WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.840 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Our mission here 00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:04.799 is, as always, the same. We take a huge stack 00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:07.179 of source material, biographies, critical essays, 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:09.539 you name it, and we build the ultimate shortcut 00:00:09.539 --> 00:00:12.539 to being well -informed. Today, we are immersing 00:00:12.539 --> 00:00:17.899 ourselves in the dizzying, precise, and profoundly 00:00:17.899 --> 00:00:20.500 influential universe engineered by Jorge Luis 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:23.120 Borges. And it is so essential we do this justice. 00:00:23.399 --> 00:00:26.480 Why so? Well, because Borges, the Argentine master, 00:00:26.699 --> 00:00:29.359 is arguably the most important... intellectual 00:00:29.359 --> 00:00:31.760 pivot point in 20th century literature that's 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:34.679 a huge claim it is but he sits right on that 00:00:34.679 --> 00:00:37.740 line he is the bridge between high modernism 00:00:37.740 --> 00:00:40.439 with its concerns about fragmentation and post 00:00:40.439 --> 00:00:42.880 -modernism's obsession with structure information 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:46.880 and well Absolutely. And the sources we have 00:00:46.880 --> 00:00:50.020 for this deep dive are they're incredibly comprehensive. 00:00:50.420 --> 00:00:52.380 They track not only his literary techniques, 00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:55.299 but also the intense philosophical and political 00:00:55.299 --> 00:00:57.320 battles that really defined his life. Right. 00:00:57.420 --> 00:00:59.859 So for you, the learner, our mission is to move 00:00:59.859 --> 00:01:02.299 far beyond that basic image of the blind man 00:01:02.299 --> 00:01:04.519 wandering through the archives. We want to show 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:07.000 how Borges didn't just write stories. Yeah. He 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.379 engineered new literary forms. He was an architect 00:01:10.379 --> 00:01:13.140 of what we now call narrative non -linearity. 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:15.620 A true. Renovator. The critic J .M. Coetzee put 00:01:15.620 --> 00:01:18.079 it perfectly, I think. What did he say? He said 00:01:18.079 --> 00:01:20.900 Borges renovated the language of fiction. And 00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:23.079 that renovation, it happened across so many forms. 00:01:23.180 --> 00:01:25.959 He was a poet, an essayist, a translator. But 00:01:25.959 --> 00:01:28.920 his global reputation, that really rests on his 00:01:28.920 --> 00:01:31.340 short story collections. Primarily Fictiones 00:01:31.340 --> 00:01:34.519 and LLF. Both from the 1940s. And these works 00:01:34.519 --> 00:01:37.250 are like... They're like intellectual puzzles. 00:01:37.450 --> 00:01:40.129 They explore concepts that feel so contemporary. 00:01:40.469 --> 00:01:44.150 Eerily so. Infinity, the illusory nature of time, 00:01:44.390 --> 00:01:47.250 self -referential systems. And the overwhelming 00:01:47.250 --> 00:01:49.730 nature of archives. Yeah. The feeling of being 00:01:49.730 --> 00:01:52.569 drowned in information. The genius is that he 00:01:52.569 --> 00:01:55.430 managed to synthesize mythology, mathematics, 00:01:55.709 --> 00:01:58.790 and philosophy into these miniature fictional 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:01.909 universes. On just a few pages. It's dense material, 00:02:02.209 --> 00:02:04.209 for sure, but we'll guide you through it all. 00:02:04.620 --> 00:02:07.739 The fascinating biographical ironies, the philosophical 00:02:07.739 --> 00:02:10.240 hoaxes he championed, and the political resistance 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:13.060 that really characterized his career. Okay, let's 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:15.379 start with the man himself. Let's do it. Let's 00:02:15.379 --> 00:02:18.000 unpack the accidental education that created 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.699 this strange architect. To begin, we have to 00:02:21.699 --> 00:02:24.699 plant our flag in Buenos Aires. Right. That's 00:02:24.699 --> 00:02:27.439 where Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges was 00:02:27.439 --> 00:02:31.300 born in 1899. What a name. It is. And he was 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:34.479 born into an educated middle class family. But 00:02:34.479 --> 00:02:37.139 what's instantly fascinating is the sheer cultural 00:02:37.139 --> 00:02:40.139 cocktail of his heritage. That mixed lineage 00:02:40.139 --> 00:02:42.620 was absolutely crucial, wasn't it? Oh, completely. 00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:45.740 He had these deep roots in military and early 00:02:45.740 --> 00:02:48.340 Argentine history. On his mother's side, the 00:02:48.340 --> 00:02:50.939 Criollo, the Spanish -Argentine side. But then 00:02:50.939 --> 00:02:53.560 you have this other very strong influence. The 00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:56.199 English influence from his father, Jorge Guillermo 00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:58.699 Borges Haslam, who was half English. And this 00:02:58.699 --> 00:03:01.080 blend, it wasn't just a genealogical footnote, 00:03:01.139 --> 00:03:03.479 you know? No, not at all. It structured his entire 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:05.900 intellectual environment. It certainly did. I 00:03:05.900 --> 00:03:08.340 mean, he was remarkably bilingual from his earliest 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:10.560 years. Speaking Spanish and English simultaneously. 00:03:10.699 --> 00:03:13.120 And his proficiency in English just allowed him 00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:15.580 to read the foundational texts of Western literature 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:18.719 directly. The sources note he was tackling Shakespeare 00:03:18.719 --> 00:03:21.620 in English by age 12. Just think about that for 00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:24.439 a second. The level of fluency, the complexity 00:03:24.439 --> 00:03:27.879 at such a young age. And this brings us to what 00:03:27.879 --> 00:03:30.860 Borges himself defined as the chief event of 00:03:30.860 --> 00:03:33.539 his life. Not his first publication, not a literary 00:03:33.539 --> 00:03:37.229 prize. No. his father's private English library, 00:03:37.490 --> 00:03:39.969 which contained well over a thousand volumes. 00:03:40.289 --> 00:03:42.610 It's an amazing detail. This wasn't just a domestic 00:03:42.610 --> 00:03:44.870 collection. It was more like a self -contained 00:03:44.870 --> 00:03:47.789 liberal arts university in his own home. So he 00:03:47.789 --> 00:03:50.789 grew up literally surrounded by the entire history 00:03:50.789 --> 00:03:53.090 of English literature. From the Anglo -Saxons 00:03:53.090 --> 00:03:54.930 right up to the Victorians, it was all there. 00:03:55.129 --> 00:03:57.710 And that library was the initial laboratory for 00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:00.189 his mind. But it wasn't just, you know, passive 00:04:00.189 --> 00:04:03.689 absorption. He was already... There's that fantastic 00:04:03.689 --> 00:04:06.689 anecdote. I love this one. At just 10 years old, 00:04:06.750 --> 00:04:08.889 he translates Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince 00:04:08.889 --> 00:04:11.530 into Spanish. And it gets published in a local 00:04:11.530 --> 00:04:14.009 journal. What was the reaction? Well, the sources 00:04:14.009 --> 00:04:17.370 point to an inherent irony there, too. His friends 00:04:17.370 --> 00:04:19.470 and most of the readers, they just assumed the 00:04:19.470 --> 00:04:21.269 published piece must have been his father's work. 00:04:21.410 --> 00:04:23.550 Which is fascinating because his father was a 00:04:23.550 --> 00:04:26.050 lawyer and a psychology teacher. Right. But he 00:04:26.050 --> 00:04:28.790 also harbored these frustrated literary ambitions. 