Ficciones

The following are my notes on Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges. These notes are subject to change in the future.

General Background Information

Borges comes from a poetic background, and only switches to prose later in life.

Plot Summary

Introduction

Not written by Borges, uses a lot of purple prose to say Borge is very well read and that his works are diverse in what they pull from. Also makes the claim that Borges hints at universal symbols and questions that man grapples with.

Part 1: The Garden of Forking Paths

Prologue

Borges describes to the reader his stories and confirms that they do not require “extraneous elucidation”. Borges espouses the opinion that books are laborious compared to speech where an idea can be developed in minutes. The eight story is a detective story, the first is notes on a book that hasn’t been written.

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius

I

Borges and his friends are dining one night, and after one of his friends proposes the idea of a novel with an unreliable narrator they notice a mirror and are horrified by it late at night. One of his friends Bioy Cesares comments that a heresiarch from Uqbar once said “mirrors and copulation are abominable since they both multiply the numbers of man”. Upon looking for the source of this in The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, a “literal if inadequate reprint” of a British encyclopedia where his friend claimed he read it, they do not find mention of Uqbar.

Borges thinks little of it and assumes his friend made up the quote to give a more noble origin to his turn of phrase, especially because after consulting the same encyclopedia and many other sources he finds no mention of Uqbar. His friend calls him and they find that in his friend’s copy of the book, which is the same volume as his, there is a 4 page section on Uqbar. It is unremarkable and vague other than the above quotation, which is more closely about how the world is an illusion, and so mirrors and copulation are abominable as they multiply and extend this illusion. Other than that Uqbar is only interesting in that its myths are fantastical and refer to two lands: Mlejnas and Tlön. It doesn’t give enough details to confirm anything about Uqbar, and only of its cited sources can be found. The first source that the encyclopedia cites has an author that Borges recognizes as being a 17th century theologian who wrote about an imaginary community Rosae Crucis, that others later founded inspired by his work.

II

We learn that Borges finds a volume on Tlön after he finds a book that a friend of his father’s had left behind after he died. We learn about the world of Tlön and the first characteristic we are given is that Tlön’s people’s system of language “presupposes idealism”. This is relatively vague, but Borges clarifies that this means to the people of Tlön the world is “not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogenous series of independent acts”.

He claims this is as a result of their language not containing any nouns, and therefore not giving them the opportunity to have realist views. This is immediately contradicted by an example sentence with a process nominal, and then immediately after that he just says they actually do have nouns, but they look like adjectives and they refer to ideas. Nouns are already not a fixed class, which undermines his presentation, but he also gives a unique quality of his adjective composed nouns as being not real according to the people of Tlön. In other words, people in Tlön don’t believe these nouns refer to something that exists, rather they refer to sense-experiences that could be or could not be. The problem with this is that English nouns have this expressibility (many English nouns refer to things that could or could not be), and that the Tlön nouns he gives could easily be used in the extensional way we assume nouns are used (as people in Tlön do believe in temporal states, and therefore states starting and ending). These ideas are resolved by the claim that things persist as a result of all minds being situated in a larger divine gods mind (this is just Berkely’s argument, restated).

Regardless, the claim has moved from people in Tlön only believing in heterogenous series of independent acts, to only believing in mental states and experiences (which could easily be nominal). He then discusses how people in Tlön have a hard time interacting with the hypothesis of things existing and persisting in the world outside of perception due to their language (although this isn’t supported by analysis of their language which easily allows description of these objects). He then gives a nonsensical description of a different system of geometry that does not conform at all to geometry, and a system of counting in which the count of an object isn’t fixed till it is measured. He calls this arithmetic, but it isn’t arithmetic.

He established that in Tlön if someone loses something and finds it again, it’s possible that another person may find the same thing but it will be slightly different. This seems entirely against the description of how these people perceive the world. These found objects are called hrönir. Producing hrönir methodologically only works if the process doesn’t involve a witness who knows what is happening. In Tlön things duplicate themselves and disappear.

