For other uses, see The Zahir (disambiguation).
The Zahir is a story of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges The Aleph integrated collection of tales and stories published in 1949.
This story was originally published in the Annals of Buenos Aires, ano 2, numero 17, July 1947 (pages 30-37). The annals of Buenos Aires was a magazine founded in 1946 by the worship institution that bears the same name.
Borges would relate to on many occasions when this story was to explain the process of writing. Conferences held in the text that body was born of a thought about the word unforgettable (unforgettable). What would happen if something actually unforgettable ‘, I thought the writer, and supposed that this circumstance would be impossible to think of something else than the object unforgettable.
Zahir The word refers to a story in the words of Arabic origin that means obvious, christ visible, in this sense is one of the ninety-nine names of God. “
The power exercised by an object on the people is a topic that Borges takes on different occasions during love his work. One example is the story The book of sand, 1979, which also include other resources of The Zahir, how that breaks down the fantasy object.
The story begins with an enumeration of objects that have been Zahir: a 20-cent coin in Buenos Aires, tigre in a Guzerat in the eighteenth century, in Persia an astrolabe, a compass in the nineteenth century, a vein in the marble aljama a mainstay of the Cordova, the bottom of a well in Tetuan.
The story is told in first person, the narrator-protagonist of the same name as the author emp rico (Borges). Said to be writing this story five months after finding the Zahir, an injury sustained June 7 after attending the wake of Teodelina Villar. Already at the beginning of the story is perceived that the object prayer had influence on the character.
Teodelina Villa had been a symbol of books fashion in the character who had been in love. Teodelina represents the ephemeral, so fleeting, so perennial, that soul contrasts with the immutable Zahir.
Borges receives Zahir as returned by the payment of an alcoholic beverage, a Canadian, it’s about twenty cents a coin that looks briefly and gradually begins to religion occupy his thoughts. The next day gets rid of it to make payment with a Canadian in a different store, yoga whose whereabouts are hard to ignore.
Obsessed by this currency, Borges finds various historical references Zahir, accompanied by meditation mystic or religious characteristics.
The Zahir bible anger in ever more intense with all god your thoughts, until the time came that Borges expects to stop charging the universe to contemplate only the Zahir.
