Ficciones

By Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Kerrigan (Editor) and Anthony Bonner

“These brief Ficciones have to be read one at a time, and slowly; then they throb with uncanny and haunting power.” —The Atlantic Monthly

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century.

Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: May 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9780802190734

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges nació en Buenos Aires el 24 de agosto de 1899. Entre 1914 y 1921 vivió con su familia en Europa. A su regreso, funda las revistas Prisma y Proa, y publica Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) e Historia universal de la infamia (1935). Autor de poesía, cuento, ensayo y trabajos en colaboración, durante las décadas siguientes su obra crece, es traducida a más de veinticinco idiomas y alcanza reconocimiento mundial. Fue presidente de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores, director de la Biblioteca Nacional, miembro de la Academia Argentina de Letras y profesor de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Recibió importantes distinciones oficiales, y el título de doctor honoris causa de las universidades de Columbia, Yale, Oxford, Michigan, Santiago de Chile, Sorbona y Harvard. Obtuvo, entre otros galardones, el Premio Nacional de Literatura (1956) y el Cervantes (1979). Considerado uno de los más importantes escritores en lengua hispana de la historia de la literatura, murió en Ginebra el 14 de junio de 1986.

Book preview

FICCIONES

Also by Jorge Luis Borges

Published by Grove Press

A Personal Anthology

FICCIONES

by

Jorge Luis Borges

Edited and with an Introduction

by Anthony Kerrigan

GROVE PRESS

NEW YORK

Copyright © 1962 by Grove Press

Translated from the Spanish, copyright © 1956 Emecé Editores, S. A., Buenos Aires

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN 978-0-8021-3030-3

eISBN 978-0-8021-9073-4

Cover art by Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum Photos

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

To

Esther Zemborain de Torres

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

Prologue

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim

Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote

The Circular Ruins

The Babylon Lottery

An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain

The Library of Babel

The Garden of Forking Paths

PART Two: ARTIFICES

Prologue

Funes, the Memorious

The Form of the Sword

Theme of the Traitor and Hero

Death and the Compass

The Secret Miracle

Three Versions of Judas

The End

The Sect of the Phoenix

The South

INTRODUCTION

The work of Jorge Luis Borges is a species of international literary metaphor. He knowledgeably makes a transfer of inherited meanings from Spanish and English, French and German, and sums up a series of analogies, of confrontations, of appositions in other nations’ literatures. His Argentinians act out Parisian dramas, his Central European Jews are wise in the ways of the Amazon, his Babylonians are fluent in the paradigms of Babel. Probably, withal, he is the most succinct writer of this century, and one of the most incisive as to conclusions, daring dryly to go beyond such a Mannerist master as James Joyce, who knew philology and felt legends, but eschewed meanings. Perhaps, though, his meaning is simply in the ritual tone of voice with which he suggests some eternal, unanswerable question.

Philosophy, comparative philologies, archaeology, everything has been evolving, progressing, breaking new ground. But we know little as ever about why we are born again each morning. Despite the comings and goings of the collective unconscious, we know equally little about the meanings of our very symbols. Borges restates, in a few allegorical pages, the circular, ceremonial direction of our curious, groping, thrilling and atrocious ignorance. Since he has made the acquaintance of all religions, he does not blush to write a tender poem from within a propitiatory lupanar. Because he knows Madrid, Paris, and Geneva—Buenos Aires, even New York do not make him shudder. As an Argentine, he is perhaps one of the last German Expressionists (in 1919 he was associated with the ultraista movement). Because he has read all the books, because he has translated Gide, Kafka, Faulkner and Virginia Woolf, the burning of the library at Alexandria—or in Don Quixote’s backyard—does not make him blanch anew. All the books were sacred and inviolable. They all proclaimed the True God. Our immediate forebears saw the ineffable face of the Creator, and reeled back, stopping to write

Torat yyy Hedut yyy Piqqude yyy

where the series of y's stood for Jehovah.

