3/18/2021 0 Comments Jorge Luis Borges Poetry
Excerpts: I have been horrified before all mirrors not just before the impenetrable glass, the end and the beginning of that space inhabited by nothing reflections, but faced with specular water, mirroring the other blue within its bottomless sky, incised at time by the illusory flight of inverted birds, or troubled by a ripple, or face to face with the unspeaking surface of ghostly ebony whose very hardness reflects, as if within a dream, the whiteness of spectral marble or a spectral rose.This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems--the largest collection of Borges poetry ever assembled in English, including scores of poems never previously translated.Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions by a remarkable cast of translators, including Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, and John Updike.
![]() With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Jorge Luis Borges Poetry Series To ProvideReaders trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Selected Poems brings together some two hundred poems - the largest collection of Borges poetry ever assembled in English, including many never previously translated. The brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched with luminous English versions. Borges sees himself first as a poet and only then as the writer of the stories that have made him famous, till the time his poems have been all but unavailable in English. Taken together, the poems distill those concerns, which famously preoccupy him in the brief ficciones. And, like the fictions, they are almost disturbingly comprehensible. Excerpts: Little by little, the beautiful universe left him behind: a stubborn mist blurred the outline of his hand, the night was emptied of stars, and the ground grew beneath his feet. When he realized he was going blind, he cried out; Stoic modesty had yet to be invented, and hector could flee unperturbed. Borges explored so many different themes in these poems however a few of the themes which are prominent throughout the collection are time, memory, blindness, age, God, mirrors; the poem The Hourglass specifically explored the theme of time in both temporal and metaphorical manner- the idea that time and fate are alike is stark proof of it. Here Borges used hourglass as symbol of cosmic time wherein the falling and rising of sand in it represents the ageing of universe humankind. Its one of the most beautiful and lyrical poems of the collection. Excerpts: Pleasure there is in watching how the sand Slowly slithers up and males a slope Then, just about to fall, piles up again With an insistence that appears quite human, The sand of every cycle is the same And infinite is the history of sand; So, underlying your fortunes and your sorrows, Yawns an invulnerable eternity. The rite of falling sand is infinite And, with the sand, our lives are leaving us. The Argentine poet had been fascinated with idea of death and God, he has explored the theme of God in the poem Chess wherein the idea that we all are acting on the moves by the creator or God if a chess board considered as a symbol for life, the logic of life cant be defined as it moves by some magic- what magic really is Something which cant be defined by our understanding of life or something which deceives us. The existential traits about nausea towards inability to control ones own life could be traced out in it, the angst and absurdness that one doesnt know that ones life is controlled by someone else- someone omnipotent- is clearly visible in the poem. Excerpts: Within the game itself the forms gives off Their magic rules: Homeric castle, knight Swift to attack, queen warlike, king decisive, Slanted bishop, and attacking pawns.. They do not know it is players hand That dominates and guide their destiny. They do not know an adamantine fate Controls their will and lays the battle plan.. God moves the player, he in turn the piece. But what god beyond God begins the round Of dust and time and sleep and agonies The fascination with Mirrors can be seen in these poems also as in case of his prose- one of the poems titled Mirrors accentuated it, the documentary The Mirror Man captures Borges s childhood fascination with mirrors and mirror-like surfaces. More than anything the boy feared another self reflected in the polished furniture and dark mirrors of the house.
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