A week(ish) of Borges

Mini-break from statistics

I’m writing this from the Aspen Music Festival, where my younger sibling is a piano student. It was possible for me to work on statistics while acting as William’s adult guardian (my parents are away right now), but I found it quite difficult, so I decided to knock out some of my reading goals instead.

I’m reading the Andrew Hurley translation of Borges’s short stories, which were written originally in Spanish. Here are a few thoughts on each story I read.

(Massive spoilers ahead.)

---

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

For the people of Tlön, the world is not an amalgam of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts—the world is successive, temporal, but not spatial.

Somehow this metaphysical conception reminds me of music; what sets music apart from many forms of art is its temporality. Not just its temporality—one can rightfully argue that literature and visual art (for example) cannot be consumed “all at once”—but moreso the temporality the performer or composer imposes upon the listener.

(Of course, at this point everything reminds me of music …)

Contact with Tlön, the habit of Tlön, has disintegrated this world. Spellbound by Tlön’s rigor, humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels. Already Tlön’s (conjectural) “primitive language” has filtered into our schools; already the teaching of Tlön’s harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has obliterated the history that governed my own childhood; already a fictitious past has supplanted in men’s memories that other past, of which we now know nothing certain—not even that it is false.

What a strange ending! It is very difficult to grasp.

The imagined world of Tlön seeps into the real world. First, Borges gives us objects—a compass engraved with letters from the alphabets of Tlön; a heavy metal cone with the image of a Tlönian deity; The First Encyclopedia of Tlön.

But by giving us nouns, objects, or describing them as such, and then later pivoting to describing the rewriting of history and other such grander metaphysical conceptions, he inverts the correct order. We know that given these intrusions the first impact of Tlön on our reality was not its “objects” but rather its rules, for our own do not allow for these manifestations.

I think I need to reread this one a few times.

The Circular Ruins

The title itself: circular. A joke from Borges, given the cyclical nature of the story he presents to us: a man dreams up another man into reality, only to discover at the end that he himself is the result of a similar dream.

But in fact the gray man had kissed the mud, scrambled up the steep bank (without pushing back, probably without even feeling, the sharp-leaved bulrushes that slashed his flesh), and dragged himself, faint and bloody, to the circular enclosure, crowned by the stone figure of a horse or tiger, which had once been the color of fire but was now the color of ashes.

A brilliant description—“which had once been the color of fire but was now the color of ashes” is virtuosity. It works on an unbelievable number of levels, both in isolation (where fire is bright red or orange, and over time burns and is reduced to gray ashes) and in the context of the short story (in relation to the deity the gray man worships.)

One afternoon, the man almost destroyed his creation, but he could not bring himself to do it. (He’d have been better off if he had.)

This passage confuses me. Why would he have been better off if he had?

The man realizes, “with humiliation, with terror,” that he is another man’s dream when his temple is destroyed by fire. This seems to be the only (significantly) bad thing that happens to him. It seems he would have made this realization whether or not he dreamt up his creation, though.

To me the most sensible theory would be that the man’s act of creation is simultaneously an act of worship for the deity, whom we are told is named Fire. Fire tells the man that “in that circular temple (and others like it) men had made sacrifices and worshiped it”; here “men” could refer to dreamed-up men, “sacrifices” could refer to the enormous time investment, and “worshiped” could refer to the process of dreaming up another man to worship Fire. In many mythologies gods require worship to sustain themselves; maybe if the man destroyed his creation, Fire would fade, the temple would never have been engulfed by flames, and the man would never have discovered that he was also a creation.

The Lottery in Babylon

The man who bought [no lottery tickets] was considered a pusillanimous wretch, a man with no spirit of adventure. In time, this justified contempt found a second target: not just the man who didn’t play, but also the man who lost and paid the fine.

The idea of The Lottery in Babylon is that in Babylon, there is and has been held a countrywide lottery for many years—even centuries—from which any outcome is possible. But it started smaller, simpler, with people needing to buy tickets, available only to the elites.

The narrator calling this contempt “justified” is tongue-in-cheek: probably some sort of shot at the human tendency to look down upon people whom mostly were unlucky enough to be born into the wrong family.

