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Borges meets Ireneo Funes on a trip to Uruguay. One day, Funes has a horse-riding accident and is left paralyzed. He hears that Borges has brought Latin books to Uruguay and asks to borrow them. When Borges goes to retrieve them, he spends the night talking with Funes, who has developed a “prodigious” memory since his accident. He now spends his days lying in a dark room, learning languages, and developing a new number system. Two years after Borges’s night with Funes, Funes dies at the age of 19.
Ireneo Funes Quotes in Ficciones
The Ficciones quotes below are all either spoken by Ireneo Funes or refer to Ireneo Funes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
9. Funes, The Memorious
Quotes
For nineteen years, he said, he had lived like a person in a dream: he looked without seeing, heard without hearing, forgot everything—almost everything. On falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front).
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Ireneo Funes Quotes in Ficciones
The Ficciones quotes below are all either spoken by Ireneo Funes or refer to Ireneo Funes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
9. Funes, The Memorious
Quotes
For nineteen years, he said, he had lived like a person in a dream: he looked without seeing, heard without hearing, forgot everything—almost everything. On falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front).