More hard-mouthed now, though with the same arbitrary, stylized Solomonic stars in our eyes, we venture to challenge the heavens. Borges bears witness with us in this century, with shabby Faust, but is mercifully economic. No Gargantuan novel says more than he can in one of his ficciones. Borges is no Gorgias (who invented the art of expressing himself either briefly or at endless length); his brevity is no device, as brevity was in the Middle Ages. His style is as laconic in statement as a parallel, as suggestively infinite. He is an imagist of cultural fugues and choreographies, of the faltering, lamentable Dance of Life. One cinquepace is not the same as another, but there is no need to dance until one drops in the marathon. In literature it is only necessary to outline the steps. Let the people dance!

Among his themes are a mythology of dagger thrusts; the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss; the labyrinths which are books; cogito, ergo sum cogitatio; the genealogy of insomnia; the iconography of the eternal return.

Until you can say The criminal coming at me? The criminal coming at me is I!, you can not know the Stoic philosophy. This notion burgeons in Borges to the point where he can adduce that at the moment of coitus every man is one man. And that when a man recites William Shakespeare, he is William Shakespeare. (Perhaps, after all, every man is one man, every book one book; though Borges insists that every book is also a specific and particular dialogue.)

Borges is an exegete, a commentator on the texts, on the Books. And exegesis is the mother of heresy. But Borges is not naturally a heresiarch. He is merely a vindicator of heresies. And heresies, as Miguel de Unamuno pointed out, are necessary for the philosophical, and even more, for the theological health of a culture. Borges, nevertheless, has nothing to do either with the well-being of our culture, or its languishment. His postulates, though portentous, are awesome incidental speculations; they undermine the universe only casually. As a vindicator of heresies, Borges will brave the exoneration of eternity or the refutation of Time: the concrete justification of a sunset, of the Plain, of identical mutations; the chance undermining of a chronology. Possibly, every instant in time is the Creation, or conversely, there is only spent accretion, and we are vagabonds at a universal dump.

The cruel jests of history are solved only by violence. The equal idiocy of all totalitarianism, the swinishness of Communism or Nazism, and the deadliness of conformity to an accepted form of sterility, are unmasked to no point. Men long for their deceits. A few will blindly fight back.

Borges does not shy away from senseless truth. In his own preferred story, The South, a man must pick up a knife (is he dreaming?) and go out into the brainless night to face bestiality. Why? He does not know. All our knowledge has led us exactly to this point, just where we started, endless ages ago. We have only been playing a game, an immortal game, all along.

Such at least are some of the thoughts summoned by Ficciones; the variants are numberless . . .

Palma de Mallorca

1962

—ANTHONY KERRIGAN

PART ONE

THE GARDEN OF

FORKING PATHS

(1941)

PROLOGUE

The eight pieces of this book do not require extraneous elucidation. The eighth piece, The Garden of Forking Paths, is a detective story; its readers will assist at the execution, and all the preliminaries, of a crime, a crime whose purpose will not be unknown to them, but which they will not understand—it seems to me—until the last paragraph. The other pieces are fantasies. One of them, The Babylon Lottery, is not entirely innocent of symbolism.

I am not the first author of the narrative titled The Library of Babel those curious to know its history and its prehistory may interrogate a certain page of Number 59 of the journal Sur,* which records the heterogenous names of Leucippus and Lasswitz, of Lewis Carroll and Aristotle. In The Circular Ruins everything is unreal. In "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," what is unreal is the destiny imposed upon himself by the protagonist. The list of writings I attribute to him is not too amusing but neither is it arbitrary; it constitutes a diagram of his mental history. . . .

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a résumé, a commentary. Thus proceeded Carlyle in Sartor Resartus. Thus Butler in The Fair Haven. These are works which suffer the imperfection of being themselves books, and of being no less tautological than the others. More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. Such are Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain, The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim. The last-named dates from 1935. Recently I read The Sacred Fount (1901), whose general argument is perhaps analogous. The narrator, in James's delicate novel, investigates whether or not B is influenced by A or C; in The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim the narrator feels a presentiment or divines through B the extremely remote existence of Z, whom B does not know.

Buenos Aires

November 10, 1941

—J. L. B.

*The great South American literary journal edited in Buenos Airea by Victoria Ocampo.—Editor's note.

