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The Aleph and Other Stories
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Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires g
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Paperback, 210 pages
Published
July 27th 2004
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1949)
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Start your review of The Aleph and Other Stories
THE IMMORTAL
We have all experienced different dimensions in our life, to name just three: waking, deep sleep and dreaming. Yet when it comes to describing or imagining the afterlife, I’ve read very few accounts postulating how awareness could shift between various levels; rather, life (or lack of life) after death tends to be portrayed as an uninterrupted hum all at one frequency, the three major frequencies: 1) awareness within a specific form, like a light body 2) formless awareness, that is, ...more
Dec 19, 2012
Ahmad Sharabiani
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
latin-american,
magical-realism,
argentina,
spanish,
classics,
short-stories,
literature,
20th-century
EL aleph = The Aleph and Other Stories, Jorge Luis Borges
The Aleph and Other Stories is a book of short stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The title work, "The Aleph", describes a point in space that contains all other spaces at once.
The work also presents the idea of infinite time. Borges writes in the original afterword, dated May 3, 1949 (Buenos Aires), that most of the stories belong to the genre of fantasy, mentioning themes such as identity and immortality. Borges added four n ...more
The Aleph and Other Stories is a book of short stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The title work, "The Aleph", describes a point in space that contains all other spaces at once.
The work also presents the idea of infinite time. Borges writes in the original afterword, dated May 3, 1949 (Buenos Aires), that most of the stories belong to the genre of fantasy, mentioning themes such as identity and immortality. Borges added four n ...more
This is a masterful collection by a writer of genius. I believe The Aleph is just as good as Fictions," and Fictions is as good as any book of short pieces produced in the 20th Century. If you like paradoxes, puzzles, doppelgangers and labyrinths used as metaphors for the relation of microcosm to macrocosm and the fluid nature of personal identity, then this is the book for you.
These stories are profound, but they are written in such an entertaining traditional narrative style that they might o ...more
Down and Out in Lovecraft and Borges
At some point (but not today) I intend to do a review of Borges and Lovecraft together. Not to say anything important but merely to understand how they depend on one another. I think it is clear that Borges borrowed from Lovecraft. And I think it is just as clear that we read Lovecraft in light of what Borges did with the genre of fantasy/horror.
At least a half dozen stories have been identified by readers as ‘cross-overs’ as it were from Lovecraft to Borges. ...more
At some point (but not today) I intend to do a review of Borges and Lovecraft together. Not to say anything important but merely to understand how they depend on one another. I think it is clear that Borges borrowed from Lovecraft. And I think it is just as clear that we read Lovecraft in light of what Borges did with the genre of fantasy/horror.
At least a half dozen stories have been identified by readers as ‘cross-overs’ as it were from Lovecraft to Borges. ...more
The 'Aleph' is a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness which lives under the ninth stair of a dark basement in Buenos Aires. The basement is in the house of would-be poet, Carlos Argentino Danieri, whose life's work is a never-to-be-completed poem, inspired by the images he claims to see in the iridescent sphere, and which becomes an impossibly detailed geography of the world as revealed to him by his many sessions lying on the basement floor gazing up at the Aleph.
The story o ...more
The story o ...more
Jul 30, 2020
The Artisan Geek
added it
“Anything can drive a person insane if that person cannot manage to put it out of their mind” – even… “a map of Hungary”! Obsession is the unifying theme of virtually all these stories, which is apt, because I’m beginning to be a trifle obsessed myself. It is perhaps most central to The Zahir.
I have the Collected Fictions (with copious translator's notes), but am splitting my review of that into its components, listed in publication order: Collected Fictions - all reviews. This is the fourth, pu ...more
I have the Collected Fictions (with copious translator's notes), but am splitting my review of that into its components, listed in publication order: Collected Fictions - all reviews. This is the fourth, pu ...more
Jun 30, 2020
Théodore
added it
Borges's book had the gift of revealing an idea to me, which, after all, I already had, somewhere in the corners of my mind.
