Historia de la eternidad

Historia de la eternidad

Author	Jorge Luis Borges
Country	Argentina
Language	Spanish
Series	Cronology of Jorge Luis Borges
Genre	essay
Published	1936, Viau y Zona (Buenos Aires)
Pages	121
OCLC	435372797
Preceded by	A Universal History of Infamy
Followed by	Ficciones

Historia de la eternidad (in English: A History of Eternity) is the first essay book published by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, in 1936 (editio princeps).

Content

In the essay after which the book is titled, which is complemented by two others (La doctrina de los ciclos, in English: Cycles' doctrine, and El tiempo circular, in English: Circular time), the author contemplates the issues of time and eternity, from platonic, christian and nietzschean perspectives. As Borges himself states in the book's prologue, eternity

is a splendid artifice that liberates us, even if for just a few moments, from the unbearable oppression of the passage of time.^[1]

In the essays titled Los Kenningar (in English: The Kenningars) and La metáfora (in English: Metaphor), Borges analyzes that poetic resource, particularly from the point of view of the ancient Germanic epics. By comparing metaphors present in the ancient Icelandic sagas with later ones, we can observe how the same ones are repeated from one culture to another:

I see something like a reductio ad absurdum in any effort to elaborate new metaphors. Lugones and Baudelaire, I have suspected, have not faced any less failure than the courtier poets of Iceland.^[2]

In Los traductores de Las Mil y Una Noches (in English: The translators of One Thousand and One Nights) the author discusses the different old versions of the celebrated collection of oriental stories.

The book is completed by one of the Borges' most noted essay-stories, which also appears in his acclaimed Ficciones: El acercamiento a Almotásim (in English: The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim, and a short and tasteful review of satiric literature and classical insults (El arte de injuriar, in English: The Art of Insulting).

Essays

Historia de la eternidad (A history of eternity)
Las kenningar (The Kenningars)
La metáfora (Metaphor)
La doctrina de los ciclos (Cycles' doctrine)
El tiempo circular (Circular time)
Los traductores de las mil y una noches (The translators of One Thousand and One Nights):

El capitán Burton (Captain Burton)
El doctor Mardrus (Doctor Mardrus)
Enno Littmann

Two Notes:

El acercamiento a Almotásim (The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim) (short story)
El arte de injuriar (The art of insulting)

Notes

↑ Borges, Jorge Luis. Historia de la eternidad. Alianza Editorial, 1997. ISBN 84-206-3315-1 p.9-10
↑ op. cit. p.80

Jorge Luis Borges

Bibliography

Original
collections

A Universal History of Infamy	"On Exactitude in Science"

Ficciones	"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" "The Circular Ruins" "The Lottery in Babylon" "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" "The Library of Babel" "The Garden of Forking Paths" "Funes the Memorious" "The Form of the Sword" "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" "Death and the Compass" "The Secret Miracle" "Three Versions of Judas" "The End" "The Sect of the Phoenix" "The South"

The Aleph	"The Immortal" "The Dead Man" "The Theologians" "Emma Zunz" "The House of Asterion" "Deutsches Requiem" "Averroes's Search" "The Zahir" "The Writing of the God" "The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths" "The Wait" "The Aleph"

Otras Inquisiciones (1937–1952)	"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"

Dreamtigers	"Borges and I"

Dr. Brodie's Report	"The Encounter" "The Gospel According to Mark"

The Book of Sand	"The Other" "Ulrikke" "The Congress" "There Are More Things" "The Disk" "The Book of Sand"

Shakespeare's Memory	"Blue Tigers" "Shakespeare's Memory"

Other works

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Historia de la eternidad

Content

Essays

See also

Notes