WITH magnificent irony, magnifica ironia, God gave Jorge Luis Borges two things: books and the night. In the 1950s, when he was already half a century old, the great Argentine poet became completely blind.

It is interesting, though, that in the poem he wrote about it, he used the word ‘night’, la noche, to describe ‘blindness’. Borges, born in the late 19th century maybe forgot: the 20th century had introduced another side of the night,