song written is a writing website, after all—a lyric is one form of literature—and today is the birthday of my favorite author, Jorge Luis Borges.
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates my favorite author, Jorge Luis Borges.
I learned of Borges when my friend Dan brought over a volume of the man’s work and recommended that I read “The Library of Babel”. I read it on the spot. Those eight pages changed me forever. Thanks, Dan.
I loved it so much that I copied the story by hand so I’d be able to read it while waiting for my copy of Collected Fictions to arrive in the mail.
When I finally received Collected Fictions, I found that Borges’s other stories were consistently devastating just as “The Library of Babel” had been. “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “The Aleph”, “The Lottery of Babylon”, “Funes the Memorious”. These are my favorite tales; each is instilled with a kind of awe and wonder at the strangeness of existence.
Last winter in Maine I remember we suffered this blinding snowstorm. From my third-floor apartment, the view overnight and through much of the day had been pure rushing white.
I was listening to the lecture tapes somebody found in the basement of Harvard. I stood by the window, watching the snow, which had reached a momentary lull. Borges, over 70 years old on that recording, was saying in his halting, thoughtful English that he wrote about labyrinths and mirrors because he felt “very lost”.
The snow, falling delicately now, was moving strangely, paradoxically: sideways here, downward there; and even seemed to be drifting upward in places. And I realized that the snow was tracing the sinuous contours of air currents that are always there—the dots of snow were just light and sensitive enough to be moved by them and turn the invisible visible. And like Borges I felt very lost, and very happy to be lost in this beautiful world of ours, and grateful to be lost on the same world as Borges.
Happy birthday, Borges.
Two works from Borges that I love, in case you find yourself curious:
Not sure how I missed this when it was posted, but the last two paragraphs = <3. Now I'll have to dust of those Borges volumes…
Thanks, Dan. Definitely do. I’ve still yet to crack his nonfiction or poetry–I’ve been putting it off because I’m not ready to run out of Borges yet. Thanks again for introducing me to the man.