The mercenary sale of lots was abolished; once initiated into the mysteries of Baal, every free citizen automatically took part in the sacred drawings, which were held in the labyrinths of the god every sixty nights and determined each citizen’s destiny until the next drawing. […] A lucky draw might bring about a man’s elevation to the council of the magi or the imprisonment of his enemy […] an unlucky draw: mutilation, dishonor of many kinds, death itself.

I appreciate “free citizen.” Another little irony, especially in conjunction with “determined.” It’s not clear to me whether literally every person in Babylon takes part in the lottery, but it seems that whether they take part or not they are under its influence.

Let us imagine a first drawing, which condemns an individual to death. In pursuance of that decree, another drawing is held; out of that second drawing come, say, nine possible executors. Of those nine, four might initiate a third drawing to determine the name of the executioner, two might replace the unlucky draw with a lucky one (the discovery of a treasure, say), another might decide that the death should be exacerbated (death with dishonor, that is, or with the refinement of torture) […] the number of drawings is infinite.

Borges wants us, I would imagine, to think about how this corresponds to our reality. Let us imagine a first drawing, which sends me to Aspen. In pursuance of that decree, another drawing is held; out of that second drawing come, say, nine possible countries my parents might have to fly to this summer. Of those nine, four might initiate a third drawing to determine which position my father is assigned to, two might replace the lucky draw with an unlucky one (my sibling is rejected from Aspen), another might decide that the Aspen trip should be extended (a piano professor particularly enjoys listening to Poetry and wants to teach me) […]

(In plain language, my high-school sibling is a pianist at the Aspen music festival, where most students are in conservatory or graduate school. My father got assigned to a position in Turkey for his job, so my parents had to hunt for housing these past two weeks, but my sibling needs an adult guardian—that’s me!)

The Library of Babel

[…] the librarian deduced that the Library is “total”—perfect, complete, and whole—and that its bookshelves contain all possible combinations of the twenty-two orthographic symbols […] When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist—somewhere in some hexagon.

The premise of this short story is that the universe is a massive library, filled with 410-page books with every permutation of twenty-two symbols.

It is strange that everyone feels joy once realizing the library is “total,” as for every “correct” solution to a personal or world problem, there exist numerous more “incorrect” ones. And though the short story was published back in 1941, from a more modern perspective we can now generate hundreds of thousands of permutations of characters in the blink of an eye—and with enough time, we would generate all our futures … But I suppose the notion that there is, somewhere physically out there, a correct solution is unbelievably enticing. And I suppose the story speaks to how it feels—to me—easier to keep looking for the answers in other places and people, than to construct your own answers.

The Garden of Forking Paths

My favorite (and also the first I read.)

A short plot summary: Yu Tsun, a Nazi spy and collaborator during WWII, has been discovered by a British captain. He needs to convey where a new artillery park is being built to his superiors. Seeing no alternative, he finds and kills a man named Stephen Albert, so that in the reporting of the news, his superiors will know Albert is the correct location to strike.

Then I reflected that all things happen to oneself, and happen precisely, precisely now. Century follows century, yet events occur only in the present […]

He who is to perform a horrendous act should imagine to himself that it is already done, should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. That is what I did, while my eyes—the eyes of a man already dead—registered the flow of that day perhaps to be my last […]

He read with slow precision two versions of a single epic chapter. In the first, an army marches off to battle through a mountain wilderness; the horror of the rocks and darkness inspires in them a disdain for life, and they go on to an easy victory. In the second, the same army passes through a palace in which a ball is being held; the brilliant battle seems to them a continuation of the fête, and they win it easily.

In this short story Borges presents us a version of eternalism, with the future “as irrevocable as the past.” (One could reasonably argue the first quote is more aligned with presentism, but in context it seems to argue for a fixed past and future.) Yu Tsun knows that his conversation with Stephen Albert—in which they discuss his ancestor, Ts’ui Pen; Ts’ui Pen’s philosophy and life’s work; his book, which posits a story with forking futures; its interpretation as an extended riddle—will end in murder. But they could have discussed anything. Yu Tsun could have shot him immediately. I suspect this is why Borges writes that “events occur only in the present”; why he writes “a man already dead”; why the example Stephen Albert provides from Ts’ui Pen’s book is two different paths to the same ending.

Borges also gives us a version of the growing-block view. Such is the imagery of “forking paths,” Dr. Stephen Albert’s description of ‘several futures,’ the constant references to labyrinths. This is the intuitive perspective, where the past is fixed and the future does not yet exist.

