In Search of Arabic Influences on Borges

T HE FICTIONAL work of Jorge Luis Borges is so meaningful as to provoke the reader into making new discoveries even after uncounted readings. The purpose of this paper is to find, if not an ultimate understanding of Borges' meaning, at least a new trail in our quest for what is probably unreachable. I suggest that there may be a connection, however tenuous, between Borges' oxymoronic thinking (a concept to be discussed below) and Arabic thought, and that, as a result of such a potential influence, Borges has produced a new element in thought, or, rather, that Borges' originality of thought may rest, in part, on this influence. In the large number of critiques and the several books on Borges,' no consideration has yet been given, as far as I have seen, to the influence on him of Arabic philosophic thought and a certain quality of a given Arabic pattern of conceptualization. He has been among the most omnivorous readers of his generation, and in his critical and fictional works he has filled almost every page with reflections on more than 3000 years of world literature, the Islamic included. Borges himself points out the reading he considers most relevant to his work,2 but he never singles out any Arabic influence on himself. Perhaps he is so deeply affected by Arabic thought that he hardly notices it-just as, according to his own words (citing Gibbon), the Koran mentions no camels because the environment in which the Koran was written was saturated with the camel (D, 156)

Arabic · Art · Linguistics · Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity · Philosophy

• Muḥammad’s Jug

  Gábor Korvin•The Arabist Budapest Studies in…•2024

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• La madre del libro

  Open Access•Lucas Adur, Lucas Martín Adur•Lingüística y Literatura•2022

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