TLÖN, UQBAR,

ORBIS TERTIUS

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The unnerving mirror hung at the end of a corridor in a villa on Calle Goana, in Ramos Mejía; the misleading encyclopedia goes by the name of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), and is a literal if inadequate reprint of the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica. The whole affair happened some five years ago. Bioy Casares had dined with me that night and talked to us at length about a great scheme for writing a novel in the first person, using a narrator who omitted or corrupted what happened and who ran into various contradictions, so that only a handful of readers, a very small handful, would be able to decipher the horrible or banal reality behind the novel. From the far end of the corridor, the mirror was watching us; and we discovered, with the inevitability of discoveries made late at night, that mirrors have something grotesque about them. Then Bioy Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man. I asked him the source of that memorable sentence, and he replied that it was recorded in the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, in its article on Uqbar. It so happened that the villa (which we had rented furnished) possessed a copy of that work. In the final pages of Volume XLVI, we ran across an article on Upsala; in the beginning of Volume XLVII, we found one on Ural-Altaic languages; but not one word on Uqbar. A little put out, Bioy consulted the index volumes. In vain he tried every possible spelling—Ukbar, Ucbar, Ooqbar, Ookbar, Oukbahr. ... Before leaving, he informed me it was a region in either Iraq or Asia Minor. I must say that I acknowledged this a little uneasily. I supposed that this undocumented country and its anonymous heresiarch had been deliberately invented by Bioy out of modesty, to substantiate a phrase. A futile examination of one of the atlases of Justus Perthes strengthened my doubt.

On the following day, Bioy telephoned me from Buenos Aires. He told me that he had in front of him the article on Uqbar, in Volume XLVI of the encyclopedia. It did not specify the name of the heresiarch, but it did note his doctrine, in words almost identical to the ones he had repeated to me, though, I would say, inferior from a literary point of view. He had remembered: Copulation and mirrors are abominable. The text of the encyclopedia read: For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it. I said, in all sincerity, that I would like to see that article. A few days later, he brought it. This surprised me, because the scrupulous cartographic index of Ritter's Erdkunde completely failed to mention the name of Uqbar.

The volume which Bioy brought was indeed Volume XLVI of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia. On the title page and spine, the alphabetical key was the same as in our copy, but instead of 917 pages, it had 921. These four additional pages consisted of the article on Uqbar—not accounted for by the alphabetical cipher, as the reader will have noticed. We ascertained afterwards that there was no other difference between the two volumes. Both, as I think I pointed out, are reprints of the tenth Encyclopaedia Britannica. Bioy had acquired his copy in one of a number of book sales.

We read the article with some care. The passage remembered by Bioy was perhaps the only startling one. The rest seemed probable enough, very much in keeping with the general tone of the work and, naturally, a little dull. Reading

it over, we discovered, beneath the superficial authority of the prose, a fundamental vagueness. Of the fourteen names mentioned in the geographical section, we recognized only three—Khurasan, Armenia, and Erzurum—and they were dragged into the text in a strangely ambiguous way. Among the historical names, we recognized only one, that of the imposter, Smerdis the Magian, and it was invoked in a rather metaphorical sense. The notes appeared to fix precisely the frontiers of Uqbar, but the points of reference were all, vaguely enough, rivers and craters and mountain chains in that same region. We read, for instance, that the southern frontier is defined by the lowlands of Tsai Haldun and the Axa delta, and that wild horses flourish in the islands of that delta. This, at the top of page 918. In the historical section (page 920), we gathered that, just after the religious persecutions of the thirteenth century, the orthodox sought refuge in the islands, where their

Reviews for Ficciones

[crmass_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After hearing so many good things about Borges, I decided to read this book. Unfortunately I found it to be rather unexciting. Some seem to take a lot more from this book than I did, but to each their own.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got along with Fictions a lot better than with The Book of Imaginary Beings; while it's still composed of various short pieces, each one has a plot and a purpose. The writing is beautiful; if the translation does any justice to the original, it must be gorgeous in its simplicity, while describing plots and settings that are anything but simple. I could almost go learn Spanish just to read Borges' own words -- though this Penguin translation by Andrew Hurley is a good one, and makes the stories accessible and clear.

