The Book of the Sand is one of the short stories published by Argentine writer Borges in 1975. In Borges' novels, the recurring themes hidden in fictional stories are often time and eternity, absurdity of existence, extinction of personality, man's exploration of his own value and hopeless pursuit of absolute truth.
His novels often express these themes through fantasy and symbol. Images such as mazes, mirrors and circles often appear in his works in the 1940s and 1950s.
Extended data:
First, the creative background
In the late 1950s, Borges gradually fell into the deep blindness of family inheritance. Because of the rhythm and rhythm of poetry, it is easy for him to write articles from memory when he is blind. Borges began to write a lot of metrical poems, and his novels were completely put aside. It was not until the 1970s that he entered the second peak of novel creation with the collection of short stories Brody Report.
Different from the first peak of novel creation, in the second peak, his novels and poems were created at the same time. Although his short stories of this period still focus on some "metaphysical private interests" that he was fascinated by all his life: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, duality, infinity, death, memory and time.
However, in terms of skills, it combines the plainness and compressibility polished by his poems at the same time, making the novels of this period, especially Sha Shu, more restrained, refined and quiet. This "style infiltration" is the most obvious.
Second, the influence of the work.
The Book of the Sand is recognized as the pinnacle of his second novel creation peak in his later years, and Borges himself even surpassed any of his masterpieces similar to South and Garden with Bifurcated Paths in the first novel creation peak in the 1940s.
The reason why The Book of the Sand can have a great shock in readers' minds is that it packages a highly fantastic story in an ordinary and unpretentious form. In other words, it successfully tells a complete lie with highly credible narrative skills.
Here, lies are not derogatory, because according to Borges' descendant and Peruvian writer Vargas Luesa, all novels are lies, but superb novels are by no means "cheap fiction, insignificant magic", but make lies real enough to "fill the gap left by the lack of life", which may be "constant doubts about this life and the afterlife".
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