Ficciones

A collection of original short stories first published in full in 1944, and generally considered to be the principle Borges work of fiction, Ficciones is composed of two sections. The first, entitled THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS, was originally published in 1941, and contains eight stories that fully explore the labyrinthine nature of reality and the impact of language on literature, philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. Many of them are concerned with imaginary books penned by fantastical authors, and more then a few engage in flights of symbolism and meta-reality. The stories are as follows:

"Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" A reference to an imaginary country leads the author deeper into a different linguistical reality.

"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"-A review of a work of detective fiction concerned with the quest for an unreal person.

"Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote"- Borges explains why Menard's twentieth century (but identical) Quixote is superior to that of Cervantes'.

"The Circular Ruins"-A mystic visionary attempts to dream a human into being.

"The Babylon Lottery"-The history of a society ruled by the random, invisible, and godlike Company.

"An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain"-Reviews of three strange pieces of fiction by a very unusual author.

"The Library of Babel"-The tale of a man, perhaps Borges himself, a caretaker in the Library of infinity.

"The Garden of Forking Paths"-A unique spy story about an impossible book and a mythical labyrinth.

The second part of the book is entitled ARTIFICES, and are generally shorter than those in the first. Published in 1944, these stories are similar, but deal more with the ideas and metaphors in a slightly less elaborate and fantastical way. The nine stories are:

"Funes, the Memorius"-A nineteen year old invalid reveals that language is an inadequate tool for those who can forget nothing.

"The Form of the Sword"-The tale of an Irish expatriot and the scar on his face.

"Theme of the Traitor and Hero"-When history repeats literature, looking deeper often reveals the hand of hidden forces.

"Death and the Compass"-A detective story in which the ineffable name of God is the principle clue.

"The Secret Miracle"-A writer's last days under a Nazi death sentence.

"Three Versions of Judas"-A review of the work of Nils Runeberg, a modern heresiarch, and his views on the nature of Judas Iscariot.

"The End"-A completion of Jose Hernandez' great folk poem about Martin Fierro.

"The Sect of the Phoenix"-The sectarians are a cult that have survived the ages, judiciously keeping the Secret which unites them.

"The South"-A copy of the One Thousand and One Nights precipitates the strange sickness of an Argentine nationalist.

Visions from the Library Basement: A Mid-life Rebirth

Borges's biggest fear was that he had lost his creative ability; that the disease had burned it out of him. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth-he was about to embark on a creative arc that would eventually carry him to world fame. In an attempt to discover whether or not he still possessed his creative faculties, he penned a new story, an attempt at something different, something unique. The result was "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." Next he wrote "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Both were well received and published in Victoria Ocampo's Sur.

Delighted at his new surge in creativity, he began writing stories in the basement of the library, and so while his co-workers above obliviously frittered away their time on gossip, Borges was busy in the basement planting the seeds of postmodernism. "The Library of Babel" became his nightmare allegory for his job, and other stories quickly followed. In 1941, a collection of these stories was published, The Garden of Forking Paths, which would later be added to Artifices and retitled Ficciones in 1944. In 1942 he published a series of spoof detective stories with his younger friend Adolfo Bioy-Casares, Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, under the joint pen-name of "Bustos Domecq." In addition to his new stories, which ingeniously mixed philosophy, fact, fantasy and mystery, Borges also began to write political articles again. Appearing in El Hogar, these articles didn't so much support any one political system as criticize many of the general trends of the time: anti-semitism, nazism, and the increasing decline into fascism. Ironically he gained wider recognition for his articles than for his brilliant, but largely unnoticed, fictions-a fact that was to cause him problems when the fascists came into power in the mid forties. In 1946 Juan Perón was "elected" president, and due to his political affiliations, Borges was "promoted" to "Inspector of Poultry and Rabbits in the Public Markets." He immediately decided to resign, remarking that "dictatorships foment subservience, dictatorships foment cruelty; even more abominable is the fact that they foment stupidity. To fight against those sad monotonies is one of the many duties of writers."

