Ratings20
Average rating4.4
In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand". As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author. At the beginning of the story, he is mourning the recent death of a woman whom he loved, named Beatriz Viterbo, and resolves to stop by the house of her family to pay his respects. Over time, he comes to know her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet with a vastly exaggerated view of his own talent who has made it his lifelong quest to write an epic poem that describes every single location on the planet in excruciatingly fine detail. Later in the story, a business on the same street attempts to tear down Daneri's house in the course of its expansion. Daneri becomes enraged, explaining to the narrator that he must keep the house in order to finish his poem, because the cellar contains an Aleph which he is using to write the poem. Though by now he believes Daneri to be quite insane, the narrator proposes without waiting for an answer to come to the house and see the Aleph for himself. Left alone in the darkness of the cellar, the narrator begins to fear that Daneri is conspiring to kill him, and then he sees the Aleph for himself: "On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand..." Though staggered by the experience of seeing the Aleph, the narrator pretends to have seen nothing in order to get revenge on Daneri, whom he dislikes, by giving Daneri a reason to doubt his own sanity. The narrator tells Daneri that he has lived too long amongst the noise and bustle of the city and spent too much time in the dark and enclosed space of his cellar, and assures him that what he truly needs are the wide open spaces and fresh air of the countryside, and these will provide him the true peace of mind that he needs to complete his poem. He then takes his leave of Daneri and exits the house. In a postscript to the story, Borges explains that Daneri's house was ultimately demolished, but that Daneri himself won second place for the Argentine National Prize for Literature. He also states his belief that the Aleph in Daneri's house was not the only one that exists, based on a report he has discovered, written by "Captain Burton" (Richard Francis Burton) when he was British consul in Brazil, describing the Mosque of Amr in Cairo, within which there is said to be a stone pillar that contains the entire universe; although this Aleph cannot be seen, it is said that those who put their ear to the pillar can hear a continuous hum that symbolises all the concurrent noises of the universe heard at any given time. - Wikipedia.
Reviews with the most likes.
Como un vino largo que se instala en el paladar y deja un prolongado sabor en boca que muta y se transforma, los cuentos de Borges dejan una inconfundible marca tras su lectura: se instalan en tu cabeza, se pegotean en tu mente como un chicle tenaz y te acompañan durante un largo tiempo después de su lectura. Son cuentos estimulantes, que traen consigo ideas, conceptos, reflexiones que invitan al pensamiento y a la reflexión.
Si bien me gustó más Ficciones (no hay día que no evoque a Tlön), El Aleph es una cosa impresionante. El inmortal y El Aleph son sin dudas el plato fuerte, pero tengo especial debilidad por La casa de Asterión y Biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz desde que los leí allá por cuarto año del secundario. La grata sorpresa fue El zahir, un cuento que no es de los más renombrados pero que me encantó.
Es muy interesante el ejercicio de volver a la lectura de Borges después de tantos años. La relectura confirma sin dudas la repetida fórmula de que se requiere cierta madurez literaria para disfrutar mejor a Borges, que es tan cierta como que leer a Borges es bueno a cualquier edad y en cualquier circunstancia.
Ha sido un viaje muy interesante, han habido cuentos donde crecí, aprendí, me confundí pero más que todo, explore a un autor de tan alto nivel, quien me dejo algo sediento de más.
Bastante interesante este libro y sus diferentes cuentos, te deja a pensar, te motiva a investigar.
Though his tales are packed with philosophical ruminations, Borges is first of all an inveterate story teller, whether it's a simple tale of revenge or the history of the hidden face of God. His stories often feature a sense of uncertainty which lends them a certain immediacy, as if they were ancient legends, now distorted by time, or police reports, with caveats where the teller bumps up against the limits of knowledge–but the best of these combine a sense of both, linking the mythic to the procedural, the infinite to the particular.