History Creator / JorgeLuisBorges

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' The last testament of Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}en, and tries to [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture explain humanity's future]] while he awaits the firing squad; his position is that the violence of Nazi Germany has successfully dethroned and destroyed the weak, hypocritical phantoms of Judaism and Christianity forever... and all it took was the sacrifice of Germany itself.

* The Empire: England and Germany:

** Combined with WastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot in "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain". The titular author wrote (among other things) a collection of short stories, each of which promises and hints at a good plot and then intentionally frustrates it; the annoyed reader is meant to ponder what Quain ''should'' have done with each story, thus arriving at ''his own'' version of the plot Quain intended.

* StylisticSuck: Carlos Argentino Daneri's poems in "The Aleph".

** ''The shape of the sword'': A man with a scar tells Borges how he did get it: When he was a young irish rebel, a comrade he saved from death betrayed him to the English and he gave it a MarkOfShame. When Borges asks him to finish the story, [[spoiler: the man reveals himself as the traitor. His GuiltComplex is so big he only can tell the story of his treason invoking a PerspectiveFlip]].

** Another subversion is ''The Condemned'': In some street of Buenos Aires, two BitPartBadGuys are going to fight. Ezequiel Tabares wants revenge because El Chengo stealed Matilde from him, and impatiently waits for him repeatedly entering a little bar. [[spoiler: Ezequiel can see the new houses and the buses pass through him. He doesn’t realize that he’s DeadAllAlong and condemned to a GroundhogDayLoop of his final moments… and doesn’t care either. ]] [[ThePowerOfHate His own hate fulfill him]].

* Another subversion is ''The Condemned'': In some street of Buenos Aires, two BitPartBadGuys are going to fight. Ezequiel Tabares wants revenge because El Chengo stealed Matilde from him, and impatiently waits for him repeatedly entering a little bar. [[spoiler: Ezequiel can see the new houses and the buses pass through him. He doesn’t realize that he’s DeadAllAlong and condemned to a GroundhogDayLoop of his final moments… and doesn’t care either. ]] [[ThePowerOfHate His own hate fulfill him]].

* Another subversion is ''The Condemned'': In some street of Buenos Aires, two BitPartBadGuys are going to fight. Ezequiel Tabares wants revenge because El Chengo stealed Matilde from him, and impatiently waits for him repeatedly entering a little bar. [[spoiler: Ezequiel can see the new houses and the buses pass through him. He doesn’t realize that he’s DeadAllAlong and condemned to a GroundhogDayLoop of his final moments… and doesn’t care either. ]] [[ThePowerOfHate his hatred fulfill him]].

** ''The Disk'', a woodcutter once met an old man who claimed to be King of the sects, and to prove it show him the disk of Odin, that has but one side. There is not another thing on earth that has but one side. The woodcutter wants it and [[spoiler: kills the old man, who left the disk on the floor. The woodcutter says he is still looking for the disk after many long years]]

* AscendedFanfic: "The End" and "A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz" are expansions on ''Literature/MartinFierro''.

* [[http://blog.jamzik.com/2006/11/borges-golem.html The Golem]]: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Loew_ben_Bezalel Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague]], creates a {{Golem}}, but [[AIIsACrapshoot ''it'' is no more than a man imperfect copy]]. At the very end, we have a deconstruction of CreatorBacklash.

* [[http://blog.jamzik.com/2006/11/borges-golem.html The Golem]]: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Loew_ben_Bezalel Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague]], creates a {{Golem}}, but [[AIIsACrapshoot, it is a man imperfect copy]]. At the very end, we have a deconstruction of CreatorBacklash.

* [[http://blog.jamzik.com/2006/11/borges-golem.html The Golem]]: [[Judah_Loew_ben_Bezalel Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague]], creates a {{Golem}}, but [[AIIsACrapshoot, it is a man imperfect copy]]. At the very end, we have a deconstruction of CreatorBacklash.

