Umberto Eco - How to Be a TV Host

This is a short essay from Umberto Eco's collection of essays "How to travel with a Salmon' that I have been reading and found it interesting. This story focusses on the writer's experience in the Svalbard Islands where he was invited to spend several years studying the fictional Bonga nation and their society. This fictional story is very similar in its literary devices and treatment to Borges's work - "Tiön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". The one thing unique about Bonga nation was their unusual insistence on the explicit, the declarative. They ignore the art of the implicit, the taken-for-granted.

For example, if we begin to talk, obviously we use words; but we feel no need to say so. A Bonga, on the contrary, in speaking to another Bonga, begins by saying: Pay attention. I am now speaking and I will use some words. We build houses and then (with the exception of the Japanese) we indicate to possible visitors the street, the number, the name of the occupant. The Bongas write “house” on every house, and “door” beside the door. If you ring a Bonga gentleman’s bell, he will open the door, saying, “Now I am opening the door,” and then introduce himself. If he invites you to dinner, he will show you to a chair with the words: “This is the table, and these are the chairs!” Then, in a triumphant tone, he announces, “And now the maid! Here is Rosina. She will ask you what you want and will serve you your favourite dish!” The procedure is the same in restaurants.  

It is strange to observe the Bongas when they go to the theatre. As the house lights go down, an actor appears and says, “Here is the curtain!” Then the curtain parts and other actors enter, to perform, say, Hamlet. But each actor is introduced to the audience, first with his real first and last names, then with the name of the character he is to play. When an actor has finished speaking, he announces: “Now, a moment of silence!” Some seconds go by, and then the next actor starts speaking. Needless to say, at the end of the first act, one of the players comes to the footlights to inform everyone that “there will now be an intermission.” 

The writer was unable to reason as to what drove them to this obsessive clarification. Perhaps they are slow-witted and need to be told what is being implied or the Bongas are perhaps performance-worshippers, and therefore they have to transform everything—even the implicit—into performance. During his stay, he also investigated the history of applause in this culture.

When television shows were first broadcast in Bonga, the producers lured relatives of the organizers into the studio and, thanks to a flashing light (invisible to viewers at home), alerted them when they were to applaud. In no time the viewers discovered the trick, but, while in our country such applause would have immediately been discredited, it was not so for the Bongas. The home audience began to want to join in the applause too, and hordes of Bonga citizens turned up of their own free will in the country’s TV studios, ready to pay for the privilege of clapping. Some of these enthusiasts enrolled in special applause classes. And since at this point everything was in the open, it was the host himself who said, in a loud voice at the appropriate moments, “And now let’s hear a good round of applause.” But soon the studio audience began applauding without any urging from the host. He had simply to question someone in the crowd, asking him, for example, what he did for a living, and when he replied, “I'm in charge of the gas chamber at the city dog pound,” his words were greeted by a resounding ovation.  

Applause became so indispensable that even during the commercials, when the salesman would say, “Buy PIP slimming tablets,” oceanic applause would be heard. The viewers knew very well that there was no one in the studio with the salesman, but the applause was necessary; otherwise the program would have seemed contrived, and the viewers would switch channels. The Bongas want television to show them real life, as it is lived, without pretence. The applause comes from the audience (which is like us), not from the actor (who is pretending), and it is therefore the only guarantee that television is a window open on the world. 

I cannot say that the Bongas are our inferiors. Indeed, one of them told me that they plan to conquer the world. That evening I turned on the TV and I saw a host introducing the girls who assisted him, then announcing that he would do a cosmic monologue, and concluding with: "And now our ballet!" A distinguished gentleman, debating grave political problems with another distinguished gentleman, at a certain point broke off to say, "And now, a break for the commercials." Some entertainers even introduced the audience. Others the camera that was filming them, Everyone applauded.
Distressed,  I left the house and went to a restaurant famous for its nouvelle cuisine. The waiter arrived bringing me three leaves of lettuce. And he said, "This is our macedoine of laitue lombarde, dotted with rughetta from Piedmont, finely chopped and dressed with sea salt, marinated in the balsamic vinegar of the house, anointed with first-pressing virgin olive oil from Umbria."

