Ralph Dumain: "The Autodidact Project": Poem: "Spinoza" by Jorge Luis Borges

Spinoza

by Jorge Luis Borges

The Jew's hands, translucent in the dusk,
polish the lenses time and again.
The dying afternoon is fear, is
cold, and all afternoons are the same.
The hands and the hyacinth-blue air
that whitens at the Ghetto edges
do not quite exist for this silent
man who conjures up a clear labyrinth—
undisturbed by fame, that reflection
of dreams in the dream of another
mirror, nor by maidens' timid love.
Free of metaphor and myth, he grinds
a stubborn crystal: the infinite
map of the One who is all His stars.

(translated by Richard Howard, César Rennert)

SOURCE: Borges, Jorge Luis. "Spinoza," in Borges, A Reader: A Selection from the Writings of Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid (New York: Dutton, 1981), p. 285.

See also translation by Willis Barnstone in Borges' Selected Poems, edited by Alexander Coleman. (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 229.

There is another poem on Spinoza by Borges in the Coleman anthology: "Baruch Spinoza" (translated by Willis Barnstone; from The Unending Rose), p. 383.

"Baruch Spinoza" — poem by Jorge Luis Borges

"Zu Spinozas Ethik" (On Spinoza's Ethics) — poem by Albert Einstein

Heinrich Heine on Spinoza and Our Lenses

Heinrich Heine on Leibniz & Spinoza

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

Spinoza’s World-View by A. M. Deborin

Spinoza's Attributes by Constantin Brunner

"The Congress" by Jorge Luis Borges

A Taxonomy of Surreal Taxonomists by Prentiss Riddle

The Cyclical Night: Irony in James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges by L. A. Murrilo

Offsite:

Spinoza (Borges poem in Spanish)

"Borges and I" (Borges)

Spinoza in Borges' looking-glass by Marcelo Abadi

Jorge Luis Borges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Borges: Garden of Forking Paths

Borges Center at The University of Iowa

CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 16 July 2006