Literature repeats endlessly the same few themes, the only thing that changes is the time of writing and reading. The main themes used by Homer are found in contemporary works too. Though, the perspective is different. Borges is fascinated by this idea of the text that is written endlessly, that only by getting lost in this re-reading of the text - will we come to understa ...more
Literature repeats endlessly the same few themes, the only thing that changes is the time of writing and reading. The main themes used by Homer are found in contemporary works too. Though, the perspective is different. Borges is fascinated by this idea of the text that is written endlessly, that only by getting lost in this re-reading of the text - will we come to understa ...more
Stevenson, Wells, Twain, Verne,…the Arabian Nights, were some of the references for Borges very early on, back in Argentina. At his father’s library he read a lot. Then he went to Europe...
Borges: “American, old and a blind poet “ he realized once, later in life. Afterwards he had to live up to it and face old age as a “time of happiness”; the “animal being dead…man and soul go on”.
Borges “a shy man who longed for oblivion” (“siempre tímido”, as he said of himself). But not shy stories ...more
Borges: “American, old and a blind poet “ he realized once, later in life. Afterwards he had to live up to it and face old age as a “time of happiness”; the “animal being dead…man and soul go on”.
Borges “a shy man who longed for oblivion” (“siempre tímido”, as he said of himself). But not shy stories ...more
You're avoiding a single star, Borges, simply because I try my best not to dish them out. There's little value in reading if one is going to try consider ways to dislike doing it. I love your ideas, but not your executions. Reading through the contents list, I can easily choose five or six stories whose very conception alone excite me(The Immortal, The Zahir, The Writing of The God, The House of Asterion), but you continually bashed me over the head with names, places, dates, literary and histor
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It is always a pleasure for me to read Borges. I read with delight each of the short stories in this collection.
Borges, always faithful to his style and his magic transports his reader to extraordinary places to discover fabulous things and stories. He leads it with his Borgesian cunning, multiplying references and names. He doesn't tell, Borges builds labyrinths.
From the new metaphysics (if you will) to the new detective, to the philosophical but also mythological tale, we lose ourselves to fin ...more
Borges, always faithful to his style and his magic transports his reader to extraordinary places to discover fabulous things and stories. He leads it with his Borgesian cunning, multiplying references and names. He doesn't tell, Borges builds labyrinths.
From the new metaphysics (if you will) to the new detective, to the philosophical but also mythological tale, we lose ourselves to fin ...more
I know why I didn't write a review. I wrote several reviews about Borges' books and I got tired of saying how amazing this writer was. Is. Will always be. This is one of the greatest short stories collections I've ever read. There are ordinary situations combined with magical events, sometimes very subtle, sometimes not. But it's there. And they're all beautifully written. Stories like "El Inmortal", "Emma Zunz", "La casa de Asterión" or "Los teólogos" are outstanding pieces of literary work tha
...more
Jun 19, 2015
poncho
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2015,
favorites
After reading Borges my brain usually feels fried, so excuse all the nonsense in this review. My intention was never to write anything about it, to let it flow, to carry on with my life. But trust me, after reading this magnificent writer, and specially such writings as the ones collected in El Aleph, life's never the same. My brain may be fried, but my soul feels somewhat soothed.
Reading him is like facing the Zahir: something that seeds in one's soul a never-ending obsession in life's groundle ...more
Reading him is like facing the Zahir: something that seeds in one's soul a never-ending obsession in life's groundle ...more
This is the second Borges book that I have read (though the first in Spanish), and I have found that my reaction was an echo of the first. With Borges, I have the constant sensation that the writing is superlative and the style very much to my taste; yet somehow I often manage to be uninspired. The typical Borgesian themes—the collapse of personal identity, the sense of a mysterious connection, the obsession with a sort of occult understanding of a higher reality—make me uneasy, and at times str
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I’ve read Borges in my early twenties, I liked it, but was not totally overwhelmed. So this time around I did not know what to expect. And this time around I am totally in awe to his genius. I would finish the story and go back to the beginning to read it again. This collection was written later that The Fictions. And it is better to read them in the order they’ve written. “Fictions” creates the universe. And makes you to look at it with the new eyes. This is darker, more diverse and more ground
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What is there to say about Jorge Luis Borges that hasn't been said before?
