“Borges and I”: The Cultivation of Image and Artistic Creation

Jorge Luis Borges is one of the greatest authors of all time. Writing almost exclusively short stories, he created multifarious masterpieces that combined remarkable prosaic efficiency with profound poetic beauty of text, unparalleled creativity of form, and the ideas of a genius. Among his many phenomenal works is the short (and I mean very short; its full length is less than a page’s worth of text) story “Borges and I.” 

In this story, Borges (the narrator) writes about “the other one, the one called Borges,” who is his public image, the author, translator, poet, essayist, and professor who is revered. Through the story, then, Borges reveals his understanding of the nature of authorship and of public perception.

Borges sees the author as creating a facade, the one seen by readers, and this is an intrinsic aspect of being an author; that is to say, it is not merely authors who deliberately and methodically cultivate a persona who develop one, but rather all authors as they speak through their work. However, there is certainly a reality to the effect of fame on this image: as society admires the author to a greater extent (and as the author’s financial situation necessitates it), the author is forced to interact more with society, and in doing so must be seen by others as a certain kind of person.

Reflecting on his career, Borges sees that he (the narrator) is increasingly subsumed under him (the author), such that he (the narrator) now recognizes himself “less in his [Borges, the author’s] books than in many others.” Thus, the act of artistic creation involves another dimension, the creation of an image, leading to an irony: just as the author creates a work through which people can recognize themselves (as evidenced by the narrator’s ability to see himself in other authors’ works), he or she becomes a different person.

Moreover, esotericism fails as an escape: Borges as the narrator reveals that he sought refuge in “the games with time and infinity” (a reference to Borges’s brilliant short stories on those subjects), but that those “belong to Borges now.” Thus, even an attempt to leave one’s public image merely adds to it; we as readers come to realize that even our experience of “Borges and I” is one in which we form an image of the person writing it, an image which is categorically distinct from the subjective reality of the one writing the story.

In the end, then, the relationship between the artist and those who experience his or her art is not symmetric: the artist shares ideas with (say) the reader, but in so doing creates an image of his or her nature in the reader’s mind, which then becomes the person with whom the reader interacts. 

Thus, the artist communicates a self-image to the reader; yet because this self-image is different from the author him-or-herself, the reader does not interact with the author, but rather with the facade cultivated by the author (deliberately or otherwise). 

Moreover, as the author gains fame and attention, his or her public image becomes increasingly distinct from the interior reality, and this becomes an inescapable trap, as every one of his or her actions or creations that is observed by others becomes a part of his or her public image and is thus almost blocked off from becoming a part of his or her interior reality.