Customer Reviews

El Aleph

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Borges is perhaps one of the only writers in the world who deserved to get a nobel price and never did. His book The Aleph is a short stories book (Borges never wrote novels, he thought if there was something to be said it could be said in a short story) with many interesting and different subjects. The short story The Aleph, takes the reader to an abstract and surreal place in the corner of a basement, where the world can be observed, much like the feeling of our everyday lives, when we discover a little thing that will let us escape from daily rutine for a second. The book is easy to read and the stories are easy to follow . They stole all my time and I found myself taking time from work, homework, and other duties just fo finish reading a story, that otherwise would live in my head for days. Knowing Borges' style and having read other magical realism authors as well as some modern literature might make it more enjoyable as there is constant references to religion, physics, metaphysics, cabala, etc. This book may not change the way you live your life, but it will bring you a smile during traffic hour when you stop thinking about the bumper ahead, and you become obsessed with finding "The Aleph"

Trying to full describe the writings of Jorge Luis Borges is like trying to explain exactly why Leonardo da Vinci's art still captivates. The man wrote works of art.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" includes several of Borges' stories, with all sorts of surreal twists in a seemingly ordinary world. But this collection is a shining example of why people enjoy Borges -- magical, rich in language, and lets us glimpse the minds of anything and anyone he can conjure up.

The title story involves a sort of fictional version of Borges, who makes regular pilgrimages to the house of a woman he loved, and encounters her slightly nuts first cousin Daneri, who is composing a horrible epic poem describing the whole world. When Daneri's house is threatened, he reveals how he's composed the poem -- the Aleph, which he discovered as a child, and he allows Borges to catch a glimpse of... everything.

The other stories have tales of heretics and holy men, of a man's last days awaiting an assassin's bullet, of a girl who coldly seeks revenge for her father, and the Zahir (the opposite of the Aleph), which can cause an all-encompassing obsession in the one who sees it, until they shut out reality.

It's hard to even find a flaw with "The Aleph" -- Borges' writing is exquisitely detailed and atmospheric, and densely packed with philosophical pockets. The main flaw with this collection is that it's basically split into two very dissimilar styles -- some of them are short and relatively plain, while the others are dense pockets of philosophy. In fact, all the stories are based on the idea of shared experiences and infinite time, where there are no "new" experiences but only repetition.

And Borges wraps these stories in lush, digified prose that takes a little while to wade through, but the richness of the words he uses is worth it ("every generation of mankind includes four honest men who secretly hold up the universe and justify it"). And his writing takes on many different people's selves -- he even makes readers squirm by taking us into the mind of a loyal Nazi.

It's almost like another world, Borgeworld, which is almost like ours, but where magical items are hidden in the cellars, soldiers are forgotten, the Minotaur plays in his maze, and God dreams of mortal lives. The most entrancing foray into Borgeworld is "The Immortal," about a Roman soldier who goes searching for a city of immortals, and finds an ancient poet who seems very familiar.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" is a brilliant collection of Borges' exquisite stories. Magical and gritty, beautiful and haunting -- this collection should be cherished.

Borges' short stories are masterful, unique, enchanting, seducing. I cannot compare them to anything else I have read, except perhaps - very remotely - to Edgar Allan Poe. However, the most striking feature of Borges' stories is a complete and singular quest for the metaphysical in even the simplest occurence, the smallest word. Befitting then that this selection of stories is named after the story "The Aleph", about the Hebrew letter that contains the whole universe. Borges makes it possible and plausible!
Hint to first-time reader: read the first 1-2 pages of each story quickly without trying to understand and then go back and read it again from the start. Try it, it works.

PS This edition also includes "The Maker", a series of very short "vignettes" written by Borges later in his life, and not as convincing as "The Aleph".

Borges es casi un mito en el ambiente cultural y literario. Se conoce su ceguera, su vida libresca, sus amores flemáticos, algún poema fácil, pero como siempre sucede, se sabe menos de su importantísima obra. Difícil a veces, pero siempre entretenido, Borges debería ser más leído. Y "El Aleph" es un libro fundamental. Algunos cuentos, como "los teólogos", "deutches requiem" o "la escritura del dios" juegan con la filosofía con la maestría de Borges, quien hace parecer toda la filosofía occidental como simple acrobacia mental y pretexto literario. Otros mezclan la erudición borgiana con temibles compadritos argentinos y desoladas pampas (¿quién se atrevió a decir que Borges es europeizante?). Otros recrean episodios mitológicos con giros inesperados. Si uno no queda medio desarmado y desnudo después de este libro, es que ha visto demasiada televisión

No me quiero referir especificamente a El Aleph, me encantaria poder transmitirles lo fascinante que ha sido la obra y la vida de Borges.No sera de gran relevancia el primer libro de el que lean, les puedo asegurar que se van a quedar maravillados con la erudiccion Jorge Luis Borges.Les recomiendo el poema de los dones.

Borges ha planteado un mundo aparte del mundo real. Un mundo paralelo en donde se teje otro universo, ¿por qué no?, igual de verdadero, en la misma recta del tiempo, pero en otro espacio. A través de la óptica del gran mago, del demiurgo arquetípico, Borges intuye una zona en el espacio y en el tiempo, desde donde todo se puede ver, escuchar, saber. Una zona donde existe una correspondencia biunívoca entre el universo total y cada punto de esta región...aquél que descubra esta zona, podrá verlo todo, escucharlo todo, saberlo todo, poseerlo todo. La lectura del Aleph y las demás narraciones del libro del mismo nombre, lo pondrán, amigo lector, en la justa dimensión que coloca el gran maestro a sus alumnos cuando les dice sutilmente: "El que tenga ojos, que vea; el que tenga oídos, que escuche..."

Refiriéndome únicamente al único cuento que leí (el que le da nombre al libro) no creo estar cometiendo un error ni valorizando el libro por solo una parte del mismo, porque mi opinión sobre el cuento concuerda con las opiniones vertidas sobre el volumen. Verdaderamente interesante. Y sobre todo quisiera enviar un pequeño mensaje a los lectores habituales de cómics: en "La Cosa del Pantano", durante la etapa de Alan Moore, se puede encontrar un homenaje a Borges, en el capítulo en el que La Cosa encuentra a Metron y a Darskeid en el espacio. ¡Revísenlo!