Not much. Borges is a wonderful story-teller. His world is one of mysticism and magic, and paradoxically, of raw realism. It's a world of serious philosophical thoughts and of detective plots. The Aleph is a window for everything that the world contains; perhaps that is the perfect description of Borges's stories.
I must admit, however, that some of the stories didn't awe me that much. I infinitely prefer when Borges write ...more
Not much. Borges is a wonderful story-teller. His world is one of mysticism and magic, and paradoxically, of raw realism. It's a world of serious philosophical thoughts and of detective plots. The Aleph is a window for everything that the world contains; perhaps that is the perfect description of Borges's stories.
I must admit, however, that some of the stories didn't awe me that much. I infinitely prefer when Borges write ...more
What is divine, terrible, and
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.
Borges has always been there for me. That strange name I encountered a lifetime ago in a book about nihilism. The marvel of those stories, that surfeit of wisdom. The different configurations and yet I return to these stories like the coins and mirrors in the tales themselves. The infinite pairings: barbarians and those that go native. The theologians and the cyclical. The gauchos and the poets. It is the sly tales of reve ...more
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.
Borges has always been there for me. That strange name I encountered a lifetime ago in a book about nihilism. The marvel of those stories, that surfeit of wisdom. The different configurations and yet I return to these stories like the coins and mirrors in the tales themselves. The infinite pairings: barbarians and those that go native. The theologians and the cyclical. The gauchos and the poets. It is the sly tales of reve ...more
I’m starting to wonder if books I read this year should be rated on a curve: I’m not sure that I would feel the same way I do about some of them if I was reading them under “normal” circumstances vs. reading them in lockdown and hearing upsetting news every other day…
I was very much looking forward to sinking my teeth into Mr. Borges collection of short stories “The Aleph”; I knew the prose was beautiful, and that his interest in subject matters such as time, death, mazes, occultism and surreali ...more
I was very much looking forward to sinking my teeth into Mr. Borges collection of short stories “The Aleph”; I knew the prose was beautiful, and that his interest in subject matters such as time, death, mazes, occultism and surreali ...more
This is the 2nd time I try to read these stories. This time I tried in Spanish (very bad idea- too difficult for my level) and then came back to the Romanian translation.
I liked the ideas (such as for the Immortals) but the author continually put references of different names, places, dates, literary and historical citations that in my opinion made the story unpleasant to read. I understand the author is very well read and he drew inspiration from all the book he cites (Iliad, Hamlet, etc) but ...more
I liked the ideas (such as for the Immortals) but the author continually put references of different names, places, dates, literary and historical citations that in my opinion made the story unpleasant to read. I understand the author is very well read and he drew inspiration from all the book he cites (Iliad, Hamlet, etc) but ...more
The Last Words of Christ the Lord
A friend of my ex-wife’s (it’s not necessary that you know his name or hers), though at the time of his death a committed atheist, was awarded a Doctor of Sacred Theology by an American University after the publication of his biography of the late Pope, which was generally well received, even in Roman Catholic circles.
He was a great frequenter of antiquarian bookshops in Rome, at one of which he encountered and purchased for his future studies a collection of bo ...more
A friend of my ex-wife’s (it’s not necessary that you know his name or hers), though at the time of his death a committed atheist, was awarded a Doctor of Sacred Theology by an American University after the publication of his biography of the late Pope, which was generally well received, even in Roman Catholic circles.
He was a great frequenter of antiquarian bookshops in Rome, at one of which he encountered and purchased for his future studies a collection of bo ...more
“Our twentieth century had inverted the story of Mohammed and the mountain; nowadays, the mountain came to the modern Mohammed.”
Isn’t it about the modern mass media?
“‘When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph.’ ‘The Aleph?’ ‘Yes, the only place on earth where all places are – seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending.’”
As The Aleph is a locus of the entire world so the stories by Jorge Luis Borges are the epitome of the entire intellectual universe.
“His guiding p ...more
Isn’t it about the modern mass media?
“‘When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph.’ ‘The Aleph?’ ‘Yes, the only place on earth where all places are – seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending.’”
As The Aleph is a locus of the entire world so the stories by Jorge Luis Borges are the epitome of the entire intellectual universe.
“His guiding p ...more
Heavy going in places, but lovely short stories just the same.