00:04:28.889 --> 00:04:32.069 Yeah. So this early confusion, it foreshadows 00:04:32.069 --> 00:04:34.769 Borges' later themes about the nature of authorship 00:04:34.769 --> 00:04:38.310 and, you know, authenticity. It also hints at 00:04:38.310 --> 00:04:41.029 that complex relationship with his father who 00:04:41.029 --> 00:04:44.870 cast this long shadow. Borges was acutely aware 00:04:44.870 --> 00:04:47.910 of his own difference. He knew he'd be a bookish 00:04:47.910 --> 00:04:51.089 kind of person and not a man of action, which 00:04:51.089 --> 00:04:53.189 was so different from the soldiers he admired 00:04:53.189 --> 00:04:56.129 in his ancestry. And the father, though, he provided 00:04:56.129 --> 00:04:58.769 the immediate catalyst for the family's big shift. 00:04:58.910 --> 00:05:02.269 To Europe. Precisely. In 1914, the family moved 00:05:02.269 --> 00:05:04.550 to Geneva, Switzerland. And the primary reason 00:05:04.550 --> 00:05:07.430 for this relocation was, tragically, very pragmatic. 00:05:07.990 --> 00:05:10.420 It was his father's eyesight. He was progressively 00:05:10.420 --> 00:05:12.639 losing his sight from a degenerative disorder. 00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:15.779 A condition that Borges himself would later inherit. 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.519 And the family ended up staying for seven years. 00:05:18.699 --> 00:05:21.180 They were sort of trapped there by the outbreak 00:05:21.180 --> 00:05:23.300 of World War I and then political instability 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:26.959 back in Argentina. So Borges suddenly finds himself 00:05:26.959 --> 00:05:30.139 in Geneva studying at the Collège de Genève during 00:05:30.139 --> 00:05:33.660 wartime. A huge shift. He learned French, deepened 00:05:33.660 --> 00:05:36.040 his reading of English authors like Thomas Carlyle. 00:05:36.100 --> 00:05:38.319 And then crucially, he started grappling with 00:05:38.319 --> 00:05:41.360 philosophy written in German. This was just an 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:43.540 explosion of intellectual expansion for him. 00:05:43.579 --> 00:05:46.199 But maybe the most formative period came right 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:49.819 after, in Spain. Yes. Upon moving to Spain, he 00:05:49.819 --> 00:05:52.079 just dives headfirst into the avant -garde scene. 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:54.519 He joins the altruist literary movement. Can 00:05:54.519 --> 00:05:56.920 you unpack what that was? Sure. It was a direct 00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:01.209 reaction against the ornate. often overly sentimental 00:06:01.209 --> 00:06:03.610 style of modernismo. So they were stripping things 00:06:03.610 --> 00:06:07.290 down. Exactly. Altruism emphasized stark metaphor, 00:06:07.629 --> 00:06:10.129 free verse, and a real distillation of language. 00:06:10.529 --> 00:06:13.629 That focus on precision and economy would become 00:06:13.629 --> 00:06:15.970 a trademark of Borges' own style. And it was 00:06:15.970 --> 00:06:18.050 here he published his first poem, Hymn to the 00:06:18.050 --> 00:06:21.639 Sea. It was. But the real seeds of the Borghesean 00:06:21.639 --> 00:06:24.680 universe, the one built on illusion and skepticism, 00:06:24.899 --> 00:06:27.399 they weren't sown by poetry. It was philosophy. 00:06:27.699 --> 00:06:30.620 It was philosophy. The sources consistently highlight 00:06:30.620 --> 00:06:33.620 two monumental influences. The first being? The 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:35.779 German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Right. 00:06:36.139 --> 00:06:38.439 Schopenhauer's metaphysical theory, particularly 00:06:38.439 --> 00:06:41.480 the concept that the phenomenal world, the world 00:06:41.480 --> 00:06:44.339 we perceive, is largely a manifestation of an 00:06:44.339 --> 00:06:48.040 underlying will or even an illusion. That became 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:51.019 foundational for Borges. So his later obsessions 00:06:51.019 --> 00:06:54.139 with dreams, mirrors, alternative realities, 00:06:54.439 --> 00:06:57.000 it all stems directly from that philosophical 00:06:57.000 --> 00:06:59.639 bedrock. It does. And the second influence was 00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:02.660 a novel. Gustav Meyrink's The Golem. Yes. This 00:07:02.660 --> 00:07:05.060 German novel, which is just steeped in esoteric 00:07:05.060 --> 00:07:07.879 themes and Kabbalistic lore, it introduced Borges 00:07:07.879 --> 00:07:10.199 to the power of the urban labyrinth and the concept 00:07:10.199 --> 00:07:12.620 of a simulated or artificial man. So you have 00:07:12.620 --> 00:07:15.319 this sense of... ancient mystery and engineered 00:07:15.319 --> 00:07:17.519 reality. And that provided the perfect fictional 00:07:17.519 --> 00:07:20.139 framework for Schopenhauer's idealism. So he 00:07:20.139 --> 00:07:23.079 returns to Argentina in 1921, armed with the 00:07:23.079 --> 00:07:24.920 whole of European literature and philosophy. 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:27.379 But, you know, he needs a livelihood. Which is 00:07:27.379 --> 00:07:30.680 where we confront the first major irony, the 00:07:30.680 --> 00:07:33.360 government subsidized writer. It's incredible. 00:07:33.579 --> 00:07:36.180 Despite his burgeoning reputation as a writer, 00:07:36.319 --> 00:07:39.079 contributing to literary journals, he takes a 00:07:39.079 --> 00:07:42.600 job in 1938 at the Miguel Canet Municipal Library. 00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:45.379 And the conditions of the job are, well, they're 00:07:45.379 --> 00:07:47.980 legendarily absurd. They perfectly illustrate 00:07:47.980 --> 00:07:50.259 the bureaucratics ennui he often wrote about. 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:52.860 Tell us about the job itself. He was hired as 00:07:52.860 --> 00:07:55.879 a cataloger on his very first day. He's explicitly 00:07:55.879 --> 00:07:58.740 told by his superior that cataloging more than 00:07:58.740 --> 00:08:02.879 100 books a day was strongly discouraged. Discouraged, 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:05.180 why? Because exceeding that number would make 00:08:05.180 --> 00:08:07.560 the rest of the staff look bad. So he was actively 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:10.339 punished for being efficient. He was. And Borges, 00:08:10.540 --> 00:08:13.220 being highly efficient and focused, found he 00:08:13.220 --> 00:08:15.279 could complete his quota in about an hour. And 00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:16.980 for the rest of the day. He spent the remaining 00:08:16.980 --> 00:08:19.759 seven hours of his shift writing, translating, 00:08:19.939 --> 00:08:22.759 and thinking, often relegated to the dusty basement 00:08:22.759 --> 00:08:26.300 stacks. So it was basically a quiet, government 00:08:26.300 --> 00:08:29.139 -subsidized writing retreat, hidden in plain 00:08:29.139 --> 00:08:32.059 sight. Funded by the very state apparatus he 00:08:32.059 --> 00:08:35.250 would often critique. This job gave him the security 00:08:35.250 --> 00:08:38.049 and the solitude he needed to begin his most 00:08:38.049 --> 00:08:41.370 innovative work. The irony just deepens in the 00:08:41.370 --> 00:08:43.929 following decades. The family condition, that 00:08:43.929 --> 00:08:47.029 progressive loss of sight, it culminates. By 00:08:47.029 --> 00:08:49.809 the late 1950s, the man who lived for reading 00:08:49.809 --> 00:08:53.370 and writing was completely blind. Definitively 00:08:53.370 --> 00:08:56.110 so by age 55. And this is where the sheer majesty 00:08:56.110 --> 00:08:59.389 of the timing just hits you. In 1955, at the 00:08:59.389 --> 00:09:01.870 very moment he was engulfed by darkness. He was 00:09:01.870 --> 00:09:03.610 appointed director of the Argentine National 00:09:03.610 --> 00:09:06.269 Public Library. And simultaneously a professor 00:09:06.269 --> 00:09:08.289 of English literature at the University of Buenos 00:09:08.289 --> 00:09:10.370 Aires. The national custodian of books could 00:09:10.370 --> 00:09:12.169 no longer read them. It sounds like something 00:09:12.169 --> 00:09:14.190 straight out of one of his own fictions. It does. 00:09:14.409 --> 00:09:16.570 What was his intellectual response to this? I 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:18.990 mean, this profound personal tragedy. It must 00:09:18.990 --> 00:09:21.669 have been devastating. It was, of course. But 00:09:21.669 --> 00:09:24.570 Borges was a classicist at heart. He saw tragedy 00:09:24.570 --> 00:09:27.549 as a catalyst. How so? He noted that the loss 00:09:27.549 --> 00:09:30.169 of sight freed him from the visual world and 00:09:30.169 --> 00:09:32.710 pushed him toward intellectual and acoustic forms. 