The Maravilla of Art

While most authors invite readers to escape the world, Borges forces the reader to become more aware of it, beginning with awareness of their separation from the story’s, and ultimately the world’s, fictionality. The story begins with the narrator-translator declaring that the original story, which he has set out to translate, cannot be found, and his translation is not quite a translation: “I must inform the reader that the pages I translate and publish here will be sought in vain.” The reader has to “judge these pages as he may. My translation is not literal but is worthy of faith.”