And yet — Borges himself is immortal.
So here is the secret Borges leaves us:
The Immortal Borges: Labyrinths, Mirrors, and the Man Who Outlived Himself the immortal borges
Not because he believed in an afterlife. He was famously skeptical. (“I am not an atheist,” he once said, “I am an agnostic. I am a man of doubt.”) No, Borges is immortal in the way a mirror is: he doesn’t die; he multiplies. And yet — Borges himself is immortal
To read Borges is to enter a hall of mirrors. You think you’re reading about a Chinese emperor’s map, or a library of hexagonal rooms, or a man who dreams another man — but really, you’re reading about reading. About the shimmering impossibility of a final page. (“I am not an atheist,” he once said,
To be immortal is to be bored of every sunrise. To forget your mother’s voice. To watch cities crumble into sand and feel nothing.
Borges understood what Hollywood action films never will: Immortality is not superhuman. It is subhuman.