Based on your group discussion on Thursday, February 24, summarize your views on the labyrinth imagery in one of Borges's stories. In each story, the reader can find an element (e.g. the forking paths or the volumes in the library) that creates a metaphysical structure of endless repetition or proliferation. What is the nature of this structure and how does it create an impact on the characters? What goes on in the story? What is the overall meaning of the story?
Due: Wednesday, March 2, 11:55 pm
The story “The Library of Babel” is an allegory for the Universe and mankind’s futile attempt to find meaning and purpose in it. The library itself is the universe, and “man, the imperfect librarian” (Borges 52). Man incessantly tries to understand the mysteries of the library but is unable to in every attempt. The books are scrutinized by librarians in search of something that will shed light on the nature of the library itself. However, the librarians simply cannot make sense of the seemingly endless volumes of books, of which “for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences” (Borges 53). Debates spring up concerning whether the Library itself is a senseless, meaningless, chaotic mess or whether there is actually some fundamental meaning that lies somewhere—a mystery to humans. When a sect of librarians proposes that there exists books which contain a comprehensive answer to all of the questions—“books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe” (Borges 55)—the library erupts in frantic search. The obsession with finding the answers brings with it a thrill of being in proximity to the library’s meaning, leading to a relentless search to find the books containing the vindication of everything.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Borges writing style is illustrative of the Library, or chaotic Universe, in which he describes. While on the surface, this story appears to be nonsensical, jumbled and meaningless, with a closer look there appears to be inherent meaning in every sentence. However, Borges challenges the reader, asking, “You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?” (Borges 58), proposing that one can only speculate about the true meaning of the text—just like the librarians/mankind can only speculate about the meaning of the Library/Universe. For Borges, the Universe is an intricate Labyrinth that is “unlimited and cyclical” (Borges 58). While it may appear a chaotic void of nonsense, the Library actually contains not a single example of absolute nonsense” (Borges 57). Like a Labyrinth, the Universe has inherent meaning and structure. Thus, it seems that the problem isn’t the question of whether or not meaning in the Library exists; the problem is mankind’s obsession with discovering it.
In The Circular Ruins, Borges creates a story that is both real and unreal. Just from the title, the reader recognizes that the story does not progress linearly in the way that it appears to travel from a beginning to end. Rather, it is cyclical, a dream within a dream, where it is unclear if any of the characters are genuinely real. The Circular Ruins is the place in which the dreams are dreamt, and where the dreams come to life.
ReplyDeleteThrough fire, the wizard's imagined son acquires a semblance of reality, but the wizard realizes that he is also an illusion. In this respect, the wizard and his imagined son are almost the same character. Each is being dreamed and in turn is dreaming someone else into existence. Borges even hints at the wizard's similarity to his representation of a man, where the wizard feels like the entire process of dreaming a man has already happened. The end of the story suggests that the wizard himself is a figment of the dreams of someone outside the story, the writer of the story. In the wizard's discovery that he himself is an illusion, he both mourns the loss of his humanity, yet feels a tinge of relief. He has no identity as a human being, but neither will he ever face the unknown, inevitable fear of death.
The Circular Ruins abounds with multiple readings and interpretations. To me, it represents the self-fashioning of the multiple interpretations of oneself, representing the fact that people are what they make themselves appear to be. People have multiple layers and personalities and change as they move through different experiences in life.
Lauren Supersano
"The Lottery in Babylon" depicts a mythical Babylon in which everyone's lives and activies are controlled by a lottery. Our group believed that the lottery is a metaphor that represents the role of chance in life. At the beginning of the story, the lottery ran normally (it was not mandatory), although the amount that was to be rewarded was unknown. Towards the end of the story, punishments and a larger rewards were added to the game until it finally became required to participate. Still, no one truly knows what is happening and must blindly accept their fates. "The Company" may represent God or some deity that the players of the lottery must trust because He/She knows what is best for them. This story possibly runs with the labyrinth theme by symbolizing how mankind will always be unsure of whether people are creating the idea of some supreme being or whether He/She created them. It is a cycle that will never have a clear ending and/or answer.
