Victoria Gornopolskaya

“The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim,” by Gorge Luis Borges was quite the tangled web. It is centered on a law student trying to find Al-Mu’tasim after he kills an unknown man. It is through this pilgrimage that the law student hopes to find new meaning and begin to live his life more purposefully. However the story ends on a cliffhanger and we never find out the impact that the meeting actually had on the law student. What we do know is that Al-Mu’tasim appears different for those of a different religion, making him this universal god to all mankind. At the end of the story it questions whether the meeting actually did occur and whether Al-Mu’tasim was the man that the law student killed during the riot. All of this is possible considering the way Borges uses his creativity to mold new worlds with some very interesting characters.

In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, Borges sensationalizes Pierre Menard for reinventing the story of “Don Quixote”, originally written by Miguel Cervantes. It is unclear whether Menard is an artist or a writer, or both; but one thing is for sure, he wrote a much better version of Cervantes’s work according to the narrator. I believe Pierre Menard is a liar and a thief because of his merit-less actions. If he were that great a writer he could have certainly written something great on his own. This shows me that as an author you have to be careful when you send out your novel overseas, because it may get lost in translation.