SOURCE: “The Mark of the Phallus: Homoerotic Desire in Borges' ‘La forma de la espada,’” in Chasqui, Vol. XXV, No. 1, May, 1996, pp. 25–38.

In the following explication of Borges's short story “The Shape of the Sword,” Brant suggests a homosexual subtext motivates the story's manifest content.

Envidia. Envidia siente el cobarde … Envidia. Envidia amarga y traidora, Envidia que grita y llora. La que causa más dolor es la envidia por amor. 

(José González Castillo, “Envidia”)

The fiction of Jorge Luis Borges is intriguing and yet, unsettling. These qualities seem to originate in what I consider two principal characteristics of Borges' work: confounding ambivalence and a clever use of paradox. His work is paradoxical insofar as it is macrocosmic, and yet microcosmic; central, and yet peripheral; collective—it seems to speak with many voices—and yet it is deeply personal and evokes the strongest emotional responses, especially in...