/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11894760]

What’s his best short story?

[Anonymous No.11894797]

>>11894760
Ah, the weekly "whats the best Borges story" thread.

[Anonymous No.11894800]

>>11894760
“The Joyous Execution of Jamal Apestein, the Niggerjew” is without a doubt in his top three

[Anonymous No.11894801]

>>11894797
Bitch don’t be bitter just answer

[Anonymous No.11894811]

>>11894801
“The Immortal” is objectively his best. “Garden of Forking Paths” and “the Alpeh” are up there.

[Anonymous No.11894831]

>>11894800
That wasn't originally his story, though. He took it all from Pierre Menard.

[Anonymous No.11894834]

>>11894831
What story can truly be said to be “new”?

[Anonymous No.11894842]

The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim

[Anonymous No.11894846]

>>11894760
My favorite short stories of his:

“The Dead Man”
“The South”
“The Aleph”
“The Intruder”
“The Book of Sand”
“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”

Also for anyone who has read all of Borges and feels they still have an itch they can’t scratch, read Kafka’s Parables and Paradoxes. He has one story called “A Message from the Emperor” that must have influenced Borges a lot because it feels a lot like him. But the other stuff in the collection is great as well.

[Anonymous No.11894854]

>>11894760
Why do people always ask "whats the best x" here? As if literature was a competition or some banal ranking. You should ask "whats your favourite x". It makes the discussion more personal and engaging.

[Anonymous No.11894858]

>>11894854
>muh everything are subjectives—no doyyy!!

[Anonymous No.11894860]

>>11894854
You should eat my dick because it makes your mouth more personal and engaging.

[Anonymous No.11894868]

>>11894860
That's homosexual. Stop being a degenerate.

>>11894858
Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.11894875]

>>11894868
Hey my favourite colour is blue! But blue’s not the bestest colour just my favourite. That’s why I had Dad paint my room blue, and also Mr Blanky has blue squares as well as red ones. Thanks for listening to my arbitrary and unjustifiable preferences! I hope this added to serious conversation about the merits and demerits of certain colours, as well as the nature of colour as such! And thanks Dad for painting my room blue and for making uncle randy stop tickling my legs under the dinner table.

[Anonymous No.11894891]

>>11894875
>the size of that hyperbole
We're talking literature here, retard. Not about your faggot room. I can say Borges best story is Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius but my favourite is Utopia of a Tired Man. There's a difference.

[Anonymous No.11894905]

>>11894891
Literature is a ranking faggot. Because there are objective standards in art. Either you agree with this, in which case saying that people should stop asking about “the best” is difficult to justify, because they may actually want to know which story of Borges is the best, or you don’t believe in objective standards, which would render the comment to which I’m replying inconsistent with your beliefs.

Feel free to start a thread asking about people’s feels and favourites. I’ll keep clicking on ones where we discuss what’s best.

[Anonymous No.11894960]

>>11894905
>Feel free to start a thread asking about people’s feels and favourites. I’ll keep clicking on ones where we discuss what’s best.
>being a bitch a simple opinion.
Art is subjective, anon. Only pseuds treat art the same as a mean or a condom. But I wouldn't be surprised that market and production standards are being applied to art in our materialism-inclined modern times.

[Anonymous No.11895016]

For sure it is Argumentum Ornitologicum. Really short but very deep.

[Anonymous No.11895139]

>>11894960
Hey genius who has transcended the truth about art’s objectivity implied by the very existence of the canon, try and rewrite your post so your basic points are at least moderately intelligible. Who is treating art as a mean or a condom? And do you think beliefs in aesthetic objectivity are modern phenomena reducible to contemporary materialism and markets?

[Anonymous No.11895153]

>>11894760
I've only read Ficciones.

My personal favorite was The Circular Ruins, followed closely by The Library of Babel

[Anonymous No.11895194]

Nobody here mentioned Deutsches Requiem.

[Anonymous No.11895197]

>>11894797
Don't even talk shit, you philistine. Borges is the best thing to happen on this board. He's not perfect, but he's pretty much the only thing that can make /lit/ have a normal conversation about anything.

[Anonymous No.11895814]

>>11894854
It's basically meant the same as "recommend me your favorite of his stories" you fucking autistic twit.

[Anonymous No.11896906]

>>11894860
Strongly chuckled

[Anonymous No.11897850]

Borges: John 1:14


This page will be no less a riddle

than those of my holy books

or those others repeated

by ignorant mouths

believing them the handiwork of a man,

not the Spirit’s dark mirrors.

I who am the Was, the Is, and the Is to Come

again condescend to the written word

which is time in succession and no more than an emblem.

Who plays with a child plays with something

near and mysterious;

wanting once to play with My children,

I stood among them with awe and tenderness.

I was born of a womb by an act of magic.

I lived under a spell, imprisoned in a body,

in the humbleness of a soul.

I knew memory,

that coin that’s never twice the same.

I knew hope and fear,

those twin faces of the uncertain future.

I knew wakefulness, sleep, and dreams,

ignorance, the flesh,

reason’s roundabout labyrinths,

the friendship of men,

the blind devotion of dogs.

I was loved, understood, praised, and hung from a cross.

I drank my cup to the dregs.

My eyes saw what they had never seen –

night and its many stars.

I knew things smooth and gritty, uneven and rough,

the taste of honey and apple,

water in the throat of thirst,

the weight of metal in the hand,

the human voice, the sound of footsteps on the grass,

the smell of rain in Galilee,

the cry of birds on high.

I knew bitterness as well.

I have entrusted the writing of these words to a common man;

they will never be what I want to say

but only their shadow.

These signs are dropped from My eternity.

Let someone else write the poem, not he who is now its scribe.

Tomorrow I shall be a great tree in Asia,

or a tiger among tigers

preaching my law to the tigers’ woods.
Sometimes homesick, I think back

on the smell of that carpenter’s shop.

[Anonymous No.11897895]

>>11895197
lol I'm not even talking shit about Borges. I love him, I've read his entire work in Spanish, so I know it better than you. It's just that this question is repetitive to me. Always the same answer. A more interesting question would be "whats the best Borges poem", but of course we won't get that because Murifags have only read his most famous fiction.

[Anonymous No.11897976]

>>11897895
It's a shame I can't bring myself to learn Spanish even though I've studied the rest of the Romantic suite. Since you've read his oeuvre, is it true that his best works are yet to be translated into English? With how much he loved English, I'm surprised all of it isn't on the table yet.

Did he ever translate his own works? Do you know if any of his pieces were originally written in English? I listened to his Harvard lectures a while ago, and I think he mentioned it once.

[Anonymous No.11898034]

>>11897976
>Since you've read his oeuvre, is it true that his best works are yet to be translated into English?
No, all his fiction, poetry, and most non-fiction (essays, articles) has been translated into English. There's maybe a couple of non-fiction pieces here and there which hasn't been translated but I wouldn't worry about it.

>Did he ever translate his own works?
He worked along his first English translator, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, but to my knowledge, he didn't translate anything on his own.

>Do you know if any of his pieces were originally written in English?
Yes, he wrote an autobiographical essay in English, as well as two poems.

[Anonymous No.11898561]

>>11897976
>>11898034
I
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.

Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.

Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half, withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.

The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.

The big wave brought you.

Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.

The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.

Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are illustrious toys you have left me.

I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find them; I tell them to the few stray stars dogs and the few stray stars of the dawn.

Your dark rich life
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile that lonely, mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

[Anonymous No.11899814]

There is a thread out there where everyone participating said 'The Library of Babel'.