00:09:33.090 --> 00:09:36.370 He moved more and more toward poetry and shorter 00:09:36.370 --> 00:09:38.809 narratives. Because he could compose them internally, 00:09:39.110 --> 00:09:42.090 memorize them. Exactly. It forced him to rely 00:09:42.090 --> 00:09:44.730 on others for dictation, which also changed his 00:09:44.730 --> 00:09:47.450 creative process. So the physical darkness actually 00:09:47.450 --> 00:09:50.750 enhanced his internal vision. It sharpened his 00:09:50.750 --> 00:09:53.950 focus on abstract symbols and eternal forms. 00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:57.120 That's the interpretation he embraced. And his 00:09:57.120 --> 00:09:59.919 poetry just beautifully captures this terrible 00:09:59.919 --> 00:10:01.899 paradox. There's that quote from Seven Nights. 00:10:02.259 --> 00:10:04.740 Right. Reflecting on God's splendid irony, he 00:10:04.740 --> 00:10:07.559 wrote, No one should read self -pity or reproach 00:10:07.559 --> 00:10:10.120 into this statement of the majesty of God, who 00:10:10.120 --> 00:10:12.480 with such splendid irony at one touch granted 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:14.559 me books and night. Books and night. The two 00:10:14.559 --> 00:10:17.179 core elements of his life, literature and darkness, 00:10:17.340 --> 00:10:20.000 were granted to him simultaneously. And he frames 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.240 it not as cruelty, but as a form of divine, majestic 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:26.129 irony. It's a defining image that we have to 00:10:26.129 --> 00:10:28.909 carry forward with us. It is. That profound connection 00:10:28.909 --> 00:10:31.529 between the physical void and the philosophical 00:10:31.529 --> 00:10:34.970 search for light is foundational. And that search 00:10:34.970 --> 00:10:37.870 intensified in the years leading up to his blindness, 00:10:38.110 --> 00:10:41.529 following a massive personal crisis. A near fatal 00:10:41.529 --> 00:10:45.159 incident. Let's transition now to how he actually 00:10:45.159 --> 00:10:47.279 invented a whole new way of writing after that. 00:10:47.399 --> 00:10:51.080 So the period between 1938 and 1941 was just 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:53.639 transformative for him. And it was marked by 00:10:53.639 --> 00:10:56.460 intense trauma. First, the death of his beloved 00:10:56.460 --> 00:10:59.240 father in 1938. And then shortly after that. 00:10:59.610 --> 00:11:01.830 Borges suffered a severe head injury. Right. 00:11:01.909 --> 00:11:03.889 He nearly died of sepsis during the treatment. 00:11:04.090 --> 00:11:06.990 And this traumatic recovery period where he was 00:11:06.990 --> 00:11:08.990 in an environment where he questioned his own 00:11:08.990 --> 00:11:12.029 sanity, it prompted him to just jettison the 00:11:12.029 --> 00:11:14.269 literary styles of his youth. And develop the 00:11:14.269 --> 00:11:16.710 precise, paradoxical voice we recognize today. 00:11:16.990 --> 00:11:19.850 It was a real crucible moment for him. He emerged 00:11:19.850 --> 00:11:22.690 from that trauma with a distinct new approach 00:11:22.690 --> 00:11:25.070 to narrative. And his first major story in this 00:11:25.070 --> 00:11:27.649 new vein was Pierre Menard, author of The Quixote. 00:11:27.919 --> 00:11:30.559 which he published in 1939. This story is the 00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:32.759 perfect entry point into Borges' intellectual 00:11:32.759 --> 00:11:35.240 universe. It really is. For the listener who 00:11:35.240 --> 00:11:37.460 hasn't encountered it, the premise is so simple, 00:11:37.559 --> 00:11:40.159 but it's revolutionary. Tell us about Menard. 00:11:40.620 --> 00:11:44.299 Pierre Menard is a fictional 20th century French 00:11:44.299 --> 00:11:47.899 symbolist. And he decides not to copy Cervantes' 00:11:48.059 --> 00:11:50.320 Don Quixote. Right. He decides to rewrite it, 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:53.360 word for word, through sheer exertion of will. 00:11:53.659 --> 00:11:56.559 And he succeeds. He produces several chapters 00:11:56.559 --> 00:11:58.980 that are identical to the original. The irony, 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.240 of course, is that a sentence written by Cervantes 00:12:01.240 --> 00:12:03.820 in the 17th century about history as the mother 00:12:03.820 --> 00:12:07.129 of truth is... You know, it's just a standard 00:12:07.129 --> 00:12:09.190 platitude of the time. But when Menard writes 00:12:09.190 --> 00:12:12.090 the exact same line in the 20th century, knowing 00:12:12.090 --> 00:12:14.350 everything that has transpired since, it becomes 00:12:14.350 --> 00:12:17.429 startlingly profound, anachronistic. Exactly. 00:12:17.429 --> 00:12:19.629 So it's not about the words themselves. It's 00:12:19.629 --> 00:12:21.629 about the context and the historical baggage 00:12:21.629 --> 00:12:24.149 they carry. Borges is showing us that authorship 00:12:24.149 --> 00:12:27.110 isn't fixed, meaning is historical. Precisely. 00:12:27.210 --> 00:12:30.350 It examines the nature of authorship, of literary 00:12:30.350 --> 00:12:33.179 reproduction. And this leads directly to his 00:12:33.179 --> 00:12:36.019 reliance on the literary forgery and pseudo -epigrapha. 00:12:36.059 --> 00:12:38.580 Which became a hallmark of his career, collected 00:12:38.580 --> 00:12:41.960 initially in A Universal History of Infamy. He 00:12:41.960 --> 00:12:44.500 wasn't just writing new stories. He was claiming 00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:47.480 they were translations of obscure or even imaginary 00:12:47.480 --> 00:12:51.230 existing works. Sometimes attributed to ancient 00:12:51.230 --> 00:12:55.029 Persian scholars or fictional mystics, why the 00:12:55.029 --> 00:12:58.250 deliberate obfuscation? I mean, why the literary 00:12:58.250 --> 00:13:01.289 hoax? The rationale is absolutely key to his 00:13:01.289 --> 00:13:03.610 whole approach to literature, and he famously 00:13:03.610 --> 00:13:06.629 articulated it. He believed that composing vast 00:13:06.629 --> 00:13:10.230 books, you know, the typical sprawling 19th century 00:13:10.230 --> 00:13:13.649 novel, was a laborious madness. Right. His better 00:13:13.649 --> 00:13:16.789 and more philosophical method was to pretend 00:13:16.789 --> 00:13:19.710 that those books already exist. and offer a summary, 00:13:19.830 --> 00:13:22.509 a commentary on them. So why write the entire 00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:24.789 library when the catalog entry, the critical 00:13:24.789 --> 00:13:27.429 review, is the true intellectual achievement? 