was suggested to him by his friend, the dancer Cecilia Ingenieros, but once he's taken the step of letting a woman into one of his stories he seems to be quite happy to let her act with the same kind of limitations and autonomy he gives to his male characters. "El Aleph" and "El Zahir" both have dead, offstage women who act only as romantic love-interest for the narrator; a couple of women sneak into the end of "Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva" but we only get to see them at second-hand. Other than that, it might as well be "Billy Budd"...
Coming back to these stories after many years, I was impressed again by the clarity and conciseness of Borges's writing. However complicated the mathematical, historical, philosophical or theological issues he's dealing with, his sentences never get tangled up in them - on the face of it, everything looks clear, bright and logical. It's only when we step back for a moment that we realise what an astonishing paradox we've just been tricked into accepting.
Overrated or not, Borges is simply someone you have to re-read from time to time: there's no way around it!
The stories pick up a good range of the famous
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Borges themes: there are three labyrinth-stories (one Cretan, one Arab/Persian, one a Conan Doyle parody), a couple of gaucho stories riffing off the Argentinian epic Martín Fierro, several paradoxes in which death doesn't work the way we expect it to, a couple of stories about medieval thinkers (Islamic in one case, Christian in the other), a couple of Buenos Aires crime stories with odd twists, and a monologue by a condemned Nazi war criminal that forces us to look again at any comfortable assumption that we can cut 1933-1945 out of our picture of German culture and carry on with the rest. And of course there is the eponymous Aleph - a point in which we can see all the points in the universe from all directions - and its counterpart, the Zahir - a trivial thing that we can't stop thinking about. Just about all the stories address the limitations of the narrator's - and even more the reader's - knowledge of events. Frequently, the narrator tells us that the text is incomplete and must be revised, or adds material that has come to light subsequently.Women, as usual in Borges, are mostly absent or in the background. Only the story "Emma Zunz" has a female protagonist. Borges makes a point of telling us that its plot was suggested to him by his friend, the dancer Cecilia Ingenieros, but once he's taken the step of letting a woman into one of his stories he seems to be quite happy to let her act with the same kind of limitations and autonomy he gives to his male characters. "El Aleph" and "El Zahir" both have dead, offstage women who act only as romantic love-interest for the narrator; a couple of women sneak into the end of "Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva" but we only get to see them at second-hand. Other than that, it might as well be "Billy Budd"...
Coming back to these stories after many years, I was impressed again by the clarity and conciseness of Borges's writing. However complicated the mathematical, historical, philosophical or theological issues he's dealing with, his sentences never get tangled up in them - on the face of it, everything looks clear, bright and logical. It's only when we step back for a moment that we realise what an astonishing paradox we've just been tricked into accepting.
Overrated or not, Borges is simply someone you have to re-read from time to time: there's no way around it!
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LibraryThing member MariaAlhambra
A masterful collection which contains some of Borges' most brilliant puzzles. A particular highlight are the twin stories 'El Zahir' and 'El Aleph', two stories around the motif of obsession and madness, with a curious undercurrent of sexual longing and jealousy.
LibraryThing member Jannes
Borges is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and in The Aleph he shows his strength in a way that will leave you awestruck: the prose is so rich and evocative it's almost ridiculous, and it almost feels as a force of nature as it sweeps you along. Borges recurring themes - books,
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labyrinths, mirrors, myth, libraires, sotorytelling - makes the stories twist and turn and fold back into themselves and each other untill you're dizzy with delight. This truly is fiction fit for the ages. Show Less
LibraryThing member tronella
A collection of (mostly fantasy) short stories, in Spanish. The only one of these I'd read before was La casa de Asterión, which I guess I must have read around the time I was reading House of Leaves? I enjoyed most of these, although the title story was quite tough for me to read in places
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(because of the pretentious vocabulary of the antagonist). I do like Borges' mathsy qualities. Show Less
LibraryThing member CarlosMcRey
Though his tales are packed with philosophical ruminations, Borges is first of all an inveterate story teller, whether it's a simple tale of revenge or the history of the hidden face of God. His stories often feature a sense of uncertainty which lends them a certain immediacy, as if they were
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ancient legends, now distorted by time, or police reports, with caveats where the teller bumps up against the limits of knowledge--but the best of these combine a sense of both, linking the mythic to the procedural, the infinite to the particular. Show Less
LibraryThing member bartt95
Absolutely fantastic. Full of ideas about time, history and the world, rich in geographical settings, and containing of a multitude of cultures.
Once you start to understand that the stories, especially in The Aleph, are about something more, like the world, or perhaps the entire universe, you
I can absolutely not wait to read Ficciones.
Once you start to understand that the stories, especially in The Aleph, are about something more, like the world, or perhaps the entire universe, you
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start looking for signs of this, but Borges, in every one of his stories, manages to inspire true wonder. I can absolutely not wait to read Ficciones.
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LibraryThing member ReneePaule
Heavy going in places, but lovely short stories just the same.
LibraryThing member tronella
A collection of (mostly fantasy) short stories, in Spanish. The only one of these I'd read before was La casa de Asterión, which I guess I must have read around the time I was reading House of Leaves? I enjoyed most of these, although the title story was quite tough for me to read in places
Show More
(because of the pretentious vocabulary of the antagonist). I do like Borges' mathsy qualities. Show Less
LibraryThing member qaphsiel
I think I liked this at least as much for the commentary and the autobiographical sketch as for the stories themselves.
Language
Original publication date
1949
ISBN
9870713599 / 9789870713593