Borges en su laberinto

La forma obstinada de un laberinto ocupa el gran salón circular del Palais de Glace. Estamos en "El Universo de Borges", donde el orden de los objetos responde a un mapa temático cuyas regiones identifican deiciséis espacios, agrupados a su vez en cuatro grandes reinos: Bibliotecas, Eterno Retorno, Laberintos y Mitologías. En el laberinto mayor hay un espacio que también se llama Laberinto, cumpliendo así con el requisito borgeano de la puesta en abismo: figuras dentro de figuras. Duplicaciones, fotografías, traducciones, manuscritos y obrasimpresas, cuadros, espejos, réplicas, superficies pulidas, hacen su papel de dobles. Los relojes de acumulados sin orden en una vitrina, el reloj de arena en otra, muestran un tiempo, circular y periódico como el que Borges conjeturó en relatos y poemas. El: tigres dibujados por Borges a los años, su gato Beppo, un sello chino, esculturas zoomórficas remiten a una zoología. La foto de Leonor Acevedo de Borges, un perfil bellísimo de señora distinguida todavía joven, marca la huella biográfica de un itinerario, donde también están las imágenes sus amigos, de María Kodama en las instantáneas los viajes, las poses de los grupos literarios, los sepias de Jorge Luis y Nora Borges a de siglo, el dibujo del árbol genealógico de la familia. Ejemplares de Prisma nombran a la vanguardia de los años veinte. Un estante muestra los libros: Kipling, Conrad, James, Stevenson, Poe, Swedenborg testimonian las obsesiones que Borges citó en sus textos. En otra vitrina, varios ejemplares de folletines de Eduardo Gutiérrez. Obviamente, también está el Fierro. Cada cual encontrará su Borges en esta exposición. Yo me detengo frente a las manitos de bronce de dos llamadores. Llegan del Buenos Aires de las primeras décadas del siglo XX, cuando colgaban al costado de las puertas. Vaciadas en metal, esas manos cortadas a la altura de la muñeca y clavadas con los dedos hacia abajo sobre la madera del marco, solían aferrar en su palma una esfera también de bronce. Ella era la que golpeaba la puerta y producía el sonido de la llamada. Son objetos extraños esas dos manos cortadas, que el visitante apresaba con su propia mano para anunciarse. Perfectos simulacros, miniaturas, cuya amputación de un cuerpo ausente produce hoy, en las vitrinas de la exposición, un efecto contradictorio. Son familiares y siniestras como restos de un pasado que ha perdido su función para conservar sólo una forma. Tienen algo de la perturbación que los surrealistas buscaban con el collage de fragmentos de grabados antiguos. Conocemos la poca simpatía de Borges por el surrealismo, y, sin embargo, las manitos están bien en su vitrina, porque citan un tiempo al que también pertenece esa carátula del cuaderno marca "Lanceros Argentinos", donde Borges escribió dos palabras: Martín Fierro, que recuerdan a una de sus obsesiones más perdurables.

En el video de Edgardo Cozarinsky, que puede verse en una de las salidas del laberinto, Borges dice: "La infelicidad y la nostalgia son la materia del arte". Esta exposición muestra más la nostalgia que la infelicidad. Las fotos de Borges sonriendo son imágenes a la vez felices y convincentes: la sonrisa es abierta, simpática, confiada. ¿Donde buscar la infelicidad? ¿Cómo mostrarla? Hay un grabado de Piranesi y la torre de Babel de Brueghel. Piranesi muestra su arquitectura sombría, de falsas simetrías y falsos empalmes: perspectivas imaginarias. Brueghel abre el infierno borgeano de la proliferación. Quienes recorran la exposición se sorprenderán cuando encuentren, reiterada y periódicamente, su propia imagen en los espejos que cierran el laberinto: esa duplicación sorprende por lo extemporánea (también es extemporánea la inclusión del lector en la ficción, como Borges lo hace en "El Aleph"). En esa duplicación Borges descubría un principio de infelicidad, una suma perturbadora al orden del mundo. Lo escribió, atribuyéndoselo a los sabios de un planeta imaginario en "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Otro grabado de Etienne-Louis Boullée muestra una sala de la Biblioteca Nacional de París. El proyecto de Boullée, clásico dibujo académico del siglo XVIII, es una perspectiva simétrica de un recinto inmenso, abovedado, una especie de cañón gigantesco, cuya multiplicación es imaginable precisamente por la simetría racional y la posibilidad de repetición exacta de los volúmenes geométricos. Está muy bien, en este "Universo de Borges", el grabado de Boullée: menos turbio que Piranesi, pero también proclive a la multiplicación, señala el orden de la biblioteca y también su potencial infinito.