00:13:27.549 --> 00:13:29.789 It's the ultimate conceptual shortcut. It is. 00:13:29.850 --> 00:13:31.509 It's an act of deconstruction that's applied 00:13:31.509 --> 00:13:34.529 to creation itself. He saw the critical commentaries 00:13:34.529 --> 00:13:36.710 being superior to the original text. Because 00:13:36.710 --> 00:13:39.090 it could encompass the entire imagined work in 00:13:39.090 --> 00:13:40.929 miniature. And he certainly developed this from 00:13:40.929 --> 00:13:43.549 precursors. He references Thomas Carlyle's Sartre 00:13:43.549 --> 00:13:45.990 Resardus. Which was a critical review of a non 00:13:45.990 --> 00:13:48.960 -existent German transcendentalist text. But 00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:52.620 Borges pushed it even further. He felt even Carlyle's 00:13:52.620 --> 00:13:55.000 work suffered from the imperfection that they 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:57.399 themselves are books. He wanted to write notes 00:13:57.399 --> 00:14:00.399 on imaginary books. Yes, creating literature 00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:03.950 through the device of academic critique. which 00:14:03.950 --> 00:14:07.450 gives his prose that wonderful, dry, professorial 00:14:07.450 --> 00:14:10.850 tone, even when he's describing completely impossible 00:14:10.850 --> 00:14:13.789 events. And this technique became the perfect 00:14:13.789 --> 00:14:16.669 vehicle for exploring the central motifs that 00:14:16.669 --> 00:14:20.409 define the Borghesean universe. Dreams, infinity. 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:24.059 mirrors and labyrinths these aren't just decorative 00:14:24.059 --> 00:14:26.220 elements are they they are philosophical structures 00:14:26.220 --> 00:14:28.539 absolutely let's dedicate some time to these 00:14:28.539 --> 00:14:31.019 core conceptual structures starting with maybe 00:14:31.019 --> 00:14:33.539 his most famous depiction of infinity library 00:14:33.539 --> 00:14:36.610 of babel In the Library of Babel, Borges envisions 00:14:36.610 --> 00:14:38.990 a universe that's composed of an infinite library. 00:14:39.250 --> 00:14:41.370 It contains every book that could possibly be 00:14:41.370 --> 00:14:44.769 written. Each with 410 pages, uniform format 00:14:44.769 --> 00:14:47.509 with all possible variations of characters. And 00:14:47.509 --> 00:14:49.529 because the library is infinite, it must contain 00:14:49.529 --> 00:14:51.909 true statements, false statements, gibberish. 00:14:52.129 --> 00:14:54.750 And most frustratingly, the key to the library 00:14:54.750 --> 00:14:57.990 itself, the catalog. Which is, of course, just 00:14:57.990 --> 00:15:00.620 another book lost somewhere in the library. So 00:15:00.620 --> 00:15:03.259 the paradox here is that in a universe of infinite 00:15:03.259 --> 00:15:06.720 information, knowledge becomes impossible. If 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:09.740 everything that can be said has been said, then 00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:12.879 nothing has meaning. Exactly. The human struggle 00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:15.360 in the story is this futile search for meaning 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:18.899 within an infinite archive. The sources describe 00:15:18.899 --> 00:15:21.809 the librarians resulting despair. their tendency 00:15:21.809 --> 00:15:25.149 towards suicide, the rise of nihilistic cults 00:15:25.149 --> 00:15:26.909 who believe certain books are worthless and must 00:15:26.909 --> 00:15:29.610 be destroyed. It's Borges using this structure 00:15:29.610 --> 00:15:32.049 to comment on the modern condition of information 00:15:32.049 --> 00:15:34.870 overload. That feeling that we are drowning in 00:15:34.870 --> 00:15:37.309 data without the ability to synthesize wisdom. 00:15:37.509 --> 00:15:39.590 It's a terrifying vision of the internet written 00:15:39.590 --> 00:15:42.269 decades before the internet existed. Which brings 00:15:42.269 --> 00:15:47.679 us to Plon. ukbar orbis tertius wow yes perhaps 00:15:47.679 --> 00:15:50.440 the story that most directly prefigures the simulation 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:52.580 and the blurring of reality that we live with 00:15:52.580 --> 00:15:54.779 today this story is about the discovery of an 00:15:54.779 --> 00:15:57.399 encyclopedia entry describing a fictional planet 00:15:57.399 --> 00:16:00.419 tuamon and as scholars research this obscure 00:16:00.419 --> 00:16:03.299 non -existent planet the rules and concepts of 00:16:03.299 --> 00:16:06.659 tuam Which include a radical philosophical idealism 00:16:06.659 --> 00:16:09.100 where objects cease to exist when they are not 00:16:09.100 --> 00:16:11.980 perceived. Those rules begin to infiltrate and 00:16:11.980 --> 00:16:14.919 eventually contaminate the real world. Objects 00:16:14.919 --> 00:16:17.740 from Twan start spontaneously manifesting. This 00:16:17.740 --> 00:16:20.000 is the ontological question applied to fiction. 00:16:20.599 --> 00:16:23.419 The ideas of this fake world are so compelling, 00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:26.220 so logically consistent, that they start replacing 00:16:26.220 --> 00:16:28.620 the rules of our own reality. That's the dark 00:16:28.620 --> 00:16:31.019 core of it. The sources note that Borgias is 00:16:31.019 --> 00:16:33.379 essentially describing a highly successful information 00:16:33.379 --> 00:16:37.019 operation. A world so perfectly documented in 00:16:37.019 --> 00:16:40.000 its fictionality that it gains reality. And the 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.080 narrator concludes that the entire world will 00:16:42.080 --> 00:16:44.720 soon become Tlan. It's pure information warfare. 00:16:45.289 --> 00:16:47.730 It shows how the desire for order and structure 00:16:47.730 --> 00:16:50.490 can lead to the embrace of a beautiful, systematic 00:16:50.490 --> 00:16:54.110 lie over chaotic, unpleasant reality. So if Tlan 00:16:54.110 --> 00:16:56.570 is about the infiltration of ideas, The Garden 00:16:56.570 --> 00:16:59.029 of Forking Paths, published in 1941, is about 00:16:59.029 --> 00:17:01.950 dismantling linear time. This story is crucial. 00:17:02.230 --> 00:17:04.369 This is the moment he anticipates the conceptual 00:17:04.369 --> 00:17:07.089 framework for hypertext and the multiverse. It 00:17:07.089 --> 00:17:09.769 absolutely is. The story is a metafictional puzzle 00:17:09.769 --> 00:17:13.140 told by a Chinese spy named Yuzhen. Right. And 00:17:13.140 --> 00:17:15.880 he is trying to decipher a novel written by his 00:17:15.880 --> 00:17:19.059 ancestor, Qi Pen. And this novel, which is also 00:17:19.059 --> 00:17:21.619 a physical labyrinth, it never resolves. Because 00:17:21.619 --> 00:17:24.220 at every point, the protagonist chooses all possible 00:17:24.220 --> 00:17:27.039 outcomes simultaneously. If he enters a house, 00:17:27.220 --> 00:17:29.819 he also doesn't enter it, leading to countless 00:17:29.819 --> 00:17:32.400 branching narratives across time. A combination 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:36.059 of a book and a maze. This is why the term Borghesean 00:17:36.059 --> 00:17:38.920 became synonymous with narrative non -linearity. 00:17:39.319 --> 00:17:42.460 He took a spatial concept, the maze, and he applied 00:17:42.460 --> 00:17:45.220 it to temporal structure. He argued that the 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:47.460 universe of his ancestor was not a spatial maze, 00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:50.740 but an infinite series of times in a growing, 00:17:50.859 --> 00:17:53.500 dizzying network of divergent, convergent, and 00:17:53.500 --> 00:17:55.940 parallel times. And that for a writer working 00:17:55.940 --> 00:17:59.319 decades before digital programming is just astonishing. 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:01.900 He conceived of a network of potential narratives 00:18:01.900 --> 00:18:04.460 where every decision opens new timelines and 00:18:04.460 --> 00:18:07.440 no single path is definitive. It's the conceptual 00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:09.960 blueprint for interactive fiction digital archives. 00:18:10.339 --> 00:18:12.660 Even the many worlds interpretation of quantum 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:14.940 mechanics all encapsulated in a spy thriller. 