Borges - Everything And Nothing (Summary)

This is a fascinating short story by Borges. The complete story is below (in italics). It is about a man who has no true self but only emptiness within him ("There was no one in him"). He is like a dream that was dreamt by no one. Ultimately he finds satisfaction as an actor where he plays 'somebody' so that others would not discover his nobodiness. In his countless plays, he played such an endless array of characters that he seemed to exhaust all possible destinies of man. He had died innumerable deaths and loved so much and endured so much that 'he had all men inside of him' and yet he had 'no one inside of him'. He had achieved the fundamental unity of existing, dreaming and acting. For twenty years he revelled in this theatre. One day realizing the terror of being no one, he retires and settle down in his native village. When he dies, he finds himself in presence of God and asks God that he just wanted to be himself. To which the God replied, that neither am I anyone. I have dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare. One of the forms in dream are you who like me are many and yet no one. You are everything and nothing.

Borges touches on his familiar themes about God, the meaning of life and living and unity and multiplicity of existences or time. The last conversation between and actor and God is opaque in its interpretation and meaning. The idea that 'one man is all men' has been repeated multiple times in Borges's stories. Here the actor is no one and he is all men. He is unable to have a singular identity, a constant and an unchanging Self. He created multiple identities to give his life an identity. He was never meant to be anyone. He via his acts affects, empathises and simulates other people. Anything human is what he can be and he can feel and choose to be any other human. He identifies with all men. He is nothing in particular and yet everything, like a infinite space that is infinitely full and yet indefinitely empty. He feels and experiences situations and circumstances similarly as men who came before him felt and faced. His actions have been acted before. His pain and joys have been felt before. Whatever we do has a likeness to what has already happened to someone else. His destiny is no different from the destiny of all men. What happens to him will happen to all the men for they share the collective experience and a collective destiny. He is nothing that has already not happened or going to happen. Same is to God which is this constant idea, a constance presence in all the forms that one sees. The forms are all His many dreams, his many creations and like Man, He is many and yet He is no one. He is a dream of forms he dreamt. Without the creation he dreamt, He is nothing. He is all things and He is none.

There was no one in him: behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance.Once he thought that in books he would find a cure for his ill and thus he learned the small Latin and less Greek a contemporary would speak of; later he considered that what he sought might well be found in an element rite of humanity, and let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At the age of twenty-odd years he went to London. Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one; in London he found the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person. His histrionic tasks brought him a singular satisfaction, perhaps the first he had ever known; but once the last verse had been acclaimed and the last dead man withdrawn from the stage, the hated flavor of unreality returned to him. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamerlane and became no one again. Thus hounded, he took to imagining other heroes and other tragic fables. And so, while his flesh fulfilled its destiny as flesh in the taverns and brothels of London, the soul that inhabited him was Caesar, who disregards the augur's admonition, and Juliet, who abhors the lark, and Macbeth, who converses on the plain with the witches who are also Fates. No one has ever been so many men as this man, who like the Egyptian Proteus could exhaust all the guises of reality. At times he would leave a confession hidden away in some corner of his work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his person he plays the part of many and lago claims with curious words "I am not what I am," The fundamental identity of existing, dreaming and acting inspired famous passages of his.  

For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge and melodiously expire. That very day he arranged to sell his theater. Within a week he had returned to his native village, where he recovered the trees and rivers of his childhood and did not relate them to the others his muse had celebrated, illustrious with mythological allusions and Latin terms. He had to be someone; he was a retired impresario who had made his fortune and concerned himself with loans, lawsuits and petty usury. It was in this character that he dictated the arid will and testament known to us, from which he deliberately excluded all traces of pathos or literature. His friends from London would visit his retreat and for them he would take up again his role as poet.  

