Product Description
Jorge Luis Borges, one of the indisputably great writers of the twentieth century, was born in Buenos Aires in 1899. Never having been awarded the Nobel Prize, which his readers worldwide believed he deserved, this story writer, poet, essayist, and man of letters died at age eighty-six. This anthology of interviews with him features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life and work. He discusses his blindness, his family and childhood, early travels, literary friends, and struggles to find his literary identity. In depth he examines the meanings and intentions of his own famous stories and poems, and he speaks of the writers whose works he has loved - Dante, Cervantes, Emerson, Dickinson, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Stevenson, Kipling, Whitman, Frost, and Faulkner - and of those whom he disliked, such as Hemingway and Lorca. Borges expresses his contempt for Peron and assesses the tumultuous politics of Argentina. He speaks also of the imagination as a type of dreaming, about issues of collaboration and translation, about philosophy, and about time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Jorge Puell
In a world where everyone is thinking about knowing the most hidden secrets of the life, Borges, when is asked to give some advice to the younger generation, only says:

I don't think I can give advice to other people. I've hardly been able to manage my own life. pp 75.

what a man.

He lived in literature and literature lived in him
He lived in Literature and Literature lived in him. Books were for him his truest friends and the secret intimates of his soul. When he spoke to another he spoke always to himself and to the books within him. But because he knew books so well and loved them so much all his speaking too became a book .And in the end even his final words there were books talking to books and talking to more books.
So for those of us who also love books , his particular love of books taught us so somuch - but only in books.

A Good Read
This offers a series of interviews in chronlogical order (from 1966 until shortly before his death in '85) While he is good humored and self effacing he never lets you know more than he wants you to. There are also certain repetitons of ideas that occur, but anyone that has read Borges before will be used to that.To some extent it happans with most of the better writers in varying degrees anyways. Even with the repetitions it never comes across like he is doing memorized routines (which sometimes happans with William burroughs interviews)all in all important insight into the mind of an important writer.

Borges!
Borges is great in in his writings, and almost as good in conversation.Witty, urbane, stylish, Borges shows that conversation can be as exciting as literature.Buy now! ... Read more

Product Description
This volume examines five stories by Jorge Luis Borges considered remarkable by Harold Bloom. Studied texts include "Death and the Compass," "Tlön, Ugbar, Orbis Tertius," "The Immortal," "The Aleph," and "The South."

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. The world’s most prominent writers of short stories are covered in one series with expert analysis by Bloom and other critics. These titles contain a wealth of information on the writers and short stories that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A review in English of these poems in English translation
I read these poems in English translation so my comments will not speak to their true musical quality. They are the poems of Borges beginning and not among his greatest. The only one he mentions later on as a real poem, perhaps his first real poem ,' Simplicity' Borges says of these poems that they would 'foreshadow all that comes afterwards' But despite his depictions of his own rich perceptions of the city, his listing of realities in his own special way, his concern with courage and poetry and the city's poor, and funerals and tombs, and the Streets of Buenos Aires, and much else- I do not believe these poems have the metaphysical depth and the emotional richness of his later poems. The fantasy and the counterfactual - imagination, the mythological elements are not here in the way they are in the later poems.
Still they are Borges. And Borges writes and sees as only he can, what Stevenson, Schopenhauer, and above all Whitman may have helped show him but what he alone makes as his home in the city which now has its meaning connected too with his name. ... Read more

Product Description
Autor de celebres cuentos y ensayos que modificaron radicalmente la literatura en castellano, Jorege Luis Borges logro hacia el final de su vida esa dificil forma de la perfeccion que consiste en describir con sencillez hechos portentosos. Cada uno de los cuentos reunidos en "La memoria de Shakespeare", los ultimos que escribio, registra con maestria esta circunstancia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Relatos finales del maestro
Este libro incluye los cuatro últimos cuentos escritos por Borges. Su idea era completar un nuevo volumen de relatos, pero la muerte se adelantó y la tarea quedó inconclusa.

Resulta increíble pensar que si cada uno de los grandes artistas de la historia hubiese vivido, digamos, uno o dos años más, tendríamos quizás un puñado extra de obras que sólo pueden ser hechas por ellos, nadie más, y que el resto del mundo no puede ni siquiera llegar a imaginar.