En su video, Cozarinsky filma un largo recorrido de Borges por la galería que daba a la sala de lectura de la vieja Biblioteca Nacional, en la calle México. Borges va solo, con pasos seguros, la mirada puesta en un punto más allá de la cámara que va anticipando su recorrido. Precedido por su bastón, Borges camina entre la balaustrada y los estantes. No necesita ver para saber que está en el espacio que probablemente haya conocido de manera más completa, aunque ya fuera un ciego a quien le fueron dados, al mismo tiempo, los libros y la noche. Bibliotecas, páginas impresas, manuscritos de letra pequeña y gentil. La exposición sigue el camino que Borges trazó para leer a Borges.

Borges: The Blind Visionary

Arguably, Jorge Luis Borges, throughout his literary career, has laid the foreground for what is today commonly referred to as postmodern fiction. In the words of Borges scholar Jaime Alazraki, "In take same way that much of contemporary Hispanic literature cannot be explained in its totality without keeping Borges in mind, it is not an exaggeration to say that the map of twentieth-century fiction would be incomplete without his name" (3). What is particularly significant about Borges' writing is its visionary, postmodern tone. Coming of age as a writer at the height modernism, Borges, in his fiction, poetry, and prose, re-envisions, rather Than re-inscribes, the basic theoretical tenets of the modern literary tradition, perhaps best articulated by T.S. Eliot in his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent." To foreground this discussion and the major thrusts of this project, I will briefly outline some of the major themes of modernism (as articulated primarily by Eliot), and postmodernism (as articulated by Ihab Hassan). Although this discussion will be constricted and necessarily insufficient-- that is, the complexities of the modernist and postmodernist literary traditions cannot be sufficiently addressed within the confines of this paper-my analysis will nonetheless offer some important insights into the major theoretical premises which Borges subverts and embraces in his own writing. To focus this discussion and my proof, I will concentrate my analysis on Borges short story the "Circular Ruins," one of his more widely anthologized pieces. In short, I will argue that this story enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of 'grand histoire" (Hassan 281), specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity. Before navigating to the text of Borges' story, in which you will have the choice of pursing a number of different links, all of which exemplify my main argument, I would first recommend that you take some time to explore my links on Modernism and Postmodernism. When considering the rather diverse articulations of both of these terms, I think it especially important to consider my rendition of these signifiers, especially as they are relevant to his discussion on "The Circular Ruins."

Modernism

As stated in the introduction, the term modernism is in itself a slippery term, and any attempts to reduce it to one signifier is ultimately spurious, for at times, so-called modernist writers offer contradictory formulations of the term as well as its major theoretical premises. But having acknowledged the limited nature of this discussion, I do agree with Selden, Widdowson, and literary theorists who suggest that however crude, there are some significant commonalties in the modernist approach to understanding literature. To elucidate these commonalties, I concentrate my discussion of T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." According to Selden and Widdowson, T.S. Eliot's the "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is perhaps "the singly most influential work in Anglo-American criticism"(Selden 11). Selden and Widdowson argue that Eliot's assertions about literary criticism inaugurated (or perhaps codified) the literary tradition we know as modernism, with its emphasis on objectivity and reason. In his rather brief essay, Eliot forwards two of the major premises of modernist thinking, "he emphasizes that writers must have 'the historical sense'-- that is, a sense of the tradition of writing in which they must situate themselves; and in this process reinforces the necessary 'depersonalization of the artist if his or her art is to attain the impersonality' it must have if it is 'to approach the condition of science'" (Selden 11). In considering the implications of Eliot's claims, I think it helpful to briefly consider the analogy that Eliot employs to exemplify his argument; perhaps not surprisingly, Eliot's analogy is a scientific one. In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" Eliot asks the reader to consider "the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulfur dioxide" (qtd in Richter 468). According to Eliot, "the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected . . . [it] has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged." Eliot goes on to argue that a mature poet, one deserving of the name, is "a shred of platinum" (qtd in Richter 469). More specifically, the objective of the poet is to remove himself and his emotions from his art. Instead, the poet should act as the neutral medium through which emotion is communicated. What is startling about Eliot's claims is his insistence that the poet can somehow transcend his own historicity and thus achieve a scientific objectivity which, unbounded by human emotions, reaches the level of art. For Eliot, the depersonalized poet--or the disinterested one to use Matthew Arnold's term--is like the scientist who reaches objective truth by removing his personal bias, emotions, and ultimately self, from his scholarship. Like the scientist, the poet is the medium through which natural laws (literature) is communicated and understood. (Please note that I use the pronoun he in this discussion on Eliot not because there are (and were) no women poets and scientists, but rather because Eliot, in his theoretical formulations, does not explicitly include both genders in his discussion.) As is clear in my discussion of postmodernism, many post-modern theorists, including Ihab Hassan, maintain that Eliot's call for a depersonalized poet, is, to use Haraway's term, a "political myth."

