Jorge Luis Borges

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, best known for his intriguing short stories that play with philosophical ideas, such as identity, reality and language. His work, which includes poetry, essays, and reviews of imaginary books, has had great influence on magical realism and literary theory. He viewed the realist novel as over-rated and deluded, revelling instead in fable and imaginary worlds. He declared “people think life is the thing but I prefer reading”.Translation formed an important part of his work, writing a Spanish language version of an Oscar Wilde story when aged around 9. He went on to introduce other key writers such as Faulkner and Kafka to Latin America, liberally making changes to the original work which went far beyond what was, strictly speaking, translation.He lived most of his life in obscurity, finding recognition only in his sixties when he was awarded the International Publishers’ Prize which he shared with Samuel Beckett. By this point he was blind but continued to write, composing poetry in his head and reciting from memory.So how has Borges’ work informed ideas about our experience of the world through language? How much was his writing shaped by his travel abroad and an unrequited love? And how has his legacy inspired the next generation of great Latin American authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Edwin Williamson 2 episodes
  Professor of Spanish Studies at Oxford University
• Efrain Kristal No other episodes
  Professor of Comparative Literature at University of California, Los Angeles
• Evelyn Fishburn No other episodes
  Professor Emeritus at London Metropolitan University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London

Related episodes

• Fernando Pessoa
  
  3 Dec, 2020 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Writing and Political Oppression
  
  8 Apr, 1999 320 Political science
• Wittgenstein
  
  4 Dec, 2003 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Lorca
  
  4 Jul, 2019 860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures
• Tolstoy
  
  25 Apr, 2002 890 Other literatures
• Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
  
  10 Feb, 2000 830 German and related literatures
• Montaigne
  
  25 Apr, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Rudyard Kipling
  
  16 Oct, 2014 820 English and Old English literatures
• Germaine de Stael
  
  16 Nov, 2017 840 French and related literatures
• Don Quixote
  
  16 Mar, 2006 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Bergson and Time
  
  9 May, 2019 110 Metaphysics
• Pope
  
  9 Nov, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
• Samuel Beckett
  
  17 Jan, 2019 840 French and related literatures
• Proust
  
  17 Apr, 2003 840 French and related literatures
• Shakespeare’s Work
  
  11 May, 2000 820 English and Old English literatures
• Camus
  
  3 Jan, 2008 840 French and related literatures
• Sartre
  
  7 Oct, 2004 840 French and related literatures
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
  
  15 Sep, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Goethe
  
  6 Apr, 2006 830 German and related literatures
• Metamorphosis
  
  2 Mar, 2000 870 Latin and Italic literatures

---

Programme ID: b0076182

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076182

Auto-category: 860 (Spanish and Portuguese literatures)