ReplyDeleteOur group did ‘The Lottery in Babylon’, and when we first sat down to analyze it, it wasn’t as easy as one may think. Borges almost seems more like a philosopher to me, and philosophy isn’t an easy thing to attempt to analyze because there could be so many underlying meanings to the text, and the author doesn’t write to have one strict meaning, they write in order to give the audience some different perspectives on things. In The Lottery, Borges shows the labyrinth again though, especially in the cyclical way of life he portrays in this story. In the beginning, the Lottery was not something that people had to regularly participate in, but as time progresses, society gets intermingled and people are then supposed to participate in the lottery. When we analyzed this story, we saw biblical references throughout, and the solid conclusion we came to is the idea that Borges is using biblical references to create a labyrinth, something that could be perceived as a safe haven, but in reality, it isn’t and society has no free-will.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the meaning of the story might be complex to gather, but we discussed the idea of free-will, and how, considering society was told to participate in the lottery, they had no free-will and therefore they were stuck in a way of life that was repetitive, hence the labyrinth reference. The society spends life being engrossed in this lottery, forced into participating and their free-will is taken from them. This ties into the idea of a labyrinth because when someone is in a labyrinth, their free-will is taken. They can’t just decide they want to be out of the labyrinth and do it, they have to first travel through mazes and complex paths to get out, having no say in the way that they escape the labyrinth. I think Borges was also trying to say something about society with this, because when people generally lose their free-will, they have to go through complex situations and trouble to either gain it back or learn to live without it.
-Lauren Slygh
Our group looked at “Funes the Memorious”, which we found to be a fascinating look at the nature of time, the human brain, and the limits of language. When Ireno Funes is left paralyzed after being thrown from a horse, his mind and intellectual capacity experience an intense enhancement. Funes describes to the narrator how “before that rainy afternoon when the blue-gray horse threw him, he had been what all humans are: blind, deaf, addlebrained, absent-minded”(Borges 63). He proceeds to describe how human beings are so caught up in their every day lives, they neglect the small moments that he now relishes. Funes invents an original number system, using random words in place of numbers, playing with the limits of language. He also describes his incomprehension that “the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals”(65), a concept that evokes the theories of Saussure and the relationship between the signified and the signifier. The signified, in this case the dog, is created by mental associations with that animal, and so the dog is limited to human reflections of that animal. Funes struggles to understand these limitations as he has been opened up to a world full of tiny, interlinking moments. I feel that the mind in this story represents the labyrinth, and the human capacity for thought is limited to only sections of this labyrinth. In order for us to become fully enlightened, we must reach the center of that labyrinth, which perhaps Funes has done in becoming physically incapable and therefore mentally liberated.
ReplyDeleteLucy Baugh
In our group, we discussed “The Circular Ruins,” which seemed to quantify the idea of the labyrinth in such an unexpected way. The labyrinth imagery was more like clouds or a mist, not at all concrete images. Yes, the title makes it sound as if a ruins in the circular design would be the labyrinth, but the character mind was it instead. Creating something real from the unreal and discovering he himself was unreal. It was overtly realistically surreal, if that make sense. A man creating his son and to discover that he was created the same way. The creation was the labyrinth. The nature of this structure deeply affects the character. I personally find it resembling the god-complex. And as I was quoted in class as saying, “The story is of a God (the magician or the stranger) creating Adam or Prometheus (the first man). Only to find that he himself was created by an Adam or a Prometheus or a man. Ipso facto man created (him as) God. And with the parable of fire; fire belongs to the gods and will never be humans, which comes from the Prometheus parable.”
ReplyDelete- ian g.
In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Borges portraits the final efforts of Pierre Menard, whom was attempting to write Miguel Cervantes' "Don Quixote." The labyrinth in this short-story lies within Menard's fruitless and somewhat unhinged desire to rewrite the entire Quixote – an already extant book – in his own voice, from the perspective of Cervantes. The 'punchline,' if you will, occurs when the reader is finally allowed to read two excerpts from each of the Quixotes, one from Cervantes' original and one from Mendard's version: The excerpts are identical. The narrator informs us that Menard had "multiplied draft upon draft, revised tenaciously and tore up thousands of manuscript pages." Thus the labyrinth imagery is delivered. Menard has stepped into a labyrinth of his own creation. He has chosen to recreate a book which has already been written, and after revising endlessly, has arrived at the exact same conclusion that Cervantes did, lifetimes before him. Why did he choose to rewrite the book, instead of simply copying it? To copy the Quixote would be simply that – a copy, an unlegitimate fraud. But to rewrite the book... as insane as it sounds... Menard has taken the same journey which Cervantes set out on, and completed it. In that sense, both authors have walked the same metaphorical labyrinth.
