Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) is considered one of the greatest Argentinian (Fig. 1) and Spanish language writers. His stories have been the subject of medical-literary analysis; in particular, neurosciences have been captivated by stories such as Funes el Memorioso.¹,² Borges’ blindness, the mystery of which prevails to this day, has been subjected to various analyses of ophthalmological nature; however, it has escaped the neurological approach; therefore, we reviewed Jorge Luis Borges’ work searching for arguments in favor of neurological implications.

Figure 1 Poster in homage to Jorge Luis Borges, 30 years after his death, outside Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph by Sergio A. Castillo-Torres, September 2016). 

Medical perspective on Borges’ blindness

Borges’ relationship with blindness has been explored from the diagnostic point of view,³-⁵ given that his work reflects the chronic and hereditary nature of blindness. In his first autobiographical work, he recounts how blindness “had been coming on gradually since childhood”,⁶ as well as in the poem El Ciego II:⁷

The second, in La ceguera: “I should say that I am speaking for myself, and for my father and my grandmother, who both died blind-blind, laughing, and brave, as I also hope to die.”⁸ Although there is no precise diagnosis available, his work has allowed some differential diagnoses to be conjectured, out of which progressive myopia seems the most likely.⁵,⁹

Neurological perspective

There are some elements in Borges’ work that generate reasonable doubt about whether there was also brain damage. Borges suffered a head trauma on 1938 Christmas Eve, about which he wrote: “In spite of first-aid treatment, the wound became poisoned, and for a period of a week or so I lay sleepless every night and had hallucinations and high fever. One evening, I lost the power of speech and had to be rushed to the hospital for an immediate operation. Septicemia had set in, and for a month I hovered, all unknowingly, between life and death.”⁶ Data suggest cerebral cortex involvement (hallucinations, speech loss) and it is not surprising that visual loss had cortical characteristics, with alterations consistent with the so-called “phantom chromatopsia”, in which the visual field of blind or almost blind patients is invaded by a cortically-generated color, usually purple or gold.¹⁰,¹¹ As a proof of the above, we have some fragments of his poetry:

Along with his stories and essays: “When you get to my age, you will have lost your eyesight almost completely. You’ll still make out the colour yellow and lights and shadows”;¹³ “I can still make out certain colors; I can still see blue and green. And yellow, in particular, has remained faithful to me”.⁸

From his descriptions, we can rule out monochromatopsia or xanthopsia, both with preserved visual acuity.¹¹ Patients with phantom chromatopsia tend to have associated mood disorders, and since nobody believes their color vision stories, they are taken as “hysterical”.¹⁰ This might be consistent with specific characteristics of Borges’ mood disorder, since as some of his biographers (like Alejandro Vaccaro) refer, during the years he wrote Historia de la Eternidad (1936, prior to his accident) and that he began to collaborate as a literary critic for El Hogar magazine, the idea of suicide crossed his mind now and then; after the deaths of his grandmother and his father, he plunged into long periods of depression. Although this period precedes that of total blindness, the persistence of these neurological characteristics would explain the description of colors mentioned by Borges.

Seventeen years after his accident, in 1955, he became aware of his blindness when he remained in charge of the National Library (Fig. 2). Before him, two directors had also been blind: José Mármol and Paul Groussac. Borges interpreted this as his destiny: “I, who had just lost my sight, (and) remembered — inevitably remembered — that the most illustrious of my predecessors, Groussac, had been blind and director of the library like me, thought that our destiny was the same”.¹⁴ Being the third blind director of a library is nothing more than a confirmation of his destiny: “Here appears the number three, which seals everything. Two is a mere coincidence; three a confirmation. A confirmation of a ternary order, a divine or theological confirmation”;⁸ as well as coinciding in place and circumstances with his predecessors is “an affirmation that the torment was past, and was a joyous, secret challenge to the frustrated forces of evil”.¹⁵

Figure 2 Former National Library, at Calle México 564, Barrio de San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph by Sergio A. Castillo-Torres, September 2016). 

Borges turns blindness into another instrument to something else, “since I have lost the beloved world of appearances.” (The South)⁸ as he expresses in Poema de los dones:¹⁶

Inspired by Groussac, Borges asks from us not to be condescending and to interpret his poem as proof of the greatness of divinity:¹⁶

Conclusion

Borges’ work reveals data consistent with neurological damage. Although an accurate diagnosis is not possible, his genius reminds us that misfortunes are made available to us “so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.”⁸