A Reflection on Jorge Luis Borge's "Borges and I"

A Reflection on Jorge Luis Borge's "Borges and I"

As I read this week’s assignments I found myself drawn to the beautiful descriptions in Alan Lightman’s “Einstein’s Dreams,” and to the transcendent journey that Jean Rhys describes in “I used to live here once,” yet Jorge Luis Borges “Borges and I” spoke to me in unexpected ways. 

However, while this short story resonated with me, I struggle to explain exactly why. Perhaps it is the universality that this story carries as it explores what it means to have an identity? Or perhaps it is the ambiguity and strangeness with which the narrator describes the relationship between these two “selves”? But what I think really struck me was how this conflict very specific to Borges—between his private self and pubic self—is in essence a meditation of what is means to be human. Can this duality between a private “I” and a public “I” co-exist or does the public self eventually take over your identity? I was also mesmerised by how such simple language could be used to capture such complexities, paradoxes and uncertainties. At a time where I begin to make decisions about my future Borges’ meditation on ones identity made me realise how easy it is to get lost in ones career and let oneself become defined by who one is to the public sphere. The short story ends with the striking sadness that accompanies the realisation that to the narrator “life leaks away and I lose everything, and everything passes into oblivion, or to my other.” Through "Borges and I" I am left with the lingering irony that one can become powerless in defining one's own identity.