“Funes el memorioso” and the “ferocious splendor” of Jorge Luis Borges’s imagination

The narrator of Jorge Luis Borges's "Funes el Memorioso" (1942, in "Ficciones", 1944) finally sums up the position in the world of Ireneo Funes, a young man who never forgets the slightest detail of his experiences: "Babilonia, Londres y Nueva York han abrumado con feroz esplendor la imaginación de los hombres; nadie, en sus torres populosas o en sus avenidas urgentes, ha sentido el calor y la presión de una realidad tan infatigable como la que día y noche convergía sobre el infeliz Ireneo, en su pobre arrabal sudamericano." Borges himself was a man on the margins living with "the ferocious splendor of his imagination" — and with ambitions to literary greatness. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 April 2023)

 

Note:

An English version of the quoted sentence: 

"Babylon, London and New York have overwhelmed with their ferocious splendor the imaginations of men; no one, in trleir populous towers or their urgent avenues, has felt the heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night converged upon the hapless Ireneo, in his poor South American suburb."

That's from this PDF of an English translation of the story, whose translator is unidentified.