Which was the most terrible moment of our life?” Then the other said, “Let’s put ourselves to the test. “I am Borges who has seen your name in the register and has climbed up to this room.” “But don’t you see that the important thing is to discover whether there is only one dreamer or two?” “I am the dreamer,” I answered with a certain defiance. The hotel in Adrogué was pulled down many years ago – twenty, maybe thirty. “Who is dreaming of whom? I know I am dreaming of you but I don’t know whether you are dreaming me. And that’s quite a trick on Borges’s part. His self reference (and self reverence) is never exhausting but always artful. But there is a certain brilliance in that too. He even dismisses it all, in the text, as a pale imitation of himself. In many ways it’s a retread of his themes – a kind of Borges Cliff’s Notes. Just as “The Bishop” found Chekhov seemingly narrate his own death in a story that could only be termed Chekhovian, “August 25, 1983” addresses Borges’s decline into death through distinctly Borgesian means. Here we have Borges encapsulating all the hallmarks of his career (he even namechecks them at one point) as he imagines his own death. Presenting an array of his most famous literary styles and devices in a story that looks back on his life and career
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