Book Review: "The Aleph and Other Stories" by Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges has written so many great books over his lifetime and in my own time, I have read a few of them. I have read Fictions, Labyrinths and The Library of Babel and yet, I am no closer to discovering the true message of Borges' works. He is seriously a man of mystery and a man whom I think is trying to teach us about the more compassionate aspects of the human condition through riddles, puzzles and paradoxes. It has, admittedly, been a while since I have read anything by Borges and so I sought to pick up a book of short stories rather than a full-length novel in order to get a better feeling of his literary life lessons and their background, of his philosophies and their roots and where in the critical literary compass he lies. I may not have answered all of these questions, but I have definitely got a better, more confident feeling of reading and re-reading Borges now that The Aleph and Other Stories is over.

"At my age, one should be aware of one's limits, and this knowledge may make for happiness. When I was young, I thought of literature as a game of skilful and surprising variations; now that I have found my own voice, I feel that tinkering and tampering neither greatly improve nor greatly spoil my drafts. This, of course, is a sin against one of the main tendencies of letters in this century--the vanity of overwriting-- ... I suppose my best work is over." - The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

This is one of my favourite quotations from The Aleph and Other Stories because it really studies and analyses life from a point of when you get older in comparison to when you are younger. Yes, there are a change in belief systems but there is also a change in definitions. The definition of literature seems to shift from being a study to being an ability. It shifts from being a skill to being an art and it makes its way out of the academic realm and into the personal. This is something I feel is repeated in Borges' The Library of Babel as well.

The book itself is about many things. Being an anthology, it consists of many stories: a theologian, a man who has a realisation of great truth in his moments of death, a story about the Death Camps during World War 2, a puzzling story regarding a Babylonian king and finally, a story of strange misplaced wants for revenge. There are many stories in between these and each of them hold a special place in teaching us about life and the universe and how fate and choice can play a huge role in where we end up, but ultimately, some of our fates are not our own. Borges demonstrates brilliantly how we are unable to truly see where we are and yet, we keep moving through the darkness, unaware that the light may be a complete set-up by someone who wants us to fall. Maybe, it is better to stay in the dark sometimes.

To conclude, I think that the quotation to start off with beautifully encapsulates all the ideas of this anthology, it is a fact that literature becomes less of a skill and more of an art as Borges wraps puzzles in his words. Often with double meanings, untold truths and manipulative characters, Borges paints a picture of man's struggle for life as he weaves his way through history from Babylon to World War Two - meeting masses of people changed by the choices they have unwittingly made.