BORGES AGAINST BLOOM: THE AESTHETIC AND IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF CANON FORMATION

Jorge Luis Borges and Harold Bloom are in agreement that the classics or the "Western Canon" are steeped in mystery, worthy of the description, "deep like the cosmos," or that they impose a certain "strangeness" on us. But when it comes to their fundamentals, their two views differ. For the former, the qualities of a classic are external and their value can change, and each tradition has its own center. For the latter, the value of the canon is inherent, and Shakespeare is at the center of a single Western tradition. Here, we will draw from both views to understand the way in which works become classics or canonical. Bloom insists that determining certain "objective" qualities of a work proves indispensable for assessing if they should be part of the canon or not. But as Borges noted, said qualities vary throughout history and between cultures. There is not, therefore, a single canon, but a multiplicity of them, selected and organized, however, not for mysterious reasons, but under the aesthetic-ideological criteria established by each tradition.