Los cuentos son:

1. 25 de agosto, 1983, donde un Borges futuro conversa con un Borges más joven, y le explica, entre otras cosas, que publicó un libro bajo otro nombre, que la gente no reconoció y tachó de "torpe imitador de Borges".

2. Tigres Azules. Uno de los cuentos más extraños de Borges, en donde un grupo de objetos se comportan de manera caótica, en contra de las leyes de la lógica, pero empiezan a sugerir que quizás nuestro orden, nuestros hábitos y nuestro mundo sean igualmente aberrantes e inexplicables.

3. La Rosa de Paracelso recuerda, por su ambiente casi de cuento folklórico, a Las Ruinas Circulares.

4. La Memoria de Shakespeare. Uno de los mejores cuentos de Borges. Un hombre acepta la "memoria" de Shakespeare, que poco a poco empieza a convivir con la suya propia. Planea escribir un libro aprovechándola, pero empieza a darse cuenta que "la memoria de Shakespeare no podía revelarme otra cosa que las circunstancias de Shakespeare. Es evidente que éstas no constituyen la singularidad del poeta; lo que importa es la obra que ejecutó con ese material deleznable".

De la misma manera, algún escritor (y hay más de uno dando vueltas) podrá imitar ciertos manerismos, ciertos giros, ciertas expresiones, ciertas ideas de Borges, pero no puede escribir la página que Borges hubiese escrito, sencillamente porque los artistas mediocres se parecen, comparten lo que es común a los que se dedican a una misma "profesión"; pero los grandes artistas son únicos e irrepetibles. Nosotros vivimos bajo sus luces, bajo sus sombras.

Un texto espléndido
Tal vez sea uno de los mejores cuentos pergeñados por Georgie. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

In praise of Borges
The book- jacket tells us that these poems collected here are the first Borges has written since 1929 with the aim of collecting them in one volume. When he began to go blind in the 1950's Borges moved more to the writing of poetry rather than short stories because he could work on the poems by memory. "The darkness in the title, says Borges, " stands for blindness and death". Among the poems are Heraclitus, Cambridge,Elsa ,New England 1967, James Joyce, The Unending Gift, Episode of the Enemy, The Labyrinth, Labyrith, May 20,1928, Ricardo Guiraldes, The Anthropologist, To a Certain Ghost 1940, Plain Things, Rubiyat, Pedro Salvadores, To Israel, Israel, June 1968, The Keeper of the Books, The Gauchos,Acevedo, Milonga, Invocation to Joyce, Israel 1969, Buenos Aires, From an Apocryphal Gospel, Legend, Prayer, a Reader, In Praise of Darkness.
I do not know Spanish well enough to comment on the quality of translation. I can say that Norman Thomas di Giovanni's translation reads like true poetry.
I would like to conclude the review by citing a few of Borges' lines.

ISRAEL 1969

I feared that in Israel there might be lurking,
sweetly and insidiously,
the nostalgia gathered like some sad treasure
during the centuries of dispersion
in cities of the unbeliever,in ghettoes,
in the sunset of the steppes- in dreams-
the nostalgia of those who longed for you,
Jerusalem, beside the waters of Babylon.
What else were you, Israel , but that wistfulness,
that will to save
amid the shifting shapes of time
your old magical book, your ceremonies,
your loneliness with God?
Not so.The most ancient of nations
is also the youngest.
You have not tempted men with gardens or gold,
and the emptiness of gold
but with the hard work, beleaguered land,
Without words Israel has told them:
Forget who you are
Forget who you have been
Forget the man you were in those countries
which gave you their mornings and evenings
and to which you must not look back in yearing.
You will forget your father's tongue
and learn the ongue of Paradise.
You shall be an Israeli, a soldier,
You shall build a country on wasteland,
making it rise out of deserts
Your brother, whose face you've never seen
will work by your side.
One thing only we promise you-
your place in the battle.

