Jorge Francisco Isidore Luis Borges (24th August 1899-14th June 1986)’s Other Inquisitions (1964) [originally published as Otras Inquisiciones in 1952] forms a necessary complement to the fictional entities of Fictions (originally published as Ficciones in 1944) and The Aleph (published as El Aleph in 1949) which made him a towering personality in Latin American avant-garde literature. Poet, essayist, critic, translator- Borges is truly a virtuoso. His fiction, a vortex for seemingly the entire universe, deploys the search for meaning, archaeological reconstruction and narrativity in all its forms as epistemological paradigms. Borges’s fiction mimes other kinds of writings- narrative, literary criticism, encyclopaedic learning, learned disputation,
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His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future” (Borges, Other Inquisitions 108). He goes on to say “The word ‘precursor’ is indispensable in the vocabulary of criticism, but one should try to purify it from every connotation of polemic or rivalry” (109). His vision of literary tradition is astute.By the inveterate tool of allusion, Borges’s stories examine the possibility that the literary question of one’s relationship to one’s successors runs parallel to the philosophical question of one’s personal identity. To Borges, not only one’s writing but one’s own identity is contingent upon the revisionary perspectives provided by the future generations.Borges deems Oscar Wilde (in the essay “About Oscar Wilde”) to have that rare ability to mix humour and frivolity with intense intellectual depth. Through him, Borges came to believe in comic truth, the truth of fiction which is able to tolerate cyclical and contradictory representations of …show more content…
His cosmopolitanism and his eagerness to be a master of so far-ranging a cultural sphere is a hallmark of his fiction. His construction of a past upon a foundation both national and foreign was his way of being profoundly Argentine. The basic hypothesis of Borges’s literary endeavours is paradoxical. John Barth refers to this tendency as being akin to the ‘Literature of Exhaustion’ to which belongs nearly all of Borges’s works. This type of self-regarding literature, as Borges indulges in, is underscored by the fact that his universe is fictive, not real.(Barth 78). Fiction and fact, imagination and critique areaspects of the same continuum throughout Borges’s work. This erasure of boundaries is encountered in the essays “The Meeting in A Dream” as well as “From Somebody to
His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future” (Borges, Other Inquisitions 108). He goes on to say “The word ‘precursor’ is indispensable in the vocabulary of criticism, but one should try to purify it from every connotation of polemic or rivalry” (109). His vision of literary tradition is astute.By the inveterate tool of allusion, Borges’s stories examine the possibility that the literary question of one’s relationship to one’s successors runs parallel to the philosophical question of one’s personal identity. To Borges, not only one’s writing but one’s own identity is contingent upon the revisionary perspectives provided by the future generations.Borges deems Oscar Wilde (in the essay “About Oscar Wilde”) to have that rare ability to mix humour and frivolity with intense intellectual depth. Through him, Borges came to believe in comic truth, the truth of fiction which is able to tolerate cyclical and contradictory representations of …show more content…
His cosmopolitanism and his eagerness to be a master of so far-ranging a cultural sphere is a hallmark of his fiction. His construction of a past upon a foundation both national and foreign was his way of being profoundly Argentine. The basic hypothesis of Borges’s literary endeavours is paradoxical. John Barth refers to this tendency as being akin to the ‘Literature of Exhaustion’ to which belongs nearly all of Borges’s works. This type of self-regarding literature, as Borges indulges in, is underscored by the fact that his universe is fictive, not real.(Barth 78). Fiction and fact, imagination and critique areaspects of the same continuum throughout Borges’s work. This erasure of boundaries is encountered in the essays “The Meeting in A Dream” as well as “From Somebody to