O livro de Areia and the Bible

Infinity and inversions of Scripture in Borges

Abstract

This article seeks to think about reading models of religious texts and, among them, the Bible, based on the experience of reading in Jorge Luis Borges. The Bible is understood as a potential text for the creation of texts, as a world of words that generate virtualities, whose function is to feed poetic creations and to enhance their fiction. The religious text is endowed with polysemy, in an analogous way to the artistic text, which is why they are often found in the border zone between art and religion, at the base of metaphorical creation, in the common characteristics of mythopoetic thought, in the structure of fictional thought that underlies both. By highlighting the connections between the religious and artistic text, and following two of the threads pulled by Borges, the materiality of the text and the microscopic approach, the article presents the concept of text and reading in O livro de Areia, in addition to highlighting how Borges interprets biblical texts in a direct, parodic and ironic way, when he rereads them in the form of apocryphal fragments.