Borges the poet is superb.
This volume of poems - I refer to the Spanish version - Elogio a la Sombra - makes my short list of my favorite books. Mr Borges infuses these poems with his characteristic mystery and inventiveness. But he proves himself capable of versifying as well - "Manuel Flores va a morir" comes to mind. His preface too is memorable for its simplicity and its humility, as well as its affirmation of a truism too easily forgotten: In this world, beauty is common. Although I have not held this book in my hands for 20 years, many of the lines from these poems remain with me still. I would certainly be eager to acquire a copy of this work ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Museo
Estos textos (muchos de ellos ya fueron publicados en otros lados; varios son textos ajenos que forman parte de otras antologias hechas por Borges y Bioy) son mas bien una curiosidad. Diria que es el ultimo libro de Borges o Bioy que uno deberia comprar, si es que lo tiene que comprar. Incluye algunas rarezas, como el folleto publicitario de "Leche Cuajada 'La Martona' "(primera colaboracion de ambos escritores) y alguna traduccion, pero que no se si justifican el precio del libro. Supongo que es para aquellos que necesitan tener "todo" lo que ambos escribieron. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Borges is Borges; this edition, a rip-off
I am reading this very Volume 1 of the 2007 Emece edition. For this reader, at least, to have all of Borges works gathered together is a boon. I haven't found anyone as consistently interesting since I read straight through all of Orwell's published works nearly thirty years ago. The four volumes in this set contain most of his published work (all? not sure of this) his brief and potent ficciones, his extraordinary but overlooked poetry, and his occasional pieces on literature and history, the finest examples of dilletantatism (not necessarily a bad word - most of us are dilletantes in most areas of interest).
However, I am compelled to give a mediocre rating to a collection of the fabulous Borges' works, for a very practical reason, to wit:
The book is falling apart in my hands as I read it. This volume, and the rest in the series, are "perfect-bound", meaning that the pages were completely cut, laid in order, then glued to the cover. And Emece has made a wretched mess of it, the worst I've ever seen in binding of this type. Perfect-bound books always fall apart, when the glue has had time to age, even if they're hardly used. But the four volumes in this uniform series of Borges fall apart immediately.
Alternatives are not so readily available. At roughly forty dollars per volume (I bought mine in a surviving bricks-and-mortar store in Chicago), perfect-bound is a rip-off. I have never seen the earlier hardcover set for sale in used bookstores, and earlier editions, hard- and soft-cover, are rather expensive on the Internet. There is less interest in Borges than there used to be (at one time he could rival Kafka and Hesse in the interest he awakened among people who didn't usually read demanding literature) and there seems to be less interest than formerly in Spanish-language literature generally; I don't quite understand that. Well, next time you go to Buenos Aires, look for it.
*By the way, the cover depicted here is an earlier edition, not the 2007 fiasco.

BORGES, OBRAS COMPLETAS, TOMO 1:
No hace falta que les repita lo bueno que es Borges, ¿no? Para tener una idea más detallada de los libros incluidos es mejor que busquen la información de cada uno por separado. Acá voy sólo a detallar qué libros se encuentran en este tomo:

BORGES, OBRAS COMPLETAS, TOMO 1:

POESIA
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923)
Luna de enfrente (1925)
Cuaderno San Martín (1929)

ENSAYO
Evaristo Carriego (1930)
Discusión (1932) Historia de la eternidad (1936)

Relatos
Historia universal de la infamia (1935)
Ficciones (1944). (Incluye: El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) y Artificios (1944))
El Aleph (1949) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Parmenides, Being, and the Biting Crabs
When one thinks of the Argentinean Pampas, the first thought associated with it is probably not Parmenides, or Greek philosophy, or Heidegger.A reader of Being in the Pampas will be surprised by the mixture - or hyperinflation - of elements that this author juxtaposes when speaking of this vast place that he explores as a way of understanding being.

I have to say, I did not quite expect my encounter with the Pampas via Julio C. Diaz to be a rollercoaster ride, but this book proved to be just that. Thanks to the author's bold approach, his wicked humor, and the slightly emotional glimpses at his personal history, he successfully creates bridges of intellectual conversation between continents, and between the past and the present. This book offers a refreshing way to conceive of being, navigating between various excesses: from Parmenides, Zeno, Plato and the like, to Borges and Heidegger; from the Huiliches, Ema la Cautiva, and bloody leaders peeking from behind the curtains of Argentinean history, to a graceful hare; from the cruelty of crabs (crawling inside the author's own recollections, one assumes), to Nora, a mysterious modern Persephone.

