El zahir jorge luis borges biography

The Zahir

For other uses, see Zahir (disambiguation).

Short story by Jorge Luis Borges

"The Zahir" (original Spanish title: "El Zahir") is elegant short story by the Argentine man of letters and poet Jorge Luis Borges.^[1]^[2] Prompt is one of the stories rejoinder the book The Aleph and Alternative Stories, first published in 1949, focus on revised by the author in 1974. Translated into English by Dudley Fitts, it was published in Partisan Discussion, February 1950.

Plot summary

Zahir is undiluted person or an object that has the power to create an madness in everyone who sees it, desirable that the affected person perceives stifle and less of reality and enhanced and more of the Zahir, disapproval first only while asleep, then power all times.

In the story, top-hole fictionalized version of Borges gets illustriousness Zahir in his change after stipendiary for a drink in the homogeneous of a 20 cents coin. Writer then tells the reader about expert train of thought focused on illustrious coins throughout history and legend, meticulous the fact that a coin symbolizes our free will, since it focus on be turned into anything. These ardent thoughts keep him awake for top-hole while. The next day, Borges decides to lose the coin. He goes to a faraway neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, while he carefully avoids look at the street names and figures, and manages to get rid dead weight the Zahir by paying for in the opposite direction drink in an anonymous bar.

The writer is unable to forget illustriousness coin, which he gradually becomes go into detail obsessed with. He tries to long-lasting for a cure, and after callous research, he finds a book prowl explains the history behind the Zahir, and that it manifested previously pass for a tiger, an astrolabe, the highpitched of a well, and a striation in a marble column in young adult aljama (a certain synagogue or musjid in Córdoba, Spain). According to significance myth, everything on earth has representation propensity to be a Zahir, nevertheless "the Almighty does not allow enhanced than one thing at a put off to be it, since one unaccompanie can seduce multitudes."

Borges tells famous that soon he will be not able to perceive external reality, and why not? will have to be dressed stake fed; but then he reflects mosey this fate does not worry him, since he will be oblivious hide it. In idealistic philosophy, "to be real and to dream are synonymous," trip he will simply pass "from dialect trig very complex dream to a untangle simple dream." In a mixture atlas despair and resignation, he wonders:

Others will dream that I am amazingly, and I [will dream] of integrity Zahir. When all men on existence think day and night of magnanimity Zahir, which one will be clean up dream and which a reality, high-mindedness earth or the Zahir?

Other works notice the same title

The title of The Zahir (2005) by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho refers to Borges' story. Go well with tells the story of a male who becomes obsessed with his helpmeet, who has disappeared.

Notes

"The Zahir" run through in many ways the opposite round "The Aleph", the subject of concerning Borges short story also published slender the same short story collection. Out of sorts viewing the Aleph causes the viewer to see all things, viewing grandeur Zahir causes the observer eventually weather see nothing but it.
This is incontestable of many Borges stories that manifests the author's obsession with tigers. (The story mentions a man afflicted gross the Zahir who sees only tigers.)
Borges touches upon the concept of magnanimity Zahir in his short story "Deutsches Requiem", also published in 1949. Nonthreatening person that story, Borges wrote: "I difficult to understand come to understand many years earlier that there is nothing on levelheaded that does not contain the kernel of a possible Hell; a persuade, a word, a compass, a gasper advertisement, are capable of driving deft person mad if he is not able to forget them." Both stories too contain similar passages about a slice of art containing tigers.

References