Category Archives: Reference

“Benito Perez Galdos: (1843-1920) Spanish novelist. In the 1870s he began a cycle of 46 short historical novels, Episodios nacionales (1873-1912), that earned him comparison with Honore de Balzac and Charles Dickens. Some of his finest works chronicle contemporary Spain, including The Disinherited Lady (1881) and his masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87), a study of two unhappily married women. His earlier works showed a reforming zeal and anticlericalism, but after the 1880s he displayed greater sympathy for Spain and it idiosyncrasies, as in Nazarin (1895), Compassion (1897), and a series featuring the character Torquemada. He also wrote plays, some very popular, but of less artistic value, He was regarded as Spain’s greatest novelist since Miquel de Cervantes.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

“Jorge Luis Borges: (1899-1986) Argentinean short-story writer, essayist, poet, and man of letters. Borges was one of the first Latin American writers to achieve international as well as national fame. His reputation rests equally on his poetry, fiction, and critical/philosophical works. Borges’s writing is unmistakably local in the realities it perceives but is universal in its conceptions, manifesting the ultimate metaphysical preoccupations of man—time, destiny, and the absurdity of human existence. One of Borges’s most famous images is that of life as a labyrinth though which one passes, vainly seeking to understand the many facets of human existence. Only art can triumph over the chaos of existence, crystallizing and unifying experience and providing a sense of structure, validity, and form. His writing, which is a blend of myth, fantasy, symbolism, and erudition, has had a considerable influence on the attitudes and styles of a number of writers. Borges’s eyesight, affected by a congenital disease, deteriorated radically in the 1950s; by 1970 he was almost totally blind and had to rely entirely on dictation for his writing.

Among his many prose works are Ficciones (1944; tr Ficciones, 1962), El Aleph (1949; tr The Aleph and Other Stories, 1970), El informe de Brodie (1970; tr Dr. Brodie’s Report, 1972), El libro de arena (1975; tr The Book of Sand, 1977), Antologia personal (1961; tr A Personal Anthology, 1967), Nuevo essayos dantescos (Nine Dantesque Essays, (1982), Siete noches (1980; tr Seven Nights, 1984), and Los conjurados (The Conspirators, 1985), the last written shortly before his death. His verse has been collected in a translation, Selected Poems: 1923-1967 (1972).

The recipient of many literary awards and prizes, in 1983 Borges was awarded the Legion of Honor and was decorated by France’s President Mitterand for the body of his work.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.