After reading Ficciones, Borges struck me as one of those writers whose greatness you have to acknowledge, but might personally never be able to really enjoy reading. The Aleph disproved this for me, mostly because of Emma Zunz.
Emma Zunz, while written in third person, has a masterful feminine tone to it; very reactive and emotional, but in a simplified sense. This work strays from Borges usual form. The sentences are more concise and information is delivered more slowly. It's very psychological, and I feel that Borges' ability to elaborate on details works nicely with a protagonist going through emotional upheaval.
Deutsches Requiem interested me just because the voice is geographically and culturally so separate from many of Borges' other stories. It's rather dark, but definitely a good addition to the collection.
The short story The Aleph seemed a nice crowning finale for the collection. It's a solid work work of metaphysical fiction. I did not really find it to be believable, but it was interesting nonetheless.
There were still stories I could not find an element within to reasonate with, such The Writing of the God. As beautiful as the language is, it's a story about a guy trying to solve fur. A lot of Borges strikes me in this way. He uses langage to convey a trememndous amount of information, yet its hard to glean very much information from it at all. A lot of it seems more like poetry writing than fiction writing; meant to be analyzed line by line rather than as a whole. Personally I've always found that the more details and background given which are not absolutely essential to a story, obscure its plot. I've always been a fan of concise, direct writing, and Borges drags the reader to the sky and underground with rambling sentences. His use of words is wonderful, but it's somethign I can't quite get into.
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I think your complains about Borges's style--not his topics or methods--should be directed at Hurley. In fact, Borges is the most concise writer in Spanish and one of the most concise writers in any language. A comparison of the Borges/di Giovanni Aleph with Hurley's version is I think necessary to get an idea of Borges's tendencies as a writer. In his translation Borges goes too far eliminating passages from the original. Hurley on the other hand adds French words and phrases--not present in the original which is strictly in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteBut what remains is Borges's ability to tell plots that could be novels in a few pages.