The Aleph

The Aleph (in Spanish : is a collection of seventeen stories written by Jorge Luis Borges , published separately between 1944 and 1952 in various periodicals of Buenos Aires. The book's title is the latest news.

We find in this book the favorite themes of Borges : the numerous literary references (sometimes deliberately fanciful), the metaphysical , the labyrinths , the infinite. Several stories have on the subject of death or immortality. Several are set in the ancient Greco-Roman or Eastern medieval.

Editions

The stories in this collection were written (in Spanish) and published on an interval of almost ten years. The book itself has gone through several editions. The first, in 1949, did not include Abenhacan el Bokhari dead in his labyrinth, the two kings and two labyrinths, Waiting, and The Man in the doorway, built in 1952.

French, Roger Caillois has translated and published four of them in 1953 in a small volume, entitled Labyrinths: The immortal, History of the warrior and the captive, the writing of God, and the pursuit of Averroes. He justifies this choice by a "common inspiration" and thus has four new ^New

The Immortal

• First published: Journal Los Anales de Buenos Aires, vol. 2, ^No. 12, February 1947, as the immortals.
• Original title: Los Inmortales

The death

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 145, November 1946.
• Original title: El muerto

Theologians

• First published: Journal Los Anales de Buenos Aires, vol. 2, ^No. 14, April 1947.
• Original title: Los telogos

History of the warrior and the captive

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 175, May 1949.
• Original title: Historia del guerrero y la Cautiva

Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 122, December 1944.
• Original title: Biografa Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)

Emma Zunz

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 167, September 1948.
• Original title: Emma Zunz

The House of Asterion

The house of Asterion? (View from the palace of Knossos )

• First published: Journal Los Anales de Buenos Aires, vol. 2, ^No. 15-16, May 1947.
• Original title: La casa de Asterion

Asterion , a solitary and innocent, describes his home and his life, made up games and dreams, but also boredom at the end of the story, Theseus kills. The myth of the Minotaur , but from the perspective of the monster.

This story was inspired by a painting by Borges George Frederic Watts visible on this page of the site of the Tate Gallery.

The construction of the new progressive. Borges leaves clues which, little by little hint at the reality of this character. For readers who doubt or did not understand the ending is abrupt:

"The morning sun shone on the bronze sword, where there was already a trace of blood. "Would you believe Ariane? said Theseus, the Minotaur was barely defended. ""

This paragraph is the only one whose narrator is not Asterion.

The other death

• First issue: newspaper La Nacin, January 9, 1949.
• Original title: La otra muerte

Deutsches Requiem

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 136, February 1946.
• Original title: Deutsches Requiem

The search for Averroes

Averroes thought

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 152, June 1947.
• Original title: La busca of Averroes

This new recounts the difficulties faced by Averroes , in his translation of The Poetics of Aristotle. Indeed, the concepts of comedy and tragedy , like the theater are unknown to the Arabs of that time. By setting abyss characteristic of his style, Borges sets at the end of the story, the parallel between the difficulties of Averroes and his own: he must, indeed, understand the thinking of the Arab scholar to write this story.

"I understood Averroes trying to imagine what a tragedy, without suspecting what a theater, was no more absurd than I tried to imagine Averroes The Zahir

• First published: Journal Los Anales de Buenos Aires, vol. 2, ^No. 17, July 1947.
• Original title: El Zahir

Writing of the god

Jaguar Warrior Aztec

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 172, February 1949.
• Original title: La escritura del Dios

Abenhacan el Bokhari dead in his labyrinth

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 202, August 1951.
• Original title: El Abenjacn Bojar, muerto en su laberinto

The two kings and two labyrinths

• First issue: newspaper El Hogar, 16 June 1939.
• Original title: Leyenda arbiga (Historia de los dos reyes y los dos Laberintos, como nota Burton)

The two kings and two labyrinths takes the form of an oriental tale in the style of Arabian Nights , a work tirelessly reread Borges. The king of Babylon had built a labyrinth so complex that even the wisest of his subjects are lost. One day an Arab king visited him. To mock him, the king of Babylon to penetrate into the labyrinth where he wanders desperately until nightfall. He finds out that imploring divine help. Back in Saudi, he decides to take revenge, gathers his armies and ravaging the kingdoms of Babylon. It captures the king, the fastener on the back of a camel, took him in the desert and said: "Babylon you wanted to get lost in a labyrinth of countless bronze stairs, walls and doors. Now the Almighty has willed that I'll show you mine, where there are no stairs to climb, or forcing doors or walls that keep moving . Then he abandons her, leaving him to die of thirst.

This story was published for the first time June 16, 1939 in El Hogar, immediately after the review that Borges dedicates the novel to Joyce 's Finnegans Wake. According to Vincent Post , "this tale is part of the review of Finnegans Wake. It is a true parable between Borges and Joyce, two practices literature . The king of Babylon would be an avatar of Joyce, who built an extremely complex work, close to unreadable. King of the Arabs, He is none other than Borges himself: although his works are equally labyrinthine, he seeks in his own words to give them the "modest and secret complexity "of the desert.

Expectations

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 186, March 1950.
• Original title: La espera

The man on the threshold

• First issue: newspaper La Nacin, April 20, 1952.
• Original title: El hombre en el umbral

The aleph

• First published: journal Sur, ^No. 131, September 1945.
• Original title: El Aleph

Bibliography

• Adrian Huici El clsico mito in the obra de Jorge Luis Borges: el laberinto, Ediciones Alfar, 1998.
• Vincent Post, "The two kings and two labyrinths: JL Borges, J. Joyce and the novel idea of efficiency "in Literature No. 153, March 2009, p. 3-18, available online Editions
  • The Aleph series "imaginary", Gallimard , ( ISBN 2-07-029666-0 )

  Notes

  1. The Aleph series "imaginary", op. cit., p. 10
  2. Borges, Collected Works I, Bibliothque de la Pliade, Gallimard, 1993 644
  3. Vincent Post, "The two kings and two labyrinths: JL Borges, J. Joyce and the novel idea of efficiency "in Literature No. 153 - March 2009, p. 14
  4. Borges, Collected Works II, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard, 1993 66

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