Ficciones Study Guide

Borges was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Growing up, his family resided in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. His mother, Leonor, came from a Uruguayan family of Spanish origin. Borges’s father, also named Jorge, was a lawyer and a novelist. The young Borges was raised bilingual in Spanish and English, and even translated an Oscar Wilde play from English to Spanish for a local publication at age 10. As his father’s eyesight began to decline, he left his law practice and moved the family to Geneva, Switzerland in 1814 to seek treatment. There, Jorge Luis learned French and German. Borges’s family stayed in Europe until 1921, when they returned to Buenos Aires. There, Borges began his literary career with a poetry collection called Fervor de Buenos Aires and with literary reviews. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he began to explore existential themes in his writing and dabbled in many genres. In the late 1930s, Borges began working as a library assistant, a position that would influence some of his most famous works. In his early 30s, Borges’s vision began to decline and, unable to spend all his time writing, he began working as a lecturer to support himself. In 1955, he became the director of the Argentine National Library. His vision continued to decline, and by the late 1950s, he was almost completely blind. He continued to write with his mother’s help as his personal secretary. In 1967, Borges married Elsa Astete Millán. However, the marriage lasted only 3 years. Afterwards, he continued to live with his mother until she died at 99. In his later years, he traveled internationally with his personal assistant María Kodama, whom he married in 1986. Borges died later in 1986, in Geneva.

Borges references many real-life historical events in Ficciones. Two of the most prominent events during Borges's lifetime were World War I and World War II. Both of these events figure largely throughout the stories. For example, in “The Garden of Forking Paths,” which is set during World War I, the narrator and main character is a German operative. This story explores the main character’s morality and motivations—because the story is told in the form of the main character’s deposition about killing a man, the reader is able to see his point of view and reflect on his actions. While the main character is committed to fulfilling his mission for his German Chief, he does feel guilty over killing a man. Furthermore, the main character and his target connect over their mutual interests—thus, Borges uses the backdrop of war to show the ways that politics and international conflict can come between human connection. Additionally, “The Secret Miracle” tells the story of a Jewish writer in 1939 condemned to be executed by the Nazis for the crime of being Jewish. In writing from the perspective of a Jewish man faced with certain death during World War II, Borges explores the emotional realities of war, persecution, and antisemitism. In doing so, Borges explores both the political and the personal experiences of those who lived through the events of World War I and World War II.

Borges references Martin Fierro, a famous Argentinian epic poem that is known as an icon of Argentine literature and was a favorite of Borges. In fact, the story “The End,” featured in Ficciones, shows a scene from the poem from an alternate point of view. Similarly, Borges’s early work of poetry, Fervor de Buenos Aires, deals with Buenos Aires as a city. Furthermore, Borges focuses nearly an entire story on Don Quixote in “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,” referencing the classic Spanish novel to ask philosophical questions about authorship, history, and psychology. Finally, critics (and Borges himself) have often identified Franz Kafka as an early influence of Borges, having discovered his writing while living as a teenager in Geneva. Borges actually wrote the introduction to the 1938 Spanish translation of The Metamorphosis.