Postscript

It is confirmed that Tlön was created by a group of scholars including George Berkely. They all conspired to create Tlön and were funded by an American millionaire who wanted to prove to god men could create worlds. The American founder kept the project secret, and Herbert Ashe in his death let the project escape confinement. We then learn of aspects of the world of Tlön that have found their way into Borges’ reality. Eventually they take over our reality completely.

The Approach to Al-Mu’Tasim

Borges established that Al-Mu’Tasim is considered a detective novel with mystical elements. He claims it is not a hybrid novel in the style of Chesterton.

Borges only has access to a later volume, which he claims is worse from the changes noted in the appendix. He describes the first chapter as describing an Indian law student who is having a crisis of faith in his Islamic beliefs. There is a civil dispute between a Muslim and a Hindu and it devolves into a riot where some are killed. The student kills someone who he believes to be a Hindu, but he can’t tell. After this he is chased by the police to a large tower with a well on its top floor. There he meets a graverobber who tells him about how he despises horse thieves in Guzerat. The student falls asleep and then resolves to go on a journey to discover these horse thieves.

The last 19 chapters are described as containing too much to be succinctly described. Autobiographical, rambling and total all of India is visited, many characters are introduced and the story ends near the tower where the student initially departed from.

In these chapters the student becomes entrenched in the underworld as he finds infamy amongst them mitigating of his murder. During this entrenched period he meets an evil person who has more complexity than the rest. This person seems to him to have some clarity about them, and so our protagonist reasons they are a friend of a friend. The clarity that this stranger has is presumed to have been imprinted on him by another. The student then vows to go find the source of this clarity, or Al-Mutasim. He talks to people, and traces greater and greater reflections of the initial clarity till he finds Al-Mutasim.

Borges reasons that this story is only interesting if we believe the protagonist has some prophetic power, and that Al-Mutasim is real. He contends the reason current editions are worse is that they reduce Al-Mutasim to a symbol.

Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote

We are introduced to Pierre Menard as being the author of Don Quixote, a poet whose works have been embellished and added to without their consent by a zealous newspaper writer. Borges is writing this letter in an effort to rectify Menard’s canon. He claims he is supported by an acquaintance of Menard and a dignified countess.

He then gives a list of all the unpublished works he found amongst the author’s archives.

The remainder of the work describes Pierre Menard’s greatest work as being one that he never finished and kept no notes of. In this work he attempted to write Don Quixote, but rather than copy it he would live a life such that he would produce an identical work. The context for the work would be his, so either he would change his experience such that he would produce the work, or he would find a way to have his experience comport with the production of the work.

Borges puts this forward as a better way to engage with reading.

Circular Ruins

We are introduced to a man from a rural and unsocialized land who has found himself in the ruins of a temple along a river bank. This man’s goal is to dream a man so complete that this man becomes a part of reality.

Locals feed him and he dedicates all of his mental and physical energy to dreaming this man. He selects the man from an audience of possibilities in his dream. He educates this individual and builds him bit by bit. Eventually he prays to the stone sculpture in the temple he occupies. The god of this temple, Fire, grants his dreamed man life and physicality to everyone but the man and Fire.

The man begins to see this dreamed man as his son. Eventually he fulfills Fire’s condition of placing this man in another temple along the bank. His life becomes dull in the absence of his dream. He becomes distressed when he learns his son has demonstrated fire immunity, as he believes it may lead his son to knowing he is a simulacrum.

Fire envelops the temple the man is in, and he accepts his death and realizes he himself is a dream.

The Babylon Lottery

We are introduced to a citizen of Babylon. In Babylon people believe most events are determined by a lottery. This lottery is controlled by an unnamed and unseen group. As a result of buying into the games of chance given from the lottery controlling most aspects of their lives people are not strict about maintaining order. They accept aberrations as parts of the game of chance that already controls so much of their life.

It is proposed that all of life is controlled by chance, and that it does not matter if the group controlling the lottery really exist.

An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain

Some schemes for writing are proposed. One where a detective story presents itself straightforwardly but there is a secret solution available to the discerning reader. One where many different possibilities of one evening are explored in the same book.

