The Immortal (short story)
| "The Immortal" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
| Original title | "El Inmortal" |
| Country |
 Argentina
|
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1949 |
"The Immortal" (original Spanish title: "El inmortal") is a short story by noted Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in February 1947, and later in the collection El Aleph in 1949. The story tells about a character who mistakenly achieves immortality and then, weary of a long life, struggles to lose it and writes an account of his experiences. The story consists of a quote, an introduction, five chapters, and a postscript. "The Immortal" has been described as "the culmination of Borges' art" by critic Ronald J. Christ.
Borges begins by quoting Francis Bacon's Essays, LVIII. "Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion."
The introduction takes place in London in the first part of June 1929. Herein the following five chapters are purported to have been found in the last of six volumes in small quarto (1715–20) of Alexander Pope's Iliad, given to the Princess of Lucinge by a rare bookseller named Joseph Cartaphilus.
The story is an autobiographical tale told by a Roman soldier, Marcus Flaminius Rufus, during the reign of the emperor Diocletian. During a sleepless night in Thebes, Egypt, a mysterious man, exhausted and wounded, seeks refuge in his camp. Just before dying, he tells Rufus about a river whose waters bestow immortality on whoever drinks from it. The river is next to a place called the City of the Immortals. Determined to find it, Rufus sets out for Africa with his soldiers. The harsh conditions of the trip cause many of his men to desert. After hearing that the remaining soldiers are planning his death, Rufus flees and wanders through the desert.
Rufus wakes up from a nightmare to find himself tied up in a small recess on the side of a mountain inhabited by Troglodytes. Down below, he spots a polluted stream and jumps down to drink from it; wounded, he falls asleep. Over the next few days, he recovers and, seeing the City of the Immortals in the distance, is able to walk there, followed by a Troglodyte.
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