Borges'in "en kiisel kitabm" dedii Yaratan, ksa hikâyelerden, iirlerden ve ancak Borgesvari diye tanmlayabileceim tuhaf metinlerden oluuyor. Her zamanki gibi yer yer anlamas, yakalamas güç metinlerden olsa da, ortalama bir Borges kitabna kyasla daha kolay metinlerden olutuunu söylemek mümkün. Ksa metinlerden olutuu için labirentvari hikâyeler burada ayn heybetle oluamyor. Daha önce Alef için de söylemitim, Borges basit eyler yazmyor, ama tamamen kapal, içine girilemez metinler de deil bunlar. Borges'in neyi iyi yaptn görmek için ona ve yazdklarna efkatle yaklamak gerekiyor, çünkü dediim gibi, okuyucuya kolaylk salamak gibi bir derdi yok. Bu ksa kitap, Borges'e efkat duymak için, onu biraz olsun sevebilmek için güzel bir balangç noktas. Daha önce hiç Borges okumamlar bu kitapla balayabilirler okumaya.Bir de kitabn içinde iir bölümü var. Ben iir sevmeyen, okumayan biri olarak birkaç iiri çok beendim. Armaanlar iiri bunlardan biriydi. Ama birkaç iirden de neredeyse hiçbir ey anlamadm. Hem Borges, hem iir, olur böyle eyler deyip geçtim açkças, çok da peine düesim gelmedi.

I admire Borges' ability to craft a plot, but maybe that's because the Borges story always cracks a little bit at the end, he always has the urge to take it all back and say Maybe this was a dream, maybe it was something happening far away and at another time than I've just said.Dreamtigers is entirely cracks, notes, fragments. Dreams and recantings and odes to toenails. It's the best Borges I've ever read.As an example: "Parable of the Palace," tells the story of a poet being shown an infinite palace, and afterward speaking, in a single stanza or line or word, such a perfect description of it the emperor puts him to death for having robbed him of something. Borges ends:"Such legends, of course, are simply literary fictions. The poet was the emperor's slave and died a slave; his composition fell into oblivion because it merited oblivion, and his descendants still seek, though they shall never find, the word for the universe."

Out of the five books by Jorge Luis Borges I've read so far, this is probably the one I find hardest to categorize. It is certainly the most autobiographical of his short story collections, yet also the one that is most mythological in character. The overall impression is that it's Borges himself reflecting back upon both his personal life, literary legacy and all of human history that leads up to this with the consideration of what will happen then. Borges' own internal spiritual life then comes to appear as a microcosm of cultural history, as much as his own use of that literary heritage seeming to unfold as a macrocosm of his own life.The first half of this volume is taken up by short texts that are one or two pages in length each, that are difficult to categorize into any specific genre but somewhere in the borderland between literary essays, autobiography and the magical realist fiction Borges by then had become celebrated for. The imagery and themes used seem to draw upon the author's life and early literary inspirations, often alluding to them in a direct personal manner when compared to the elaborate "mind game"-type narratives found in "Ficciones" or "The Aleph". Indeed, as the anthology's English-language title suggests, the stories are peculiarly dream-like with the symbolism often coming from recurring dream Borges had as a young man especially one revolving around tigers. Others reflect in turn upon his friendships and other relations to people in the Argentine cultural sphere at the time.The second half contains more mock epic poetry, perhaps following the premise that Borges' blindness having become total at this point making him even more of a Homer of late modernity than before. As a result, Borges' writing style seems here to more focus on the musical and lyrical rhythm as well as exploration of literature's adaptation to the sonic realm when read aloud, a dimension that is somewhat altered when translated into other languages. Indeed, some of the pieces herein deal with linguistic/cultural barriers in the context of learning or exploring languages from a completely oral and audial perspective, in particular those drawing from mythological traditions outside Borges' own cultural background. I've dealt with the oft-neglected continuity of influence from Edgar Allan Poe to Jorge Luis Borges, in the sense of the puzzle-like aspect of Borges' writing being inspired by a similar quality in Poe's stories only extrapolated even further. Here, it seems like Borges instead follows up not just Poe's inclusion of his poetic work in prose fiction to a similar extrapolation but also the "campfire storytelling" aspect... which is no doubt also how the epic mythological poetry Borges alludes to in many of the stories here was originally meant to be read.Overall, this is not where I would recommend anyone to start with Borges, even if some literary historians most notably Harold Bloom consider "Dreamtigers" his most important work. If anything "Dreamtigers" should be read as a sort of companion piece to his better known work, which it both builds upon and illuminates further by adding an autobiographical angle to Borges' literary oeuvre.

En iyi kitab diyemesem de, Borges'in okuduklarm arasnda bana en fazla keyif ve derinlik hissi veren kitab Yaratan oldu. Kitapta belki Alef veya Ficciones'te gibi karmak görünümlü, fiyakal hikayeler yok; ama kendine has iirsellii içinde kitabn barndrd ince fikir saysnn dier ikisinden fazla olduunu söyleyebilirim.

"Covered Mirrors", my favourite of his, comes across as somewhat solipsistic in retrospect, but this is still a worthy collection. I like stuff that is touched by/touches upon the real, rather than literary (ew [retches]), world, mention of Macedonio, those which come across, at least, as personal narratives, relation of anecdotes, statements of influence and inspiration amongst friends.