* ''"Averroes's Search"'' An exploration of the TragicDream in the character of Averroes, an Islamic philosopher who hoped to explain Creator/{{Aristotle}}’s works to Islamic culture. [[CultureClash Averroes's problem is that, being confined to the sphere of Islam, he cannot understand the terms “Tragedy” and “Comedy” that constantly pop up in Aristotle’s canon]]. Suddenly there is NoEnding and [[spoiler: Borges is BreakingTheFourthWall to inform us that this story is his own TragicDream, because as a twentieth-century author, he has no better chance of successfully imagining the character of a twelfth-century Arab with nothing better to go on than some literary references. This realization forces him to recognize the RecursiveReality of literature, and conduces Borges to a CreatorBreakdown and his story to a NoEnding because a minor case of AuthorExistenceFailure.]]
* ''"The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths"'': A deconstruction of SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The Prideful King of Babylon mocks the King of Arabia by forcing him to enter his labyrinth. The King of Arabia asks for God's help, [[DeusExMachina and gets out]]. He tells the King of Babylon he knows a better labyrinth and some day he will show it to him. Years later, [[spoiler: The Arabian King makes war and dethrones the King of Babylon, drags him out into the Arabian desert and abandons him there, where he died from thirst and hunger in a "labyrinth with no walls"]].

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' The last testament of Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}en, and tries to [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture explain humanity's future]] while he awaits the firing squad; his position is that the violence of Nazi Germany has successfully destroyed the weak, hypocritical phantoms of Judaism and Christianity forever... and all it took was the sacrifice of Germany itself.

* RealitySubtext: In the essay ''Kafka and His Precursors'', Borges presents us with various literary works whose tone and material seem like forerunners of Creator/FranzKafka. Before Kafka, though, no one would have said they had much in common. Borges argues that the reality of the author's later career [[MindScrew created its precursors]], retroactively making them similar to each other!
** The poem ''SherlockHolmes'' is about how this fictional character managed to survive his CreatorBacklash to the point to [[OutlivedItsCreator Outlive His Creator]], realizing that literature has made an immortal character simply because Holmes was never alive. Borges published this poem at the ''Los conjurados'', his last book, and died some months after its publication.

* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: An early example of the device, "Death and the Compass" offers an interesting DoubleSubversion in that the villain's intended victim is [[spoiler: the detective himself, who turns up early after deducing the particular place and time suggested by the pattern to try and stop the last murder. He thus becomes the victim of an ambush by the killer, his longtime ArchEnemy.]] The added twist makes this story a bit of an early, UnbuiltTrope version f the device.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Asterion's House.

** "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain" mentions a story in which, based on the final sentence, the sagacious reader can discover that the solution to the mystery was ''wrong'' and, with that additional piece of information, can reconstruct what actually happened.

* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler: Lönrott in "Death and the Compass"]], [[spoiler: Every Babylon citizen (except those ''already'' in TheConspiracy]] at ''The Lottery in Babylon''
* WeAreEverywhere: Deconstructed at ''The Lottery in Babylon:'' [[TheConspiracy The Company ]]is [[NebulousEvilOrganization continually trying to introduce chaos at Babylon]], and everyone knows they have infiltrated the city. Given anyone could work for them, those who aren’t working for them are ProperlyParanoid about being manipulated into being their {{Unwitting Pawn}}s:
--> ''The Company, [[TheConspiracy with godlike modesty, shuns all publicity. Its agents, of course, are secret; the orders it constantly (perhaps continually) imparts are no different from those spread wholesale by impostors.]]''
--> ''Besides—who will boast of being a mere impostor? [[ParanoiaFuel The drunken man who blurts out an absurd command, the sleeping man who suddenly awakes and turns and chokes to death the woman sleeping at his side—are they not, perhaps, implementing one of the Company's secret decisions?]]''

* AscendedFanfic: ''"The End"'' and ''"Tadeo Isidoro Cruz's Biography"'' are expansions of the Literature/MartinFierro.
* AuthorExistenceFailure: '' "Averroes's Search" '': A subversion, when Borges has his CreatorBreakdown, he doesn’t believe anymore in the characters of this story, forcing a NoEnding.

* BigBad: [[spoiler: Azevedo Bandeira]] in ''"The dead man"'', [[spoiler: Red Scarlarch]] in ''"The death and the compass"''.
* BilingualBonus: There is a famous Brahms composition called ''Ein deutsches requiem'' that could be translated as ''A german requiem'', but the title of one of Borges stories is ''Deutsches requiem'' that could be translated as ''A requiem for Germany'': The tale is told by a Nazi who destroyed his own country.

