Jorge Luis Borges, dead inside his labyrinth

It was not uncommon for the best authors of the mid 19th to the early 20th century to die while they were middle-aged. Often their end was quite tragic, or even brutal. Kafka, De Maupassant, Nerval, Poe, were some of the examples of this deterioration and subsequent demise.
While Borges lived to be very old, it is often argued that in reality he 'died' in his middle age as well. After the early 50s his work never reached the previous heights. He also became literally blind.

Prior to that era he had lived a life which was of relative economic provilege, but also of severe and self-imposed isolation. He was well into his 40s when he managed to have a second sexual experience, after what seems to have been a very traumatic one, in the end of his teens.
He created three collections of short stories which for many still represent the pinnacle of the spanish language in the 20th century. The garden of forking paths, the fictions, and Aleph, along with his earlier short story titled "The approach to Al-Mutasim", appear to be all of his work which defines this writer, despite a couple of later stories- like the gospel according to Matthew, and the Disc- which sometimes echo the voice of that past, already very distant.

Borges claimed, in one of his critiques of Flaubert, that he too wished to not present his own self in his works. While he maintains that his style was deemed as uniquely his own (thus negating this supposed end of an anonymity in the sentences as if they could have been uttered by anyone), he later on even named his own self as the narrator of some of the stories (as in the case of Aleph). But very seldom does he actually refer to any personal emotion. In some story he briefly alludes to a great pain he had felt about his somatic form. That story is not memorable by itself, however it seems to have been a short sighting of the actual Borges, through one of the diimmest windows of the labyrinth inside which he lost himself.

Watching some photographs of him, with his stable expression which might be immitating a smile without actually being sincere in this facade, i tend to recall the other main Iberian-related author of the first half of the 20th century. Fernando Pessoa wrote in Portuguese, and lived for most of his life in Lisbon. Borges spent his critical writing years in the chaos of Buenos Aires. By now they are both very known, and examined by readers and writers who cast their eyes on the prose portraying not just personal misery, but a wish to cast a light on ideas that elude other people as if they were ghosts, or the winged harpies sent to attack the person, and torment him, without knowing that he would soon tend to see them as a curiosity to write and think about.

Hello! It's good to see someone who is interested in this topic. Here in Portugal we are plenty of writers and poets that were dead at middle age...
My favourite of those was really Fernando Pessoa, he was not understood at his time and he sank his sadness in alcohol, and that wasn't good for his health. He died at the young age of 47.
He had a lot of heteronyms (a lot of persons inside of himself) and had a lot of masterpieces, like "Mensagem" (Message), it was a book of Portugal's history in poetry and the more beautiful of his books: "O Livro do Descontentamento" (The book of unhapiness), it was signed by Bernardo Soares, one of his heteronyms, and it's so beautiful that I can't describe it here...

Florbela Espanca was also a not reknown artist in Portugal. Her poetry is based on love and on her wish to love everybody an to be loved with care and joy, but no one in her lifetime, so she decided to kill herself in her birthday at the age of 36.

Another example was Eça de Queiroz, a late XIX diplomat and writer. He wrote a lot of masterpieces like "Os Maias" and "A Relíquia" (The Maia Familly and the Relic, respectively). But there was a problem: There is the belief that the characters of his books, were real people and he blackmailed those people. If they didn't do what he wanted to, he would put their real names. It's quite bad to do this, because "Os Maias" for example is an history of a love between a man and a woman that discover that they are brothers...
He died at the age of 54, in 1900.

We, have a lot of writing genius, but we didn't valorize themselves enough.

Post Scriptum: Sorry, I know that this question is offtopic, but I'm new here. How can I post? I just don't find the button or something like that. Thank you!

No one taking a left turn in the labyrinth?

(and very belated thanks for your reply! )