Jorge Luis Borges
Argentine · 1899–1986
Argentine short story writer and poet whose labyrinthine fictions transformed 20th-century literature with their explorations of infinity, time, and identity.
Wikipedia ↗“Todo hombre debe ser capaz de todas las ideas, y entiendo que en el porvenir lo será.”
Spanish
“Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be.”
“No hay ejercicio intelectual que no sea finalmente inútil.”
Spanish
“There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless.”
“El universo (que otros llaman la Biblioteca) se compone de un número indefinido, y tal vez infinito, de galerías hexagonales.”
Spanish
“The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.”
“El tiempo es la substancia de que estoy hecho. El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río.”
Spanish
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river.”
Translated by: 王永年
“Aceptamos la realidad con tanta facilidad — acaso porque intuimos que nada es real.”
Spanish
“We accept reality so readily — perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.”
“Enamorarse es crear una religión cuyo dios es falible.”
Spanish
“To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”
“Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / bajo la especie de una biblioteca.”
Spanish
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
Translated by: 王永年
“Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.”
Spanish
“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”
“Nada se edifica sobre la piedra, todo sobre la arena, pero nuestro deber es edificar como si fuera piedra la arena.”
Spanish
“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”
“Estar contigo o no estar contigo es la medida de mi tiempo.”
Spanish
“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
“Un libro es más que una estructura verbal, o que una serie de estructuras verbales; es el diálogo que entabla con su lector y la entonación que impone a su voz y las cambiantes y durables imágenes que deja en su memoria.”
Spanish
“A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory.”
“No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado.”
Spanish
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved.”
“Un escritor — y creo que en general todas las personas — debe pensar que todo lo que le ocurre es un recurso.”
Spanish
“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.”