SOURCE: “Empty Words: Vanity in the Writings of Jorge Luis Borges,” in Romance Notes, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, Spring, 1999, pp. 265–71.

In the following essay, Couture discusses the centrality of “vanity” as a word and as a concept in Borges's writing.

Twisting an old Spanish saying, Bryce Echenique wrote that Borges “más sabía por viejo y sabía más todavía por diablo” (7). Alastair Reid, speaking of conversations with Borges about translation, said that Borges's modesty could be deadly. These remarks allude to one of Borges's greatest charms, something that attracts us more than his audacious, sophisticated metaphysical speculations: his coy sense of humor. I think that a great deal of the humor in Borges can be attributed to his sense of the vanity of literature, his own included. Borges, while aware of the beauty and power of words, also knew that words, at last, are just...