Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

1972

Brasch PQ7797 B635 A29 1970

Harmondsworth: Penguin

In some modernist writing, there are non-moments or anti-epiphanies: epiphanies that do not happen. Jorge Luis Borges records one such non-moment in his short story ‘Averroes's Search.’ Borges’ Averroes (twelfth-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd) is translating Aristotle’s Poetics into Arabic, but he is struggling to define drama since he has never seen a play. Arranging elements in his story, Borges prepares his character for a moment of understanding, but Averroes fails to grasp the significance of what he has seen and heard. In this story, Borges draws on European and Eastern scholarship and literature, inventively making it new.