Abstract: influence of Czech writer Franz on Jorge Luis Borges has often been noted. Critics suggest that Borges first came across Kafka's writings some rime around 1917 when his family was in Geneva and Borges was immersing himself in German Expressionism (Conversations 213). However, unlike many of his other early infatuations, was to remain an abiding presence throughout Borges's career. Borges translated Kafka's parable Before Law for weekly El Hogar in 1938 and a selection of Kafka's stories in book form as La metamorfosis same year. Borges himself spoke of influence of upon his first attempts to write fiction, and even of his attempts directly to imitate aspects of Kafka's work, which we might see in his use of non sequiturs, introduction of logical gaps within his narratives and way initial premises gradually expand into vast and unchecked conspiracies. Borges even directly pays homage to in one of his stories by naming sacred latrine that would permit access to all-powerful Company in The Lottery of Babylon Qaphqa, which phonetically spells out word Kafka (Collected Fictions l04). It is a connection that Borges's commentators have not been slow to recognize, with many devoting considerable pages to relationship between two authors. Typical is Gene Bell-Villada, who in his Borges and His Fiction seeks to show on a thematic level how Borges's The Library of Babel and The Lottery of Babylon follow such stories as The Great Wall of China and Josephine Singer, or Mouse Folk in their portrayal of a remote or imaginary society whose quaint absurdities dimly but unmistakably evoke our own. Or on a stylistic level Beatriz Sarlo in her Jorge Luis Borges: A Writer on Edge speaks of way that Borges seeks to imitate in the perfection of his plot, in its simplicity and in nightmarish accumulation of minor and uncertain details and repetitions.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot