By this time, you probably all received Google’s tweet, saw today’s Doodle on Google’s homepage, as well as read the post by Chloe Albanesius on PCMag, or this other one by Alison Flood on The Guardian.
So good posts, actually, that we hardly need another one. But Jorge Luis Borges wasn’t afraid of huge bibliographies, and I really like the idea of Google paying homage to him.I hope that will be an occasion, for all of us arounf the Web, to read him again, for that’s the only true way to remember a writer.
If you haven’t read The Aleph and Other Stories, you should find time to immerse yourself in these stories. You will find the time, actually: that’s one of Borges’ deepest magic.
That’s, basically, shamefully basically, a book about stories. How stories live, and die, and shape the people who read them, as well as the ones who wrote them, and the books in which they are written.
That’s also a place, an intricate and labyrinthine place, where you will meet great characters, historical ones, mythical ones, imaginary ones, and stop being sure there’s a difference between them. You’ll meet Homer himself, the great scholar Averroes, Christian heretics, Nazi criminals, Babylonian Kings, and Asterion.
You don’t know who Asterion is? Please don’t look for him on the Web. You would uncover him, of course, and deprive yourself of the pleasure of reading “The House of Asterion”, one of Borges’ stories dearest to me.
Read it, and the other ones.
And if you ever come to visit me in Geneva, pay a visit to Borges’ grave in the Cimetière des Rois (Cemetary of Kings, not exclusively Babylonian ones). It’s one of the most peaceful and gracious cemetaries I ever saw.