These are not random juxtapositions. The author stirs the well-settled waters of ontology by claiming that time and chronology are detrimental to our perception of being, given the limiting nature of the time continuum. Obviously in a response to Heidegger, the author derails the temporally-grounded being by creating his own ontology that proposes place as the grounding for the unfolding of being. It is precisely in juxtaposition and proliferation, rumor and story, the many paths through the tricky Pampas, and in mintage, circulation and devaluation, that the continuum of being is revealed, since these are the processes by which being exceeds itself. Time freezes being, while place brings it to life because being always overflows its place.

We learn that it is difficult to teach children, in the virtual wilderness of Bahia Blanca, about Parmenides (with a vase as pedagogic prop) after one has been bitten by crabs while walking the many miles to school; it is difficult, we learn, for the Huiliches (Argentinean Indians) to avoid being killed by arrows when the Huiliches are not familiar with philosophical paradoxes that forbid the arrow from ever reaching them; it is equally difficult for truth to emerge from the many versions coming in the form of rumors, journals, stories and other means of circulation. What the Pampas enables, however, is for the apparently absurd to become history's reality through theatrical, ridiculous displays of power: absurd quantities of freshly minted money, absurdly luxurious fashion displayed in front of empty spaces, and the cruelty of leaders that grows to absurd proportions through rumors and circulation.

Parmenides can find his One in the spatial continuum of the Pampas. Even Plato's cave finds reinterpretation in this brave book. I would have to say that this is a book worthy of its many inspirations.
... Read more

Product Description

Borges On Writing

In 1971, Jorge Luis Borges was invited to preside over a series of seminars on his writing at Columbia University. This book is a record of those seminars, which took the form of informal discussions between Borges, Norman Thomas di Giovanni--his editor and translator, Frank MacShane--then head of the writing program at Columbia, and the students. Borges's prose, poetry, and translations are handled separately and the book is divided accordingly.

The prose seminar is based on a line-by-line discussion of one of Borges's most distinctive stories, "The End of the Duel." Borges explains how he wrote the story, his use of local knowledge, and his characteristic method of relating violent events in a precise and ironic way. This close analysis of his methods produces some illuminating observations on the role of the writer and the function of literature.

The poetry section begins with some general remarks by Borges on the need for form and structure and moves into a revealing analysis of four of his poems. The final section, on translation, is an exciting discussion of how the art and culture of one country can be "translated" into the language of another.

This book is a tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of South America's--indeed, the world's--most distinguished writers and provides valuable insight into his inspiration and his method.

Product Description
Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, these lost lectures given in English at Harvard in 1967-1968 by Jorge Luis Borges return to us now, a recovered tale of a life-long love affair with literature and the English language. Transcribed from tapes only recently discovered, This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of the twentieth century. In its wide-ranging commentary and exquisite insights, the book stands as a deeply personal yet far-reaching introduction to the pleasures of the word, and as a first-hand testimony to the life of literature. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms (especially the novel), literary history, and translation theory to philosophical aspects of literature in particular and communication in general. Probably the best-read citizen of the globe in his day, he draws on a wealth of examples from literature in modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese, speaking with characteristic eloquence on Plato, the Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as on translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.Whether discussing metaphor, epic poetry, the origins of verse, poetic meaning, or his own "poetic creed," Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and in the making of a unique literary sensibility, this is a sustained encounter with one of the writers by whom the twentieth century will be long remembered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

What is Poetry
All the previous reviewers have given this five stars and rightfully so, and they've brought out what is so invigorating about Borges approach to the subject. He was like a little boy jumping from rock to rock, or climbing a tree.His lectures delve into the question of what is the essence of poetry, but in a lively, discursive way. He brings up the questions that interest him and quotes the poetry that has meant a lot to him. They are not ponderous pronouncements. His view is that poetry is the electric element in the ether we sometimes feel, the energy, rather than the words. And this too reminds me of boyhood. He is honest, contradictory, sometimes even silly, deferential, with a hearty appetite for deep questions. It's thrilling really.

"Words are symbols for shared memories"
"This craft of verse" allows you to experience what Jorge Luis Borges' students felt like listening to him, during the lectures he delivered in Harvard in 1967 and 1968. Truth to be told, this opportunity is open to us only due to sheer luck, as the tapes of these lectures were lost for a long time, and have only recently been discovered.

