El Inmortal Borges

Es uno de esos libros que como diría Vasconcelos: "leo de pie".




One of my favorite Books is “El Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s a great compilation of seventeen stories where the writer mixes myth, argentinean tradition, fantasy about nature of the time, personal identity, the death, life, and immortality. Although the complete book is wonderful because it reflects the surprising genius inside Borges, in my personal opinion the best story is “El inmortal”.

But before, we have to know who Jorge Luis Borges was. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 24th, 1899. He learned to read english before spanish. When he was seven years old wrote a summary of Greek Mythology, then when he was nine he translated “El príncipe feliz” by Oscar Wilde. After that he moved to Europe where he studied the High school in Ginebra during The First World War is happening (1914-1918). He lived in Spain too from 1919 to 1921 when he decided to come back to Argentina and started to publish many poems and books. In 1925 he is recognized as a vanguard leader writer. In the next thirty years he becomes “Borges” and one of the most brilliant and polemic latin american writer. He tried to make a new kind of regionalism with a metaphysical perspective of reality and then he created a fantastic or magic narrative, he made some of the greatest fiction stories of the last century like “El inmortal”. He died in Ginebra on June 14th, 1986.

The story of “El Inmortal” talks about the possibility of eternal life but… What does this idea imply? Imagine that you don’t know any language or that you know all the languages that had been created by humans through History. Imagine that every concept, every moment, every taste, every feeling, every emotion, every smile, every tear and every idea you can repeat from time to time again, forever. Borges in fact talks about the power of symbols, signs, meaning and language for humans. The language gives us the possibility of immortality, the possibility to transmit or communicate ours ideas, concepts or feelings to many generations not only to our contemporaries. Without language nothing would have meaning.

The immortals ones of Borges convert into inhuman more every time because they lost the language, they left it. The code, the language represents the finite of life, of our world, but not for them, the immortals ones, they knew every language of every culture of every century of every age. They stopped being surprised with the things, feelings and events. They already had lived every thing at less once. The closing of language was the end of their human form.

Just trough language we can to express the totality of our own experience. There is World only trough this symbolic organization that we came and which we built it. We have two options to react: the monotony of a repetitive life or the great value of every beautiful new time, the risk of uncertainly where creativity will throw us. The physic life is always mortal but we could get immortal essence trough a creative life and creative ideas.

Here I add some textual fragments of “El Inmortal” by Jorge Luis Borges (1949)


“Pensé en un mundo sin memoria, sin tiempo, consideré la posibilidad de un lenguaje que ignorara los sustantivos, un lenguaje de verbos impersonales o de indeclinables epítetos. Así fueron muriendo los días y con los días los años.”

“…en un plazo infinito le ocurren a todo hombre todas las cosas. Por sus pasadas o futuras virtudes, todo hombre es acreedor a toda bondad, pero también a toda traición, por sus infamias del pasado o del porvenir. Así como en los juegos de azar las cifras pares y las cifras impares tienden al equilibrio, así también se anulan y se corrigen el ingenio y la estolidez…”

“Existe un río cuyas aguas dan la inmortalidad; en alguna región habrá otro río cuyas aguas la borren.”

“Cuando se acerca el fin, ya no quedan imágenes del recuerdo; sólo quedan palabras. No es extraño que el tiempo haya confundido las que alguna vez me representaron con las que fueron símbolos de la suerte de quien me acompañó tantos siglos. Yo he sido Homero; en breve, seré Nadie, como Ulises; en breve, seré todos: estaré muerto.

“La muerte (o su alusión) hace preciosos y patéticos a los hombres. Éstos se conmueven por su condición de fantasmas; cada acto que ejecutan puede ser el último; no hay rostro que no esté por desdibujarse como el rostro de un sueño. Todo, entre los mortales, tiene el valor de lo irrecuperable y de lo azaroso. Entre los Inmortales, en cambio, cada acto (y cada pensamiento) es el eco de otros que en el pasado lo antecedieron, sin principio visible, o el fiel presagio de otros que en el futuro lo repetirán hasta el vértigo. No hay cosa que no esté como perdida entre infatigables espejos. Nada puede ocurrir una sola vez, nada es preciosamente precario. Lo elegíaco, lo grave, lo ceremonial, no rigen para los Inmortales. Homero y yo nos separamos en las puertas del Tánger; creo que no nos dijimos adiós.”