What's the meaning of "a definite shadow, if you’ll pardon the paradox, a broken shadow"? [closed]

Following is a part from the short story Joanna Silvestri by Roberto Bolano

And anyway the photo he has shown me of the man presumed to be English is old and blurry, it shows a young man of twenty-something, and the English I remember was well into his thirties, maybe even over forty, a definite shadow, if you’ll pardon the paradox, a broken shadow; I didn’t pay much attention to him, although his features have remained in my memory: blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, full lips, small ears.

What might be the meaning of the part in bold?

The first thing I discovered is that this work is translated from Spanish. The original phrase appears to be:

... una sombra definida, valga la paradoja, una sombra derrotada...

With the disclaimer that I'm not fluent in Spanish: derrotada appears to be translatable as "defeated" or "beaten." This is indeed a meaning present in the English "broken," but I had imagined that it was saying something about the coherency and consistency of a shadow projected by light.

In addition, although the word sombra appears to be a very close direct match to the English "shadow," it also can be a synonym for fantasma, as the English "shade" can mean a ghost. This supports the interpretation suggested by rajah9: the intent is to describe the memory of the man as "a shadow"/ghost of his former self, broken/defeated and faded.

The "paradox" is probably what Kate Bunting suggested, that the speaker used definida to express certainty (he was "definitely" a shadow), and then comments on the cognitive dissonance as shadows/shades/ghosts (and memories) are indefinite, incoherent, fuzzy, or ill-defined.