The Library of Babel

An infinite library is composed of stacks of hexagonal rooms with bookshelves, staircases to access other hexagons and bathrooms. The books are populated by random characters selected from a finite list.

Once this fact has been deduced it is claimed that these books necessarily contain all possible meanings expressed through language, and that they are unique. This is only possibly true if the books are not finite in length, which they are explicitly established to be. It is proposed that ideas ineffable in one language will certainly be effable in some language and that language will be contained within the infinite books. This is not necessarily true as it is possible some ideas are not expressible in any language, or that the symbols in the original set of characters do not encode all possible languages.

Regardless, it is proposed that the books do contain all possible ideas. This results in people searching for ideas within the books and then despairing when they realize the size of infinity. People try to write their own books through random character manipulation to emulate the infinite library.

It is once again proposed that all possible meanings are in the library as any number of languages could be encoded using the 22 character alphabet and these languages could have idiosyncratic meanings to their terms.

The Garden of Forking Paths

We are reading a dictation of a Japanese spy in the English camp working for the Germans during WWI.

One of his revelations is that all things only happen in the present, and that one should live as though they have already undertaken all the actions they plan to take. We learn his grandfather was a governor who tasked himself with creating an interminable maze. This same grandfather left behind an undecipherable novel and no physical evidence of a maze.

Yu Tsun, the Japanese spy whose dictation we are reading, is going to meet a man named Stephen Albert to help the Germans win the war. He arrives and hears Chinese music, he is greeted by Stephen Albert and learns Stephen Albert is a sinologist who has recovered and restored his grandfather’s novel.

It is revealed that the novel is the maze, which was a surprise to the characters in the story. The novel is constructed to reveal that possible futures potentially split out into other universes making all possible futures exist. It is claimed that this would not have been possible to describe unless one obliquely used such a structure, and that direct description would not do the subject justice.

Our main character is touched by viewing time this way and it appears to make them feel more empathy for people, and Stephen Albert specifically. Regardless, he shoots and kills Stephen Albert, and is arrested, hence us reading his deposition.

Part 1: Artifices

Prologue

These pieces are intended to actually be of the kind that Borges’ writes about referentially in the first section of the book.

Funes, The Memorious

Funes is a child that Borges meets in his youth. Funes has a good memory but after being crippled can remember and perceive everything in exact detail. This results in him rejecting category, he views all things as so different, that even if he sees the same thing at different times he refuses to accept they should accept the same name.

This is wondrous to the other who listens to Funes describe the way he perceives the world. It is suspected that Funes does not think, as Borges proposes that thought would require one to generalize in a way that Funes couldn’t, he views everything as unique.

It would have been interesting to explore increased precision of memory and cognition allowing one to generalize more effectively rather than less (consider finding music harmonious or cacophonous, if we had the ability to notice patterns up to large primes, very little would sound cacophonous as we could identify the rhythm).

The Form of the Sword

We are introduced to a scarred Englishman who lives in the country side. His scar supposedly holds a fantastic story that earned him the opportunity to purchase his land.

Borges stays with this man, and learns he is Irish and that he was a revolutionary. He then hears his story.

The story contains a coward who rats out the man some 10 days into staying in an unoccupied English mansion during the war. It is unclear if the man is only the coward or a mix of both the narrating character and the coward. The scar he certainly gave to himself to wear as a scarlet letter.

Theme of the Traitor and Hero

Borges imagines someone writing a book about history that is motivated by the people in that history reconfiguring the historical event to be discoverable as a secret plot that should be written about.

Death and the Compass

An investigator is lead to his murder scene by criminals creating a conspiracy that could only be solved by a very clever investigator leading him there.

The Secret Miracle

A writer in Hungary hasn’t produced very much but ponders on the possibility of all men being the same men and all actions always occurring.

Nazi’s order his death as he is Jewish. He has an unfinished work that he fears he won’t be able to complete as he ponders his impending death. He begs god for the time to finish this work.

