“In the kingdoms of England, the sound of the bells is already one of the customs of the afternoon, but the man, while still a boy, had seen the face of Woden, had seen holy dread and exultation, had seen the rude wooden idol weighed down with Roman coins and heavy vestments, seen the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he would be dead and with him would die, never to return, the last firsthand images of the pagan rites. The world would be poorer when this Saxon was no more.”
“We may well be astonished by space-filling acts which come to an end when someone dies, and yet something, or an infinite number of things, die in each death—unless there is a universal memory, as the theosophists have conjectured. There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ were closed forever. The battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of some one man. What will die with me when I die? What pathetic or frail form will the world lose? Perhaps the voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a horse in the vacant space at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?”
– Jorge Luis Borges,
from The Witness, a one-page short story.
Borges is one of the 300 Heroes of Wizard Academy.
“Borges is known as one of the most prominent figures in the magic realism literary genre, and his two most famous books, Ficciones and The Aleph — both collections of short stories – still confound and amaze readers all around the world.”
“He was also known for writing reviews of nonexistant works by other writers as well as literary forgeries, which contributed to the air of mystery which surrounded the author throughout his lifetime.”
“Although many supporters claimed he deserved one, Borges never received a Nobel Prize for literature. ‘Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me,’ he famously commented.”