History Creator / JorgeLuisBorges

Borges became blind due to an inherited disease in his middle age and blindness is a recurring {{Motif|s}} in his later works. Other common motifs are labyrinths, mirrors, libraries, tigers, and daggers. The blind monk Jorge de Burgos in Creator/UmbertoEco's ''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose'' is one allusion to Borges. The blind librarian in ''[[BookOfTheNewSun The Shadow of the Torturer]]'' by Creator/GeneWolfe may be another.

** Later, Borges wrote that one of the characters of this tale, Teodelina Villar, was a deconstruction of this trope: Who could be fascinating to anyone in RealLife? A ShallowLoveInterest, someone who nobody (not even the guy who is in love with her) can define ''why'' is he in love: Teodelina was a RichInDollarsPoorInSense RichBitch when she was young, and then she was a FallenPrincess. Even when Borges describes her as pretty stupid, he claims to love her, even when he cannot justify why, except because Borges admit he is a snob.

* ''"Half-Way House" by Ellery Queen'': A simple critique of the rules of 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.

* CthulhuMythos: "There Are More Things", written in memory of Lovecraft. Incidentally, Borges considered Lovecraft more like an involuntary parodist of Poe.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: "The Immortal", in which [[spoiler:{{Homer}} has become immortal.]]

'''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 20th-century Spain (where Borges arrived around 1920).

* ShoutOut: Pretty much every author in the Western ''and'' Eastern literary and philosophical canon gets a ShoutOut in some Borges story or another. For example, "Death and the Compass" has [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] to philosopher Baruch Spinoza and authors EdgarAllanPoe and Creator/JamesJoyce, among others.

* {{Foil}}: He said that Creator/GKChesterton was this to Creator/OscarWilde: the former was a conservative, orthodox Catholic who stood for health, order and harmony, but whose works were always teetering on the edge of nightmare, whereas the latter was a socialist, feminist aesthete with no formal religious affinities who stood for pleasure and beauty, whose work was fundamentally happy and innocent.

** The ''DivineComedy'' gets a few {{Shout Out}}s in "The Aleph".

%%->"... it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is."
%%-->"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"

-> ''"That history should have copied history was already sufficiently astonishing; that history should copy literature was inconceivable."''
-->-- '''Jorge Luis Borges''', ''The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero''.

** Arguably, he's also one of the founders of it and by far one of the most well known, along with GabrielGarciaMarquez.

-->-- '''Jorge-Luis Borges''', ''The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero''.

* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: The City of the Immortals, in "The Immortal".

* Bizarrchitecture: The City of the Immortals, in "The Immortal".

* WeAreEverywhere: Deconstructed in "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:

* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler: Lönnrott in "Death and the Compass"]], [[spoiler: Every Babylon citizen (except those ''already'' in TheConspiracy]] in "The Lottery in Babylon"
* WeAreEverywhere: Deconstructed in "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:

* PostModernism.

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

** Special mention goes to "Averroes's Search". In it, the Islamic philosopher Averroes investigates a Greek translation and ponders the meaning of "tragedy" and "comedy", which he can't understand because he lives in a culture in which the art of dramatic performance doesn't exist. After hearing with some guests a story about China and the performers that live there and CompletelyMissingthePoint about the whole "acting" thing, he starts meditating and eventually has a sudden realization about the meaning of "tragedy" and "comedy", [[spoiler:which turns out to be wrong]]. He then [[spoiler: disappears, as do his house and all those that were in it, 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.]]

* MagicRealism: many of his stories are in this genre, and he was part of the so-called "Latin American Boom" that helped popularize it.

** "The Garden of Forking Paths"'' the FramingDevice is a TrenchcoatBrigade type of SpyFiction in World War I, where a Chinese is obliged 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 the Irish agent must surely know that his masters despise him for being an Irishman, but they are both still obliged to be the {{UnwittingPawn}}s of countries they hate.

* ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'': The FramingDevice is a spy story set at World War I where TheProtagonist visiting MrExposition who explains 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]].

** Alternatively, ''A twentieth century German TortureTechnician tries in vain, before his execution, to exculpate himself, never suspecting that the secret justification for his life is that he has inspired a writer to create [[ThoseWackyNazis a new trope]]''.

%%->"...it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is."

** 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 he doesn’t care either. ]] [[ThePowerOfHate His own hate fulfill him]].
* AnimalMotifs: tigers, featured or mentioned in many of his stories. [[spoiler:Particularly important when you consider that one of the Zahir was once a tiger.]]

** "The Man on the Threshold": A British government official in TheRaj investigates the disappearance of a judge. [[spoiler: LaResistance kidnapped him to judge him for being an EvilColonialist HangingJudge]].