00:18:15.349 --> 00:18:18.569 This relentless questioning of reality and merit 00:18:18.569 --> 00:18:21.750 of structure, it leads us directly to the philosophical 00:18:21.750 --> 00:18:24.869 concept that actually bears his name. The Borghesean 00:18:24.869 --> 00:18:27.130 Conundrum. What is it fundamentally? It's an 00:18:27.130 --> 00:18:29.470 ontological question. A question about the nature 00:18:29.470 --> 00:18:31.849 of being, it asks. Whether the writer writes 00:18:31.849 --> 00:18:34.569 the story or it writes him. It challenges the 00:18:34.569 --> 00:18:37.970 concept of singular, intentional creation. Does 00:18:37.970 --> 00:18:41.470 the author truly invent the themes? Or do the 00:18:41.470 --> 00:18:44.230 themes, the collective human archive of history, 00:18:44.369 --> 00:18:47.589 myth, and psychology, simply use the author as 00:18:47.589 --> 00:18:50.490 a vessel to express themselves? He expanded on 00:18:50.490 --> 00:18:53.190 this idea in that astonishing essay, Kafka and 00:18:53.190 --> 00:18:55.349 His Precursors. One of the most brilliant pieces 00:18:55.349 --> 00:18:57.750 of literary criticism ever written. Precisely 00:18:57.750 --> 00:19:00.150 because it uses this conundrum to rewrite history. 00:19:00.430 --> 00:19:03.029 It's mind -bending. Borges identifies several 00:19:03.029 --> 00:19:06.559 older, seemingly unrelated texts. from Zeno of 00:19:06.559 --> 00:19:09.359 Leia to writings from the 19th century, and argues 00:19:09.359 --> 00:19:11.579 they all contain the thematic idiosyncrasies 00:19:11.579 --> 00:19:13.920 we now associate with Franz Kafka. But then comes 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:16.079 the punchline. The punchline is that Borges argues 00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:18.000 that if Kafka had never written a single line, 00:19:18.059 --> 00:19:20.019 we would not perceive this quality in those older 00:19:20.019 --> 00:19:22.500 texts. In other words, it would not exist. So 00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:25.119 the present writer, Kafka, retroactively creates 00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:27.720 his own past. He changes the way we look at history 00:19:27.720 --> 00:19:31.420 and tradition. And Borges concludes. Every writer 00:19:31.420 --> 00:19:35.119 creates his own precursors. It is genius literary 00:19:35.119 --> 00:19:38.029 revisionism. And Borges knew he was creating 00:19:38.029 --> 00:19:40.650 his own precursors, too. His influence, built 00:19:40.650 --> 00:19:43.170 on these short, precise conceptual fictions, 00:19:43.170 --> 00:19:46.450 was massive. It provided the essential toolkit 00:19:46.450 --> 00:19:48.789 for the magical realist movement in Latin America. 00:19:49.009 --> 00:19:52.190 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortázar, and others. 00:19:52.410 --> 00:19:54.769 They learned how to infuse the fantastic into 00:19:54.769 --> 00:19:57.950 the real world with this dry procedural logic, 00:19:58.150 --> 00:20:00.549 a technique they absorbed directly from Borges' 00:20:00.789 --> 00:20:03.369 faux academic style. And his influence stretched 00:20:03.369 --> 00:20:06.130 far beyond the Academy. He devoured genre fiction. 00:20:06.430 --> 00:20:08.950 He certainly did. He had a deep, critical understanding 00:20:08.950 --> 00:20:12.130 of science fiction Lovecraft, Heinlein, Bradbury. 00:20:12.309 --> 00:20:15.329 And his work inspired entire generations of conceptual 00:20:15.329 --> 00:20:17.529 fiction writers, particularly those obsessed 00:20:17.529 --> 00:20:20.130 with archives, unstable reality, and simulation. 00:20:20.609 --> 00:20:23.059 Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe. William Gibson, the 00:20:23.059 --> 00:20:26.079 acknowledged father of cyberpunk, famously said 00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:29.680 that reading Trillin, Ukebar, Orbis Tertius felt 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:32.039 like installing software that instantly increased 00:20:32.039 --> 00:20:34.420 his conceptual bandwidth. It's a perfect description. 00:20:34.779 --> 00:20:36.980 Borges didn't invent the Internet, but he certainly 00:20:36.980 --> 00:20:40.339 invented the concept of the universally interconnected, 00:20:40.720 --> 00:20:44.359 potentially illusory, self -replicating information 00:20:44.359 --> 00:20:46.640 network. He was defining the structure of the 00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:49.839 digital age using paper and ink. And this structural 00:20:49.839 --> 00:20:52.579 innovation, this claim to universal culture was 00:20:52.579 --> 00:20:55.119 directly tied to his political identity as an 00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:57.599 Argentine writer. Which brings us to the real 00:20:57.599 --> 00:21:00.480 world fight that consumed his adult life. So 00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.319 Borges spent decades building these fictional 00:21:03.319 --> 00:21:06.559 worlds of infinite archives and theoretical mathematics. 00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:09.220 But he was also a fiercely political Argentine. 00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:12.559 And his stance on nationalism tradition and dictatorship 00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:15.000 shaped his life as profoundly as any book he 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:17.359 ever read. Early in his career he did briefly 00:21:17.359 --> 00:21:20.069 embrace a more local identity. He was part of 00:21:20.069 --> 00:21:22.109 the avant -garde Martin Fierro magazine. Which 00:21:22.109 --> 00:21:24.430 focused on Argentine sensibility, the gaucho 00:21:24.430 --> 00:21:26.769 figure. But he quickly broke away from what he 00:21:26.769 --> 00:21:29.650 saw as literary constraints. And that intellectual 00:21:29.650 --> 00:21:33.289 break came in his famous 1951 essay, The Argentine 00:21:33.289 --> 00:21:36.390 Writer and Tradition. What was his key argument 00:21:36.390 --> 00:21:38.890 here? He argued forcefully against the notion 00:21:38.890 --> 00:21:41.150 that Argentine literature must be limited to 00:21:41.150 --> 00:21:44.049 local color. To writing about gauchos and tangos 00:21:44.049 --> 00:21:47.549 and local customs? Yes. He asserted that a writer 00:21:47.549 --> 00:21:49.789 from Argentina, writing from the geographical 00:21:49.789 --> 00:21:53.029 and cultural margins, had inherited the entirety 00:21:53.029 --> 00:21:56.609 of world literature. So his marginal status was 00:21:56.609 --> 00:21:59.730 a strategic advantage. Precisely. He believed 00:21:59.730 --> 00:22:01.250 they were free to innovate because they didn't 00:22:01.250 --> 00:22:03.529 have to carry the heavy canon of a central European 00:22:03.529 --> 00:22:06.230 literature. They could draw from old Norse sagas, 00:22:06.309 --> 00:22:09.789 Anglo -Saxon poetry. Buddhism, the Jewish Kabbalah, 00:22:09.789 --> 00:22:12.420 Islamic scholarship. All with equal freedom. 00:22:12.619 --> 00:22:15.259 So his core belief was that this cosmopolitan 00:22:15.259 --> 00:22:18.180 reading made Argentine writing universally relevant, 00:22:18.299 --> 00:22:20.599 not just locally provincial. And his personal 00:22:20.599 --> 00:22:23.000 politics mirrored this emphasis on freedom and 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:25.559 the individual against the collective. He identified 00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.200 as a mild classical liberal, influenced heavily 00:22:28.200 --> 00:22:30.720 by his father. Declaring himself a Spencerian 00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:32.599 anarchist who believes in the individual and 00:22:32.599 --> 00:22:34.660 not in the state. It's important to clarify what 00:22:34.660 --> 00:22:38.059 that means in this context, right? It is. Spencerian 00:22:38.059 --> 00:22:41.720 anarchism. from Herbert Spencer, emphasizes extreme 00:22:41.720 --> 00:22:45.200 individualism and minimizing state power. It's 00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:47.380 about personal liberty and voluntary cooperation. 