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one." -- By Jorge Luis Borges (Translated by James E. Irby)

Borges - The Secret Miracle (Summary)

On March 19th 1939, Jaromir Hladik a Jewish author is arrested by the Third Reich. He was tried for being Jewish and working against the Nazi state and sentenced to death on the 29th of same month. His first emotion were of terror and he reflected greatly on the different methods of his execution. The pure act of dying did not engross him as much as the circumstances of it. He tried to foresee every variation of it and died hundreds of death in his thoughts standing in courtyard whose shape took all possible form and executed by soldiers of changing faces and numbers. Hladik reflects that the reality seldom acts the way it has been envisioned before hand and he deduces that if he can foresee the actual reality, he can prevent it from happening. He began to weave exquisite circumstances for that day so that they would not occur. Ultimately he came to fear that is thoughts would become prophetic. On the eve of his execution, he pondered over his unfinished play "The Enemies". He always thought that this play would redeem his reputation from less satisfactory earlier works. The play is about the unities of time, place and action. In the play even though the events play out yet the time is shown to stay still. The complete scenes repeats and the characters who die appear become alive in subsequent scenes and the multiple characters are in fact the same person in different times. It is as if the play has never taken place and it is a circular delirium that the characters experiences and re-experiences.

Not satisfied with the way the play is written and having no time to finish it now, he asks God for more time. If, he prayed, I do somehow exist, if I am not one of Thy repetitions or errata, then I exist as the author of The Enemies. In order to complete that play, which can justify me and justify Thee as well, I need one more year. Grant me those days, Thou who art the centuries and time itself. In his sleep, he visits a library looking for God.The librarian said it is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes here. Hladik picks up a random book and flips it pages. He saw a map of India and suddenly certain, he touched one of the tiny letters. A voice that was everywhere spoke to him:The time for your labor has been granted.  .

At this moment Hladik wakes up and two soldiers take him to the backyard for execution. The firing squad lines up and the final order are shouted. At that moment, the physical universe stops. All are made immobile and paralysed. In his mind he wonders if the time has been halted but then he argues that if that were true, his thoughts would have halted as well. For an unknown amount of time he slept and when he wakes up still paralysed, he realises that God has granted him his request. In Hladik’s mind a year would pass between the order to fire and the discharge of the rifles. He furiously reworks on his unfinished work rewriting and redoing it to his satisfaction, until a single epithet was left to be decided. He finds it and at that moment, the volley of bullets fells him and he died exactly on the day and time when it was designated for.

Unlike many stories that Borges wrote, this story's background is based on historical events that actually took place in WWII Europe. Jews were widely targeted and mostly summarily executed. In this story, there is a surreal play within the story which is eerie familiar to the main story. The plot of the play is a circular drama where characters and their actions repeat and the time on stage is shown to have not changed. The drama in fact never takes place. It is like a collective neurosis that all characters experience. In the story the unconscious mind (dreams) and the conscious both appear seamless and influence one another. Similarly the distinction between reality and fiction are blurred and reality actually copies from the fiction. The God is all powerful and unattainable but for Hladik He is approachable and personal. The success of Hladik's last wish is the vindication of Hladik's God's existence for Hladik. There are shades of determinism (as in he never asks God to not be executed and he does not want to change what awaits him), but at the same time he uses his free will and thought to finish his masterpiece ultimately redeeming himself. Familiar Borges's ideas of dreams, God, story within story, perception of reality and time are all visited in the story. Can the the perception of time be open to change? Can we live a life in a passage of a second of the clock? If universe was in fact was to stop, would time also stop and how would the conscious mind understand it?  Pretty dense for a three page story.

