Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges, born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899, was an Argentine poet and prose writer. Bilingual in English and Spanish at an early age, Borges was a well-read child despite not receiving formal schooling until he was nine years old. In 1914, Borges moved to Switzerland with his family, where he attended the Collège de Genève. After completing his education, Borges and his family moved to Spain, where he became associated with Ultraism—an avant-garde literary movement initiated in Spain in 1919. Borges is credited with introducing it to South America in 1921, when he returned to Buenos Aires.
In that same year, Borges founded the poetry serial Prisma, which ran for just two issues, in addition to other short-lived magazines. His first collection of poems, Fervor de Buenos Aires [Fervor of Buenos Aires] was published by Imprenta Serrantes in 1923. Between 1923 and 1930, Borges published primarily poetry and essays, including Luna de enfrente [Moon Across the Way] (Editorial Proa, 1925) and Cuaderno San Martín [San Martín Copybook] (Cuadernos del Plata, 1929).
Perhaps best known for his short stories, Borges is the author of many collections of fiction including Labyrinths (New Directions, 1962); Ficciones [Fictions] (Editorial Sur, 1944), which, in 1962, would be his first book translated into English; and El Aleph [The Aleph] (Editorial Losada, 1949).
An outspoken opponent of the Peronist regime, in 1950, Borges was elected president of SADE, the Society of Argentine Writers, and, following the deposition of Juan Perón in 1955, was appointed director of the Argentine National Library, where he would remain until 1973. Additionally, Borges was elected to the Argentine Academy of Letters and served as a professor of English and American literature at the University of Buenos Aires.
By this time in his life, Borges had become completely blind—the progression of a hereditary affliction from which his father had also suffered. He continued his work via dictation and published at the same rate he had prior, averaging around a book a year. This consistent output included many collections of prose and poetry, such as El libro de arena [The Book of Sand] (Emecé Editores, 1975); El oro de los tigres [The Gold of the Tigers] (Emecé Editores, 1972); and Elogio de la sombra [In Praise of Darkness] (Emecé Editores, 1969).
Borges was the recipient of numerous awards, one of his first being the National Prize for Literature (Argentina) in 1956. That same year, he received an honorary doctorate, his first of many, from the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. In 1961, he was awarded the International Prix Formentor, alongside Samuel Beckett. His other awards include the Annual Literary Award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation for his “outstanding contribution to literature”; honorary doctorates from Columbia, Oxford, and Cambridge, among other universities; the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize; and the Alfonso Reyes Prize, one of Mexico’s most prestigious cultural awards. In 1980, Borges and Gerardo Diego shared the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, considered to be the Spanish world’s highest literary accolade.
After an appointment at the University of Texas at Austin, Borges taught abroad often, including a lecture tour in Britain and nine months at Harvard as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry between 1967 and 1968.
Shortly before his death, Borges left Buenos Aires for Geneva, Switzerland. He died June 14, 1986, of liver cancer and is buried in the Plainpalais Cemetery, also known as the Cemetery of Kings.