* CultureClash: '' "Averroes's Search" '': This is the cause why Averroes, an islamic philosopher, had PopCultureIsolation.

* {{Determinator}}: Deconstructed in ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'', ''"The Shape of the Sword"'' and ''"Emma Zunz story"''. The protagonists had a goal and they will cross the DespairEventHorizon to achieve it, only to ask themselves if WasItReallyWorthIt for the rest of their lives. ''"The other death"'' protagonist will achieve his goal, [[RedemptionEqualsDeath but just at the time of his death after trying it for all his life]]. The narrator [[EsotericHappyEnding thinks nobody could be happier than him]].

** ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'' the FramingDevice is a TrenchcoatBrigade type of SpyFiction at World War I where a chinese is obligued to spy for Germany, and is chased by an Irish agent working for the english: The Chinese reflects that for him, Germany is a barbarian country (maybe excepting Goethe) and he and the irish agent knew that their masters despise them, but they are obligued to be their {{UnwittingPawn}}s.
** ''"The Shape of the Sword"'' and ''"Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"'': The protagonists of those stories are part of the Irish LaResistance.
** ''"The man at the threshold"'': A secret agent investigates the desaparition of a judge at TheRaj. [[spoiler: LaResistance kidnapped him to judge him for being an EvilColonialist HangingJudge]].
* FallenPrincess: Teodelina Villar from ''The Zahir''.

--> ''There are no decent words to name it, but it is understood that all words name it or rather inevitably allude to it, and so in a conversation I said anything and the adepts smile or become uncomfortable, because they felt that I had touched the Secret.''

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: ''[[spoiler: "The dead man"]]'', ''[[spoiler: "The man at the threshold"]]'', ''[[spoiler: "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"]]''.
* MeaningfulName: Plenty, often combined with ShoutOut. For example, Carlos Argentino Daneri in "The Aleph" is a play on ''Dan''te Alighi''eri'' (his cousin is called Beatriz), and Pedro Damián in "The Other Death" references medieval philosopher Pier Damiani, as [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the story itself.

** Special mention goes to "Averroes's Search". In it, the Islamic philosopher Averroes investigates a Greek translation and ponders the meaning of "drama" and "comedy", which he can't understand because he lives in a culture in which the art of perfomance doesn't exist. After hearing with some guests a story about China and the performers that live in there and [[CompletelyMissingthePoint completely misses the point about the whole "acting" thing]] he starts meditating and eventually has a sudden realization about the meaning of "drama" and "comedy", [[spoiler:which turns out to be wrong]]. He then [[spoiler: disappears, as do his house and all those that were in there without leaving a trace.]] Borges then explains within the story that he himself had to understand Averroes to write the story, and like Averroes, had no real chance of doing so. The writer, [[spoiler: could no longer believe in Averroes as a character and he naturally disappeared completely along with his house.]]
* MockMillionaire: At his prologue of Thorstein Veblen's '' [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense Theory Of The Leisure Class]]'' (The reader can find more about this book at ConspicuousConsumption, RealLife) Borges shows us a harsh critic for Argentinean Society:
-->''Veblen thought and wrote this book in the [[{{Eagleland}} United States]]. [[{{UsefulNotes/Argentina}} Between us,]] the phenomenon of the leisure class [[UpToEleven is more serious]]. Except for the very poor, [[MockMillionaire every Argentine pretends to belong to that class]]. As a child, I have known [[{{Determinator}} families during the hot summer months living secretly in his house, to make people believe that they vacationed in a]] [[BigFancyHouse hypothetical summer village]] or in the city of Montevideo. One woman confided to me her intention to [[MockGuffin decorate the hall with a signed painting, certainly not by virtue of calligraphy]].''

* NonsenseClassification: His fake chinese encyclopedia Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, with its classification of animals: (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush; (l) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies.

** And a story sketched in "The Zahir," whose protagonist is an ascetic living in isolation in a wasteland called ''gnittaheidr'', guarding a huge treasure to protect lesser men from the temptation it causes (including his own father, whom he killed). [[spoiler: in the end, it turns out the protagonist is Fafnir, who was turned into a giant serpent by [[ArtifactOfDoom the Ring of the Niebelungen]] and slain by Siegfried.]]

