"The Writing of the God" | |
---|---|
Short story by Jorge Luis Borges | |
Original title | La escritura del dios |
Country | Argentina |
Language | Spanish |
Genre(s) | Fantasy, short story |
Publication | |
Published in | Sur |
Media type | |
Publication date | February 1949 |
"The Writing of the God" (original Spanish title: "La escritura del dios", sometimes translated as "The God's Script") is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was published in Sur in February 1949, and later reprinted in the collection The Aleph . [1] [2]
The story is narrated by a Maya priest named Tzinacán, who is tortured by Pedro de Alvarado (who burned the pyramid Qaholom where the protagonist was a magician) and incarcerated, with a jaguar in the adjacent cell. Tzinacán searches for a divine script that will provide him omnipotence in the patterns of the animal's fur. While in the process of doing so, he has a dream in which he imagines himself drowning in sand, and awakes to a vision of an enormous wheel "made of water, but also of fire," which allows him to understand the patterns in the jaguar's fur. Tzinacán claims that the divine script is a formula of fourteen "apparently random" words, which upon speaking, will make his prison disappear and will set the jaguar upon Alvarado. The story ends with the narrator deciding not to say the words, however, because knowing the words has made him forget Tzinacán, whom he is content to let lie in prison. [3] [4]
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph, published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
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