Behind the mirror in the labyrinth he lurks
Fictions
The Aleph
A Universal History of Iniquity
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
If I want to write something about Borges, what should I write?
There are countless pieces out there written about Borges - pieces by people who are more authorised and more well-versed than I am to discuss and criticize Borges. So maybe I should start with just a simple claim: I love Borges.
I read Chesterton first and I can understand why Borges loved him.
I read Eco first and I can understand why he loves Borges.
Borges is a master in story-telling. You don’t need me to tell you about it. He drew and borrowed stories from various sources and rewrote, retold, and twisted them into something truly his. He created false history, writing it in a style ever-so convincing as if they’re true - or too good to be true. His fascination with blood-and-guts, mirror and labyrinth is apparent throughout the three books that I read (with some considerable distance between the first two titles mentioned and the third): Fictions, The Aleph and A Universal History of Iniquity.
Borges admired Chesterton’s work, and driven by that admiration Borges was able to write some of the most interesting mystery/detective stories humankind ever sees. Sometimes the real mystery is the absence of mystery at all - such as in Death and the Compass, when three murders happened one after the other. A message is left at the location of each murder, indicating that another ‘letter of the Name has been written’. So another death is needed to complete the Tetragrammaton? The story feels like it has been written upon a blueprint provided by Chesterton’s The Honour of Israel Gow. Is there a mysterious thing happening? Yes. Is there really a mystery behind it? Not really. While in Ibn-Hakam al Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth, Borges plays with logic - how plain logic can either hide or reveal the truth. The story again calls to mind The Honour of Israel Gow, in which Chesterton’s hero, the Catholic priest Father Brown, astonished his friends when he could build so many explanations from so many seemingly unconnected evidence left at the site of the crime - but in the end, there is only one true explanation for it all.
Playfulness.
It is one of Borges’ strongest points. He breathed new life into literature exactly because he took writing as so much fun. He freely used his right as a writer to modify events, names, dates. But he also presented reality in so natural a way as if everyone will understand what he was writing about (a similar thing you will experience when you read Tollester’s The King Amaz’d: A Chronicle). The memories of Latin America, especially Argentina, in his times are well-presented in his work. How to translate his Hombre de la esquina rosada - what does it mean?
His translator, Andrew Hurley, explained it as follows:
The Buenos Aires of JLB’s memory and imagination still had high, thick stucco or plastered brick walls lining the streets, such as the reader may see in the colonial cities of the Caribbean and Central and South America even today… Those walls in Buenos Aires were painted generally bright pastel colors.
With the words esquina rosada, Borges (or JLB for short) didn’t only evoke the memories of his city at the time, but also the things that happened there, in the watering holes by the pastel-coloured corners. Of course the information is lost when the words are translated into different languages for us who perhaps know next to nothing about Argentina in Borges’ times.
The Garden of Forking Paths is perhaps among the most famous of Borges’ stories, and it is one of my favourite too. Other stories that I also love are Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv (about a false prophet whose face would blind anyone who sees it, or so he says), Man on Pink Corner (a man told Borges about a terrible murder, Murder of Roger Ackyord-styled, sorry if I spoil it all), The Library of Babel (The Name of the Rose instantly comes to mind), The Aleph and Averroës’ Search (just to show you of how true Bacon’s notions of idols are - Ibn Rusyd couldn’t understand the meaning of tragedy and comedy because his language and mindscape don’t have ready words and meanings to express or even conceptualize them).
So, like I said, what can I write about Borges except that I love his work?
The Aleph
A Universal History of Iniquity
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
If I want to write something about Borges, what should I write?
There are countless pieces out there written about Borges - pieces by people who are more authorised and more well-versed than I am to discuss and criticize Borges. So maybe I should start with just a simple claim: I love Borges.
I read Chesterton first and I can understand why Borges loved him.
I read Eco first and I can understand why he loves Borges.
Borges is a master in story-telling. You don’t need me to tell you about it. He drew and borrowed stories from various sources and rewrote, retold, and twisted them into something truly his. He created false history, writing it in a style ever-so convincing as if they’re true - or too good to be true. His fascination with blood-and-guts, mirror and labyrinth is apparent throughout the three books that I read (with some considerable distance between the first two titles mentioned and the third): Fictions, The Aleph and A Universal History of Iniquity.
Borges admired Chesterton’s work, and driven by that admiration Borges was able to write some of the most interesting mystery/detective stories humankind ever sees. Sometimes the real mystery is the absence of mystery at all - such as in Death and the Compass, when three murders happened one after the other. A message is left at the location of each murder, indicating that another ‘letter of the Name has been written’. So another death is needed to complete the Tetragrammaton? The story feels like it has been written upon a blueprint provided by Chesterton’s The Honour of Israel Gow. Is there a mysterious thing happening? Yes. Is there really a mystery behind it? Not really. While in Ibn-Hakam al Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth, Borges plays with logic - how plain logic can either hide or reveal the truth. The story again calls to mind The Honour of Israel Gow, in which Chesterton’s hero, the Catholic priest Father Brown, astonished his friends when he could build so many explanations from so many seemingly unconnected evidence left at the site of the crime - but in the end, there is only one true explanation for it all.
Playfulness.
It is one of Borges’ strongest points. He breathed new life into literature exactly because he took writing as so much fun. He freely used his right as a writer to modify events, names, dates. But he also presented reality in so natural a way as if everyone will understand what he was writing about (a similar thing you will experience when you read Tollester’s The King Amaz’d: A Chronicle). The memories of Latin America, especially Argentina, in his times are well-presented in his work. How to translate his Hombre de la esquina rosada - what does it mean?
His translator, Andrew Hurley, explained it as follows:
The Buenos Aires of JLB’s memory and imagination still had high, thick stucco or plastered brick walls lining the streets, such as the reader may see in the colonial cities of the Caribbean and Central and South America even today… Those walls in Buenos Aires were painted generally bright pastel colors.
With the words esquina rosada, Borges (or JLB for short) didn’t only evoke the memories of his city at the time, but also the things that happened there, in the watering holes by the pastel-coloured corners. Of course the information is lost when the words are translated into different languages for us who perhaps know next to nothing about Argentina in Borges’ times.
The Garden of Forking Paths is perhaps among the most famous of Borges’ stories, and it is one of my favourite too. Other stories that I also love are Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv (about a false prophet whose face would blind anyone who sees it, or so he says), Man on Pink Corner (a man told Borges about a terrible murder, Murder of Roger Ackyord-styled, sorry if I spoil it all), The Library of Babel (The Name of the Rose instantly comes to mind), The Aleph and Averroës’ Search (just to show you of how true Bacon’s notions of idols are - Ibn Rusyd couldn’t understand the meaning of tragedy and comedy because his language and mindscape don’t have ready words and meanings to express or even conceptualize them).
So, like I said, what can I write about Borges except that I love his work?