Baldanders by Jorge Luis Borges

Name: Baldanders
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

The narrative revolves around a mythical creature known as Baldanders, who is said to possess incredible strength and endurance. The story explores the concept of identity and reality through the character's interactions with various individuals, including a knight and a scholar. Baldanders' existence is marked by his ability to withstand physical punishment and his capacity for learning and adapting. He is described as being both a monster and a sage, embodying contradictory qualities that blur the lines between good and evil. The narrative delves into themes of perception, reality, and the nature of truth, raising questions about the reliability of information and the instability of identity. Through Baldanders' character, the story challenges readers to consider the complexities of human understanding and the fluidity of reality.

By Jorge Luis Borges · First published 1957 · Genre: Fantasy, Metafiction, Picaresque · 444 words

First lines

Baldanders (whose name we may translate as Soon-another or At-any-moment-something-else) was suggested to the master shoemaker Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremburg by that passage in the Odyssey in which Menelaus pursues the Egyptian god Proteus, who changes himself into a lion, a serpent, a panther, a huge wild boar, a tree, and flowing water. Some ninety years after Sachs's death, Baldanders makes a new appearance in the last book of the picaresque fantastic novel by Grimmelshausen, The Adventuresome Simplicissimus (1669). In the midst of a wood, the hero comes upon a stone statue which seems to him an idol from some old Germanic temple. He touches it and the statue tells him he is Baldanders and thereupon takes the forms of a man, of an oak tree, of a sow, of a fat sausage, of a field of clover, of dung, of a flower, of a blossoming branch, of a mulberry bush, of a silk tapestry, of many other things and beings, and then, once more, of a man. He pretends to teach Simplicissimus the art ‘of conversing with things, which by their nature are dumb, such as chairs and benches, pots and pans'; he also makes himself into a secretary and writes these words from the Revelation of St John: ‘I am the first and the last', which are the key to the coded document in which he leaves the hero his instructions. Baldanders adds that his emblem (like that of the Turk, and with more right to it than the Turk) is the inconstant moon.

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Baldanders is listed on Textopian as a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, dated 1957 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Date: 1957 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fantasy, Metafiction, Picaresque, Philosophical, Mythological
Length: 444 words
Structure: 1 section, 2 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Similar titles

Genres

Fantasy — The narrative involves mythical creatures and transformations, central to the fantasy genre.
Metafiction — The story references other literary works and plays with the concept of storytelling itself.
Picaresque — The character of Baldanders appears in a picaresque novel, which influences the narrative style.
Philosophical — Themes of identity and transformation suggest philosophical exploration.