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Blindness is an essay written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1977. In this work, much attention was paid to self-referentiality because the authors experience is extremely important to support his writing (Block de Behar, A Rhetoric of Silence 279-281). To understand the purpose of this essay, it is critical to refer to Borgess explanations and illustrative examples. In comparison to other forms of essays, personal essays contribute to authors self-referentiality because these works rely on individual experiences, and drawing attention to his writing and flow of thoughts in Blindness, Borges accentuated that this essay described only his subjective view on being blind as having a gift.
Personal essays seem to encourage authors self-referentiality and self-conscious engagement because all the content is presented from the perspective of an essayist. According to Lopate, an essay is a notoriously flexible and adaptable form because it possesses the freedom to move anywhere, in all directions (xxxvii). This form allows for self-deprecation and self-referentiality using a conversational and honest tone to contribute to achieving certain intimate relations with a reader (Lopate xxxvii). Working on a personal essay, an author can freely choose any approach to representing his or her thoughts, and the focus on personal views distinguishes essays from other literature forms (Block de Behar, Borges 83-85). Therefore, to build sincere relations with readers, it is often important for essayists to describe their process of writing an essay through self-referentiality to become closer and more open to the audience.
Borges drew attention to the writing process and accentuated the understanding of the advantages of such an essay because it was important for him to provide a reader with concreteness, with his own story of blindness. The author explained why he was focused on writing Blindness as a personal essay that described his own experience of being blind in the first lines of the work. Borges noted, In the course of the many lectures too many lectures I have given, Ive observed that people tend to prefer the personal to the general, the concrete to the abstract. I will begin, then, by referring to my own modest blindness (377). Therefore, the essayists reason for self-referentiality and focusing on his personal story is in addressing readers expectations and preferences to learn concrete details. This aspect explains why the author accentuated how he planned to start the essay and what it would be about. Such details helped the reader to view oneself as a partner in the communication with the author of the essay.
The author emphasized the utility of writing his work in a particular manner typical of personal essays with the help of accentuating the importance of overcoming stereotypes about blindness. Still, the author accepted the fact that it was possible to write persuasively and honestly about the problem of blindness only when referring to his own experience, without making generalizations. Thus, describing his situation, Borges claimed: I live in that world of colors, and if I speak of my own modest blindness, I do so, first, because it is not the total blindness that people imagine, and second, because it deals with me (378). Furthermore, Borges added details and expounded that People generally imagine the blind as enclosed in a black world (379). However, according to the essayist, this is not true because blind people cannot see black. Referring to his own experience as important to inform readers about the realities of being blind, the author created a detailed description of his world, accentuating the significance of his writing.
In his essay, Borges spoke directly to the reader, describing his fears, problems, feelings, and successes. The author started with defining his state and he continued explaining how the loss of sight helped him to find other possibilities for development (Wilson 112). Borges described, I have lost the visible world, but now I am going to recover another, the world of my distant ancestors (380). The writer created a chronological story of his accepting blindness and discovering a new world that the physical condition opened to him. He noted, I had replaced the visible world with the aural world of the AngloSaxon language. Later I moved on to the richer world of Scandinavian literature: I went on to the Eddas and the sagas (Borges 382). From this perspective, the author received an opportunity for progress, and he also informed the reader that he was preparing a book on Scandinavian literature at the moment of creating the essay (Borges 383). Thus, the features of a personal essay associated with the flexibility of presenting peoples own unique experience allowed Borges to share his own vision of his blindness.
Throughout the essay, the author accentuated the advantages of being blind from the perspective of gifts he received, and self-referentiality allowed him to focus on his own thoughts and concerns regarding this issue. Borges noted that he did not allow blindness to intimidate him (382). On the contrary, according to the author, a writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end (386). Finally, Borges concluded, Being blind has its advantages. I owe to the darkness some gifts (382) and moreover, for the author, Blindness is a gift (386). These repetitions of the word gift helped the writer to send his specific message to the reader using his individual perspective and opinion. Still, in addition to referring to his own experience, Borges also used other illustrious cases of blindness in writers (383). This approach contributed to the authors emphasis on his own experience with the help of juxtaposition: ones experience and others experience. According to the author, he tried to concentrate only on his experience and vision of blindness, but his feelings could be shared by other people.
The form of a personal essay allowed Borges to apply self-referentiality because he referred to his individual experiences, and he creatively drew readers attention to his writing process and unique conclusions. The uniqueness of the conclusions was in the fact that the writer perceived the situation of being blind as a gift. The presentation of subjective views is typical of personal essays, and the technique of self-referentiality contributes to making the writing more personal but still persuasive. The author described not only how he came to the conclusion that his blindness could be viewed as a gift but also how he organized his essay to make it more convincing. As a result, readers seemed to be involved in the process of a literary conversation with the writer that can be achieved or observed when personal essays are created.
Works Cited
Block de Behar, Lisa. A Rhetoric of Silence and Other Selected Writings. Walter de Gruyter, 2012.
Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation. 2nd ed., SUNY Press, 2014.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Blindness. 1977. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 1995, pp. 377-387.
Lopate, Phillip. Introduction. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 1995, pp. pp. xxiii-li.
Wilson, Jason. Jorge Luis Borges. Reaktion Books, 2006.
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