Jorge Luis Borges

Lore & Background

Borges was born into an educated middle-class family in Buenos Aires. His father, a lawyer and writer, had a library of over one thousand volumes, which Borges later called the chief event in his life. He was bilingual in Spanish and English from childhood, translating Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince at age ten. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève and learned French and German. After World War I, the family traveled widely in Europe, and Borges became a member of the avant-garde Ultraist literary movement in Spain.

Returning to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He was completely blind by age 55, and scholars have proposed that his progressive loss of sight influenced his development of innovative literary symbols. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe; he was fluent in several languages.

In 1961, Borges came to international attention when he received the first International Formentor Prize, shared with Samuel Beckett. His reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by English translations, the Latin American Boom, and the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland.

Reader's Guide

Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magical realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: 'He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists.' David Foster Wallace wrote that Borges 'is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature' and that his stories are 'inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything.' His exploration of motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology has made him a central figure in international letters. His legacy endures through his influence on subsequent generations of writers and his role in the Latin American Boom.

Did You Know?

• Borges translated Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince into Spanish at age ten.
• He was completely blind by age 55, which scholars suggest influenced his literary symbols.
• He shared the first International Formentor Prize in 1961 with Samuel Beckett.
• His father's library of over one thousand volumes was a major influence on his life.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"In these selections the quotes from a story or essay are listed among the earliest collections which are known to contain it." — Jorge Luis Borges "A Poem by Oscar Wilde" (1925) An essay on Wilde and his Ballad of Reading Gaol." — Jorge Luis Borges "That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox." — Jorge Luis Borges "Reading … is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual." — Jorge Luis Borges