Borges: The silent word

Abstract

A reading of some of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories is done in order to trace, using these stories as a starting point, the question about the limits and the triumph over language. It has been stated that, faced with the insuficiency of language to reproduce a certain experience, the sphere of silence is opened that transcends the word in extasis. Silence, thus, would not annihilate the word but instead it would engender the possibility of polysemy. In addition, it is added that this opening to the absence of the verb goes beyond multiple meanings and expresses the presence of a meaning which is impossible to be included and contained within the rational structures of the consciousness.