El Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges: summary and analysis of the story

The story The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges is one of the most emblematic of this Argentine author. The interest aroused by it reaches such a point that it is considered a cult tale in the community of intellectuals. There is more than one reason for that.

In addition to showing his erudition, Borges outlines in this story his style as a narrator of fantastic stories and delves into one of his great concerns: infinity. Let's try together to get closer to the meaning of this story.

Summary of the story The Aleph

The story The Aleph it is related by a first-person narrator called "Borges", a name that is only discovered up to the middle of the text. This fictional Borges begins by recounting the state of things after the death of Beatriz Viterbo, whom he had loved without being reciprocated. Borges only had to keep intact, as much as possible, the world and the customs associated with his relationship with Beatriz.

This is how he intends to visit the old house of Beatriz's family on each anniversary of her. During these visits, the narrator establishes a relationship with the woman's first cousin, named Carlos Argentino Daneri.

As the custom progresses between the two, Daneri shares with Borges a series of poems that he has written, hoping that he will convince an important writer to prolong them. For Borges, they are chaotic and cacophonic poems. However, feeling compromised he makes her believe that he will talk to the writer.

Months later, Borges receives a call from Daneri that will change everything. This tells him that the old house will be demolished. It is there when he reveals his secret: in the basement is an Aleph, a point from which the entire universe can be seen simultaneously, and from which he needs to write.

In the name of Beatriz's memory, Borges agrees that the house cannot be demolished. But also, he is intrigued to know if the Aleph really exists or if Carlos is crazy.

Upon arriving at the place, Borges discovers that the Aleph can be seen from step nineteen in the basement, a circumference of just a few centimeters in diameter that allows him to see everything.

The Aleph hides an infinite microcosm within itself. Whoever sees through the Aleph, afterwards cannot be surprised at anything, because in an instant he will have seen everything. It only remains to hope that the shadow of oblivion passes, unfailingly, through the human mind.

Daneri approaches Borges to know his impression: Borges prefers to remain silent. He knows that he has been touched forever. He recommends that Carlos leave the house, go to the country and heal his ills there. He leaves the place and they never see each other again.

The house is finally demolished and, some time later, Borges discovers that Carlos Argentino Daneri has received a literary award for his poem, while he has not received a single vote.

From then on, Borges can only conjecture: what he and Daneri saw was a true Aleph? This is how fictional Borges begins to build a series of references and theories about the existence of the Aleph.

Story analysis The Aleph

The story The Aleph it is framed literarily in what is known as Latin American fantastic literature. The term is very ambiguous, as it has been given more than one use.

RoughlyFantastic literature is one in which an extraordinary, unlikely and disturbing element emerges, which may or may not be magical, and which makes the story transform. The fantastic story conceived in this way makes both the fictional character and the reader participate simultaneously in the doubt.

The narrator begins by evoking the memory of Beatriz. She functions as the force that mobilizes and presses the strings that entangle the story. The memory of her, her phantasmagoria, is what envelops the two main characters, Borges and Carlos, in a dynamic of empty customs where they will find something extraordinary and disturbing.

The author uses different resources to involve the reader in this rarefied universe: everything happens routinely and in a sad and serene atmosphere.

Suddenly, the reader discovers in the middle of the story that the main character is Borges himself. With this, the writer plays with verisimilitude and sows doubt in the reader, forcing him to participate in the concern about the fantastic. He exposes, outright, the great dilemma: is there really a separation between reality and fiction?

As soon as the reader knows that the narrator-character is Borges, he also discovers the Aleph through the character's gaze. The disturbance cannot be greater. Borges has concentrated both discoveries for the reader in a single sequence.

This Aleph is a kind of circumference from which the universe can be seen simultaneously from all possible angles. It is thus a brief access to infinity, a microcosm that reveals all the angles of existence. But that look is impossible to reproduce for literature, and Borges knows it.

When trying to describe what the Aleph has shown you, the words cannot seem more than chaotic and disconnected, since the narrative can only represent one thing at a time, one succession of events, totally diluting the possibility of approaching the principle of simultaneity (perhaps this could explain the chaotic poems of Carlos Argentino Daneri).

But the concern raised by the fictional Borges does not stop there. Are there other Alephs in the universe? Where did Carlos get that name from? This is how Borges puts us in relation to the symbol of the Aleph.

The aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. According to what was stated by Jaime Alazraki in Narrative and criticism of our Latin America, this letter corresponds to the spiritual root of all letters and, therefore, of all human speech.

Inasmuch as this was the first letter heard in God's revelation, it is supposed to express his will and the contained universe. Thus, in the Kabbalah, the aleph is a vital principle, an energy that encompasses all possibilities.

The Aleph as a story it forms a trilogy of stories together with The Zahir Y God's writing, each of which focuses its attention on a microcosmic element, a kind of pantheistic reference, from which the universe is accessed in different ways.

Each of these stories is based, in turn, on Borges' knowledge of religions, which he values ​​and respects for the set of images and symbols that provide humanity to understand the depth of the existence.

About the author Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges is an Argentine writer who was born in 1899 and died in 1986. He was widely valued throughout the world due to the universality of his approaches in literature.

It is known that he had Anglo-Saxon and Portuguese descent. Because of all these influences, he grew up bilingual (Spanish / English) at home, and learned other languages ​​on his own.

From a very young age he had shown extraordinary abilities in writing.

While his first post was Fervor of Buenos Aires, published in 1924, his consecration as a writer would not come until 1935, when he published Universal history of infamy.

He worked as a librarian, English teacher, and lecturer in the days when Perón ruled over Argentina. After the fall of Peronism, he was appointed as director of the National Library.

At 55 years of age, he is totally blind. From that moment on, it will be his student and assistant María Kodama who will help him develop his work. As time passed, Kodama became his wife.

He received the Formentor awards in 1961 and Miguel de Cervantes in 1979. However, he never received the Nobel Prize.

Given that for many experts Borges had plenty of merits to obtain this world award, some argue that the decision was based on the political position of the writer and not on his merits. It is known that Borges had a right-wing perspective on politics and that he opposed Peronism in Argentina.