[liehtzu]

Borges was certainly a well-read chap, and I wonder if the ending of "The Circular Ruins" ("With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he was also an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him") wasn't a tip of the hat to the Chuang Tzu, the classic Taoist text ("Yet fools think they are awake; they know just what they are, princes, herdsmen, so obstinately sure of themselves! Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who call you a dream am also a dream").

I've been re-reading the Ficciones recently and find myself appreciating them more than when I'd last read them (nearly ten years ago) and thought them rather dry intellectual exercises. Some of them still leave me cold, but the best ones certainly get me dancing round the room.