ReplyDeleteThe labyrinth, then, is one that all authors, poets, dramaturges, painters, sculptors, bards – all creative, artistic people – walk through in their life, over and over again. Authors write continuously throughout their lives, often revisiting the same project a dozen times or more, revising, never satisfied... The author dies, the books are forgotten, and later someone writes the same story, more or less, completely by chance... Thus is evidenced in The Heroes Journey, or Cambell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. The Menard of Borges' short has simply jumped forward in time and taken it upon himself to set out on the adventure of creating the Quixote before it is forgotten. Even people who aren't authors walk this creative labyrinth in their own way, as we get older, we repeatedly recreate who we are as a means to justify who we have become. It is within this labyrinth of constant repitition that all of us struggle to find form for our desire to create.
While it was not the story I was grouped in, "The Garden of Forking Paths" is probably the only story I actually understand. This story proposes the idea that everything that could happen has happened. I could post this at eight o'clock or I could wait and post it at nine o'clock. Albert, the character in the story who reveals these thoughts, would say that I posted at both times, and the consequences of those actions have also played out. At the end of the story, Albert is shot and Borges writes that he falls "uncomplainingly, immediately." Albert knows that this is his path, and that dying is just a part of it. He doesn't cling to life at all, but simply accepts what his path has brought him.
ReplyDeleteIf we're talking about the image of the labyrinth, then this story is really an infinite number of labyrinths. Each labyrinth has its own outcome, and it only has one possible way of doing things. This story says that everybody follows one labyrinth, but at the same time we follow an infinite amount of choices. The title says it all. At each fork in the road we are presented with choices. We chose one, and then we are directed to another fork in the road. Each way we don't take still exists, and all those choices still occur. I suppose you could say that no matter what road we take, we are always doing the right thing, because everything we could ever do is happening as well.
-Elliot Northlake
“The Library of Babel” is Borges’ attempt to actualize and describe the universe we exist in. The Library takes on the form of our universe – a vast, complex and puzzling array of the known and unknown. Our universe is essentially a labyrinth, with us placed somewhere in the middle of it sometimes knowing where we are and what we are doing and other times feeling completely loss in search of meaning. Like Borges describes it in the story, man is “the imperfect librarian,” one who is thrust into a system of categories and unknowns with an indefinable and unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding. In many ways, Borges’ description of the Library of Babel parallels the mysteries we face when perceiving our universe. The thousands and thousands of books in the library are all different but yet having “works which differ only in a letter or a comma.” The Man of the Book, who has read a “book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest” and has become likened to a higher metaphysical being. These and more parallel what we find in our reality, the complex and dizzying similarities and differences we see in nature, the concept of God, and our possible futility in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeletePerhaps what Borges is trying to demonstrate is that everything is truly complicated and unknown, simply because it exists in our labyrinthine universe. Even a library, something that humanity has built, categorized and understood for centuries seems complicated and abstract when written about in the dizzying and formulaic style Borges employs in the story, even to the point where he stops and asks “You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?” The labyrinth that Borges creates in the Library of Babel mirrors the labyrinth that we all face everyday when presented with something larger than ourselves. We as humans will most likely never know everything there is to know, but that is precisely what will fuel us to continue searching.
-Wilson De Gouveia
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ReplyDelete"I am withdrawing to write a book . . . I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Everyone imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing" (Borges 25).
ReplyDeleteThis too was not the story I was grouped in, but the story that I felt was the most straightforward. Set in WWI France and German spy (Yu Tsun) determines that he is about to be arrested before he can complete his mission and communicate, "to Berlin the secret name of the city they must attack" (Borges 29).
On the run from Captain Richard Madden, he takes a train to the country to Sinologist Dr. Stephen Albert's house to complete his "desperate plan" (Borges 22). The spy happens to be the "great grandson of that Ts'ui Pen who was the governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost" (Borges 23). After thirteen years his grandfather was murdered "and his novel was incoherent and no on found the labyrinth" (Borges 23).
Yu Tsun arrives at Albert's house and discovers he has his grandfather's book. He is surprised, but even more surprised at Albert's claim to have figured out the book is actually "A labyrinth of symbols . . . and invisible labyrinth of time" and that "the book and maze were one and the same thing" where "the confusion of the novel suggested to (him) that it was the maze"(Borges 25). He explains that the novel is designed to be a "cyclical volume, a circular one . . . whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely" (Borges 25).
