The Aleph and Other Stories

About “The Aleph and Other Stories”

Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Aleph" is part of a 1949 collection. The story features a fictionalized version of Borges as the protagonist, who visits the home of a woman he loved, Beatriz Viterbo. He meets her cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a poet who believes he is writing an epic about every location on Earth. Daneri claims his poem is possible because his cellar contains an Aleph—a point in space that holds everything. The narrator enters the cellar and sees the Aleph, experiencing the entire universe at once. Afterward, he pretends not to have seen it to manipulate Daneri. He suggests Daneri needs fresh air to finish his work. The story ends with a postscript noting that Daneri's house was destroyed, but he won a literary prize. Borges also references a report about a stone pillar in Cairo that may contain a similar Aleph.