Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges
Borges in the Hotel Beaux, Paris, 1968
Born	(1899-08-24)August 24, 1899 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died	June 14, 1986(1986-06-14) (aged 86) Geneva, Switzerland
Occupation	writer, poet, critic, librarian

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer. He was best known in the English-speaking world for his short stories and fictive essays. Borges was also a poet, critic, translator and man of wisdom.

He was influenced by authors such as Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Schopenhauer and G. K. Chesterton.

Quotations

• "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." — (dogma of a fictional religion in "Hakim, the masked dyer of Merv". Part of this quote is also attributed to a heresiarch of Uqbar in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius".)

• "The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry."

• "I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as 'The Masses'. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time." — Introduction to The Book of Sand

• "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."

Other websites

• Borges Center, University of Iowa Archived 2006-08-30 at the Wayback Machine: important internet resources including bibliographies, chronologies, full text articles and books, and information on the journal Variaciones Borges
• BBC Radio 4: In Our Time Archived 2007-12-21 at the Wayback Machine Archive page for edition about Borges in a series on the 'History of Ideas'. Includes link to streaming audio.
• The Modern Word: The Garden of Forking Paths Archived 2014-02-26 at the Wayback Machine. A comprehensive Web site dedicated to exploring Borges and his work, including pages that discuss writers that Borges influenced.
• Internetaleph. Fully bilingual (English/Spanish) portal dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges. Links, recent news, reading suggestions and an introduction for beginners.
• The Borgesian Cyclopaedia. "Being a Virtual Reference to the World of Jorge Luis Borges".
• Hallucinating Spaces, or the Aleph Archived 2006-07-14 at the Wayback Machine An essay from Borgesland by Susana Medina
• The Friends of Jorge Luis Borges Worldwide Society & Associates Archived 2006-02-14 at the Wayback Machine A non-Governmental and not for profit organization with four distinctive entities that aim to promote artistic and intellectual talents along with civic virtues in new generations of mankind. Borges' works ("a writer of writers" for his extensive and insightful readings) are celebrated as a thread of Ariadne to walk the labyrinths of Philosophy and Literature and all fields of knowledge in quest of wisdom.
• Fundación San Telmo's Jorge Luis Borges Collection Archived 2007-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
• The Norton Lectures, delivered at Harvard University in the fall of 1967, by Jorge Luis Borges Archived 2009-05-05 at the Wayback Machine
• Borges' Bad Politics Slate.com presents an essay by Clive James arguing that Borges could have done more to engage with Argentina's political situation
• "El Tango" Archived 2010-03-24 at the Wayback Machine on audio MP3 (in Spanish)
• Rend(er)ing L.C.: Susan Daitch Meets Borges & Borges, Delacroix, Marx, Derrida, Daumier, and Other Textualized Bodies William A. Nericcio (1993); pdf full-text
• Poem of Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 'Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires' Archived 2011-01-23 at the Wayback Machine