Postmodernism

Before offering any definition of the term postmodernism, I must emphasize the limits of such an attempt, for clearly, offering a definition of this term is especially problematic when considering some of the basic theoretical tenets of postmodern theory. However, in order to examine the ways in which Borges' "The Circular Ruins" enacts a post-modern paradigm, I must first briefly discuss that post-modern paradigm which informs my analysis. I rely on the work of Ihab Hassan to achieve this objective. Hassan opens his essay, "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism," with a discussion of the historical development of the term postmodernism itself, and as the title of his article implies, he goes on To formulate his own concept of postmodernism. After acknowledging the limits of his own approach, he argues that there is in fact such a thing as a "postmodern tendency," and according to Hassan, this tendency can be best understood by a close consideration of the term: "indeterminance" (281). In discussing this term, Hassan splits his neologism into two components-indeterminacies andimmanences--and goes on to consider the implications of each. For Hassan, indeterminacies, a "complex referent" in itself (282), is a term that signifies: "decreation, disintegration, deconstruction, decenternment, displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction" and a number of other "d" terms which basically emphasize the questioning and rupturing of all commonplace, enlightenment, modernist assertions about objective truth, reason, science, ontology, history, etc. etc. The second component of Hassan's indetermanence, which is immanences, is more difficult a concept to grasp. The postmodern immanences that Hassan envisages are not transcendental in the religious sense of the word, but are rather those resonances, which "all derive from the emergence of human beings as language animals," that serve as a common point through which human being can communicate, play, and become interdependent. In conflating these terms, Hassan directs the reader toward his concept of postmodernism, which I will argue bears some striking parallels to the images, motifs, and resonances that Borges' short-story, "The Circular Ruins," evokes. Note: If you have not yet read my discussion on Modernism I suggest that you do so before moving on to the The Circular Ruins

The Circular Ruins

I now move this discussion to what I consider to be the main- thrust of this project: a careful reading of "The Circular Ruins." By offering such a reading, I hope to elucidate the ways in which Borges' writing enacts a postmodernism which Eliot would decidedly discourage and Hassan would arguably openly embrace. (For a fuller discussion of Eliot and Hassan, please read my discussion on modernism and postmodernism.) Below, you will find a copy of Borges' "The Circular Ruins." If you are not familiar with this short story, I would recommended that you read it in its entirety before exploring my links. As discussed in my introduction, I contend that Borges, in "The Circular Ruins," subverts modernist notions about literature and instead enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of "grand histoire" (Hassan 281),specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity. In offering a proof of this claim, I draw your attention to key terms throughout "The Circular Ruins" whose significance will be amplified by the scholarship that has been written about them.