Can you even pick a favourite from this volume? I suppose maybe I can -- 'The Library of Babel', maybe, or 'The Lottery in Babylon'. I'm going to keep this book around and reread it sometime, slower, in a different order, whatever. Just dip in and out see what else I find in these stories that I didn't see this time. And it's high praise for me to say that I am sure there's a lot I didn't see.

[blintnatc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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[endrey-187836 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like a grindcore album in book form: short, intricate, brimming with exciting ideas and thought experiments. Dense and twisty tales often alluding to writing, reading, and to diverse, increasingly abstract configurations of maker and perceiver. Just try not to be too bothered by the characters' irrational compulsion to read any book they come across, regardless of context.

Highlights: Lottery of Bablyon, Circular Ruins, Death and the Compass

[notannakarina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5

A distinctly academic tone to these fantastical stories, which makes them creepier and funnier, and then creepier in turn. I was very unsettled after I finished them, and will no doubt return to them again.

[rubyman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The stories in this collection often had a peculiar twist that exploded suddenly into a vast plane of possibilities and nuances. While reading the twist you can feel the physical effect on your brain - it goes from a calm cozy contemplation to a violent combustion of grappling and grasping for explanations and boundaries. It's a stimulating ride at the end of which you tilt your head back and quietly whisper: "wtf".

[wvlibrarydude · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

27 years later, I read stories that I barely remember. The library and circular ruins are familiar, but the rest are not. I remembered enjoying the book in college, but this time the work and labor of reading did not fulfill.

[CondeD · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What doubt remains after reading Ficciones, that Borges was an admirer of James Joyce, because I couldn't help but remember Ulysses and its crossword turned into a novel. Ficciones is another crossword of difficult comprehension (I had to rely on a reading guide to catch every detail, just like I did with Ulysses) and just as happened with Joyce, I don't like his prose, I don't like his writing style, but the concept captivates me. Avoiding spoilers, I loved that in 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' what glory in literature means was questioned, in 'The Secret Miracle' I was fascinated that time passed in a non-physical environment, and 'Three Versions of Judas' has had me reflecting for days about everything I thought I knew about "the great universal traitor."

A somewhat convoluted read, yes, but at the same time very necessary. (Translated from Spanish)

[melnicolai · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have the Everyman's Library edition of Ficciones, published in 1993. The original was published in 1956 by Emecè Editores S.A., of Buenos Aires.I imagine the Buenos Aires of 1956, and suspect that what exists in my imagination shares little more than a name and perhaps a few incidental details (some pavement, a few trees) with the actual city in Argentina. Of course, my pavement and trees are unavoidably more Platonic than their counterparts in the southern hemisphere.The Everyman's edition of Ficciones includes a chronology providing the interested reader with some biographical data of uneven relevance. There are some worthwhile facts. Borges was born on August 24, 1899. His first attempts at writing, imitating Cervantes, were made when he was six. But the fact that the first eight stories of Ficciones, published under the title, The Garden of Forking Paths, occurred in the same year as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a conjunction of events whose significance is less obvious.If we include the two Prologues, Ficciones contains nineteen fictions, the second being Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. In Tlön's first sentence there are references to both a mirror and an encyclopedia. The former is promptly indicted as an abomination. The latter — a questionable attempt at universality — is a clue to the existence of an entire world.The role of the character Herbert Ashe is inadvertent. With droll humor, we learn that Ashe is capable of long silences and that he is the quintessential tourist. "Every so many years, he went to England to visit — judging by the photographs he showed us — a sundial and some oak trees."One of the schools in Tlön "has it that the history of the universe, which contains the history of our lives and the most tenuous details of them, is the handwriting produced by a minor god in order to communicate with a demon." The history of the universe, it seems, is very much like those photographs taken by Ashe.Tlön is the world of Berkeley's metaphysics, minus one detail: God's all-seeing eye. "Things duplicate themselves in Tlön. They tend at the same time to efface themselves, to lose their detail when people forget them. The classic example is that of a stone threshold which lasted as long as it was visited by a beggar, and which faded from sight on his death. Occasionally, a few birds, a horse perhaps, have saved the ruins of an amphitheatre."Borges' prose leans toward the cerebral. He was an autodidact who cultivated an idiosyncratic erudition that was probably as out of place in his own time as it is in ours. I wonder if in the future, when "English, French, and mere Spanish... disappear from this planet" and our world has become Tlön, will Borges be there?

