"Funes the memorious" or "Funes his memory" is a short story written by Jorge luis Borges, published in Ficciones in English in 1954. In this text, Borges writes about Ireneo Funes, a Uruguayan boy who has an accident, and when he awakens, he perceives the world perfectly and is able to remember everything in its slightest detail. A paramount part of the short story is the one Borges says "To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions", but Funes lives in a pure world of experience where there are only unique details. This statement and description respectively, leads you to conclude that poor Funes was not prodigious, but incapable of thinking.- In my opinion, this characterization was fantastic because it makes the reader consider possible effects that the Funes'ability could cause.
Turdus
Nationalities
2 years ago
I have read this text a long time ago and now I see how deep this short story is. Sometimes one tries to remember every detail of things or events and forget about their implications or the effects they could cause in our life. It is more important to take distance of facts to understand their meanings than to remember every single thing. This story is highly recommendable for those who want to analize it in deep and take their own conclusions.
ReplyDelete“Ficciones” is the first Borges´ book I read. And it happened long time ago... In fact I was almost a teenager. This was one of my mother´s books, but since she never understood Borges´ world, she thought it would be too hard for me. However, I felt involved with his works since then, and I started buying more and more books. The thing is that after enjoying lots of them I believe that this collection of short stories is supreme, especially “Funes, the memorious” and “the garden of furking paths”. Finally, I`d like to give you a piece of advice: read the original writing – if you didn´t. As you may know, he developped an unique and revolutionary way to express ideas and you just could get it by reading his own words.
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