Borges, the poem and the book : a study of Historia de la noche and La cifra.

Abstract

First paragraph: Introduction The first outstanding figure of the twentieth century, arguably the most important of all in Latin America, and certainly the best known outside, is Jorge Luis Borges. Jorge Luis Borges is undeniably the most significant writer to have emerged in Latin America. His fame and popularity, among both critics and readers, stems from his highly cultivated literary style. The salient feature of this style is the precision with which he manipulated language. This precision, which led him to use plain words rather than striking ones, was paralleled by the thematic precision which led him to select a small number of themes. 2 These few themes, however, he made his own: labyrinths, eternity, the paradoxes of philosophy, the problematic nature of the universe and literature itself. The latter is perhaps the major theme in Borges' work. For this reason, any study of Borges is a study of literature itself.