Yu Tsun then understands, "'The Garden of Forking Paths' was the chaotic novel" its design is one that is "forking in time, not in space" (Borges 26). Ts'ui Pen's characters, instead of choosing one path and eliminating others as in most works of fiction, choose all paths simultaneously, which in turn each creates "diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork" (Borges 26). Sometimes these labyrinth paths converge; sometimes they contradict each other, but they all happen at the same time, which is one thing the book never mentions because "The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time" and it is also an "incomplete but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pen conceived it" who believed time was an "infinite series of times, in a growing dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times" (Borges 27-28).
The spy then finishes his mission, shooting Albert the back of the head and he is arrested and condemned to the gallows. The German chief figured out the message and Germany bombed the city Albert.
Yogi Berra did say, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." This summarizes the overall meaning of the story to me that that is what life is. Each day we encounter forking paths, we are given large and small choices to make and no matter what choice we make, what path we take, we are going to get to some destination. Sometimes those paths are going to lead us back where we started, or contradict other choices we made or collide with the paths of others, but we have no choice but to make a choice and even in not choosing we are still choosing. You can't stop the cycle your on and even if you could you can't stop the cycles of the billions of others that inhabit the planet. We live in The Garden of Forking Paths.
Cassie Turner
My group and I discussed the story "Funes the Memorious". The structure of this story allows its reader to challenge their own reality through the ways in which Funes presents his own deeper perception of reality which juxtaposes the narrators accepted reality. The constant back and forth between perception and reality emphasizes the idea that reality is subjective and its understanding is based a person’s understanding and comprehension of what is going on around them. Funes also calls language into question as he explains the reality that he perceives. He sees the language people use as one full of generalizations and he begins to breakdown words and even numbers into, what he sees, as more specific words. As Funes is doing this the narrators describes that “I tried to explain to him that this rhapsody of incoherent terms was precisely the opposite of a system of numbers…Funes did not understand me or refused to understand me” (64-64). I think that this story allows the reader to analyze reality and how the depth of one’s perception of the world determines how one truly sees it. Throughout the story the narrator and Funes each believe in a different reality but each fully assimilates to it. I believe that Borges is encouraging the reader to try to see the world in a new fashion that may challenge the reality that has already been set.
ReplyDeleteShelby Thorne
Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, “The Lottery in Babylon,” which is contained in his collection Labyrinths, is a portrayal of the labyrinthine ways of life. The story’s opening words are the entrance into a Borgesian labyrinth that starts with a grand assertion and is eventually twisted into a truth of the story: “Like all men in Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, a slave” (Borges 30). The story starts off with the impression that Borges is tackling a metaphorical state of being—that all people experience moments where they are kings and slaves. But, Borges goes on to twist the narrative into a literal system where men are rulers one day and ruled over the next due to a system of chance. Besides just the labyrinthine ways of the story, Borges presents the labyrinthine ways of life and how people come to accept their fate without investigating the labyrinths by which it is designed: “Babylonians are not very speculative. They revere the judgments of fate, they deliver to them their lives, their hopes, their panic, but it does not occur to them to investigate fate’s labyrinthine laws nor the gyratory spheres which reveal it” (33). Although the Babylonians are trapped by a system of a lottery that conveys a labyrinth, they do not choose to look at their fate in depth but instead decide to just accept it. Borges is ultimately making a statement about the unknowability of life. Similar to Schroedinger’s cat, the reality that Borges constructs is one where nothing is definite or singular: “In reality the number of drawings is infinite. No decision is final, all branch into others” (34). Like the story’s labyrinthine construction which draws the reader deeper, Borges comes to the conclusion that life and its chances are seemingly labyrinthine and always follow paths that are repeating and never solid or definite.
