SOURCE: “Borges, Poet of Ecstasy,” in Borges the Poet, edited by Carlos Cortinez, The University of Arkansas Press, 1986, pp. 134-41.

In the following essay, Barnstone examines how Borges transformed himself into a seer.

The author of a very famous Spanish novel, Don Quijote de la Mancha, was born in Buenos Aires in the year 1899. His name appears to be Jorge Luis Borges, although this is questionable since he has largely dropped his Christian names and is, in his own words, merely and “unfortunately … Borges.” But here too the Argentine author of the Quijote eludes us and even puts in doubt the American authorship of the Spanish masterpiece by signing the work with the name of an intermediary, an invented Borges, who calls himself Pierre Menard.

Now there are some Spanish nationalists who would claim that the work was actually invented much earlier by a man from Alcalá de...