Jorge Luis Borges and his prose Quiz

Answer: Novel and drama

The only alleged attempt of Borges to write a novel was "The Congress" which ultimately appeared as a short story in the collection "The Book of Sand" (1975). To the best of my knowledge, he never tried to compose a play.

Answer: A Universal History of Infamy

"A Universal History of Infamy" was published in 1935, while "Fictions" appeared in 1944, "The Aleph" in 1949 and "In Praise of Darkness" in 1975. His other prose collections include "The Maker" (a.k.a. "Dreamtigers", 1960), "Brodie's Report" (1970), "The Book of Sand" (1975) and "Shakespeare's Memory" (1983).

Answer: rings

For some reason Borges never showed much interest in rings (I'm not even sure if he has read J.R.R. Tolkien) but all the other symbols appear frequently in his texts. He was also fond of mirrors, chess, knives, tigers, etc.

Answer: Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) collaborated with Borges on "Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi"(1942, published under the collective pseudonym of Bustos Domecq), "Chronicles of Bustos Domecq" (1969), "Extraordinary Tales" (1971) and "New Chronicles of Bustos Domecq" (1977). Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938), a poet, short story writer and historian, committed suicide; Borges published a book about him in 1955. Silvana Ocampo, wife of Bioy Casares, just like the three others was a writer of fantastic stories and a poetess. Martin Fierro is the main character of the famous Argentinian gaucho epic by Jose Fernandez (published in two parts in 1872 and 1879) which was one of Borges's favorites.

Answer: On Heroes and Tombs

"On Heroes and Tombs" is a 1962 novel by Ernesto Sabato, a fellow Argentinian writer, in which Borges appears briefly - and rather unflatteringly - as a character. Borges's all-time favorite was J.W. Dunne's "An Experiment with Time" (which Borges admired mostly for its title), while Emanuel Swedenborg's "Heaven and Hell" (1758) and Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621) are frequently cited in Borges' texts. Borges was also very fond of "The Odyssey", "One Thousand and One Nights", "The Divine Commedy", "Don Quixote", "Martin Fierro" and the writings of Stevenson, De Quincey, Schopenhauer, Kafka, Shakespeare and Chesterton.

Answer: The compadritos (hoodlums) of Buenos Aires

The knife-wielding and tango-dancing toughs of the Palermo district of Buenos Aires (his hometown) were Borges's favorite subject at the beginning of his literary career. Gauchos were a close second, while the conquistadors and native Indians appear in Borges's oeuvre only occasionally.

Answer: A library

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." (Jorge Luis Borges, poem "The Gifts" in the collection "The Maker" (1960, published in English as "Dreamtigers".)

Answer: Death and the Compass

The plot of "Death and a Compass" is expressly based on the kabbalistic idea of the power contained in the Tetragrammaton (the four-letter name of God.) Also, one of the characters is a Jewish expert on the Kabbalah. "Deutsches Requiem" and "The Secret Miracle" contain Jewish protagonists but they are respectively a poet and a writer. "The Immortal" includes references to the myth of the Wandering Jew but without any kabbalistic overtones.

Answer: Ragnarok

Despite its title, "Ragnarok" contains no textual references to anything Nordic. The other three stories, especially "Ulrikke", are full of them.

Answer: The Zahir

"Az-zahir" (the manifest, the visible) is one of the ninety-nine names of Allah in the "Qur'an". Incidentally, in this story Borges makes one of his rare factual mistakes by mentioning "a synagogue in Cordoba" with 1,200 marble pillars - he obviously means the famous mosque (La Mezquita).

Answer: The Congress

Although all of these plots are centred around an organized group of people, the organization in "The Congress" is not really secret.

Answer: Ulrikke in "Ulrikke"

Maria Kodama confirmed this by placing an inscription signed "Ulrikke" on Borges's tombstone. Ravenna is, of course, a city in northern Italy, not a woman.

Answer: Litotes

Borges was very fond of litotes (i.e., emphasizing the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite), for example, "...one of [the tales]...is not wholly innocent of symbolism" (foreword to "Fictions"). A relatively frequent use of this rhetorical device gives Borges's prose a stoically ironic flavor.

Answer: Juan Peron and Augusto Pinochet

In the 1930s and 1940s Borges was outspokenly anti-totalitarian, thus earning an enmity of Juan Peron, the dictator of Argentina from 1945 to 1955 and again in 1973-74. However, in the 1970s Borges visited Chile, then under the rule of a military junta led by Gen. Pinochet; he also accepted honors and accolades from the ruling Argentinian junta.

This appears to have been not so much a result of deeply held political convictions as a show of naive independence of opinion.

Answer: He badly hurt his forehead which in time lead to his near-complete blindness

Although Borges's blindness seems to have been hereditary (his father became completely blind by 1937), the accident in question very likely sped up its progress. Borges received the Prix Fomentor (conjointly with Samuel Beckett) in 1961, and married Elsa Millan in 1967 (they divorced about three years later.) As for meeting his double, it could have happened - well, sort of - on August 25, 1983 (see his short story called just that.)

Answer: Inspector of poultry and rabbits in the public markets

He refused it.

Answer: He was nominated Director of the National Library in 1955

By 1955 Borges's congenital blindness was very advanced.

Answer: English

Borges's family included British ancestry, so he learned English before Spanish. On his father's side the family lineage contained some Sephardic Jewish blood but Borges never learned their language, Ladino. Learning any jargons was out of the question as Borges's family was upper middle-class.

Answer: Death and the Compass

"Death and the Compass" was filmed under the same title by Alex Cox, the director best known for "Sid & Nancy" and "The Repo Man". "The Duel" happens to be the title of an early Steven Spielberg movie which has nothing to do with Borges.

Answer: False

Deserving as he was, Borges never received a Nobel prize. This was evidently due to his rather naive support of Gen. Pinochet's regime in Chile. Well, too bad for the Nobel Prize!