Borges as Borges' character: the author's image in “The Other” and “August 25, 1983”

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the author image attributed to Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most important Argentine writers of the twentieth century, as perceived in his fictional work. In his short stories, Borges routinely projects representations that, in addition to coinciding with his name, replicate biographical aspects in an open way, composing a literature that, as it takes literature and its forms as the subject of uncanny stories, becomes a fiction centered on the experience of being before the literary text, either through reading or writing. Thus, a series of short stories by the author rethinks the nuances of this dynamic, especially with regard to the sometimes conflicting relationship between the intimate dimension of relationship with literature and the public and cultural dimension, in a context in which the subject performs, to some extent, under an authorial mask.  Thus, the following article takes as its object Borges' short stories, with emphasis on “The Other” and “August 25, 1983”, in order to discuss how this conflict can be represented in an scope that refers to fantastic literature and autobiographical accounts.

Keywords: fantastic; double; author; Latin American literature; short story; biography.