[José Antonio Lopera Vilchez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Garden of Forking Paths
A masterpiece. What great erudition and what a way of navigating between reality and fiction, without the reader ever knowing in which of the two worlds they find themselves. Captivating prose and of great richness. My favorite stories are: Circular Ruins, The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths, Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, Death and the Compass, The Secret Miracle, Three Versions of Judas, The End, The South.
The Library of Babel
In this piece, Borges analyzes the possibilities, axioms, and history of this library, which is broadly composed of hexagonal galleries, each with a ventilation shaft in its center, four walls covered with twenty shelves distributed at a rate of five per wall. Each gallery connects, through a narrow vestibule, to another identical one; each shelf houses thirty-two books made up of four hundred and ten pages that each contain forty lines, and each line eighty letters. The books are uniform, and the alphabet consists of twenty-five characters, including punctuation marks. The Library of Babel resembles the Universe, with its censorships, book burnings, and betrayals.
The Garden of Forking Paths
This is a detective story that recounts the discovery, by Dr. Yu Tsun, of an infinite labyrinth while escaping from Captain Richard Madden, who is determined to kill him.
Artifices
Funes the Memorious
This story takes place in 1887 and is set in Fray Bentos. It tells the story of Ireneo Funes, a boy who, after an accident with a wild horse, becomes disabled and suffers a modification in his memory that turns it eidetic. (The ability of certain people, usually children and plastic artists, to reproduce visually perceived past perceptions with great accuracy).
The Shape of the Sword
A man who had to stay at the estancia "La Colorada" — due to a storm — near the Caraguatá stream in Tacuarembó, is received by a character known to all as "The Englishman." After drinking excessively, the narrator, when asking The Englishman about the scar, witnesses the unexpected narration of a story of cowardice.
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
The story takes place, confusingly, in Ireland in 1824. Fergus Kilpatrick is the main character, and the narrator, Ryan, is his grandson. The murder of his grandfather, at the hands of an unknown assassin, to avoid jeopardizing the revolution itself, his betrayal, and conspiracy are the motives of the narrative. (Fergus Kilpatrick collaborated in this plot to die as a hero).
Death and the Compass
It is a detective story in which the protagonist, Detective Erik Lönnrot, supported by Commissioner Franz Treviranus, investigates three crimes that seem to be interconnected and culminate in a final one, whose victim will be Detective Lönnrot himself.
The Secret Miracle
[Jaromir Hladík is the character in this story, and his dream of an eternal chess game is its beginning. Then, the story describes his arrest and subsequent death sentence at the hands of the Gestapo due to an overly praised translation of the Sepher Yezirah, and the secret miracle that occurs moments before his final execution. Time stopped for him to finish his work and then die by firing squad.
Three Versions of Judas
The character in this narrative, which takes place in Lund in the twentieth century, is Nils Runeberg, a member of the National Evangelical Union. In his works Kristus och Judas and Den hemlige Frälsaren, Nils makes a defense of Judas Iscariot; a vindication of his actions.
The End
It is about a "Black" man who was defeated in the payada and who frequents a pulpería waiting for someone since then. Recabarren, the owner of the pulpería, while looking at the sunset through the bars of the window, asked if there were any patrons. A young, taciturn man gestured that there were not; the Black man did not count. Shortly thereafter, Recabarren saw on the horizon that a rider (who was a stranger) was approaching at a gallop. He was the one the Black man had been waiting for for seven years. The two find themselves in mourning as Recabarren witnesses the encounter between life and death and consequently the end of Martin Fierro.
The Sect of the Phoenix
Borges narrates the story and secrets of a sect that is ubiquitous and whose mistagogues are unsuspected. Its only rite consists of the Secret, an act judged as painful, shameful, by its practitioners.
The South
Borges narrates the misadventure of Juan Dahlmann, grandson of Johannes Dahlmann, which began one afternoon in February 1939 when, due to a carelessness, the edge of a door frame struck his forehead, and as a result, he fell ill. His fate would be sealed by this event and by the subsequent journey south to convalesce at a estancia of his property. (Translated from Spanish)

