
The suggestion here is that the ‘I’ (like the ‘it’ in expressions like ‘it is raining’) is simply a verbal construct — a placeholder for an agency which only exists in language and whose entire being consists in ‘a name’. For Borges’ narrator, the Zahir destroyed his identity; for this collection, it simply revealed the existing cracks.
Accordingly, much of Zahir treats language with a degree of distrust.
Oscar Mardell reviews the Zahir: Desire and Eclipse anthology edited by Christian Patracchini.