Maybe I haven’t put my whole heart and soul into my commentary on these stories that make up Ficciones, and I apologize to the spectre of Borges for this seeming lack of proper respect. Believe me, I love the guy. My heart and soul were actually there but it was my brain that failed.
There’s so much to write about when you read Borges that it threatens to turn into essays longer than the stories themselves. Borges is not a writer’s writer perhaps–his use of language (though this is based upon what may be bad translations) is not something to make you swoon with envy. His stories–when they exist in some manner of connected form–are vehicles for more philosophical notions. His ideas, his conceptions and therefore his plotting and planning to weave a story around them are brilliant. He is a puzzlemeister, giggling I’m sure, as he imagines how to lead the reader into his traps and yet allow him to find his way out.
Borges brings in his recurring ideas of how man repeats for all time his actions–something that’s not quite clear to me yet, but obviously very important to Borges.Or is it? Are these the thoughts of a philosopher disguised safely within his characters–in most cases authors as well. Or is it all a giant joke, a man’s spoof of mankind for attempting to speculate at what can never be known.
Borges is not what I would call a weaver of words, but rather of paths. His stories are the quintessential Premise and Plot. I find myself wondering if his thought process starts at the entrance of A to seek the exit of E, or if he rewinds–as I know I’ve done with a pencil in Sunday puzzle section mazes–going from E to A. Does he conceive of an idea and ask what if? or does he find a spot and look backward to see how it got there?
Borges has piqued my curiosity, forcing me to think once again on that which I try so hard to ignore. Fanciful need not always be a paradise wrought from the known, but need be allowed to go where it wanders, this way or that; this way and that.
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