El orden del Aleph
Madrid: Editorial Candaya, (Candaya Abierta, 13), 2021. First Edition. Paperback. 349p., photos, facsimiles, bibl., indices, wrps. New. Item #78422
ISBN: 9788418504396
"El Orden del Aleph" is an exploration of the aesthetics of Jorge Luis Borges based on his most famous story, in a reading that interweaves philology, cartography, philosophy and history to reveal the original sources of the story and its final intuitions. in particular those related to the historical context in which it was written, in 1945, as a response – melancholic but hopeful – to the horrors of its time: the Holocaust, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the World War that was coming to an end .
In this compendium of stories, references, discoveries, games of mirrors and mysteries, Gustavo Faverón puts himself in the shoes of one of the most interesting characters in the Borgean universe, Erik Lönnrot, the protagonist of "Death and the compass", to decipher , like a bookish detective, what Borges hides in the metaphorical and symbolic universe of "El Aleph". In this way we go through, from the work of the Argentine author, hidden clues in The Thousand and One Nights , The Divine Comedy , the Bible , Anatomy of Melancholy or Hamlet ; or in the work of authors and historical figures such as Tycho Brahe, Thomas Browne, Benedetto Croce, Thomas De Quincey, Edgar Allan Poe or Franz Kafka.
"El Orden del Aleph" is a labyrinth, and at the same time it is a map that helps us walk through the labyrinths of Jorge Luis Borges's literature and it is also a generous exercise in shared reading, a look at the connections that emerge when we look at «that secret and conjectural object… the inconceivable universe.
Price: $44.90