Baruch Spinoza

by Jorge Luis Borges

A haze of gold, the Occident lights up

The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript

Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite.

Someone is building God in a dark cup.

A man engenders God. He is a Jew.

With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin;

Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in

A river, is borne off by waters to

Its end. No matter. The magician moved

Carves out his God with fine geometry;

From his disease, from nothing, he's begun

To construct God, using the word. No one

Is granted such prodigious love as he:

The love that has no hope of being loved.

SOURCE: Borges, Jorge Luis. "Baruch Spinoza" [from The Unending Rose], translation by Willis Barnstone, in Borges' Selected Poems, edited by Alexander Coleman. (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 383.

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web

(including all the following links)

"Spinoza" poem by Jorge Luis Borges

"The Congress" by Jorge Luis Borges

On The Congress by Jorge Luis Borges: Observations and Questions

by Ralph Dumain

Hajkoj kaj Tankaoj de Jorge Luis Borges, tradukis Carlos A. Castrillón

La Biblioteko de Babelo de Jorge Luis Borges, tradukis Gulio Cappa [in Esperanto]

A Taxonomy of Surreal Taxonomists by Prentiss Riddle

The Cyclical Night: Irony in James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges by L. A. Murrilo

Borges blog entries (start)

"Zu Spinozas Ethik" (On Spinoza's Ethics)  poem by Albert Einstein

Heinrich Heine on Spinoza and Our Lenses

Heinrich Heine on Leibniz & Spinoza

"Spinoza, the First Secular Jew?" by Yirmiyahu Yovel

Spinozas World-View by A. M. Deborin

Spinoza's Attributes by Constantin Brunner

Offsite:

Spinoza (Borges poem in Spanish)

"Borges and I" (Borges)

Spinoza in Borges' looking-glass by Marcelo Abadi

Jorge Luis Borges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Borges: Garden of Forking Paths

Borges Center