Kum kitabı benim için oldukça zor bir okuma oldu. Bunun en önemli sebebi kısacık ama çok yoğun hikayelerden oluşması. Bir hikayeyi kavrayıp tam kendinizi kaptırırken bambaşka bir hikayeye geçiyorsunuz ve o sancılı anlama süreci tekrar başlıyor. Hikayelerden bazılarını severken bazılarına karşı tepkisiz kaldığımı söyleyebilirim. Hikayeler eminim benim fark ettiğimden çok daha fazla mesaj içeriyor ama anladığım kadarıyla bile derinlikli öyküler olduğu çok açık. Bir oturuşta okunup bitirilebilecek bir eser olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Sayfa sayısına oranla çok fazla emek istiyor. İyi okumalar dilerim.

Prisionero del libro, casi no me asomaba a la calle.

*

A prisoner of the Book, I hardly left my house.
—El libro de arena/The Book of Sand

From ancient gods to Pierre Menard, everyone knows the deliciously complex journey ahead when you start reading a book by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator who knew no death.
Nothing is simple in the Borgesian world, nothing is pretentious, and several elements reflect these facts. His fascinating plots where reality seamlessly blends with fantasy. His exquisite language that brims with warm familiarity and distant erudition. His countless references to real authors and fake books that pique one's curiosity and open the doors to labyrinths of truths and appearances. The philosophical nature of numbers. Succinct poems, as it is their true essence. Time and space with no beginning and no end. Love and death in one night. Monstrous books. Legendary gauchos. Unfathomable theologies.

According to Borges, The Book of Sand is his masterpiece. Some critics don't agree. Do critics know more about Borges than the writer himself? I'm not a critic, and I'm certainly not Borges. I'm just a person who, unable to sleep, let her thoughts drift and started to think about this book, and words effortlessly emerged to the surface in the middle of the night—words she wrote down quickly so she wouldn't forget about them in the morning.

Even though this book is a delightful short story collection, at risk of offending scholars and minotaurs, philosophers and other hybrids, the alive and the dead, probably Borges—himself and the other—I must admit that to me, [b:Ficciones|426504|Ficciones|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621713120l/426504._SY75_.jpg|1007116]' perfection remains unparalleled.




Ratings and quotes:
1. El Otro/The Other ★★★★★

—Si esta mañana y este encuentro son sueños, cada uno de los dos tiene que pensar que el soñador es él. Tal vez dejemos de soñar, tal vez no. Nuestra evidente obligación, mientras tanto, es aceptar el sueño, como hemos aceptado el universo y haber sido engendrados y mirar con los ojos y respirar.
—¿Y si el sueño durara? -dijo con ansiedad. 
Para tranquilizarlo y tranquilizarme, fingí un aplomo que ciertamente no sentía. Le dije:
—Mi sueño ha durado ya setenta años. Al fin y al cabo, al recordarse, no hay persona que no se encuentre consigo misma. Es lo que nos está pasando ahora, salvo que somos dos. ¿No querés saber algo de mi pasado, que es el porvenir que te espera?

*

"If this morning and this encounter are dreams," I replied, "then each of us does have to think that he alone is the dreamer. Perhaps our dream will end, perhaps it won't. Meanwhile, our clear obligation is to accept the dream, as we have accepted the universe and our having been brought into it and the fact that we see with our eyes and that we breathe."
"But what if the dream should last?" he asked anxiously.
In order to calm him—and calm myself, as well—I feigned a self-assurance I was far from truly feeling.
"My dream," I told him, "has already lasted for seventy years. And besides—when one wakes up, the person one meets is always oneself. That is what's happening to us now, except that we are two. Wouldn't you like to know something about my past, which is now the future that awaits you?"

2. Ulrica/Ulrikke ★★★

3. El Congreso/The Congress ★★★

4. There Are More Things ★★★★

Sentí lo que sentimos cuando alguien muere: la congoja, ya inútil, de que nada nos hubiera costado haber sido más buenos.

*

I felt what we always feel when someone dies—the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving.