00:22:47.759 --> 00:22:51.339 And for Borges, this meant a staunch anti -communist 00:22:51.339 --> 00:22:54.279 and most vehemently an anti -fascist stance. 00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:57.539 His anti -fascism was tested early and very personally. 00:22:57.740 --> 00:23:02.000 In 1934, Argentine ultra -nationalists, who were 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:04.460 certainly sympathetic to the rising Nazi movement 00:23:04.460 --> 00:23:07.299 in Europe, they attempted to discredit him by 00:23:07.299 --> 00:23:10.019 asserting that Borges was secretly Jewish. trying 00:23:10.019 --> 00:23:13.200 to paint him as foreign, as non -Argentine. Borges' 00:23:13.359 --> 00:23:16.380 response was spectacular and defiant. He wrote 00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:20.059 the essay Yo Judeo, I a Jew. And in it, he declared 00:23:20.059 --> 00:23:22.160 he would be proud to have Jewish heritage. And 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:24.660 then he deployed his genealogical knowledge to 00:23:24.660 --> 00:23:27.680 argue that any pure Castilian like himself likely 00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:30.019 had ancient Jewish or Moorish descent anyway. 00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:32.440 It was a sophisticated intellectual rejection 00:23:32.440 --> 00:23:35.279 of their racial nationalism. And his political 00:23:35.279 --> 00:23:38.240 hatred for Nazism was fueled by a love for German 00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:41.779 culture. The Nazi police state's actions, like 00:23:41.779 --> 00:23:44.299 banning or rewriting classical German texts, 00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:47.019 were intellectual crimes to him. He called the 00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:49.779 Nazi rewriting of history a chaotic descent into 00:23:49.779 --> 00:23:52.140 darkness. And he used his fiction to analyze 00:23:52.140 --> 00:23:55.740 the pathology of fascism. In his 1946 story, 00:23:55.859 --> 00:23:58.799 Deutsche Requiem, he created the ultimate ideal 00:23:58.799 --> 00:24:01.900 Nazi. An intellectual who valued violence for 00:24:01.900 --> 00:24:04.279 its own sake, completely detached from political 00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:06.519 victory. Right. This Nazi narrator, reflecting 00:24:06.519 --> 00:24:09.279 on his defeat, concludes that defeats and victories 00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:12.160 are mere matters of chance. He asserts that the 00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:14.119 true victory was simply upholding the principle 00:24:14.119 --> 00:24:17.119 of necessary violence and absolute authoritarianism. 00:24:17.220 --> 00:24:20.400 So Borges used this fictional device to explore 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:22.900 the moral void at the heart of the fascist ideology. 00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:25.180 Fascist. fascinating, isn't it? But the defining 00:24:25.180 --> 00:24:27.500 political conflict of his actual life was his 00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:30.880 relentless, bitter anti -Pyronism. When Juan 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:34.160 Fron took power in 1946, Borges became an immediate, 00:24:34.319 --> 00:24:36.579 highly visible intellectual enemy. And his intellectual 00:24:36.579 --> 00:24:39.779 resistance was met with administrative spite. 00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:42.880 Borges, who was an outspoken supporter of the 00:24:42.880 --> 00:24:46.259 Allies during the war, was promoted from his 00:24:46.259 --> 00:24:49.599 quiet scholarly post as a municipal librarian. 00:24:50.019 --> 00:24:52.680 A job which paid just enough to allow him to 00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:55.220 write. To the ludicrous position of inspector 00:24:55.220 --> 00:24:57.759 of poultry and rabbits at the municipal market. 00:24:58.039 --> 00:25:00.720 I mean, inspector of poultry and rabbits. We 00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:02.819 just have to pause there and appreciate the sheer 00:25:02.819 --> 00:25:05.559 absurdity of the insult. It's perfect Peronist 00:25:05.559 --> 00:25:08.380 pettiness. It is utterly perfect, and it reveals 00:25:08.380 --> 00:25:10.599 the regime's contempt for the intellectual class. 00:25:11.079 --> 00:25:14.660 The idea was to humiliate him. Forcing him either 00:25:14.660 --> 00:25:18.059 to resign or to dedicate his intellect to supervising 00:25:18.059 --> 00:25:21.099 meat quality. A task completely beneath his professional 00:25:21.099 --> 00:25:23.880 standing. And when he demanded a reason for this 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:26.480 demotion disguised as promotion, he was told 00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:28.140 simply, well, you were on the side of the Allies. 00:25:28.259 --> 00:25:29.859 What did you expect? And he resigned immediately. 00:25:30.440 --> 00:25:32.859 turning a personal humiliation into a massive 00:25:32.859 --> 00:25:35.779 public symbol of intellectual resistance. Absolutely. 00:25:35.799 --> 00:25:38.220 He became the intellectual leader of the anti 00:25:38.220 --> 00:25:40.299 -Paranist opposition. At a dinner held in his 00:25:40.299 --> 00:25:42.759 honor following his resignation, a speech he 00:25:42.759 --> 00:25:45.119 wrote was read aloud. Which contained one of 00:25:45.119 --> 00:25:47.819 his most powerful political statements. Asserting 00:25:47.819 --> 00:25:51.559 that dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships 00:25:51.559 --> 00:25:54.460 breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty, 00:25:54.839 --> 00:25:58.180 more loathsome still is the fact that they breed 00:25:58.180 --> 00:26:02.420 idiocy. That word idiocy is doing so much work 00:26:02.420 --> 00:26:05.460 there. It frames dictatorship not just as evil, 00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:09.079 but as intellectually beneath contempt. That 00:26:09.079 --> 00:26:12.000 was the core of his critique. He saw Peronism 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.940 as an intellectual failure, a regression. His 00:26:14.940 --> 00:26:17.759 battle with Peron lasted for decades. It served 00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:19.819 as an axis around which Argentine intellectual 00:26:19.819 --> 00:26:22.480 life rotated. And when the military shouldn't 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:26.000 have temporarily overthrew Peron in 1955, Borges 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:27.880 was appointed director of the National Library 00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:30.230 in celebration. But the conflict wasn't over. 00:26:30.450 --> 00:26:32.950 Perón was eventually reelected president in 1973 00:26:32.950 --> 00:26:36.170 after years of exile. And Borges' immediate reaction. 00:26:36.329 --> 00:26:38.289 He resigned the prestigious directorship at the 00:26:38.289 --> 00:26:40.950 National Library immediately. He could not serve 00:26:40.950 --> 00:26:43.390 under Perón again. He didn't mince words referring 00:26:43.390 --> 00:26:46.170 to the leader as a humbug. In claiming that he 00:26:46.170 --> 00:26:48.450 had made Argentina look ridiculous to the world. 