The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges –  Readers of Borges’ fiction will know that it is populated by various worlds similar to our own, yet mystically different. His stories and poems contained the average and the sublime, side by side. It would seem only logical that he would write a book which contained the divine in (what most people would call) the most mundane form. The Book of Imaginary Beings is not quite an encyclopedia (it is hardly the final word on the subject and makes no pretense of being so) and yet the words “encyclopedia” and “dictionary” keep coming to mind as one reads it. Borges created a guide to surreal and fictional animals—pulling from various mythologies, religious texts, etc.—resulting in an Audubon Guide for imaginary playthings, only much more entertaining to study.

The fact that nothing described in this book is real makes it so thrilling and intriguing. Many of the old myths, having been told over and over again, have no solid form and, instead, have endless variations, only some of which Borges describes. The entries range from a few sentences to several pages. Several entries are illustrated with marvelous and surreal drawings by Peter Sís.

The species described within are not all ancient. Several of them are “Dreams” by Franz Kafka, others are cribbed from the works of C. S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll. For example, under “The Cheshire Cat”, one of the grandest of all fictional creatures, we discover the manners of Carroll’s mysterious feline derive from the expression “to grin like a Cheshire Cat,” which might come from the story that “…cheese in the shape of a laughing cat was sold in Cheshire,” or, that “Cheshire was made an Earldom, and… this provoked the hilarity of the county’s cats.” Such illogic, such pure nonsense, results in the most fascinating study of creatures. After the two explanations offered above, the third (and most real-sounding) seems to be uninspired:

“Still another [explanation] claims that in the times of Richard III there was a sheriff, one Caterling, who smiled ferociously when he caught poachers at their work.”

There are multiple digressions, references to obscure Eastern texts, tales of the Kabbalah and pagan mystics. Licentious explorers and celibate deities alike get equal shelf space in Borges’ library. There entries pulled entirely from the text which introduced the great beasts—most of these texts come from Kafka, the greatest creator of nightmare-induced mythos. These abstracts and extracts of longer works aid the underlying feeling of mystique which permeates the book.

While incomplete, Borges has presented a large range of imaginary beings to choose from in the perfect combination of the mundane and the magical.