I have argued that Borges' "The Circular Ruins" enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of "grand histoire" (Hassan 281), specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity. I substantiate my claims by carefully examining key phrases, motifs, and images in "The Circular Ruins" which help to exemplify my claims. My choice to communicate my argument in a hypertext is a strategic one that I think merits discussion. Through my non- linear links, I too have attempted to enact postmodernism call (as articulated by Ihab Hassan) for non-linear, multiple voices. This move is one that I think Borges would encourage, for clearly, in "The Circular Ruins," Borges suggests that both the universe and humankind is begotten not by one transcendental all-powerful being, but rather by a series of perhaps imperfect, even mortal, avatars. Although this insight may seem terrifying, the relief associated with the acceptance of this multiplicity and non-linearity does not leave the reader in a state of vertigo, but rather leads her/him to Borges' re envisioned "unitary sensibility" (Sontag qtd inHassan 278), as discussed in my link on Gnostic cosmogonies. In closing, I think it fair to say that Borges (and his fiction) was clearly ahead of his times; he created in an academic community in which the pervasive power of modernism manifested itself from the pampas of Argentina to the rolling country-side of England. However, as has been argued throughout this hypertext, Borges was not solely interested in resisting modernist literary techniques; he aimed to create anew. Martin Stabb writes, "It is true that he[Borges] wished to purge his poetry of certain specific modernist techniques and mannerisms, but like all good poets his objective was to affirm his own poetic values" (7). Throughout this hypertext, I have argued that Borges meets this objective in his "The Circular Ruins." thing in his dreams In briefly considering this short excerpt form Through the Looking Glass, it is clear that the idea of being "only a sort of thing in his dream" is not unique to Borges (specifically, by bringing the reader's attention to Carroll's story, Borges signals to the reader the recursivity of the theme). In his "Forms of a Legend," Borges traces the development of this notion of dreaming someone into existence, and he argues that "all religions of India, and in particular Buddhism, teach that the world is illusory"(126). If the world in is fact illusory--if our existence. like that of Alice and the magician's son, are no more(nor less) than the imaginings of another-then "[t]he life of Buddha on earth is a game or a dream, and the earth itself another dream" (126). More importantly for the sake of this discussion, if the earth is "itself another dream" (126), then the earth cannot be understood in terms of a rational, reasoned, paradigm, but instead must be thought of in terms of "antithesis," "dispersal," and "absence" (Hassan 281).For a fuller discussion of the implications of these terms (antithesis, absence, and dispersal), consider exploring my discussion in dialectical, Gnostic cosmogonies, and someone else was dreaming him. To return to the text, click on the following link thing in his dreams

Dialectical

The term dialectical is obviously a loaded one. In understanding the significance and relevance of Borges' use of it, I think it helpful to briefly outline the results of the magician's attempts to "dream a man" (69). At the start of "The Circular Ruins," the reader is led to believe that the magician, who envisions a group of students--one of which has "a soul worthy of participating in the universe" (69)--is close to achieving his goal. However, the narrator informs that one day "a catastrophe came" (70). According to the narrator, the magician's initial attempts to dream a man into existence are futile: he has "realized [that]he had not dreamt" at all (70). Even though he is able to "get to the bottom of all the enigmas of a superior or inferior order"(70), he cannot achieve his ultimate objective--the creation of another spirit--through the use of the dialectic. As "The Circular Ruins" progresses, the magician changes his tactics: he replenishes his forces, "abandon[s] all premeditation concerned with dreaming," and waits until the "disk of the moon should be perfect before taking up his task again" (71); upon doing so, he meets with immediate success: "almost at once he dreamt of a beating heart" (71). The magician's initial failure and his subsequent accomplishment is significant. At stated above, his dialectical approach is ultimately faulty. More specifically, in "The Circular Ruins," the resolution of polar opposites do not, as Hegel suggests in Phenomenology of Spirit, lead to a the odicy, in which the absolute God becomes manifest to the universe (Lavine 225). Arguably, Borges, in this short story, cleverly deconstructs one of the more potent political myths of enlightenment thought, specifically that God is the unitary centre and creator of the universe. As is clear in my discussion of Gnostic Cosmogonies, the universe that Borges envisions is not one bounded by the notion of a fixed center. Additionally, if God is not the centre of the universe, then perhaps the center of a text is not the text itself.

Gnostic Cosmogonies

I highlight this final sentence of "The Circular Ruins" because Borges' bringing of the reader full-circle exemplifies the type of circularity I have examined throughout this hypertext (please take some time to explore my links on modernism; postmodernism, and circularity as starting points for a fuller discussion in which I support my thesis claims as articulated in my introduction). In short, I have argued that Borges' "The Circular Ruins" enacts a post-modern paradigm which re envisions modernist assumptions about linearity and reason. Furthermore, the postmodern tone, imagery, and motifs of "The Circular Ruins" coincide with some of the basic theoretical tenets of postmodernism, as articulated by Hassan. A hypertext seems an especially appropriate medium in which to articulate my arguments on Borges' fiction; I offer a discussion of this choice in my Conclusion

