The themes of [Borges'] stories are inspired by the metaphysical hypotheses accumulated through many centuries of the history of philosophy, and by theological systems that are the scaffoldings of several religions. Borges, skeptical of the veracity of the former and of the revelations of the latter, strips them of their claims of absolute truth and pretended divinity and makes them instead raw material for his inventions. In this way, he returns to them the character of aesthetic creation and wonder for which they are valued and justified.

In his stories we find echoes of these doctrines. At times he makes them function as the frame on which the fiction is woven. Having read any one of his narratives, we sense beneath the design the presence of a metaphysics or the reverberation of a certain theology, which in some way explains the story and at the same time confers...