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?
→ Listen 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 -
Lorca
4 Jul, 2019 860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures -
Don Quixote
16 Mar, 2006 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism -
Tolstoy
25 Apr, 2002 890 Other literatures -
Samuel Beckett
17 Jan, 2019 840 French and related literatures -
Proust
17 Apr, 2003 840 French and related literatures -
The Novel
11 Nov, 1999 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism -
Sir Thomas Browne
6 Jun, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures -
Bohemianism
9 Oct, 2003 700 Arts -
Edgar Allan Poe
30 Nov, 2023 810 American literature in English
Programme ID: b0076182
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076182
Auto-category: 860 (Spanish and Portuguese literatures)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. Jorge Luis Borges, whom some consider to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, is best known for his work that plays with ideas such as identity, reality and language.