ReplyDeleteKyle Kretzer
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ReplyDeleteIn “The Circular Ruins”, the dream is the circular ruin. It is part of the labyrinth, much like the rest or the stories that comprise this collection, which embody the endless repetition of man that has become his reality. Dreams, libraries, pathways, histories, mythologies are all part of a broader human identity that structures each culture’s experience throughout time on earth. As these concentrations of human identity begin to accumulate, the labyrinth is created. Borges seeks that existential experience for his reader; to look outside of the body, outside of the bondage the system exerts on the mind to glimpse an unaltered view of reality. But it is ironic because it seems Borges contradicts that reality as the Magician who dreamed up a pupil, who manifested his thought in flesh with the blessing of the “Fire” god, ultimately fathering a childlike successor to his dogma, finally understands that he, as the Magician, is also a dream. The cycle is a dream of a dream of a dream etc. and it could extend forever. The impact on the character is somewhat of a doomed catharsis as he finds out he is not real, but a figment of imagination. So his quest for fulfillment at the time is satisfied as he creates his magician boy and at the same time destroyed as he understands he is not real as his creation. Nothing is real.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Ragoonanan
In the story, “The Library of Babel,” Borges constructs a metaphysical library, which represents the greater universe. The title of the story, itself, references the biblical narrative of Babel with its utter chaos. Describing this metaphysical library, Borges writes that the “universe…is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries” (Borges 51). There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the structural design of the library, which alludes to the fragmented nature of the universe. The lack of order of the library signifies the postmodern state of fragmentation, as Borges refers to the existential meaning of life and the universe. Borges portrays librarians perusing books for hours, but “the books signify nothing in themselves” (Borges 53). The librarians commit themselves to searching for authentic meaning, feverishly rummaging the shelves for something that fails to exist. This compulsion for meaning serves as a social critique of society. It becomes a destructive obsession for many, who grow to be violent with one another by “[strangling] each other on the divine stairways” (Borges 55). Others begin to idealize their own ideologies by “[eliminating] useless works” (Borges 56). As “Purifiers,” they “[condemn] whole shelves” (Borges 56). This references societal issues of censorship and xenophobic ideas. When one destroys all that is inconceivable, the remainder is solely committed to one’s beliefs. But, searching for that endless truth among the shelves of the library proves purposeless, just as the universe swells with meaninglessness and fragmentation.
ReplyDeleteInextricably tied to the fragmentation of the library is the concept of alienation. In a footnote, Borges alludes to the sinking depression of these alienated librarians with the resolve to glean meaning from the texts. He states, “Before, there was a man for every three hexagons. Suicide and pulmonary diseases have destroyed that proportion. A memory of unspeakable melancholy: at times I have traveled for many nights through the corridors….without finding a single librarian” (Borges 54). The unproductive search for meaning in the metaphysical library wears on the modern soul. The “library,” serves as a form of the greater “labyrinth.” The “labyrinth” requires the modern self to move beyond the universe’s meaninglessness and discover pathways that lead one away from its chaotic core.
-Kerri Libra
In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” the labyrinth in the story is the struggle the narrator must solve as the metaphysical obstacles imposed by the universe attempt to halt his success of solving a personal enigma. The actual labyrinth in the story is the novel, which at first the narrator doesn’t correlate because he sees the garden and the novel as two separate identities; however, as he continues to read such sacrilegious novel, he understands that the nature of the garden takes place in time, not in space. But those conclusions he experiences at the end, almost when he understands “the book and the maze were one and the same thing”; until then, Tsun, believes in a physical labyrinth powerful enough to trap men without escape, also indicating his mistake to understand the message of “Forking Paths.” The theme of entrapment come in several labyrinth symbols – some physical and others mental – but their similarities come from the characters’ endless repetitions of feeling lost. For example, even before Tsun’s awareness of the “great novel,” he attempts to confuse Capt. Madden in a series of plans to get rid of him, all of which occur because of Tsun’s knowledge about (physical) labyrinths: “For an instant, I thought Madden in some way had penetrated my desperate plan… I have some understanding of labyrinths.”
ReplyDeleteBorges in this story keeps on emphasizing the importance of labyrinths to explain the world we live in. Through the labyrinths, Borges demonstrates people’s failure to explain the universe. Tsun at first believes there’s a hidden labyrinth that encompasses the past and the future, but little did he know that such creation exists not in the way he believes in, but in the form of a novel written by his great grandfather. The character of Stephen Albert is crucial in the story because it represents the guidance people must follow in order to find the answers they look for. Tsun, in this case, ultimately understands the universal capacity to exist in “infinite series of times” and this occurs all because of his reliance in the words of the novel and those of Albert.
