"The Aleph" (1945)

I haven't read that much by Jorge Luis Borges so I don't know how typical "The Aleph" may be, but it's pretty good. Much of the story is spent on the first-person narrator (named "Borges") and his awkward relationship with a mediocre poet who is also the cousin of a woman he (the narrator) loved deeply and ridiculously. She is dead at the time of the story. The narrator gives examples of the poet's work along with the poet's own analyses. He's mocking how the poet dotes on his own work. It does seem mediocre, although of course he is celebrated and beloved by the story's end. The word "Aleph" does not even appear until well into the story. An Aleph is a very strange thing. The poet claims there is one in his basement. By this point the narrator has decided the poet is merely a nut, but he forces the issue on the Aleph and says he's coming over to see it. It's a lot of setup and foreshadowing and while it pays off for me I'm not sure it would for everyone. An Aleph, as Borges describes it, "is one of the points in space that contains all other points." Borges describes its physical presence as little more than an inch in diameter, so about the size of a ping-pong ball. His willingness and ability to attempt describing the sensation of seeing everything in the universe at once is what makes this story, along with all the effortless transitions from the mundane to the exalted and back again. The narrator's precious moments with the Aleph have imposing religious implications—experiences like this are what change lives and start churches. It's comical in a way how little it seems to affect the narrator. He won't even give the poet the satisfaction of admitting he saw it. But he saw it—he can't help but give us, anyway, the satisfaction of a narrative account. He saw it and his life has been changed by it. Borges is not generally considered a genre writer but he has obvious parallels with M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, and other bibliophile types. They are all notably fascinated by obscure texts, old books in libraries, and the study of literature, all the way down to the minutia of scholarship and citations. Borges feels a little sardonic here about the poet's fine points of erudition whereas Lovecraft is generally more focused on pumping up the cosmic wonder. What's really great about this story are the contrasts, from the petty lives of the narrator and his cousin to the trippy ecstasies of the little portal to everything. Borges doesn't tease the Aleph hard at all, beyond the title, but holds it back to the last third, and it's about perfect that way.

The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.