Provinces of Being: Annihilation of Self and poetic invention in Jorge Luis Borges

Abstract

This essay studies the annihilation of personal Self undertaken by Jorge Luis Borges in his first two essay works and its lasting consequences on the way in which literature is practiced and conceived. Borges appropriates an experience granted by Hume’s philosophy with the purpose of putting an end to “self idolizing Aesthetics”: personal Self can’t be an object for literature because it doesn’t have any reality. Poetry is the invention of a real object and an object is real only if it is a public object, “an artefact” which allows “the addition of Provinces toBeing”.Butthisinventionisonlypossibleif,atthesametime,poetrycreatesanindividual Self that gives up on being merely personal; the Self, as any object, is real just as long as it is public. This Self removes itself from time; not only from successive time (Hume) but also from duration (Bergson), and reveals itself in an “infinite instant”, privileged object in borgean literature. Lastly, we will discuss the opinion according to which Borges considers philosophy as a branch of fantastic literature. On the contrary, metaphysics, following its own procedures, creates realities, or even better, reality as a whole, ideal to which every literature aims for and that Borges will never stop celebrating.