Before a firing squad kills him God grants him a year solely in his head to finish his work. It is about a man who believes himself to be another man who lives a whole day facing people who are nice to him but really are enemies. Our main character sees himself in this man.

Once he has completed his story time resumes and he is killed.

Three Versions of Judas

Borges proposes through Runeberg the possibility that Judas was in fact the son of God. This is entertained as he says that Judas must have known that his betrayal would do nothing, and so the real reason he betrayed was to force the events that lead to the crucifixion of Jesus and the saving of all of mankind’s souls. The burden of purposefully playing the betrayal is then considered the ultimate divine action and so Judas himself is said to be God.

Runeberg is sure he is correct as this truth is not accepted by any. He considers that God punishes those who reveal his true name, which he believes he has done, and feels he will go to Hell, with Judas who he believes is the redeemer.

The End

This is the telling of a continued future of a character from Martin Fierro. This character has killed the eldest of 10 brothers. One brother waits for him in a store, they meet and draw blades. The brother’s death is avenged but that leaves the extant brother without a purpose in the world.

The Sect of the Phoenix

The ritual that binds all members of the sect of the phoenix appears to be reproductive sex. The structure of the narrative serves to illustrate the amorphous and secretive nature of sex despite its ubiquity.

The South

We are introduced to Juan Dahlmann, a man with mixed Germanic and Hispanic ancestry. He is a secretary of a library and when we are introduced to him he is planning on reading [[One Thousand and One Nights]]. He identifies the most strongly with his presumably Argentinian roots, and has managed to hold onto a ranch in the South, although he has never visited it due to his work or his indolence. He is struck by a doorframe and made bloody he contracts septicemia without knowing it. He is then brought to a treatment facility outside of the city, where he is brought to his wit’s end by the invasive procedures and lifestyle he is forced to live.

Borges’ does a very good job of showing how a change in one’s lifestyle due to something like illness can so drastically alter the frames of mind that one occupies by allowing us to traverse the despair and depth of feeling that doesn’t allow Dahlmann to contextualize his life beyond his treatment.

Once he has recovered he is sent on his way to the city, and then the South to continue his convalescence. In the city he is able to appreciate small things more than he used to, and when he is on his way to the ranch that his father owned he is unable to focus on his book, but rather simply takes in the world and small joys he was denied during treatment. Once he arrives in the South he is served an inconvenience in needing to walk to a convenience store to get a ride to his ranch.

There he sees an old man who represents everything he believes to be real about a man from the South. Later he is accosted by some drunk strangers. He is given a knife by the old man, and the drunk strangers leave, by all means they do not seem like they really wanted a fight, rather they just intended to intimidate him. Juan resolves to take the knife and go outside to meet them, choosing to try to embrace being a man of the South.

Final Thoughts

These short stories were interesting, barring the stories which included sloppy contradiction due to poor reasoning about language or infinity or specious reference to subjects Borges’ is not knowledgeable in. Borges’ seems more content to reference or allude to an idea which concerns one of his interests rather than explicitly expose or explore those ideas, which is somewhat dissatisfying.

The stories which work the best are those where the ideas referenced are explored concretely, and typically are those where the scope is small enough to where he does not feel content being purely referential to the ideas he is interested in, such as The South and Pierre Menard.

Reoccurring Themes

1. Reproduction of reality
   1. Mirrors and encyclopedias serve the purpose of reproducing reality, although their reproductions are often distorted, reflecting the unreal nature of reality posed by the first quotation ascribed to the Uqbar heresiarch “reality is an illusion, mirrors and reproduction are abominable in that they multiply and extend this illusion”
2. Unreliable production of reality
3. “Ideal objects”
   1. I think he wants to establish the possibility of referencing in a way that is not extensional (does not refer to anything real in the world). Unfortunately the reference of resolution is extension. If instead he intends to create words that can not be used extensionally, they would simply have to be words that do not refer at all, which wouldn’t work as he intends for these words to be used to communicate about specific objects. In effect: language allows us to define semantic constructs that are not purely material in their reference, so there is nothing left for his new “ideal language” to capture.