Circular

The title of Borges' story is significant and merits discussion. Arguably, the term "circular" immediately signals to the reader a sort of recursivity, perhaps even a circular cycle which is apt to repeat itself. This notion of circularity is personified in the actions that occur within the story itself. In the closing sentence of "The Circular Ruins," the narrator informs the reader that the wizard (magician) is himself the dream of another, "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him" (74). After learning that the Narrator himself is nothing more than an apparition (which might be anticipated after reading the epigraph of this story), the reader is led to believe that the process of dreaming another into existence occurs ad infinitum. According to Borges critic Jaime Alazraki, this "insistence on the infinite character of the dream is not fortuitous. Besides being a recurrent motif which in greater or lesser degree appears in almost all his stories, the infinite is translated on the stylistic level as an insistent adjective whose repetition permits us to define it as a 'linguistic'"(21).Although Borges' use of the term circular may seem innocuous or perhaps unimportant, when considering the larger theoretical context in which Borges was publishing, Borges' choice of words becomes immediately significant. More specifically, one of the major thrusts of modernism (according to Hassan, Selden and others), regards the notion of center, that is, that there exists a center, a focal point from which all else emanates; in terms of literature, the modernist would argue that the center is "'the text itself,'' the words on the page,' nothing more nor less'"(Selden 11). Borges, by intimating to the reader that the dreaming of another into existence is an infinite, cyclical process--an idea that will be further examined throughout the links in this hypertext--undermines the notion that one single center, creator, universe (etc. etc.) exists. Consequently, in the first words of this short story, Borges seems to question one of the major premises of modernist thought.

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The unnerving mirror hung at the end of a corridor in a villa on Calle Goana, in Ramos Mejia; the misleading encyclopaedia goes by the name of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), and is a literal if inadequate reprint of the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica. The whole affair happened some five years ago…(Ficciones, 17)."

"Centuries and centuries of idealism have not failed to influence reality. In the very oldest regions of Tlon, it is not an uncommon occurance for lost objects to be duplicated…(29)".

"Things duplicate themselves in Tlon.. They tend at the same time to efface themselves, to lose their detail when people forget them. The classic example is that of a stone threshold which lasted as long as it was visited by a beggar, and which faded from sight on his death. Occasionally, a few birds, a horse perhaps, have saved the ruins of an amphitheatre…(30)."

In Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Borges deals with the fragile, and oftentimes precarious, foundations upon which humanity constructs its imposing systems of knowledge -those towering edifices of imagined consilience. Our first principles maybe specious - even ludicrous, yet world views are maintained, perpetuated, and upheld to a sometimes monstrous degree. The world view of Tlon emerges from the chance, encyclopaedic discovery of an obscure country located (perhaps) somewhere in Asia Minor. Actually, it is at first only an anecdotal phantom, originating in the illusory reflection of a mirror late in the evening, followed by a cynical observation by Bioy Casares. The ensuing anecdote plunges the reader, and narrator, into a metaphysical nightmare in which the basis of reality is called into question, for it appears that this strange country, this Uqbar, may indeed constitute an entirely different planet which may or may not exist once mysterious reference material on the subject, the First Encyclopaedia of Tlon, is brought to light. Through the use of fantasy, Borges ingeniously elucidates the often bizarre ways in which our own knowledge of the physical word is epistemically created. Through the mirror of Borges's prose the view of reality in all its apparent plausibility is frighteningly transformed into the dubious Orbis Tertius - a planet which (perhaps!?) originated in a kind of ontological exercise among an esoteric group of intellectuals. However, physical manifestations of Tlon begin to materialize in the "real" world and the socially structured notions of knowledge begin to slowly conform itself to the growing seriousness of The Third Planet. Reality, Borges seems to muse, is nothing more than a malleable subjectivity enslaved to a First Principle of floating intellectual smoke looming in the contorted view of someone else's mirror. It becomes clear that our fundamental notions of reality are not exempt from exploitation The true terror of the Third Planet arises from the fact that Tlon Uqbar: "…is a labyrinth plotted by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men…" And, as Borges illustrates, a labyrinth controlled by men whose motivations are far from unequivocal.

Pierre Menard Author of Don Quixote

"He did not want to compose another Don Quixote - which would be easy - but the Don Quixote. It is unnecessary to add that his aim was never to produce a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable ambition was to produce pages which would coincide - word for word and line for line - with those of Miguel de Cervantes…(48-49)." …..

