Spinoza

by Jorge Luis Borges
translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel

The Jew's translucent hands
Shape the crystals in the twilight.
And the dying evening is all fear and chill.
(In the evenings, evenings are the same).
His hands and the hyacinth's space
Paling at the purview of the ghetto
Are almost inexistent for the quiet man
Dreaming a clear labyrinth.
Fame does not perturb him, that reflection
Of dreams in another kind of dream,
Nor the girls' fearful love.
Free of metaphor, free of myth
He shapes a rigid crystal: the infinite
Map of the One that is All Its stars.

SOURCE: Borges, Jorge Luis. “Spinoza,” translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel, in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence [v. 2] by Yirmiyahu Yovel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. vi.

"Spinoza" poem by Jorge Luis Borges,
translated by Richard Howard & César Rennert

"Baruch Spinoza" — poem by Jorge Luis Borges

“Spinozo” de Jorge Luis Borges, tradukis Julius Balbin

"Descartes" by Jorge Luis Borges

“To Spinoza” by Friedrich Nietzsche

"Spinoza, the First Secular Jew?" by Yirmiyahu Yovel

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web

Spinoza & Marxism: Selected Bibliography (with Basic Spinoza Web Guide)

Offsite:

Spinoza (Borges’ poem in Spanish)

Borges: Spinoza's Sonnet
(Borges introduces himself in English, recites poem in Spanish)

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