(no subject)
Wasn't looking for them there, but found a couple exegetical hints like that Goethe one in Borges' An Introduction to English Literature.
1st: In [Browne's] greatest work, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, the subject is a mere pretext for learned and lengthy disquisitions on music in which what he says is far less important than what he implies.
Borges ends "Uqbar" with a bizarre, seemingly non-sequitur ad for Urn Burial. After the discovery of the whole encyclopedia has unleashed a fad-chaos of absurd Idealisms into the world--during the peak years of a never mentioned WWII--the Borges of the story washes his hands of all of it:
Then English, French, and mere Spanish will disappear from this planet. Our world will be Tlon. All this means nothing to me; here in the quiet of the Hotel Adrogue I spend my days polishing a tentative translation in Quevedo's style - which I do not propose to publish - of Sir Thomas Browne's Urne-Buriall.
A hint, then, that what is implied is the main thing in this story also? Things as they are are ignored by Uqbarren systems, for which everything must stem from us--including other people, so everything must logically exfoliate from Me. I read the story as veiledly criticizing fascism, the fascistic versions of communism, and the theology-descended continental philosophy that they squinted themselves into existence out of. And maybe the hubris of those philosophers in the first place, however innocent they were of intention that blood be shed--they forgave themselves some corner-cuttings, becoming the precedent for all kinds of self-flattering indulgences of belief. I'd like it to directly attack religion, too, but I'm not the least bit sure it does. I suppose most Argentinian Nazi-sympathizers were Catholic, though? Or am I missing something more deeply implied.
2nd: Blake "speaks to us of 'a region of interwoven labyrinths'". This sounds close to what I noticed about "The Library of Babel," that it could be two (or more?) infinite labyrinths woven together.
1st: In [Browne's] greatest work, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, the subject is a mere pretext for learned and lengthy disquisitions on music in which what he says is far less important than what he implies.
Borges ends "Uqbar" with a bizarre, seemingly non-sequitur ad for Urn Burial. After the discovery of the whole encyclopedia has unleashed a fad-chaos of absurd Idealisms into the world--during the peak years of a never mentioned WWII--the Borges of the story washes his hands of all of it:
Then English, French, and mere Spanish will disappear from this planet. Our world will be Tlon. All this means nothing to me; here in the quiet of the Hotel Adrogue I spend my days polishing a tentative translation in Quevedo's style - which I do not propose to publish - of Sir Thomas Browne's Urne-Buriall.
A hint, then, that what is implied is the main thing in this story also? Things as they are are ignored by Uqbarren systems, for which everything must stem from us--including other people, so everything must logically exfoliate from Me. I read the story as veiledly criticizing fascism, the fascistic versions of communism, and the theology-descended continental philosophy that they squinted themselves into existence out of. And maybe the hubris of those philosophers in the first place, however innocent they were of intention that blood be shed--they forgave themselves some corner-cuttings, becoming the precedent for all kinds of self-flattering indulgences of belief. I'd like it to directly attack religion, too, but I'm not the least bit sure it does. I suppose most Argentinian Nazi-sympathizers were Catholic, though? Or am I missing something more deeply implied.
2nd: Blake "speaks to us of 'a region of interwoven labyrinths'". This sounds close to what I noticed about "The Library of Babel," that it could be two (or more?) infinite labyrinths woven together.