~ Salo Steinvortz
In Jorge Luis Borges' short story, "The Library of Babel," Borges the fantastic imagery of a library that is symbolic of the physical universe. The details of the library are create the sense of a endless labyrinth composed of various levels and halls of hexagonal rooms, of which 4 sides contain shelves of books. I would argue that Borges' library doesn't not exactly represent the entirety of the universe as we know it, but rather, the universe as it can be defined through language. "In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols. . ." (Borges 57). The contents of the library are, as are people, confined to the boundaries of language. Borges is using the labyrinthine image of the vast universe to question the abilities of language. Men wonder the library endlessly searching for some sort of meaning or key to unlock the mystery and purpose of the library, but it's shelves are filled with fallacies and incoherent texts which repeat themselves page after page. The narrator writes of the library, already knowing that somewhere amongst its shelves the exact words he writes have already been written. Borges' is writing in a time where many writers were beginning to question the validity of words, and if anything new, or closer to the truth of things could be written and this is clearly represented in the narrator's struggle to find meaning in "the library," "The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms" (Borges 58). This short story acts as a metaphysical meditation on the boundaries and purpose of writing, and the endless amount of interpretation that can be applied to any text, or even single word. At one point Borges directly addresses the reader asking, "You who read me, are You sure of my language?" (Borges 58). This question strikes directly to the heart of the story, how can we define our universe, ourselves, and seek meaning with language, which is inherently ambiguous and subject to any number of interpretations?
ReplyDeleteMatt Knight
In “The Library Babel,” Borges uses the image of a library as representation of the larger universe. The library is a continuous building, filled with a countless number of books. The speaker speaks of his journey to find the one book which will act as a key to all other aspects of life; a book that contains all answers regarding life and the universe. He also laments the inability of new books to bring new meaning into the world. He believes that anything that will be printed in the present or the future will only be a retelling of something printed in the past.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker constantly talks about the mysteries of the library and the need to find the one book which will offer him insight regarding the meaning of life. Because the library represents the universe, the reader must consider the many endless realms of their existence, and how, even with constant searching, a final answer which encompasses a person’s whole being will never be found. The point Borges makes regarding an author’s inability to publish an original text calls into question the purpose of books. With the high publishing rate in modern times, a reader must question the quality of content they are reading. Often times, a new publication is merely a revamped version of an older text, usually with the same basic plotline and characters.
The overall meaning of the story rests in the librarians search for the one book which will surpass all other books in content and meaning. With the vast library acting as the universe, the mysterious book represents the answer to life and human nature as a whole.
Bari London
I'm not sure what Borges intended for the reader to take from "The Library of Babel" but I definitely felt hopeless after I read it. Part of his effective and sneaky argument finds its success in his writing style. Borges seems to choose a symbol or a metaphor and stick with it. It is easy to forget that he was making a statement about life's journey when he so dedicatedly explores this world of the library and the librarians search for the ultimate knowledge through the books. They constantly look for the Man of the Book in such a way that the search overcomes any other meaning their life could hold (Borges 56). I could not help but think of Faustus and his obsessive search for knowledge and the hubris that came along with that. He hints that the search has left many men suicidal (Borges 52, 58). It seems as if this search was appealing at first to the librarians but ultimately it was capable of leading to their downfall.
ReplyDeleteI think Borges was trying to make a comment on the meaning of life. I'm still confused as to whether or not this is a modernist or postmodernist text. If it modernist, Borges may have been making the comment that the reader should be careful where he attempts to find meaning in life. Finding meaning in the library or universe may be unproductive but maybe looking for meaning elsewhere can reap may benefits. On the other hand, if Borges is postmodernist, I believe that he is making a comment on the uselessness of attempting to find meaning in life. Just as with the librarians, if people spent their entire lives attempting to find that one answer that would satisfy them, they would reach the end of life sorely disappointed. He may be cautioning the reader that, while knowledge and meaning are beneficial an obsession of them will only lead to destruction.