00:26:48.589 --> 00:26:51.130 He cited specific examples of Perón's ridiculous 00:26:51.130 --> 00:26:54.809 claims, like the infamous 1951 announcement that 00:26:54.809 --> 00:26:57.369 Argentina had achieved control over thermonuclear 00:26:57.369 --> 00:27:00.039 fusion. A claim, as Borges noted, that still 00:27:00.039 --> 00:27:02.359 hadn't happened anywhere but in the sun and the 00:27:02.359 --> 00:27:05.299 stars. His ability to inject this high -level 00:27:05.299 --> 00:27:07.839 historical and scientific context into petty 00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:11.259 political disputes is just remarkable. His political 00:27:11.259 --> 00:27:14.660 trajectory was complex, however. While staunchly 00:27:14.660 --> 00:27:17.480 anti -Paranist, he did initially support the 00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:20.259 military junta that took over in the 1970s. Hoping 00:27:20.259 --> 00:27:22.779 for stability and an end to populism. But he 00:27:22.779 --> 00:27:25.380 was quickly and profoundly scandalized by their 00:27:25.380 --> 00:27:27.859 brutal actions during the Dirty War. By the time 00:27:27.859 --> 00:27:30.380 democracy returned with Raul Alfonso's election 00:27:30.380 --> 00:27:33.440 in 1983, Borges had returned to his faith in 00:27:33.440 --> 00:27:36.720 classical democratic values. He had. And he even 00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:39.099 offered his unique literary commentary on the 00:27:39.099 --> 00:27:42.599 1982 Falklands War. Writing a short, evocative 00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:45.279 poem about two fictional soldiers, one from Argentina, 00:27:45.539 --> 00:27:47.960 one from the UK, who died in the conflict. His 00:27:47.960 --> 00:27:50.519 most memorable comment on the geopolitical absurdity 00:27:50.519 --> 00:27:53.000 of that conflict was classic Borges. What did 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:55.359 he say? He called the war a fight between two 00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.900 bald men over a comb. A perfect, cynical, and 00:27:58.900 --> 00:28:02.039 universally relevant encapsulation of why territorial 00:28:02.039 --> 00:28:05.920 conflicts often seem so pointless. So his political 00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:08.319 engagement, born of these deep individualist 00:28:08.319 --> 00:28:10.900 beliefs, led to a life marked by bureaucratic 00:28:10.900 --> 00:28:14.059 spite, international controversy, and continuous 00:28:14.059 --> 00:28:17.140 intellectual fire. Right then. Let's wrap up 00:28:17.140 --> 00:28:19.000 with the final ironies of his legacy and the 00:28:19.000 --> 00:28:21.440 greater mission. Okay, moving on from the political 00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:24.680 battles, we have to honor Borges' immense practical 00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:27.900 contribution to world letters. Specifically as 00:28:27.900 --> 00:28:30.500 a translator. His linguistic capacity was extraordinary. 00:28:31.240 --> 00:28:33.980 Fluent in Spanish, English, French, and German. 00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:37.019 He also mastered enough Old English and Old Norse 00:28:37.019 --> 00:28:39.049 to translate them. And his theoretical views 00:28:39.049 --> 00:28:41.569 on translation were revolutionary and, well, 00:28:41.690 --> 00:28:44.569 liberating for other writers. He rejected the 00:28:44.569 --> 00:28:47.230 rigid idea that a translation must be perfectly 00:28:47.230 --> 00:28:49.769 faithful. Instead, he maintained that a translation 00:28:49.769 --> 00:28:52.069 could actually improve upon the original. Or 00:28:52.069 --> 00:28:54.630 be unfaithful. and that contradictory renderings 00:28:54.630 --> 00:28:56.910 of the same source material could all be equally 00:28:56.910 --> 00:28:59.269 valid literary achievements. It ties back to 00:28:59.269 --> 00:29:01.549 his idea that absolute originality is a fictional 00:29:01.549 --> 00:29:04.630 construct. It does. And he didn't just translate 00:29:04.630 --> 00:29:08.569 European masters. Crucially, he created an indelible 00:29:08.569 --> 00:29:11.470 bridge between American and Latin American literature. 00:29:11.869 --> 00:29:14.230 By translating William Faulkner's The Wild Palms 00:29:14.230 --> 00:29:16.920 in 1940. And this exposed a whole new generation 00:29:16.920 --> 00:29:19.400 of Latin American writers, Juan Rulfo Gabriel 00:29:19.400 --> 00:29:22.539 Garcia Marquez, to the psychological depth and 00:29:22.539 --> 00:29:24.839 fragmented narrative structures of contemporary 00:29:24.839 --> 00:29:27.680 American fiction. This willingness to engage 00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:30.359 across genres and traditions was also evident 00:29:30.359 --> 00:29:32.880 in his extensive collaborations. His partnership 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.819 with fellow Argentine writer Adolfo Bayoy Casares. 00:29:36.119 --> 00:29:39.490 Often under the pseudonym H. Bustos Domek. This 00:29:39.490 --> 00:29:41.970 is a wonderful display of Borges' lighter side. 00:29:42.170 --> 00:29:44.170 Tell us more about the Domecq works. That often 00:29:44.170 --> 00:29:46.329 gets overshadowed by his philosophical fiction. 00:29:46.670 --> 00:29:48.950 They created these parody detective stories and 00:29:48.950 --> 00:29:52.289 dark humor fantasies. The detective, Isidro Perotti, 00:29:52.450 --> 00:29:55.769 operates from a jail cell. Another great Borgesian 00:29:55.769 --> 00:29:58.710 constraint and irony. Exactly. The humor is dry 00:29:58.710 --> 00:30:01.730 and highly stylized, often parodying the Argentine 00:30:01.730 --> 00:30:04.210 social scene and the inflated rhetoric of the 00:30:04.210 --> 00:30:06.549 intelligentsia. It shows Borges' capacity for 00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:09.450 fun and satire. proving that his dry style was 00:30:09.450 --> 00:30:12.769 a tool, not a limitation. And later, the collaboration 00:30:12.769 --> 00:30:15.849 with the American translator Norman Thomas DiGiovanni 00:30:15.849 --> 00:30:19.069 was key to his rise to fame in the English -speaking 00:30:19.069 --> 00:30:21.210 world. Though that relationship became legally 00:30:21.210 --> 00:30:24.509 complex later on. It did. But DiGiovanni helped 00:30:24.509 --> 00:30:27.950 introduce Borges to a mass audience in the 1960s 00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:30.470 and 70s. That partnership gave him global visibility. 00:30:30.970 --> 00:30:33.230 It did, but it wasn't without future complication. 00:30:33.559 --> 00:30:36.960 After Borgias' death, his widow, Maria Kadama, 00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:39.500 aggressively asserted her rights over the works. 00:30:39.660 --> 00:30:42.380 Which led to the revocation of the rights to 00:30:42.380 --> 00:30:45.099 Di Giovanni's translations. Right. Which resulted 00:30:45.099 --> 00:30:47.640 in a complex and sometimes contentious literary 00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:50.539 legacy regarding which translations were authorized. 00:30:50.859 --> 00:30:53.930 Now we come to the monumental question. The Nobel 00:30:53.930 --> 00:30:56.990 Prize. Ah, yes. He was nominated over 30 times, 00:30:57.109 --> 00:30:59.750 considered a towering figure of 20th century 00:30:59.750 --> 00:31:02.569 letters alongside contemporaries like Nabokov 00:31:02.569 --> 00:31:04.690 and Neruda. Yet he never won. He treated the 00:31:04.690 --> 00:31:07.029 whole affair with characteristic wit and irony, 00:31:07.170 --> 00:31:09.769 didn't he? He did. He famously quipped that not 00:31:09.769 --> 00:31:12.109 granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian 00:31:12.109 --> 00:31:14.609 tradition. We know he was frequently close. For 00:31:14.609 --> 00:31:16.430 instance, he was one of the final three choices 00:31:16.430 --> 00:31:19.369 in 1967. The year the Guatemalan writer Miguel 00:31:19.369 --> 00:31:23.640 Engel Asturias won. So why the snub? The sources 00:31:23.640 --> 00:31:26.680 point clearly toward political controversy overriding 00:31:26.680 --> 00:31:29.680 his literary merit. Absolutely. The decisive 00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.200 factor cited by at least one prominent committee 00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:35.220 member, Arthur Lundqvist, was Borges' acceptance 00:31:35.220 --> 00:31:38.000 of an honor from the Chilean dictator Augusto 00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:41.170 Pinochet in the 1970s. And Lundqvist cited this 00:31:41.170 --> 00:31:44.329 acceptance as making Borges an improper Nobel 00:31:44.329 --> 00:31:47.529 laureate for ethical and humane reasons. Which 00:31:47.529 --> 00:31:49.890 is a devastating irony. The man who risked his 00:31:49.890 --> 00:31:53.029 life and career fighting fascism and Peronism 00:31:53.029 --> 00:31:55.829 in Argentina. The same man who wrote essays declaring 00:31:55.829 --> 00:31:58.750 pride in Jewish heritage against Nazi sympathizers. 