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24 pages 48 minutes read

Jorge Luis Borges

The Aleph

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1945

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Background

Authorial Context: Jorge Luis Borges

Born in 1899 in Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges inherited the prospect of becoming a writer from his father, who had tried to make his way in the literary world. His well-traveled childhood exposed him to such wide-ranging European influences as Symbolism, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and gaucho poetry. He returned to Argentina as a young man and became deeply involved in the literary scene, founding several magazines. Borges procured a job as a lecturer on American and British Literature, traveling across Uruguay and Argentina to speak on myriad topics. Unfortunately, Borges also inherited his father’s eyesight, which eventually progressed to complete blindness. Despite his keen awareness of this setback and the challenges presented by the new fascist regime, Borges continued working and published his collection The Aleph in 1949.

Borges dedicated both the collection and story to his friend Estela Canto. Like the deceased Beatriz of the story, Borges’s relationship with Estela involved unrequited love. In her book about their relationship, which contains romantic correspondences between the two, Canto states,

Borges’s attitude moved me. I liked what I was to him, what he saw in me. Sexually I felt nothing for him, he didn't even make me uncomfortable. His kisses were clumsy, brusque, always poorly timed, and I accepted them condescendingly. I never pretended to feel what I didn’t feel (Canto, Estela. Borges a contraluz. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1989).

Borges’s rise to international fame began in 1961 when he shared the prestigious Prix International with Samuel Beckett. In 1962, two collections of his works were published in English to wide acclaim. In later years he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, and the French Legion of Honor, among many other awards. He died in 1986.

Literary Context: Philosophical Literature

The focus of Borges’s stories is often the investigation of a certain philosophy or idea, with characters and plot serving this exploration. For example, in “Borges and I,” a story from his collection The Maker, the author concocts a shadow version of himself by the same name that he both grapples and aligns with. This alter-ego recalls the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Similarly, his story “Emma Zunz” explores the nature of truth by way of deception—the story’s namesake commits a meticulous act of deception to avenge her father’s death, simultaneously killing his murderer and framing him for rape. Ultimately, she must deceive herself to carry out the plan in full.

At the climax of “The Aleph,” Borges (narrator and, perhaps, author alike) struggles to communicate what he sees in the Aleph, finally settling on sweeping descriptions of global wonders ranging from “all the ants on the earth” and “the circulation of my dark blood” (130) to the faces and features of people he glimpses as they are at that very moment. The Aleph is the heart of Borges’s investigation into the natures of Space and Time versus the human perception of each. The conflict between the narrator and Argentino serves to probe the idea. The Aleph only increases the narrator’s displeasure: While it allows him to see literally everything, the thing he cares most about, Beatriz, is fading from his memory.

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