5. La secta de los treinta/The Sect of the Thirty ★★★

6. La noche de los dones/The Night of the Gifts ★★★★★

Lo mismo da; no hay un pueblo de la provincia que no sea idéntico a los otros, hasta en lo de creerse distinto.

*

Just as well; there's not a town in the provinces that's not just like all the others—even to the point of thinking it's different.

7. El espejo y la máscara/The Mirror and the Mask ★★★★★

8. Undr ★★★

9. Utopía de un hombre que está cansado/A Weary Man's Utopia ★★★★★

—Cumplidos los cien años, el individuo puede prescindir del amor y de la amistad. Los males y la muerte involuntaria no lo amenazan. Ejerce alguna de las artes, la filosofía, las matemáticas o juega a un ajedrez solitario. Cuando quiere se mata. Dueño el hombre de su vida, lo es también de su muerte.
(...)
—¿Todavía hay museos y bibliotecas?
—No. Queremos olvidar el ayer, salvo para la composición de elegías. No hay conmemoraciones ni centenarios ni efigies de hombres muertos. Cada cual debe producir por su cuenta las ciencias y las artes que necesita.
—En tal caso, cada cual debe ser su propio Bernard Shaw, su propio Jesucristo y su propio Arquímedes.

*

"When the individual has reached a hundred years of age, he is able to do without love and friendship. Illness and inadvertent death are not things to be feared. He practices one of the arts, or philosophy or mathematics, or plays a game of one-handed chess. When he wishes, he kills himself. When a man is the master of own life, he is also the master of his death."
[...]
"Are there still museums and libraries?"
"No. We want to forget the past, save for the composition of elegies. There are no commemorations or anniversaries or portraits of dead men. Each person must produce on his own the arts and sciences that he has need for."
"In that case, every man must be his own Bernard Shaw, his own Jesus Christ, and his own Archimedes."

10. El soborno/The Bribe ★★★

11. Avelino Arredondo ★★★★

12. El disco/The Disk ★★★

13. El libro de arena/The Book of Sand ★★★★★

Me dijo que su libro se llamaba el Libro de Arena, porque ni el libro ni la arena tienen ni principio ni fin.

*

He told me his book was called the Book of Sand because neither sand nor this book has a beginning or an end.



Aug 7, 2021
* Later on my blog.
** Credits: Book, Borges

La verdad es un gran placer regresar siempre a Borges, sobre todo a sus libros fundamentales, y este es realmente uno de ellos.

Tengo que admitir que no todos los cuentos me gustaron por igual, pero en este libro hay verdaderas obras de arte, de una genialidad e imaginación propias del querido Borges.

Si tengo que puntuar cada cuento quedaría algo así:

- El otro: 5/5
- Ulrica: 3/5
- El congreso: 4/5
- There are more things: 5/5
- La secta de los treinta: 3/5
- La noche de los dones: 4/5
- El espejo y la máscara: 5/5
- Undr: 3/5
- Utopía de un hombre que está cansado: 5/5
- El soborno: 2/5
- Avelino Arredondo: 4/5
- El disco: 3/5
- El libro de arena: 5/5

Siempre que releo a Borges descubro cosas nuevas en sus cuentos, incluso aquellos que he visitado varias veces, realmente parece que sus libros son como el libro de arena que describe en el último relato de este libro.

Ohhhh JLB <3! Except, I found a number of the stories in here extremely depressing. Especially The Congress.

... longer review later I guess.

"The Book of Sand" and "The Congress" are highlights of this short story collection!

J'ai bien aimé la première nouvelle, les autres m'ont laissé plutôt indifférente. Par contre, j'ai annoté plusieurs jolies citations.

Junto con Ficciones y El Aleph, probablemente uno de los infaltables de Borges. El otro, El congreso, Utopía de un hombre que está cansado y El libro de arena son todos textos que están a la altura del mejor Borges.
El Borges de este libro es uno más contemplativo. Se nota como la vejez y la ceguera marcaron profundamente su obra tardía, que añadió a estos textos, además de la sabiduría y belleza de los temas tratados, una complejidad extra cuando se piensa en el autor y sus circunstancias.