Sarah Joseph
Labyrinth imagery, in Borges’s “Funes the Memorious,” is detectable in the great amount of attention placed on the elements of language within the story. In telling a seemingly tragic recount of Ireneo Funes, Borges questions the ability of the human mind. Funes is a character explained to embrace his heightened senses that derived from his horse-riding accident, rather than dwelling on his physical disabilities. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Funes takes advantage of his newfound gift in being able to remember “not only every leaf of every tree of every wood, but also every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it” in his mind (Borges 65). Through Funes, Borges creates a character that pushes the limits of human understanding. In his ability to take in and remember every detail, Funes creates his own language system, assigning new names and numbers to everything he sees or experiences. It is as though, through Funes’s ability to access an additional part of his mind, (taking into consideration how we only use a miniscule fraction of our brain) Borges is attempting to convey how language is highly limited. Unlike Funes, the narrator is unable to classify every memory in his childhood using a different word for each item that crosses his mind. The reader, or the average person, relates to the narrator in this sense. The complexity of language, as Borges decides, is a limitless labyrinth of which we do not fully take advantage of. Alternatively, “Funes the Memorious” reveals the way humans group several items under one collective term (such as “dog” for more than one kind of dog), and how we technically have the ability to grow more specific in this endeavor. This structure consequently leaves the reader and the narrator somewhat dumbfounded by the enormity of the universe and the limits of the human language, or more specifically, the inability to express and take note of every living instance and object.
ReplyDeleteIn Borges' story Funes the Memorious , a young man, Funes, suffers a paralyzing fall which simultaneously renders his perception and memory "infallible." Borges uses this construct to explore the idea of perception and memory. The story begins with the narrator speaking of Funes, "I remember (I think)...." and later when describing a conversation the narrator confesses "This story ... has no other plot than that dialogue which took place half a century ago. I shall not try to reproduce the words, which are now irrecoverable." Throughout the story Borges forgetful narrator stands in contrast to Funes' perfect memory. Funes' perception is described as "...almost intolerable in it's richness...." which presents the conflict of the story, is it good to actively remember everything, and, how much should we forget?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't help noticing the metafictional elements of this question. A hypothetical narrator who remembers and details everything would be unreadable, it takes Funes a day to remember another day, he cannot stand that "the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side0 should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen(seen from the front). Although Funes believes humans live a "blind, deaf, addlebrained, absent-minded" life, the narrator comments that Funes "was not very capable of thought." The narrator is trapped pondering a reality full of mystery and similarity, Funes is forced to face an alien world in which everything changes with each second and his focus is constantly consumed in the process of processing. To return to fiction, I believe Borges is making the argument that selective memory is a gift because it structures our reality and allows the medium of fiction its meaning.
in "The Circular Ruins", our group discussed that this story can signify multiple things. At first, it is about the circular "labyrinth" of creation, who created who created who. Like what was stated in class, it is unclear if the man he dreamed even exists in reality, as he himself is a dream, and it stands to reason that the same doubt applies to whomever dreamed him, and who dreamed him, and so on and so forth into an unknown point.
ReplyDeleteThe magician purposely destroyed the school he dreamed up because he felt that the students were willing to lose their own free will and free thinking in order to impress or please the magician. he even comes to realize, horrified, that all this time, he wasn't actually dreaming, and must start from scratch. this lack of awareness of knowing if he was truly dreaming or not does not make sense until the very end, when discovering that he is a dream himself. This would explain that flaw in him, in not being able to notice the difference between reality and fiction.
Another labyrinth, which ties into the notion of the pilgrimage that labyrinths are in the Christian religion, is the labyrinth of a "created god". He is a god, in a sense, because he is creating the dream boy, and later realizes he himself is created. this points to a notion of "are the gods we worship created?" The setting where the story takes place also points to this notion. He begins to seek help from the stone gods, who were created by the hands of Man. The title itself evokes a labyrinth, and in fact, evokes the very labyrinth found in catholic cathedrals.
Lisbeny
To engage my pet peeve again, I have to start by clarifying that the titular “Garden of Forking Paths” and other things like it are not labyrinths. They are mazes. A maze is a thing in which one can get lost, but a labyrinth is not. You can be trapped in a labyrinth, as it takes a great effort to escape, but you cannot be lost in one. It goes in only one direction. It is convoluted (in the original, literal sense of the term), and thus resembles a maze, but it is not an intellectual challenge. It can be a physical or spiritual challenge, a test of the will to keep going, but it offers no decisions. The only choice is whether to stay or walk the winding road forward.
ReplyDeleteI do not think mazes are a theme in Borges, in and of themselves. They are present in his work, however. They are present solely because they are the area of overlap between two areas that very much are Borgesian themes. They are labyrinths, of sorts, but they are also games. Borges is very interested in both of these things. A maze is a riddle, just as many of Borges’ own stories are riddles (or rather jokes, as I would claim of “Pierre Menard”). It is a question with an answer, but again, it is also a journey and an arduous task, and thus a sort of labyrinth. It is easy to get into the middle of a Borges story and become lost as to where you are and how to get back to something you recognize. His works are games, and they are labyrinths, and by virtue of being both are mazes.
