Borges

Thinking over the post I placed up yesterday, I've decided I'd like to expand a little bit on the subject of Borges.

Borges is, for me, one of the most powerful and important writers whose work I've yet encountered (I readily admit to being less well read than I'd like to be). Rather than writing a long polemic about the beauty of his wording or the intrigue, implications and profundity of his ideas, I'd like to simply illustrate my belief with another quote:

There was no one inside him; behind his face (which even in the bad paintings of the time resembles no other) and his words (which were multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a dream someone had failed to dream.

This sentence is the opening from his piece Everything and Nothing found in Collected Fictions and Dreamtigers (I recommend the Andrew Hurley translation of the former). In my opinion, it demonstrates perfectly the power of Borges' writing, and indeed the reasons why I love his work.