Fictions

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Fictions ( Spanish Ficciones ) is one of the most famous collections of short stories by the Argentine author and poet Jorge Luis Borges . With it the beginning of the modern Latin American fantastic literature was founded.

background

History of origin

The fictions refer to a collection of narratives that Borges wrote between 1939 and 1944. In 1941, Borges first published the second fictional anthology The Garden of Paths That Branch ( Spanish El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan ), which included a collection of seven short stories. Five years later, in 1944, the author added seven more works under the heading “Tricks” and the entire work was now called Fictions . In 1956, three more stories were added to the fictions .

content

Part One
The garden of paths that branch out
A secret society has been said to determine the fate of the people of Babylon through a lottery for centuries. But it is uncertain what influence this society has and whether it really exists.
A Chinese man works as a spy for Germany during the First World War . He meets an Englishman who has read the Chinese work The Garden of Paths That Branch . The Englishman explains to him that this confusing work is a labyrinth of symbols in which various possible courses of time are represented. Meanwhile the Chinese is about to perform a symbolic act that is supposed to convey a secret message to the German secret service.
Part two
Feats
  • Preface
  • Inexorable memory ( Funes el memorioso ) (1942)
The narrator meets a young man who has a perfect memory. He now describes the consequences of such a memory. You can remember every detail of every day and you don't have to write anything down, but since you can't forget anything, this memory is also like a garbage can.
  • The Scar ( La forma de la espada ) (1942)
  • Theme of the traitor and hero ( Tema del traidor y del héroe ) (1944)
  • Death and the Compass ( La muerte y la brújula ) (1942)
In this crime story, one of the investigators believes he sees a certain pattern in a series of three crimes. The crimes always occur on the third day of the month and the crime scenes form an equilateral triangle on the map. There is reason to believe that a fourth crime is planned. The day in Judaism begins in the evening, i.e. That is, according to this calculation, the crimes occurred on the fourth day of the month, and the triangle can be expanded to a rhombus with a fourth point . So he goes to this fourth place before the appropriate time.
  • The secret miracle ( El milagro secreto ) (1943)
The writer Jaromir Hladik is captured by the Gestapo and sentenced to death. He asks God to give him another year so that he can still complete his unfinished drama The Enemies . As he waits for the execution , the secret miracle, which is not recognizable to the environment, happens shortly before the fatal shots, that external time stands still for him, while he can work out and complete his drama in his mind for another year.
  • Three versions of Judas ( Tres versiones de Judas ) (1944)
  • The End ( El fin ) (1953)
  • The Phoenix Sect ( La secta del Fénix ) (1952)
  • The South ( El Sur ) (1953)

The stories The End , The Phoenix Sect and The South were also included in fictions in 1956 . The Argentine first edition of fictions still contained the story El acercamiento a Almotásim ( The Road to Almotásim ) published in 1936 . Borges removed them from the later editions.

Awards

The original work received the first Gran Premio de Honor de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores in 1944 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adelheid Hanke-Schaefer: Jorge Luis Borges for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-88506-987-3 , pp. 54-57.
  2. ^ Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12403-4 , p. 93.
  3. ^ Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12403-4 , p. 165.