The lectures included in these cds are "The Riddle of Poetry", "The Metaphor", "The Telling of the Tale", "Word-Music and Translation", "Thought and Poetry" and "A Poet's Creed". When you listen to them, you cannot help but appreciate the immense knowledge that Borges had. It is also easy to realize that he loved his craft, and was thankfully able to share that passion with his students, and -thanks to technology- with us.

According to Jorge Luis Borges, "Words are symbols for shared memories". By listening to Borges' lectures, you create a memory you previously didn't have, and, in a strange but very real way, share something with him. Highly recommended...

Belen Alcat

The supreme lover of literature
Borges writes in this work, " I think of myself as essentially being a reader. As you are aware, I have ventured into writing;but I think that what I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes- yet one writes not one would like to write, but what one is able to write." pp.98
This is not to contradict Borges but it seems to me that his writing is what it is essentially because he is such a reader. And as others have often remarked the most remarkable reader .For he reads from so many different linguistic and literary traditions- and he reads with his own imagination, in effect rewriting and combining all he reads into what he enables us to read- his writing.
In all this one feels that Borges so loves literature that he is making it live more by writing to us about what he reads. He is the writer perhaps more than any other for whom books are the first and primary experience. They are the world before the world is the world. Borges reads and rereads them and presents his rereadings to us.
They often amaze us with their startling perceptions and beauty.
This work is ostensibly about the craft of verse but is really Borges talking about various aspects of his reading, and his writing. And he talks with such wisdom and insight, such original poetry that it is impossible not to take pleasure in this work.
Borges writes of the music of poetry and of the meaning of metaphor and how real literature like Louis Armstrong's 'jazz' must be sensed and felt as its first definition. For people who love poetry and people who love books there is no other writer who more strengthens their faith in what they are doing, than this very great writer and reader, this supreme lover of literature.

The joy of living in literature
I am not sure whether we learn much about the CRAFT of verse from these lectures. But one thing that we do learn from Borges is what a pleasure it is to be able to find beauty in poetry (and prose). Borges was an amazing man - he was almost seventy when he delivered these six lectures, and he did it without the help of notes since his poor eyesight made it impossible for him to read.

For Borges, poetry is essentially undefinable. It flows like Heraklit's river - the meaning of words shifts with time, and readers' appreciation changes over the years. Poetry as he understands it is a riddle because it is beyond rational understanding; it is 'true' in a higher (magical) sense. And what is true in a higher sense remains unfathomable, a riddle: "we KNOW what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words [to define what poetry is]?"(18)

Metaphors, according to Borges, are the core of poetry, closer to the magic source of words than any other artistic means of expression. Metaphors are so powerful because for him "anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments."(31)

My favorite lecture is the fourth, 'Word-Music and Translation.' It is a real gem. I will not quote Borges on how word-music can be rendered in translation; just a short quote to illustrate how magnificently language can be translated by an inspired translator of genius. When Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century translated 'ars longa, vita brevis,' (art is long, life is short) he chose a stunning interpretation with 'the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.' Borges comments that here we get "not only the statement but also the very music of wistfulness. We can see that the poet is not merely thinking of the arduous art and of the brevity of life; he is also feeling it. This is given by the apparently invisible, inaudible keyword - the word 'so.' 'The lyf SO short, the craft SO long to lerne.'"(62) One small word, and it makes all the difference.

And since I prefer translations true to the spirit over translations true to the letter, I was pleased to learn from Borges that all through the Middle Ages, people thought of translation not in terms of a literal rendering but in terms of something being re-created.

I do believe that these lectures speak of the wisdom of Borges; not in spite of, but because of the contradictions in the text. Here we meet a man in full; a man who stresses the irrational in poetry and the immediacy of experiencing it, yet proves by his own example how the experience of poetry grows with the plain, rational knowledge about poetry that we gather over the years. Borges is also a man who lives in literature. He finds new beauty in poetry because he continues to change every day. And this is perhaps the most inspiring message of his lectures: people who continue to enjoy changing with the new things they learn 'turn not older with years, but newer every day,' as Emily Dickinson phrased it.

Wonderful insights on beauty
Ladies and gentleman... Borges is one of my favorite writers, so you can imagine the joy I had when I could finally listen to these lectures.

I tend to find that, when an artist says something great on art, it tends to be more useful than what most specialists have to say.

Borges has many important things to say about art and philosophy, or should I say, on beauty in general. And he says them in the most beautiful way. ... Read more