Quotes from work
Dreamtigers

Jorge Luis BorgesOriginal title El Hacedor (Spanish, 1960)

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.

“The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“Paradise will be a kind of library”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Poem of the Gifts ["Poema de los Dones"]
Dreamtigers (1960)
Variant: I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

“Man's memory shapes
Its own Eden within”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

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)

“The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

"Dead Men’s Dialogue"
Dreamtigers (1960)

“Myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

"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.

“Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

"Poem of the Gifts" ["Poema de los Dones"]
Dreamtigers (1960)