Autobiographical Notes by Jorge Luis Borges (1970) | Hacker News Reader

Autobiographical Notes by Jorge Luis Borges (1970)

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58 pointsCaiero15 comments

I've read an absolutely minimal amount of Borges' work, but all that I've read has been so memorable and insightful as to change my worldview to some extent.

Borges' on taxonomy: https://www.liquisearch.com/celestial_emporium_of_benevolent...

Borges' on "the map is (not) the terrain" (pasted in its entirety):

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Ficciones is amongst the most impressive collection of short stories I have ever read, especially the first part which in isolation might actually be the best because everything in it is genuinely good. Nearly all the stories it contains could be the highlight of another collection and even the one I find the weakest, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", is still very enjoyable.

It's amusing. I was checking on Wikipedia to see the exact title of the stories I wanted to highlight and I realised they all have articles and nearly all of them have an "Influence" section, a fact I'm not surprised about.

The man who attempted to rewrite Don Quixote is one of the best things over ever read

Borges is perfect at format.

And should have gotten a Nobel prize, but didn't get it strictly because he stood by the military dictatorship in Argentina. Not the only Latin American writer who likes the military, Diego Maquieira, my godfather, who I featured on this site when he let me put one of his poems online, wrote an epic poem called Los sea harrier, based on military technology of the 80's in the Falklands War, particularly its namesake airplane the Sea Harrier and mothership aircraft carriers. The military, which believe it or not wasn't completely devoted to persecution, and further which did produce culture at the time, I've seen many military men playing in orchestras, even saw a Dongelspiel at the very end of one. They wanted to take him to Antartica, the Chilean military has a strong presence and is very dominant in Antartica. There's other right-wing intellectuals, not so much into the money as into the military aspect, like there's a 90-year-old Mussolinist who will not apologize for his fascism even in his epitaph--but check this out, he didn't buy into the racial laws, and once he saw what War was when losing saw it wasn't all that glamorous. Roman. Black-shirt youth.

But great artist, so Borges was a great writer, and in fact I would say nowadays the internet is increasingly a Borgesian library. All the way, you follow links, follow links, follow links, read some shit, decide what link is next, follow links, boom you see a list of social security numbers, and you're on it, and it has codes--who can explain the 3 digit numbers next to them? Who printed this, where does it come from? Like how can you interpret it to continue believing you're not being persecuted, it's not happening? That's when I talk my medicine from when I was considered schizophrenic, which I still get, it's a loophole. Instantly turns down the temperature. But you? What would you do, in a Borgesian library?

The Borgesian library is a reflection of yourself, there's no objectivity to it, en este mundo en que nada es verdad y nada es mentira, todo depende del color del cristal por el que uno lo mira.

https://archive.ph/JBAGa Heads up: This is a very long read (~1h).

Borges blew my brain first when I was 18. To this day I re-read at least "The Library of Babel" once a year. Still in awe of how his mind worked.

Took me some time to find the quote again, but I keenly remembered William Gibson talking about Borges as his favourite writer. Here you go:

Q: If you had a chance to meet the author of your favorite book, who would it be and what would you ask them?

A: Jorge Luis Borges. "How is this possible?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20100418124053/http://www.willia...

Why care about William Gibson, when you are Borges? -- Or are there some possible worlds were Gibson and Borges are identical?

Well, somehow Borges apologized to Gibson (and to all of us) for coming up with all of it first. In a way. At least in this world. In this book.

"If in the following pages there is some successful verse or other, may the reader forgive me the audacity of having written it before him. We are all one; our inconsequential minds are much alike, and circumstances so influence us that it is something of an accident that you are the reader and I the writer"

I think its the from the foreword of "Ficciones". Found it here again: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68427/it-is-someth...

> To this day I re-read at least "The Library of Babel" once a year

I do the same thing. It’s my most favourite story I’ve ever read. Endless in depth.

Years after reading it first the thought came to me (probably read it somewhere) that the library is equal to π (pi) - never ending (somehow), never repeating. Its all in there. Strangely comforting: We have it already written out, just need to discover the important bits.

Oh, and of course somebody made a website https://libraryofbabel.info/

> Its all in there.

Nitpick: the normality of pi (that every possible number is "in there") is still a conjecture. It does seem true though (from a layman's perspective).

I see several contributors commenting about Borges as one of their favorite writers. May I suggest the name of Ted Chiang, whose short stories are very Borges-alike?

His story "Exhalation" for instance could have been written by Borges.

I hope not disturbing this thread by being slightly out of topic, but if I can contribute to make someone discovering this great living author, I would be very happy.

I once attempted to recreate The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia of 1917 as a wiki[0] given his stories lend themselves so effortlessly to the hyper-link. Unfortunately I forgot the password to the account before I could put together a more thorough compendium.

I'm trying to re-write some of those entries in my substack[1] and ML-generated Jukebox music[2]. Suggestions for further entries welcome...

[0] https://tlon-uqbar-orbis-tertius.fandom.com/wiki/The_Anglo-A... [1] https://songxytr.substack.com/p/pierre-menard-revisited [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeldeY0RaNA

I could not understand why was he a great deal, until I read something from him when I was 25 I think. I remember reading a short story from him, like 3 to 5 pages. Then trying to tell the story to a friend... if I would write what I spoke, it would take like 15 pages... he had this ability to tell sooo much with so little words... A genius.

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