Notes from my terminal

Jorge Luis Borges

"Though so different in style, two writers have offered us an image for the next millennium: Joyce and Borges. The first designed with words what the second designed with ideas: the original, the one and only World Wide Web. The Real Thing. The rest will remain simply virtual."
-- Umberto Eco

Richard Osinga pointed to Argentine writer Jorge L. Borges in his comment on the Schopenhauer entry. And rightly so: Borges is much too unknown given that he is such a great influence for other writers like Umberto Eco, Thomas Pynchon or Salman Rushdie.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 24, 1899 where he also died on June 14, 1986, Borges spent a great part of his life travelling (the fact that he grew up learning English before Spanish might have helped). After his return to Argentina, he got in trouble with the Peronist government, but was reestablished later, becoming the director of Argentina's National Library. At this time, he was almost completely blind, but wouldn't stop publishing poems and stories: "I speak of God's splendid irony in granting me at one time 800,000 books and darkness."

Regarding Eco's quote that Borges was the first who came up with the idea of the World Wide Web, I strongly feel the same. Read Borge's famous story "The Library of Babel" (it's online, of course) and it's almost scary to see how much of what we call the Internet today is present in his story from 1941. Among other aspects such as the Kabbala and mysticism and great story-telling, of course...

Posted by jens at September 25, 2003 09:24 PM | TrackBack