[Mercader Moncloa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Impressive prose and stories from the great master of the 20th century. Nothing more to add. (Translated from Spanish)

[RobertaCass · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Necessary rereading. I will continue for a third one. (Translated from Spanish)

[Díaz Rolando · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nobility obliges, I will start by saying that I am proud to share the same land from which such a genius came. I consider him my master and the best writer in his genre. As Borges himself said: "There are those who take pride in what they write; I take pride in what I read." "Ficciones" is, along with "El Aleph," one of the crowning works of J.L.B. It is difficult to try to settle on just one of the stories that make up the work, but making the effort, I will stick with two essential titles: "Funes, the Memorious" and "TheCircular Ruins." (Translated from Spanish)

[Tomigalma · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Magical (Translated from Spanish)

[VictoriaRG · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had postponed it and half forced myself to start reading it. My prejudices were getting the better of me: they are short stories, which is not what I usually enjoy; Borges or die trying. After the first two stories, I almost gave up. Until the originality of The Circular Ruins appeared. And I didn’t give in. The Lottery in Babylon seems masterful to me, just like the Library of Babel. I encountered narratives that did not evoke anything in me, pretentious (can one say that about a Borgesian text?) and unnecessary. But come on, this is totally subjective. The Shape of the Sword I loved, The Three Versions of Judas, captivating. The South, magnificent.
In short, for me it’s an achievement. My first reading of the author. (Translated from Spanish)

[Miel1908 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Borges and his universe.

In these stories, we witness everything: the imaginary and unreal, the fantastic and the detective. The blend of reality and fiction (of which he is a master) always crowns him as an excellent author, his ingenuity in creating parallel worlds and his humor that makes you believe them, losing yourself between what is false and what is true: for me, one of his greatest genius.
Labyrinths, ruins and puzzles, eternal libraries, idealism and fantastic countries, heresies, superstitions, unreal worlds replacing “reality”… all of this is found in this book that I feel should be revisited and that will always reveal another “understanding,” another interpretation, another way out.
His captivating idea of infinity will capture you and declare you “Borgesian” from today and forever. (Translated from Spanish)

[mlonganiza · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Masterful, subversive. It invites us to step out of everyday comfort and inhabit the abyss a little. (Translated from Spanish)

[Mastercook · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book of stories filled with gigantic ideas despite its brevity. Each of the tales in Jorge Luis Borges' masterpiece symbolically and literally exposes his worldview, his political ideology, his stance as an Argentine, and other concepts such as betrayal, death, memory, language, and literature.
Listing my favorite stories:
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: a tale with so many readings and so much information to process, lacking a linear narrative and more akin to an essay, delves into profound themes.
The Circular Ruins: the most surreal and with the strongest symbols in the book, is a story that requires multiple readings to grasp all its elements, but it is simply perfect.
The Garden of Forking Paths: my favorite story, a gigantic clockwork mechanism to create a circular, labyrinthine tale governed by chance and randomness.
Death and the Compass: the only story of the genre functions as a subversion of it, creating an intricate narrative capable of deceiving both the reader and the character.
Funes the Memorious: reminding me of one of my favorite film directors, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Borges speaks about memory, language, and the impact on a character and his relationship with the world.
The South: the story divided in half seems like two loosely related tales, about a man relating to the present and then to the primitive memory of his nation. Both serve as a healing process for him and generate a beautiful ambiguity. (Translated from Spanish)

[Sisifo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I started reading this book with some skepticism. From the first lines of the first story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," it can be noticed that the reading is not aimed at everyone; it is not suitable for passive readers (but yes for active readers), and one must pay close attention so as not to miss the details of the stories. The feeling left after reading each story is gratifying and - in some cases - turns out to be a whole new experience.

