The Circular Ruins
Jorge Luis Borges, for both of my readers who don’t know him, was one of the best Argentine writers of the 20th century. I’m currently working through a collection of his short fictions, and it’s like reading a modern-day 1001 Nights. His writing is full of gems. It sparkles with wonder.
One of his justly better-known stories is The Circular Ruins. As it turns out, the complete text of that piece is available online for free. You should probably read it; it’s short, I promise, and if you don’t like it you can write negative comments on my blog, though I will delete them.
EDIT: I just finished El Hacedor/The Maker, and found this paragraph in the afterword:
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under books, old dead white guys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “The Circular Ruins”
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ArachneDefiant said on February 18, 2009 at 3:10 pm:
Harry, you find the best stuff. What an interesting study in so many different facets of the human psyche – it would be too obvious to say parenting. Thanks for sharing.
::retreats to her ridiculously small-visioned blog to meditate on the greatness of the tubes and their contents::