Jorge Luis Borges

[Kyriakos]

Anyone read this late Argentinian writer?
I have two tomes of his (tritome in total) complete works, namely the prose and essays.
That said i had not read the books in their entirety. Recently someone suggested that i read his 3-page story "The house of Asterios".

The house of Asterios made a great impression on me.

Spoiler for the plot follows:

Spoiler :

It is about a narrator, Asterios (the name means 'star' in greek)wholives in his vast house that has no furniture at all. Once he went outside of his house, but the people who saw him appeared to be trying to hide from him. So he never again left the house, but he maintains that he is not imprisoned there.
Finally, through the story, near its end, we learn of how Asterios gets visited by 9 youths every 9 years, and they die, one of them once having made the prophecy that in the future someone will come to also liberate Asterios, like he liberated those youths. Asterios only wishes for this day to come soon, and that when he is dead he will go to a place with less complicated surroundings.
The day comes. And the last two sentences are in the third person narrative, whereas all of the rest of the text is in the first person. We are told of a sword that is cleaned from blood. And then Theseus speaks to Ariadne and says: "Would you believe it, Ariadne, the Minotaur almost gave no fight at all?"

I think that i have read this story before, maybe when i first bought this book, a couple of years ago. But i appear to have forgotten most of it. The last two sentences are unbelievably powerful in my view.

So, any of you have read Borges? And if so which works of his are your favorites?

 

[jtb1127]

I just recently read a poem called the Labyrinth by Borges. It was a decent poem and it had a nice allusion. It was all about how the Minotaur is isolated from society because they think he's a monster and he happens to eat people.

 

[GoodGame]

I haven't read him, and my only reference to him is one of my older favorite authors, Philip K. Dick, being called a "home-grown Borges".

 

[Midnight-Blue766]

I've skimmed through Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tetrius, The Library of Babel, and The Zahir, all of which were enjoyable to read.

 

[holy king]

read el aleph (the collection).
pretty good in german, i can imagine the original to be amazing.

 

[jtb1127]

I've only read English versions. Above post applies.

 

[galamer]

i only read 'the secret miracle' once, but i liked it a lot. have to read more of him though.