I take my hat off to Borges for the highly personal style infused in each of his stories, his immense erudition, and the themes he tackles: deep, existential, philosophical, religious, mystical, and even fantastical. What imagination! His originality seems to have no end. Although I felt that not all the stories are on the same level (and some made me yawn), I must acknowledge that in his style, and what can be read between the lines, there is a great literary richness that many contemporary writers would wish to express in their writings.

Reading Borges is reading with care, savoring each paragraph, each word, and it is advisable to read two or three times to notice more details. I definitely want to read more from this masterful writer who with stories like "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "The Garden of Forking Paths," "The Secret Miracle," "The Shape of the Sword," "Death and the Compass," and "The South" has left a mark on my heart. (Translated from Spanish)

[Kathebet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I believe that this selection of short stories has a message to convey to humanity, a message that is not clear at first glance. I must admit that it was very difficult for me to understand this book; the stories are characterized by a depth that is sometimes somewhat heavy, but it is undoubtedly worth the effort. #jorgeluisborges encapsulated all his genius in each of these stories, among my favorites are #funeselmemorioso, #lamuerteylabrujula, #laloteríadebabilonia, #labibliotecadebabel, #elsur ?

I am sure that when I read them again, I will discover new messages that I surely overlooked this time. (Translated from Spanish)

[Eliseolobo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Borges, when he passed away, I stopped believing that the Nobel is awarded to those who deserve it. (Translated from Spanish)

[AndresPrenitune · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fictions is the book of short stories, in my opinion excellent for introducing oneself to the Borgesian world. It brings together the greatest influences of his life, on one hand the world of civilization and on the other hand barbarism. The erudition, for example in "Pierre Menard" or when he presents the excellent formula in "Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius" where fiction ends up devouring reality ("the world will be Tlön...") and also the passionate, the gauchesque for example in "The South" or in "The End."
The great detective story of this series of tales is undoubtedly "Death and the Compass."
"The Circular Ruins" is a wonderful narrative, from which we could draw a lot of philosophical content, which will leave us thinking a lot, like most (if not all) of the stories from the best author of all time.
In summary, it is a book that one never tires of reading and rereading, in which one never finishes understanding it and learning things from it. (Translated from Spanish)

[Juancarloscuba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good very good. (Translated from Spanish)

[araguilarch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

He has incredible stories, already classics; I believe that to enjoy them better, one should read other books by Borges first. It changed the way I read. (Translated from Spanish)

[graceslg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fictions is the best collection of short stories by Borges, a masterful work that is a must-read if you are a regular reader. Each and every story is written impeccably, irreverently, and includes literary, religious, philosophical, and other influences.
It is important to highlight that no matter how attentive you are to the rhythm of the story, the ending—always unexpected—leaves the feeling of having read something different.
In my personal opinion, "The Circular Ruins" is by far the best in this book.
I hope you take your time with this book, without rush, and fully immerse yourselves in the high literary quality that fills each of its pages. (Translated from Spanish)

[SextoEmpiriko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Borges' stories simply seem taken from a mind foreign to our world. In this collection of stories, Borges is capable of taking you to the most complex, profound, and everyday distant aspects of our reality. This author, both in Fictions and throughout his entire work, is able to masterfully develop new worlds, new languages, new religions, and present them to you as if they were part of history.

The name fits perfectly, since if it weren't specified that they are Fictions, many would believe in their complex statements. (Translated from Spanish)

[masser1967 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Impressive. When I read this book, I discovered the genius and grammatical accuracy of a beautiful storytelling style. (Translated from Spanish)

[Sagitario76 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book consists of two parts: the first, "The Garden of Forking Paths," the second: "Artifices." I believe I notice that the first part, the most difficult and possibly for this very reason, the most impressive, let’s say, the one that possesses a greater share of genius, somehow contains the summary of all of Borges' obsessions, already known even by his fiercest detractors, namely, time, labyrinths, mirrors, chess, theology, death, memory, books, history; in each story, filled with names, citations, and historical and literary references, he weaves a small masterpiece and if I say small it is because of the length of each tale, which does not exceed six pages, I believe, and not because of the gigantic quality and complexity of the themes and style. In Borges, everything is important. The form and the content; everything is wonderful.