* PoesLaw: His prologue to Thorstein Veblen's ''[[RichInDollarsPoorInSense Theory Of The Leisure Class]]'' (The reader can find more about this book at ConspicuousConsumption, RealLife):
-->''When, many years ago, I was given this book, I thought it was a {{satire}}. I learned later that it was the first work of a distinguished sociologist. Otherwise, when we look closely enough into a society, we know is not {{Utopia}} and its [[CrapsackWorld fair description]] runs the risk of border on {{satire}}.''

* RealitySubtext: In the essay ''Kafka and his precursors'', Borges presents us with various literary works whose tone and material seem like forerunners of Creator/FranzKafka. Before Kafka, though, no one would have said they had much in common. Borges argues that the reality of the author's later career [[MindScrew created its precursors]], retroactively making them similar to each other!

'''Jorge Luis Borges''' (1899-1986) is considered the greatest UsefulNotes/{{Argentin|a}}e writer of the twentieth century and an immensely influential author. His short stories, essays and poetry blend truth and fiction in unexpected ways, playing {{Mind Screw}}s on the reader at every turn, and exploring deep philosophical themes (idealism, determinism, infinity, the search for personal identity, fiction vs. reality, humanity vs. divinity...) in a rigorous but entertaining way. He is considered an important precursor and originator of many {{Post Modern|ism}} devices. Borges himself was an Ultraist, a short lived movement that originated in early XX century Spain (where Borges arrived around 1920).

* ''"Averroes's Search"'' An exploration of the TragicDream in the character of Averroes, Islamic Philosophers dreamed to explain Creator/{{Aristotle}}’s works to the Islamic culture. [[CultureClash His problem was that Averroes didn’t understand the terms “Tragedy” and “Comedy” that constantly pop up in Aristotle’s canon because he was confined to the Islamic orb]]. Suddenly there is NoEnding and [[spoiler: Borges is BreakingTheFourthWall to inform that he realized that he had a TragicDream himself, because as a twenty century author, he has no better chances to imagine the 12th century Averroes’s character with only some literary references. This realization forces him to recognize the RecursiveReality of literature, and conduces Borges to a CreatorBreakdown and his story to a NoEnding because a minor case of AuthorExistenceFailure.]]
* ''"The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths"'': A deconstruction of SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The Prideful King of Babylon mocks the King of Arabia by forcing him to enter his labyrinth. The King of Arabia asks for God's help, [[DeusExMachina and gets out]]. He tells the King of Babylon he knows a better labyrinth and some day he will show it to him. Years later, [[spoiler: The Arabian King makes war and dethrones the King of Babylon, cross with him the Arabian desert and abandons the King of Babylon there, where he died from thirst and hunger]].

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' It is the last testament of Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries to [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture explain humanity's future]] while he awaits the firing squad.

!!! Some of his literary critics are:

* ''Half-Way House, By Ellery Queen'': A simple critic about the rules of the MysteryLiterature and how that genre is different from the [[{{Adventure}} Adventure Novel]] or the SpyFiction. Also explains why Ellery Queen works could be considered as GrowingTheBeard on the genre. You can find the quote at the ElleryQueen page.
* Borges explains the LogicBomb at his essay ''The perpetual Race of Achilles and the Turtle'' that Zenon's paradox had survived 23 centuries and now could be declared ''immortal'': ''In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead''. The logical method cannot explain why in RealLife Achilles really can outrun the Turtle. At his other essay, "Avatars of the Turtle" he comes to it's LogicalExtreme: The fact we cannot solve this paradox acts like a DreamWithinADream, showing us that RealLife is AllJustADream.
-->''Let us admit what all idealist admit: the hallucinatory nature of the world. Let us do what no idealist had done: seek unrealities wich confirm that nature. We shall find them, I believe, in the antonomies of Kant and in the dialectic of Zeno.'' The greatest magician (Novalis had memorabily written) would be the one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own phantasmagorias as autonomous appearances. Would not this be our case? ''In conjeture that this is o. We (hte undivided divinty operating within us) have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it as firm, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in its architecture we have allowed tenous an eternal crevices of unreason wich tell us is false.''

* ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'': The FramingDevice is a spy story set at World War I where TheProtagonist visiting MrExposition who explains TheProtagonist SecretLegacy by exploring the idea of time branching forwards into [[AlternateUniverse Alternate Universes]] [[note]]this story is famous for anticipating the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics[[/note]]. [[{{Irony}} Ironically]], TheProtagonist is also [[spoiler: a {{Determinator}} who will make sure [[YouCantFightFate there is ''only one'' possible universe]] [[ShootTheShaggyDog whatever it takes]] ]].

* ''"The Aleph"'': A mediocre poet has found in his basement an Aleph, [[CrystalBall a point that reflects every other point in the universe and from which everything can be seen simultaneously and together]]... [[ReedRichardsIsUseless and he uses it to]] [[MundaneUtility write a poem]].

* ''"Averroes's Search"'' An exploration of the TragicDream in the character of Averroes, Islamic Philosophers dreamed to explain Creator/{{Aristotle}}’s works to the Islamic culture. [[PopCultureIsolation His problem was that Averroes didn’t understand the terms “Tragedy” and “Comedy” that constantly pop up in Aristotle’s canon]] [[CultureClash because he was confined to the Islamic orb]]. Suddenly there is a NoEnding and the MindScrew begins: [[spoiler: Borges is BreakingTheFourthWall to inform that he realized that he had a TragicDream himself, because as a twenty century author, he has no better chances to imagine the 12th century Averroes’s character with only some literary references. This realization forces him to recognize the RecursiveReality of literature, and conduces Borges to a CreatorBreakdown and his story to a NoEnding because a minor case of AuthorExistenceFailure.]]
* ''"Emma Zunz story"'': To set right a MiscarriageOfJustice, the female protagonist becomes a {{Determinator}} [[spoiler: by crossing the DespairEventHorizon to ensure she will cross the MoralEventHorizon]].
* ''"The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths"'': A deconstruction of SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The Prideful King of Babylon mocks the King of Arabia by forcing him to enter his BigLabyrinthineBuilding. The King of Arabia asks for God's help, [[DeusExMachina and gets out]]. He tells the King of Babylon he knows a better labyrinth and some day he will show it to him. Years later, [[spoiler: The Arabian King [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge makes war and dethrones the King of Babylon,]] [[CrossingTheDesert cross with him the Arabian desert]] and abandons the King of Babylon there, [[ThirstyDesert where he died from thirst and hunger]]]].
* ''"The Immortal:"'' The FramingDevice has [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis a literary agent]] announcing the discovery of an {{Immortality Seeker}}’s {{Diary}} that claims to have achieved CompleteImmortality. The story develops the ExpositionOfImmortality by [[ImmortalityImmorality exploring the ethics]] in a SocietyOfImmortals really facing the TimeAbyss. The exploration includes typical tropes under ThisIndexWillLiveForever, [[note]] WhoWantsToLiveForever, ImmortalityHurts, ImmortalLifeIsCheap [[/note]] but also some others completely original. [[note]] YouWillBeBeethoven, GoldenMeanFallacy and BystanderSyndrome. [[/note]] TheFogOfAges makes the Immortal an UnreliableNarrator, and a CausticCritic denounces his narration as {{plagiarism}}. However, [[spoiler: the [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis a literary agent]] reflects that the fact that the immortal’s {{Diary}} is a ClicheStorm is the evidence that the {{Diary}} is BasedOnATrueStory]]

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' [[ApocalypticLog It is the last testament of]] Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries to [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture explain humanity's future]] while he awaits the firing squad.

-->''I had realized many years before I met David Jerusalem that [[ArtifactOfAttraction everything in the world can be the seed of a possible hell; a face, a word, a compass, an advertisement for cigarettes—anything can drive a person insane if that person cannot manage to put it out of his mind. Wouldn't a man be mad if he constantly had before his mind's eye the map of Hungary?]] I decided to apply this principle to the disciplinary regimen of our house, and—'' [--4--]... [[ColdBloodedTorture ''In late 1942, Jerusalem went insane; on March 1, 1943, he succeeded in killing himself]].