Abstract

In baroques labyrinths it get consumed the perverse pleasure of artificious complexity, the enthusiasm for a virtual architecture able to metaphorise the endless trajectories of an inextricable universe. One of the evidents signs of neo-baroque crisis in Borges’s poetics is, without doubts, the presence of labyrinth’s geometrical metaphors. Also Escher, through his graphics representations of the unestable equilibrium between illusion and disillusion, between decryption and ontological doubt, between figures possibles and impossibles, ends enrolling himself in the scope of neo-baroque crisis.

Abstract

The authors of this paper attempt to uncover a possible relationship between Calderón de la Barca and Borges, based on the hypothetical question whether or not the argentine writer read Calderon’s plays. They analyze two key concepts in both writers: the phrase «La vida es sueño» and the problem of free will, describing the different visions of Calderón and Borges. It all ends with an open conclusion: there are more concomitants than those that the reader may find at first glance.