Language:
English
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
Angaben zur Quelle:
82,4 (2001) 785-794
Keywords:
Borges, Jorge Luis,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
After discussing Freud's concept of negation and recent approaches to symbolization and functions of fiction, proceeds to discuss Borges' short story "El milagro secreto" ("The Secret Miracle", 1943), in which a writer of Jewish ancestry is murdered by the Nazis in Prague, in March 1939, because he signed a petition opposing the "Anschluss" in Austria in 1938. The nightmare reality is accentuated and undermined by dreams, and time is confused. Human freedom and rationality are questioned, as is human creativity in the face of lawlessness and arbitrariness that lead to death. The reader is left perplexed by Borges' subversive narrative technique, which uses negation to suggest unspeakably horrendous reality. Contends that Borges' art of continually moving between reality and fantasy is an appropriate way to write fiction about the Holocaust.
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