Quotes from work
Dreamtigers
Dreamtigers, first published in 1960 as El Hacedor , is a collection of poems, short essays, and literary sketches by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. Divided fairly evenly between prose and verse, the collection examines the limitations of creativity. Borges regarded Dreamtigers as his most personal work. In the view of Mortimer Adler, editor of the Great Books of the Western World series, the collection was a masterpiece of 20th century literature. Literary critic Harold Bloom includes it in his Western Canon.
“Paradise will be a kind of library”
Poem of the Gifts ["Poema de los Dones"]
Dreamtigers (1960)
Variant: I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.
Epilogue
Variant translation: A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.
Dreamtigers (1960)
"Dead Men’s Dialogue"
Dreamtigers (1960)
“Myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.”
"Parable of Cervantes and Don Quixote" (January 1955)
Tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Dreamtigers (1960)
Variant: In the beginning of literature there is myth, as there is also in the end of it.
"Poem of the Gifts" ["Poema de los Dones"]
Dreamtigers (1960)
