The Circular Ruins

Borges was primarily a poet by calling. He was also a consummate student of literature, philosophy, and religion and spent a lifetime pursuing questions about the nature of existence and reality. One particular school of thought he was drawn to was idealism, or the belief that the human mind has the ability to influence or recreate reality. This theme runs throughout “The Circular Ruins,” as the protagonist seeks to create a man by dreaming: “The goal that led him on was not impossible, though it was clearly supernatural: He wanted to dream a man. He wanted to dream him completely, in painstaking detail, and impose him upon reality” (215-16).

For Borges, the sorcerer’s task parallels that of the creative process. A writer often requires the same things: isolation, peace in which to concentrate, and time. A writer’s creation also starts as something small and amorphous until the details can be fleshed out: “He dreamed the heart warm, active, secret—about the size of a closed fist, a garnet-colored thing inside the dimness of a human body that was still faceless and sexless” (220). “The Circular Ruins” serves as a type of allegory, then, for the creative process.