when jorge luis borges was 19 his father arranged for him to lose his virginity to a prostitute. he apparently found the experience so scarring that he was unable to have sex for the rest of his life
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i'm a little obsessed with this. it completely changes how i read several borges stories that involve or pointedly don't involve women and/or sex. you can read more about it in "borges, desire, and sex" here:
library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.
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take e.g. this line from sect of the phoenix: "A kind of sacred horror prevents some of the faithful from practicing the extremely simple ritual [sex]; the others despise them for it, but they despise themselves even more"
2500art.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sect-o
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in this context i'm also struck by the way in which the circular ruins involves a kind of immaculate conception; a guy imagines another guy into existence with no woman or sex involved
users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/KafkaKier
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there's this beautiful interview from when borges was 82 that contains this funny little snippet which, given the above context (which i didn't have when i first read it), becomes painfully ironic
lareviewofbooks.org/article/ill-be
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holy shit this explains a lot.
also for me speaks to a lot of the push and pull towards masculinity in El Sur. very obsessed with who he ought to be versus who he is
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yeah i cannot even imagine how much this ties into his relationship with the argentinean conception of masculinity in particular. i personally don't get much out of his gaucho stories but he claims El Sur is his best story and this might be part of why
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