This is not an essay

A dialogue between logic and literature, Borges and Saramago

Abstract

This work aims to establish a dialogue between themes and authors that apparently do not belong to the same group, i.e., they do not relate in a natural way. The themes are logic and literature and the authors are Jorge Luis Borges and José Saramago. The proposed discussion starts from a lecture by the Portuguese author about the Argentine author, entitled Algumas provas da existência real de Herbert Quain. From a detailed analysis of this text, it is possible to observe that it goes far beyond what it apparently intends to do: pay homage to an author and his work. In fact, what Saramago does in an ingenious way is to take properly Borgesian elements to talk about Borges, that is, his homage is not restricted to the semantic plane, but is also presented in form. Including argumentative tools from mathematics and philosophy, themes very importants to Borges, Saramago builds a kind of game in which discussions arise that begins with the unnatural relationship between the exact and human sciences and goes to the transitions between the real and fictional universes.