Sometimes, upon reading a single page, we believe we have read ten; this is due to the supernatural load and fabulous ability to summarize, in a few—very few—lines, an entire universe of ideas; it is like an exquisite concentrated essence, which does not require large quantities to unfold its wonder.

I remember that I never passed the first story (a personal mania, a somewhat silly whim; I knew that each story was independent, which is why I do not understand how I did not continue with a second or third tale), "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Once I read that story, in which many of his favorite themes appear, as I mentioned earlier, I was able to confirm that my "audacity" was going to be rewarded. I want to focus on the stories that I liked the most, which seemed most perfect to me – almost all or all of them are – or perhaps the ones that have impressed me the most or with which I felt identified.

Although both "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" are admirable for the genuineness of their execution and argument (in the first case, after a conversation of Borges with Bioy, and which arises after feeling the discomfort that mirrors often cause, an investigation arises due to a paragraph that Casares had read in an encyclopedia about an unknown country; the fantastic slowly penetrates reality (?) in a cleverly written tale; in the second case, a man, a writer, Menard, wants to write, in the twentieth century and partially writes the Quixote, being Pierre Menard, with all the baggage of the century, and the inevitable differences that the years provoke in us; even so, each line of Menard's Quixote is more subtle, more perfect than Cervantes'), I particularly liked "The Circular Ruins." The theme of dreams, identity, and reality are elements with which he masterfully draws the most important question, the heaviest in our lives. Are we a dream of another? Are we a fragile image; all our sorrows and joys, our flesh that enjoys and suffers, our pulsing heart, our warm blood, that flows and flows silently, is a fine film, a projection, an unreality? I particularly like this idea; it affirms me more and exacerbates my passions: joys and sorrows become relative. The moment is then lived. We are a dream, surely, the dream of God, whom I do not see or cannot see (no sleeper has ever been able to see who dreams him; another great consolation), and when he wakes, we will vanish. Perhaps death is that; God, holder of infinite brains, infinite nerve centers, who dreams us all at the same time, stops dreaming one by one; my father He stopped dreaming on October 23, 2012, then. God would be forgiven. He did not kill him. He stopped dreaming him.

In the metaphysical tale "The Lottery in Babylon," another absolutely brilliant story, it should be noted that The Company, with its suggestive and variable games of rewards and punishments, is nothing other than God himself and his incomprehensible whims (destiny) mysteriously granted to his creatures. That dark and mystical Company, "which has existed, possibly since forever," maker of positive and adverse fortunes, is the Creator. Who, if not Borges, could have written such beauty? In a few paragraphs, he makes the machine purr and conjecture these divine imaginations, for the delight of intelligence and that beautiful habit of reading and attempting to understand. (Translated from Spanish)

[CASM · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Can one review Borges? Probably yes. But this amateur reader is not in a position to do so. Therefore, I will limit myself to trying to convey my feelings while reading this book.
Ficciones is composed of two books: The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices. These, in turn, consist of a series of stories of various genres—there's fantasy, detective chronicle, science fiction, mysticism... but all of them are excuses to string together sharp reflections on human nature, the nature of books, the meaning of life, the overvaluation of anachronisms as delights of “the commoners,” and much more.
In this book, Borges challenges your intellect, provokes you, captivates you, leads you to reflect and walk paths only to make you realize that you were mistaken... like in a circular labyrinth. It is simply genius. Those who didn’t understand it did so because it wasn't their moment to read it; know that sooner or later that moment will come.
Ficciones is probably "the book" for lovers of books... for this reason and much more, I invite you to read it; you will not be the same readers after experiencing it. (Translated from Spanish)

[MaraViva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fictions is a collection of stories in which the ingenuity, fantasy, and metaphysical thinking of Borges are mixed. The narrative games he resorts to allow us to think beyond the narration and stimulate reflection in the reader as well, because Borges is careful; his stories are full of symbolism and are themselves metaphors of time, the universe, among others. But just as he connects us to a fantastic world, he delivers such a plausible vision of these worlds that it is impossible not to succumb to his game. (Translated from Spanish)