The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say; but ambiguity is a richness.) It is a revelation to compare the Don Quixote of Menard with that of Cervantes. The latter, for instance, wrote (Don Quixote, Part One, Chapter Nine): …truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future. Written in the seventeenth century, written by the "ingenious layman" Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical eulogy of history. Menard, on the other hand , writes …truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future. History, mother of truth; the idea is astounding. Menard, a contempory of William James, does not define history as an investigation of reality, but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what took place; it is what we think took place. The final clauses - example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future - are shamelessly pragmatic…(53)." In Pierre Menard, Borges attempts to expose the uncanny sense of re-circulation which courses its way through the world of literature. In keeping with the strange, Tlonian declaration that: "…all books are the work of one single writer, who is timeless and anonymous…" Borges set about to satirize the supposed originality of Twentieth Century literature - to expose its inevitable plagiarism of form and content (Woodall114). The substance of the written word is eternal and unchanging. All acts of creation are little more than an incidental repetition, it is merely the perception, which Borges likes to a hilarious act of self-deception which obfuscates the unchanging truth behind all acts of literary expression. Menard becomes emblematic for all writers; however the joke is not really on them unless it be a comic reminder that all literary creation is merely the reiteration of past dialogues - either a summary or expansion upon unchanging topics which are themselves merely incidental manifestations of one pantheistic discourse; each in turn reflected back and forth among the macro versal world of collected books. The joke, if anything in Borges's fictions can be so unequivocally labeled, is dubiously mirrored toward the generation-conscious reader/critic who hilariously imagines that the work of their own celebrated time span is indeed unique among the canons of the world and thus constitutes a "significant break" with the traditions of the past. For Borges, literature is an inextricable matrix in which artistic composition is trapped, and even though imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it may indeed be an inescapable homage paid to the insinuatory monism latent in all literary achievement.

El jardín de los textos que se bifurcan

La obra de Jorge Luis Borges, aparentemente tan exquisita y cuidadosa con las formas tradicionales de narración no deja detener pasajes subversivos para el orden y la mentalidad recibida acerca de qué constituye un relato o un razonamiento bien expresado. En su metáfora del universo "La biblioteca de Babel", encontramos una forma de referencia inter textual que se asemeja mucho al hipertexto. Los habitantes de la biblioteca (al menos algunos) la plantean como forma de encontrar un ordenen el universo (i.e., la biblioteca), es decir de encontrar ese centro descentrado del que hablaba Cortázar. En algún anaquel de algún hexágono (razonaron los hombres) debe existir un libro que sea la cifra y el compendio perfecto de todos los demás [...] ¿Cómo localizar el venerado hexágono secreto que lo hospedaba? Alguien propuso un método regresivo: Para localizar el libro A, consultar previamente un libro B que indique el sitio de A; para localizar el libro B, consultar previamente un libro C, y así hasta lo infinito...(vol.II, p.59)Otro experimento textual propuesto medio en serio medio en broma por Borges es el de un texto que abarque varias posibilidades de desarrollo de la acción, que se separe en múltiples variantes, que se dirían como diversas conexiones hipertextuales. Tal es el caso de las (supuestas) obras consideradas en "Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain", por ejemplo lanovela April March: Trece capítulos integran la obra. El primero refiere el ambiguo diálogo de unos desconocidos en un andén. El segundo refiere los sucesos de la víspera del primero. El tercero, también retrógrado, refiere los sucesos de otra posible víspera del primero; el cuarto, los de otra. Cada una de esas tres vísperas (que rigurosamente se excluyen) se ramifica en otras tres vísperas, de índole muy diversa. La obra total consta pues de nueve novelas; cada novela, de tres largos capítulos. (El primero es común a todas ellas, naturalmente.) De esas novelas, una es de carácter simbólico; otra sobrenatural; otra, policial; otra, psicológica, otra, comunista; otra, anticomunista, etcétera. [...] Quienes los leen en orden cronológico (verbigracia: x 3, y 1, z) pierden el sabor peculiar de este extraño libro. Dos relatos -el x 7, el x 8- carecen de valor individual; la yuxtaposición le presta eficacia... No sé si debo recordar que ya publicado April March, Quain se arrepintió del orden ternario y predijo que los hombres que lo imitaran optarían por el binario y los demiurgos y los dioses por el infinito: infinitas historias, infinitamente ramificadas. (vol.II, p.52)Parece que un relato infinitamente bifurcado no es prerrogativa exclusiva de divinidades y ángeles; los nuevos medios tecnológicos posibilitan este tipo de texto como obra colectiva de una enorme comunidad humana, la de los conectados a las grandes redes de comunicación. Otro relato, "El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan", ejemplifica magistralmente las posibilidades del destino y el tema de los universos paralelos. Una de las claves del cuento es una novela china aparentemente caótica. El autor pretendía crear una novela y un laberinto, pero no se trata de un laberinto físico, la novela es el laberinto, un laberinto de universos paralelos: El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan era la novela caótica; la frase "varios porvenires (no a todos)" me sugirió la idea de la bifurcación en el tiempo, no en el espacio. La relectura general de la obra confirmó esa teoría. En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una u elimina las otras; en la del casi inextricable Ts'ui Pên, opta -simultáneamente- por todas. Crea, así, diversos porvenires, diversos tiempos, que también proliferan y se bifurcan. De ahí las contradicciones de la novela. Fang, digamos, tiene un secreto; un desconocido llama a su puerta; Fang resuelve matarlo. Naturalmente, hay varios desenlaces posibles: Fang puede matar al intruso, el intruso puede matar a Fang, ambos pueden salvarse, ambos pueden morir, ambos pueden morir, etcétera. En la obra de Ts'ui Pên, todos los desenlaces ocurren; cada uno es el punto de partida de otras bifurcaciones, Alguna vez, los senderos de ese laberinto convergen: por ejemplo, usted llega a esta casa, pero en uno de los pasados posibles usted es mi enemigo, en otro mi amigo. (vol.II, p.68) Esa multiplicidad de relaciones posibles entre los fragmentos de un texto (una novela en este caso) recuerdan inevitablemente las infinitas posibilidades de acceso a las lexias que plantea el hipertexto. La WWW también es un laberinto casi inextricable e infinito, donde todas las posibilidades se dan cita dependiendo del albur del ratón, que lleve al navegante a elegir una ruta u otra.