Yu Tsun—who from the beginning sees the future as sealed, thinks of himself as dead—kills Stephen Albert, who has dedicated years to forking paths, labyrinths, possible futures in Ts’ui Pen’s work. Ts’ui Pen’s work will not live on; Yu Tsun successfully passed his information onto his superiors. This tragic triumph seems, in some sense, an endorsement of the eternalist view over the growing-block view.

The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero / The Man on the Threshold

Sometimes Borges chooses to write a short story where the narrator is “in the story”; sometimes not. In The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, he chooses the latter.

[…] in my spare evenings I have conceived this plot […] Today, January 3, 1944, I see it in the following way:

The action takes place in an oppressed yet stubborn country—Poland, Ireland, the republic of Venice, some South American or Balkan state. … Or took place rather, for though the narrator is contemporary, the story told by him occurred in the mid or early nineteenth century—in 1824, let us say, so convenience’s sake; in Ireland, let us also say. The narrator is a man named Ryan, the great-grandson of the young, heroic, beautiful, murdered Fergus Kilpatrick […]

I think this is a technique he uses when he wants to convey that some stories keep happening over and over again. (It is evident he cares about this, given that he clarifies how the specific country and year do not appear to matter.) In particular, the same technique appears in The Man on the Threshold, which was written almost a decade later—

Among the stories he [Christopher Dewey] told us that night, I shall be so bold as to reconstruct the one that follows. […]

—where half the story is an extended conversation with an old man, who tells Dewey about another unjust judge who was killed previously, while Dewey investigates an outstanding case with an unjust judge.

Death and the Compass

Not my favorite, but possibly the most brilliant short story among the ones I’ve read.

He [Lönnrot] had virtually solved the problem; the mere circumstances, the reality (names, arrests, faces, the paperwork of trial and imprisonment), held very little interest for him now.

Truly the mindset of a mathematician, rather than an engineer. (Funny, because mathematics is how Lönnrot solves the problem.)

Also, this is a gorgeous sentence! Circumstances and reality as secondary to beauty—the beauty of a riddle unraveled, a murder demystified. The mindset of an artist, even.

He [Lönnrot] felt a chill, and an impersonal, almost anonymous sadness.

Sintió un poco de frío y una tristeza impersonal, casi anónima.

I took a few years of Spanish in middle and high school, so I figured I’d check on the original in this case. I think the word tristeza has a stronger connotation in Spanish than sadness does in English.

The sadness Lönnrot feels is impersonal, almost anonymous because it is not sadness about his impending death—it is sadness about the reality he must come to terms with. Lönnrot thought he had found a “rabbinical explanation”; thought he had solved a mystery involving the name of God. In reality, the game’s rules were constructed not from the divine but from revenge and hatred, the basest human impulses.

The End

Why should we see the dialogue and the fight between the black man and Martín Fierro from Recabarren’s point of view? More questions about the narrator.

Throughout the short story, Borges emphasizes Recabarren’s powerlessness:

He looked down without pity at his great useless body […]

Recabarren, the owner of the bar, would never forget that contest; the next day, as he was trying to straighten some bales of yerba, his right side had suddenly gone dead on him, and he discovered that he couldn’t talk.

Recabarren could make out the broad-brimmed hat, the dark poncho, the piebald horse, but not the face of the rider, who finally reined in the horse and came toward the house at an easy trot. […] At that, the man was out of Recabarren’s line of sight, but Recabarren heard him speak […]

In the last quotation, we learn that Recabarren cannot move from his cot to get a better view of the interaction. I think his powerlessness highlights the inevitability of the fight and the eventual death.

The Dead Man

In an effeminate, wheedling voice, the boss speaks an order:

These are interesting adjectives. In the original Spanish:

Con una voz que se afemina y se arrastra, el jefe le ordena:

It seems that in isolation, one could translate una voz […] que se arrastra more akin to “a voice […] that drags.” In any case, I found a truly excellent article from the translator online, from which I will pull a few quotes that I believe may explain “wheedling”:

That made me realize that I had somehow to deal with the words that Spanish-language readers and commentators had puzzled over for years; I could not simply translate them into invisibility. One of the most famous opening lines in Spanish literature is this: Nadie lo vio desembarcaren la unánime noche: “No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night”.¹ What an odd adjective, “unanimous”. It is so odd, in fact, that one is sorely tempted to put something like “all-encompassing”, so as to make it “comprehensible” to the reader.