Going back to “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” this story is as much a maze as any other. It even contains obvious blind alleys and misdirections, red herrings that can be chased for quite a long and perhaps entertaining time, but that lead along a path perpendicular to the real direction of the piece. Borges makes an embarrassment of references to all sorts of works and thinkers, both real and imagined, that help set the scene and establish the much-needed verisimilitude of the piece, but that aren’t necessary to get the main point. The minotaur in the heart of the labyrinth, or perhaps the bit of cheese at the end of the maze, is Menard and the nature of “his” great work. It takes not only patience (as in a labyrinth) but cleverness (as with a puzzle or game) to tease out the true nature of the story. Thus are we in a maze.
- Robbi Ramirez
Borges’ “The Circular Ruins” was probably my favorite story out of the selection read. Similar to the style of the other stories, “The Circular Ruins,” manages to present universal human themes in extremely unconventional manners. This technique immediately bestows a fresh perspective to otherwise cliche and over-used human themes. Moreover, I find fascinating how Borges is able to make such abstract topics so relatable to the reader. In “The Circular Ruins,” Borges’ labyrinth imagery is seen not as a literal labyrinth but as the dream-induced setting, which features surreal mountains and mist. Similar to a labyrinth, this setting immediately creates the sense of repetition, especially in relation to the dream concept of “The Circular Ruins.” In the story, the concept of reality versus dream is greatly explored as the protagonists appears to be dreaming up his own personal character. This idea is further explored when the ending reveals that he might also be a dreamt-up individual. Personally, I find the story to be very existentialist in that it questions the philosophical question of who are we and what are we here for. There are myriad interpretations of the story’s meaning, however I believe it to challenge the human concept of self and identity.
ReplyDelete-Taissa Rebroff
I was not present in class for the groups, however, in reading Borges’s Labyrinths, I was struck by the metaphorical significance of the labyrinth in “The Garden of Forking Paths”. The message I believe Borges is conveying is that the labyrinth and the novel signify each other, or they are the same. In discussion with a few of my classmates and especially after class today, I find it important to point out that there is also a metaphor of the labyrinth in everything; in our own personal lives and in our collective experience as a people, as creatures on this planet, as a spot in the Universe and so on.
ReplyDeleteBorges challenges, plays with and makes the reader contemplate reality—or some aspect of reality—in each of his stories so the title of the book is aptly named Labyrinths because I feel after walking away from this text, he would wish the theme of effervescent “truth” and reality to be on his reader’s mind. I must admit though, the “Library of Babel” was one of my favorite sections simply because of the fact that Borges used this library as an image representing the Universe. This is an idea reminiscent of “The Library of Forgotten Books” in Carlos Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind.
Borges’s use of symbols, overlapping and intermingled hidden meanings and playfulness (Pierre Menard, the Author of the Quixote) are all characteristic of his work that make it so brilliant. The stories and characters affected by them are all so strangely and beautifully human it is almost painful (Pierre Menard and Albert from Garden of Forking Paths). These are stories that you never really stop learning something from and the more we discuss each story and read each piece, the more we discover the new and hidden meanings, symbols and other subliminal messages Borges so calculatingly constructed.
Sydni Gonzalez
At the very beginning of “The Library of Babel”, Borges establishes the Library as a universe. From there, we encounter an infinite number of books, some of which only differ from one another by a single word or even a comma. These books are ideas, both searched and protected by librarians, who spend a majority of their time looking for the one book to summarize all other books – a central idea that includes all other ideas within. But such book does not exist, and this Library/universe Borges creates is one without a central point of reference – a concept that also happens to be one of the main pillars of existentialism and postmodernism. The narrator describes his lack of faith in the human species, and predicts their upcoming extinction. However, the universe, excuse me, the Library, will endure despite the fall of humans, along with the ideas. Once an idea is created, Borges proposes, it cannot be removed. It becomes a part of the cyclical nature of the universe. If a book in the Library is removed, it can be replaced by a number of volumes that only differ very slightly. Though the narrator predicts the worst of outcomes for human beings, the piece remains inherently optimistic in its basic philosophy. The universe is a place of repetition. Ideas remains. So, if the abstract traveler Borges describes were to go into the far future, he would find the same universe with same ideas repeating themselves in some form or another. The Library will always be here, with books that are always ready to be read.
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