The Mystery of Borges' Night 602

Jorge Luis Borges had a habit for rewriting facts, or reading them arbitrarily in his own writings. This is an element of his style that is now known as the "Borgesian hoax." One of the best-known examples of this is Borges' idea of the six hundred and second night of the Arabian Nights. This article discusses an example of the Borgesian hoax related to the six hundred and second night that until now has remained unexplored, namely, Borges' use of an apocryphal publication date for Hamlet and Don Quixote, in the year 1602. Furthermore, the article sets to explore a conjecture that could be used as the basis for future research: the possibility that Borges may have deliberately chosen the year 1602 to reference Night 602 following an aesthetic principle for brevity that he derived from his association with the Spanish Ultraist movement.