Borges used the technique of what I’ve called etymologized words as a way of cutting through the baroque, trimming it down, not perpetuating it—as a way of making an efficient writing, packing a great deal of meaning into the story by freighting words with not just dictionary meaning, but their entire historical significance.

So why wheedling? I suspect to achieve a certain effect, a certain sort of lightness or softness. Dragging implies heaviness in a way that wheedling does not.

Emma Zunz

[…] for her father’s death was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening, endlessly, forever after.

What a brutal depiction of grief.

Her voice quivered; the quiver befitted a snitch.

Another clever moment of translation—the sounds!

The House of Asterion

The fact is, I am unique. I am not interested in what a man can publish abroad to other men; like the philosopher, I think that nothing can be communicated by the art of writing. Vexatious and trivial minutiae find no refuge in my spirit, which has been formed for greatness; I have never grasped for long the difference between one letter and another. A certain generous impatience has prevented me from learning to read. Sometimes I regret that, because the nights and the days are long.

Indeed, nothing can be communicated by the art of writing. Read this one; it’s quite short!

The Wait / The South

In now-distant days—distant less because of the lapse of time than because of two or three irrevocable acts—he [Villari] had desired many things, with a desire that lacked all scruples; that powerful urge to possess, which had inspired the hatred of men and the love of the occasional woman, no longer desired things—it wanted only to endure, wanted not to end. The taste of the mate, the taste of the black tobacco, the growing band of shade that slowly crept across the patio—these were reason enough to live.

Beautiful!

Anyway, throughout this short story Borges goes to great lengths to assure us that Villari—who has taken on the name of a man who is hunting him down—is not a very literary-minded person.

Certainly he was not seduced by the literary error of imagining that adopting the name of his enemy would be the astute thing to do.

[…] he didn’t notice the errors, because the notion that there might be parallels between art and life never occurred to him. He docilely tried to like things; he tried to take things in the spirit they were offered. Unlike people who had read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a book.

He did not think of the infernal torments as improbable or excessive, nor did it occur to him that Dante would have condemned him, Villari, to the farthest circle of Hell, where Ugolino’s teeth gnaw endlessly at Ruggieri’s throat.²

One explanation might be that Villari is “already dead,” in the same sense that the main character Otálora in The Dead Man is “already dead.” His fate is set. Given the circumstances Borges gives us—with Villari fleeing, with him dreaming of other men and the original Villari hunting him down—a reader would conclude that the most reasonable way the story could end would be with Villari’s death. Villari himself would not think this.

Another explanation might be that this ignorance of literature helps Borges ground Villari in the present. “Villari tried to live in the mere present, looking neither backward nor ahead,” he says. Later, he describes Villari’s tooth-pulling, after he experiences pain in his mouth: “At the ‘moment of truth,’ he was neither more cowardly nor more composed than anyone else.” Literature lives outside the “moment” and the “mere present.” A strange note is that at the end, when the other Villari tracks him down and kills him, he attempts to exit the present.

He gestured at them to wait, and he turned over and faced the wall, as though going back to sleep […] so that his murderers would become a dream, as they already had been so many times, in that same place, at that same hour?

That was the magic spell he was casting when he was rubbed out by the revolvers’ fire.

And having lived in the present his entire life, he has no recourse when it snuffs him out.

The exact opposite occurs in The South:

By 1939, one of his grandsons, Juan Dahlmann, was secretary of a municipal library on Calle Córdoba […]

That afternoon Dahlmann had come upon a copy (from which some pages were missing) of Weil’s Arabian Nights; eager to examine his find, he did not wait for the elevator—he hurriedly took the stairs. Something in the dimness brushed his forehead—a bat? a bird? On the face of the woman who opened the door to him, he saw an expression of horror, and the hand he passed over his forehead came back red with blood.

Borges himself writes that one interpretation of The South involves Dahlmann dreaming up a romantic death from his hospital bed. So of course Dahlmann can exit the present—he’s a reader!

1. The opening to The Circular Ruins, actually.

2. Both Ugolino and Ruggieri are traitors.