Geburtstag: 24. August 1899
Todesdatum: 14. Juni 1986
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈβorxes] war ein argentinischer Schriftsteller und Bibliothekar. Borges verfasste eine Vielzahl phantastischer Erzählungen und Gedichte und gilt als Mitbegründer des Magischen Realismus.
Literarisch beeinflusst wurde Borges vor allem von Macedonio Fernández, Rafael Cansinos Assens, englischsprachiger Literatur , Franz Kafka und dem Daoismus. Seine philosophischen Anschauungen, die dem erkenntnistheoretischen Idealismus verpflichtet sind und sich in seinen Erzählungen und Essays wiederfinden, bezog Borges vornehmlich von George Berkeley, David Hume und Arthur Schopenhauer. Mit dem argentinischen Schriftsteller Adolfo Bioy Casares verband ihn eine lebenslange Freundschaft. Borges war Mitbegründer der „lateinamerikanischen Phantastik“ und einer der zentralen Autoren der von Victoria Ocampo und ihrer Schwester Silvina 1931 gegründeten Zeitschrift Sur, die sich dem kulturellen Austausch zwischen Lateinamerika und Europa widmete. Wikipedia
zitiert in: Borges, J.L. und Osvaldo Ferrari: Lesen ist Denken mit fremdem Gehirn - Gespräche über Bücher & Borges, Arche 1990, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S.84. Paraphrase eines Ausspruchs von Schopenhauer: "LESEN heißt mit einem fremden Kopfe, statt des eigenen, denken." Parerga und Paralipomena II, HaffmansTaschenBuch 1991, S.438
Die Zeit und J.W. Dunne, 1940, aus: Borges, Eine neue Widerlegung der Zeit, Frankfurt am Main 2003
Blindheit, in: Die letzte Reise des Odysseus, Fischer-TB, 2. Aufl. 2001, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S. 188
"Siempre imaginé que el Paraíso sería algún tipo de biblioteca."
Unser armer Individualismus, in: Inquisitionen, Fischer-TB 1992, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S. 43
Jorge Luis Borges, Autobiographischer Essay, übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Christiane Meyer-Clason, in: Borges Lesen, Fischer-TB, 1991, S.61 (vgl. books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=nQRJAAAAYAAJ&q=achthunderttausend).
Es handelt sich um Borges' "Gedicht von den Gaben", in: J.L. Borges, Borges und ich, Fischer-TB, 1993, S.49:
"[...] von Gottes planendem Genie, // da er mir, groß in seiner Ironie // die Bücher und die Nacht zum Leben gab." - volltext.online-merkur.de http://volltext.online-merkur.de/?m=v&link=/daten/www.online-merkur.de/mr_1962_04_0321-0324.pdf&session=747297512D84F4D43B9A529E7132943E
"esta declaración de la maestría // de Dios, que con magnífica ironía // me dio a la vez los libros y la noche." - Poema de los dones (1960)
"The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)
Kontext: Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados...
Quelle: El Pais, 1981 http://elpais.com/diario/1981/09/26/ultima/370303206_850215.html; translation: The Guardian, 2008 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/10/jorgeluisborges
"The Threatened", The Book of Sand [El Libro de arena] (1975)
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Other Inquisitions
"The Meeting in a Dream"
Other Inquisitions (1952)
Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Kontext: It is universally held that the unicorn is a supernatural being and of auspicious omen; so say the odes, the annals, the biographies of worthies, and other texts whose authority is unimpeachable. Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification. Nor is it like the horse or bull, the wolf or deer. In such circumstances we may be face to face with a unicorn and not know for sure that we are. We know that a certain animal with a mane is a horse and that a certain animal with horns is a bull. We do not know what the unicorn looks like.
"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Kontext: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
"Baruch Spinoza", as translated in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989) by Yirmiyahu Yovel
Kontext: Time carries him as the river carries
A leaf in the downstream water.
No matter. The enchanted one insists
And shapes God with delicate geometry.
Since his illness, since his birth,
He goes on constructing God with the word.
The mightiest love was granted him
Love that does not expect to be loved.
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Kontext: Who are the inventors of Tlön? The plural is inevitable, because the hypothesis of a lone inventor — an infinite Leibniz laboring away darkly and modestly — has been unanimously discounted. It is conjectured that this brave new world is the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebraists, moralists, painters, geometers... directed by an obscure man of genius. Individuals mastering these diverse disciplines are abundant, but not so those capable of inventiveness and less so those capable of subordinating that inventiveness to a rigorous and systematic plan. This plan is so vast that each writer's contribution is infinitesimal. At first it was believed that Tlön was a mere chaos, and irresponsible license of the imagination; now it is known that it is a cosmos and that the intimate laws which govern it have been formulated, at least provisionally. Let it suffice for me to recall that the apparent contradictions of the Eleventh Volume are the fundamental basis for the proof that the other volumes exist, so lucid and exact is the order observed in it.
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Ficciones
"Death and the Compass"
Ficciones (1944)
Kontext: "It's possible, but not interesting," Lonnrot answered. "You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber."
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Other Inquisitions
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History
Kontext: Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply. It is as if a Carthaginian had bequeathed to us the memory of the exploit of Regulus. Saxo Grammaticus wrote with justification in his Gesta Danorum: "The men of Thule [Iceland] are very fond of learning and of recording the history of all peoples and they are equally pleased to reveal the excellences of others or of themselves."
Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.