00:31:58.950 --> 00:32:01.230 Was denied the world's highest literary honor 00:32:01.230 --> 00:32:03.609 due to a single controversial gesture toward 00:32:03.609 --> 00:32:05.890 another authoritarian figure later in his life. 00:32:06.029 --> 00:32:07.869 It's the ultimate tragedy of political labeling. 00:32:08.329 --> 00:32:11.569 He saw Matinache initially as a necessary stabilizer 00:32:11.569 --> 00:32:14.309 against chaos, aligning with his anti -statist 00:32:14.309 --> 00:32:17.130 beliefs that sometimes preferred order over populism. 00:32:17.210 --> 00:32:19.349 But this proved to be a political disaster for 00:32:19.349 --> 00:32:21.769 his international image. Stepping back to the 00:32:21.769 --> 00:32:23.930 intellectual pillars that buttressed his work, 00:32:24.029 --> 00:32:26.490 we should just reinforce the philosophical influences 00:32:26.490 --> 00:32:28.970 we touched on earlier. He consistently named 00:32:28.970 --> 00:32:31.509 Bishop George Berkeley and Arthur Schopenhauer 00:32:31.509 --> 00:32:33.849 as his two greatest philosophical influences. 00:32:34.109 --> 00:32:36.990 Berkeley, the great idealist, who argued esse 00:32:36.990 --> 00:32:41.720 es percipi. To be is to be perceived. This idealism 00:32:41.720 --> 00:32:44.359 provides the groundwork for Borges' preoccupation 00:32:44.359 --> 00:32:47.079 with dreams and the precariousness of external 00:32:47.079 --> 00:32:50.500 reality, exemplified in stories like Klun, Uckbar, 00:32:50.660 --> 00:32:53.619 and Schopenhauer's influence, Schopenhauer's 00:32:53.619 --> 00:32:56.259 pessimism, and his emphasis on the illusory world 00:32:56.259 --> 00:32:58.779 of appearances, the idea that the phenomenal 00:32:58.779 --> 00:33:01.680 world is merely representation, driven by an 00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:04.640 irrational will, that lends Borges' stories their 00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:07.579 profound skepticism. a skepticism regarding purpose 00:33:07.579 --> 00:33:10.279 and linear progression. Borscht's universe is 00:33:10.279 --> 00:33:12.980 rational but fundamentally meaningless, a very 00:33:12.980 --> 00:33:15.160 Schopenhauerian concept. He also played with 00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:17.519 concepts from mathematics, showing a sophisticated 00:33:17.519 --> 00:33:20.000 if sometimes superficial knowledge of set theory. 00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:22.339 Which he used in stories like The Book of Sand 00:33:22.339 --> 00:33:24.619 to explore the nature of impossible collections 00:33:24.619 --> 00:33:27.119 and infinity. Finally, let's look at his end, 00:33:27.240 --> 00:33:29.599 which, like his life, was marked by contradiction 00:33:29.599 --> 00:33:32.910 and ecumenism. He declared himself an agnostic. 00:33:33.089 --> 00:33:35.369 But he clarified that this didn't rule anything 00:33:35.369 --> 00:33:38.630 out. He specified that being an agnostic means 00:33:38.630 --> 00:33:42.210 all things are possible, even God, even the Holy 00:33:42.210 --> 00:33:44.730 Trinity. And despite his intellectual skepticism, 00:33:44.970 --> 00:33:47.809 he maintained a lifelong practice of praying 00:33:47.809 --> 00:33:50.609 the Our Father nightly. A promise he made to 00:33:50.609 --> 00:33:53.099 his Catholic mother. And he was raised with the 00:33:53.099 --> 00:33:55.440 Bible, taught by his English Protestant grandmother. 00:33:55.700 --> 00:33:59.180 And in a final, very Borghesean act of literary 00:33:59.180 --> 00:34:01.460 and personal reconciliation before his death 00:34:01.460 --> 00:34:04.400 in Geneva in 1986. The city he dedicated his 00:34:04.400 --> 00:34:07.039 final work, The Conspirators, to. He requested 00:34:07.039 --> 00:34:09.820 two clergymen attend. Yes. A Catholic priest 00:34:09.820 --> 00:34:12.519 in memory of his mother and their shared traditions. 00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:15.179 And a Protestant minister. In memory of his English 00:34:15.179 --> 00:34:17.940 grandmother who instilled in him his love of 00:34:17.940 --> 00:34:20.239 the English language and literature. He died 00:34:20.239 --> 00:34:22.380 in Geneva in the presence of the priest. And 00:34:22.380 --> 00:34:24.800 the Protestant minister, Pasteur de Montmelin, 00:34:24.900 --> 00:34:27.579 later noted that Borges had unceasingly searched 00:34:27.579 --> 00:34:29.760 for the right word, the term that could sum up 00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:32.480 the whole, the final meaning of things. And the 00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:34.340 ultimate irony and beauty is that he knew the 00:34:34.340 --> 00:34:37.559 search itself was a labyrinth. But the act of 00:34:37.559 --> 00:34:40.639 constructing that labyrinth is his meaning. Hashtag 00:34:40.639 --> 00:34:43.460 tag outro. So what does this all mean for you, 00:34:43.579 --> 00:34:46.369 the learner? Jorge Luis Borges. mastered the 00:34:46.369 --> 00:34:48.889 synthesis of mythology, mathematics, and philosophy 00:34:48.889 --> 00:34:52.610 within these fictional miniature worlds. He created 00:34:52.610 --> 00:34:55.050 entire universes on just a few pages. He was 00:34:55.050 --> 00:34:58.409 a man defined by radical, complex ironies. The 00:34:58.409 --> 00:35:00.670 blind librarian, the cosmopolitan nationalist, 00:35:01.070 --> 00:35:03.469 the anarchist who died in the presence of religious 00:35:03.469 --> 00:35:05.900 men. He showed us that the essay could be a work 00:35:05.900 --> 00:35:08.079 of fiction, that criticism could be creation, 00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:10.920 and that the past is malleable. He was obsessed 00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:13.079 with libraries and archives, and he gave us that 00:35:13.079 --> 00:35:15.480 ultimate writer's sentiment. I always imagined 00:35:15.480 --> 00:35:17.940 Paradise to be some kind of a library. We end 00:35:17.940 --> 00:35:20.940 this deep dive with one final provocative thought. 00:35:21.320 --> 00:35:24.440 tying his life's irony to his most radical literary 00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:27.420 ambition. Borchers believed that every writer 00:35:27.420 --> 00:35:29.960 creates his own precursors. Meaning his work 00:35:29.960 --> 00:35:32.039 now permanently modifies our conception of the 00:35:32.039 --> 00:35:35.739 past and influences the future. So... if borges's 00:35:35.739 --> 00:35:39.900 own constructed universe those 410 page libraries 00:35:39.900 --> 00:35:43.199 those infinite lefts those systems of forking 00:35:43.199 --> 00:35:46.519 paths is now an indelible force in world literature 00:35:46.519 --> 00:35:49.280 shaping how we write and how we read does his 00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:51.699 paradise already exist within the infinite library 00:35:51.699 --> 00:35:54.289 he helped construct If every writer who comes 00:35:54.289 --> 00:35:56.530 after is unconsciously structuring their work 00:35:56.530 --> 00:35:58.809 according to rules he already summarized, what 00:35:58.809 --> 00:36:01.070 book written today is unconsciously copying a 00:36:01.070 --> 00:36:03.409 structure he already invented? Something to consider 00:36:03.409 --> 00:36:05.250 the next time you pick up a dense collection 00:36:05.250 --> 00:36:07.670 of short stories or open a browser window and 00:36:07.670 --> 00:36:10.010 find yourself lost in an infinite stream of information.