Las conexiones y los enlaces hipertextuales se prodigan hasta el vértigo más irónico en la obra de Borges. El anteriormente citado "Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain" termina así: Quain solía afirmar que los lectores eran una especie ya extinta. "No hay europeo -razonaba- que no sea un escritor, en potencia o en acto." Afirmaba también que de las diversas felicidades que puede ministrar la literatura, la más alta era la invención. Ya que no todos son capaces de esta felicidad, muchos habrán de contentarse con simulacros. Para esos "imperfectos escritores", cuyo nombre es legión, Quain redactó los ocho relatos del libro Statements. Cada uno de ellos prefigura o promete un buen argumento, voluntariamente frustrado por el autor. Alguno -no el mejor- insinúa dos argumentos. El lector, distraído por su vanidad, cree haberlos inventado. Del tercero, The Rose of Yesterday, yo cometí la ingenuidad de extraer "Las ruinas circulares", que es una de las narraciones del libro El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan.(vol.II, pp.53-54)

Aparte de la ironía de la cita bíblica implícita (¿por qué no llamarla salto hipertextual?) "cuyo nombre es legión" (Mc 5, 9), que en el evangelio citado se refiere a una posesión demoniaca (¿sugerencia de que las historias de Quain/Borges poseen de forma análoga a los lectores?), la mayor ironía es que el libro El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan es precisamente el libro en que está el mismo "Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain". La autoreferencia, una característica fundamental del texto literario según Foucault, alcanza proporciones vertiginosas, de las que nos vamos dando cada vez más cuenta al enfrentarnos a los medios hipertextuales.

La palabra uqbar

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius , es el nombre que Jorge Luis Borges le dio a las notas sobre libros imaginarios. Borges dice en el prólogo del El Jardín de los Senderos que se Bifurcan ,(1941): "...Desvarío laborioso y empobrecedor el de componer vastos libros; el de explayar en quinientas páginas una idea cuya perfecta exposición oral cabe en pocos minutos. Mejor procedimiento es simular que esos libros ya existen y ofrecer un resumen, un comentario. Así procedió Carlyle en Sartor Resartus; así Butler en The obras que tienen la Fair Heaven; imperfección de ser libros también, no menos tautológicos que los otros. Más razonable, más inepto, más haragán, he preferido la notas sobre libros imaginarios. escritura de Éstas son Orbis Tertius y el Examen de la Tlön, Uqbar, Obra de Quain.". Herbert

Notas tomadas del cuento

Uqbar: región de Irak o del Asia Menor según Bioy Casares.

Un heresiarca (jefe de secta herética) de uqbar dijo:

"Para uno de esos gnósticos, el visible universo era una ilusión o (más precisamente) un sofisma. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables (mirrors and fatherhood are hateful) porque lo multiplican y lo divulgan."