Four decades after his death, Jorge Luis Borges has been recalled in the twin cities that shaped his life: Buenos Aires, the labyrinthine capital of his birth, and Geneva, the sober Swiss city where he died in exile. In the Plainpalais cemetery this past weekend, forty yellow roses—one for each year of immortality, the colour of his blindness—were laid at his simple gravestone as admirers read his poems and those written for him. Meanwhile in Argentina, the Ministry of Culture has mounted “Borges, ecos de un nombre,” an exhibition at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, accompanied by a month-long programme of lectures, guided tours, and new editions of his stories and essays. From these acts of memory emerges a portrait of a writer whose work, as commentators in the Buenos Aires press note, is at once the most celebrated and the most misunderstood in the national canon.

Among the most cited of Borges’s aphorisms is the caution that “one must be careful when choosing enemies because one ends up resembling them.” The maxim, originally a reflection on the contaminating nature of hatred, has found an unexpected echo in recent psychological research. A study reported by Tehran’s Khabar Online examines the difficulty of socialising with individuals who insist they are always right—a personality type that tests the very boundaries of self-awareness and interpersonal intelligence Borges would have recognised. The research suggests that such people often lack the capacity to perceive their own rigidity, making sustained engagement a delicate emotional exercise.

Beyond the realm of declared enmity, everyday gestures are being decoded by psychologists in Argentina for their hidden signals. Leaving a door perpetually ajar, for instance, may betray an unconscious fear of isolation or a desire for connectivity, as noted by Buenos Aires specialists. Similarly, the habitual response “como quieras” (“as you wish”), often mistaken for kindness, is now understood to reflect a pattern of conflict avoidance and excessive agreeableness that can erode personal assertiveness. These micro-behaviours, trivial as they appear, map onto the Borgesian fascination with labyrinths, mirrors, and the double—the ways in which people both reveal and conceal themselves.

Taken together, the separate spheres of literary commemoration and psychological inquiry underscore a shared preoccupation with human identity. As Argentina’s intellectuals debate the true legacy of their most universal author—some arguing that he is still to be truly read—researchers in Geneva, Buenos Aires, and Tehran are mapping the intricate structures of personality he so enigmatically described. Borges’s own life, full of precise rituals and deliberate returns, seems to invite such a dual reading. Forty years on, his voice remains a puzzle, a mirror held up to the mind’s own architecture.