Memory

Memory is what is retained (or created, in Borges' terms) in the mind from experience. The theme of memory fascinated Borges, who wrote "Pierre Menard" as a test of his own mental ability after a minor head injury turned serious and gave him hallucinations. Borges' concept of memory roughly parallels that of Marcel Proust, a writer whom Borges introduced to literature circles in Argentina. Proust's landmark seven-volume novel about memory, Remembrance of Things Past (1917), exemplifies the theory of French philosopher Henri Bergson that humans do not experience life when events happen, but later, in forming memories of those events. The processing of memories, Bergson postulated, takes place in the duree [duration], deep in the mind, where the superficial constraints of clock time do not interfere. Bergson's theories of time and memory inspired the Symbolist poets, Marcel Proust, and also Borges among others.

Like Proust, Borges attempted to express...