The Secret Miracle by Jorge Luis Borges, 1943
The magic trick:
Imagining a world where man communicates to god through the act of artistic composition
“The Secret Miracle” stands as maybe Borges’s best case for intellectual creativity as religion.
It’s a sad story, set as it is during the Holocaust. But it’s a beautiful idea, a beautiful belief, that one can communicate to god through the act of artistic composition.
And that’s quite a trick on Borges’s part.
The selection:
He had asked God for a whole year to finish his work; His omnipotence had granted it. God had worked a secret miracle for him; German lead would kill him at the set hour, but in his mind a year would go by between the order and its execution.
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