I found this book on a shelf at a library two days ago. The name of the author sounded familiar, but I did not know from where. I picked it up and opened it on a random page, which happened to be the first page of the short story "The House of Asterión".
It was one of the most stunning things I had ever read. Needless to say, I brought The Aleph home with me that day.
Since then I've been reading. It would be a lie to say I understood everything, that I caught every reference. Maybe that even ad ...more
It was one of the most stunning things I had ever read. Needless to say, I brought The Aleph home with me that day.
Since then I've been reading. It would be a lie to say I understood everything, that I caught every reference. Maybe that even ad ...more
Want a great description of what it's like to look at the World Wide Web through a browser for the first time? Read the long beautiful paragraph in which Borges describes his first look into the Aleph.
I keep coming back to these stories and those in Labyrinths. Borges captures so much, so quickly. ...more
I keep coming back to these stories and those in Labyrinths. Borges captures so much, so quickly. ...more
I remember reading Ficciones earlier this year. The feelings it inspired in me were marvelous, and I felt the little grooves and folds and wrinkles of my brain expanding leaf by leaf. I went into this volume (containing The Aleph and The Maker) expecting a similar feeling, and I… kind of got it? If you think about it, in a way, it’s very Borgesian. I glanced at infinite wisdom and reality for a moment and continue to chase that high forever – knowing that I may never see it again as long as I li
...more
The Aleph and Other Stories collects two Borges short story collections, The Aleph and The Maker (a.k.a. Dreamtigers), and also contains a small segment called Museum that contains two very small short fiction pieces. Overall this collection is a disappointment compared to Ficciones. The stories in The Aleph were mostly very strong; vintage Borges.
The stories in The Maker were all very short, many no more than a single page, but aside from the occasional masterpiece I found them mostly pedestria ...more
The stories in The Maker were all very short, many no more than a single page, but aside from the occasional masterpiece I found them mostly pedestria ...more
I'll just quote Umberto Eco (one of my favorite authors and the writer of one of my favorite books, "The Name of the Rose"): "Though so different in style, two writers have offered us an image for the next millennium: Joyce and Borges. The first designed with words what the second designed with ideas: the original, the one and only, World Wide Web. The Real Thing. The rest will remain simply virtual."
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In its beginning and in its end are thoughts of a woman. Then there is a sudden, plaintive cry in the middle about her with the author identifying himself.
The beginning:
"On the incandescent February morning Beatriz Viterbo died, after a death agony so imperious it did not for a moment descend into sentimentalism or fear, I noticed that the iron billboards in the Plaza Constitucion bore new advertisements for some brand or other of Virginia tobacco; I was saddened by this fact, for it made me rea ...more
It's not about feeling more intelligent. If it is about something, it might be quite the opposite.
When we read the vast imagination of a genius, we see the amount of possibilities of living, of thinking, of feeling. We see the infinite, be on a step on a ladder, in a coin, in the reassuring consciousness of knowing ourselves finite.
But first of all, we read and see ...more
When we read the vast imagination of a genius, we see the amount of possibilities of living, of thinking, of feeling. We see the infinite, be on a step on a ladder, in a coin, in the reassuring consciousness of knowing ourselves finite.
But first of all, we read and see ...more
I can't say I loved this book. However, there were short stories within it I loved, such as The Immortal and The House of Asterion. I simply didn't find most of the short stories interesting. Also, while I was reading this book I noticed it made me feel very anxious for some reason.
I will try reading some other Borges' work in the future. ...more
I will try reading some other Borges' work in the future. ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads Italia: GdL Narrativa Dicembre 2013: L'Aleph di Jorge Luis Borges - Commenti e discussione | 31 | 227 | Aug 04, 2017 03:27AM | |
| /lit/ (revival ed...: * The Immortal - Jorge Luis Borges | 9 | 184 | Mar 21, 2014 09:38AM | |
| O meu Aleph (book club): Os teólogos | 1 | 12 | Apr 28, 2013 02:10AM | |
| O meu Aleph (book club): O morto | 1 | 9 | Mar 09, 2013 01:20PM |
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Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, usually referred to as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: [xoɾxe lwis boɾxes]), was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals. He also wo
...more
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