Borges : Death and the Compass (Summary)

I caught up with another of Borges's story "Death and the Compass", which is more of detective work that investigates a series of murder that seem to follow a pattern. The crimes are being investigated by 2 cops, Lonnrot  and Treviranus. A Jewish rabbi is killed in a  hotel room on Dec 3. T. postulates that he was killed by mistake for someone intended to steal from the person in the next room who owns the finest gems. On the typewriter in the room,  an unfinished line is written - "The first letter of the Name has been written.". Other possessions are mostly Kabbalah & Jewish books. L. shrugs off this explanation as not interesting and points to it being a planned murder. L. takes along dead man's books and studies them. Of particular interest to him is "tetragrammaton" which is the unspeakable name of the God. Word gets out that L. has taken to study the names of God in order find the murderer.

The next crime happens Jan 3 amid rhombus houses, a person lay dead with the "The second letter of the Name has been written." scribbled on the walls. On Feb 3, T. gets an anonymous call who offers to reveal the details of the murders. He traces the call to a hotel and when they reach the hotel room, they find the third crime committed and predictably scrawled on the wall is "The last letter of the Name has been written.". The hotel manager mentions that room guest had made a call and soon left. In the room L. finds a text underlined "The Jewish day begins at sundown and lasts until sundown of the following day."

On March 1, T. receives a letter predicting that this month there will be no crime and sending the exact location of the three crimes on map which turn out to be a equilateral triangle.T. is of the opinion that the killing spree is finished. L. pondered over the space and time symmetry of the crimes and declares that he will have killer arrested soon for there will be another crime. He leaves for the south a day earlier to pre-empt and catch the murderer. He reaches a villa that abounded in "pointless symmetries and obsessive repetitions." A niche reflected in a niche, a balcony was reflected in another balcony. A two-faced Hermes adored the garden. The abandoned house seemed infinite and ever growing.

Here he is ambushed by known criminal Scharlach Red and his henchmen. Red is previously known to L. for he arrested Red's brother in a shoot-out that also gravely injuring Red. Lying for nine days in midst of struggle between life and death in this complex villa, he vowed to hunt down L. and weave a labyrinth around him. Red discloses that the first murder was by chance for they were there to loot the gems, but his henchman double crossed and mistakenly killed the rabbi. The rabbi has just written a line on the typewriter. Red got the news that L. investigating the case was certain that the elusive line was linked to the murder. So Red set about justifying that link and killed the next two people on specific days & directions and left behind connecting clues to point to a greater conspiracy fully aware that only L. would see through it and find out that there is fourth piece to the puzzle for there are four directions, the day was the fourth Jewish day, and the Name of God "YHVH" consists of four letters. L. in his bitterness says that such a complex maze was not needed and proposes a easier solution before he is shot dead.

"There are three lines too many in your labyrinth," he said at last. "I know of a Greek labyrinth that is but one straight line. So many philosophers have been lost upon that line that a mere detective might be pardoned if he became lost as well. When you hunt me down in another avatar of our lives, Scharlach, I suggest that you fake (or commit) one crime at A, a second crime at B, eight kilometers from A, then a third crime at C, four kilometers from A and B and halfway between them. Then wait for me at D, two kilometers from A and C, once again halfway between them. Kill me at D, as you are about to kill me at Triste-le-Roy." "The next time I kill you,"Scharlach replied, "I promise you the labyrinth that consists of a single straight line that is invisible and endless."

One way to analyse this story is to read it at its face value as one detective investigation that goes horribly wrong or one can go about delving into the numerous niches and symbols and come up with all kind of fantastical and abstract propositions. This would in fact be the same mistake that L. did. He went about untangling the mystery, but in the act he tangles himself and ultimately the maze consumes him. He sees signs and scheme where there was none to begin with and that becomes his nemesis. Sometimes a rose it just a rose. Sometimes the most easiest explanation is the correct explanation. The form of the truth is its not its simplicity (or lack of it) but its essence. The mere fact that there is so much detail available does not change the substance of the situation or the truth about it.

Humans have this tendency to complicate things, to see it a part of a bigger design or of great game. No doubt world is a complex place with no particular order and whole life generally seems haphazard. But we do not like the idea that we are not in control, that we are not aware of it. We tend to see this randomness as a pattern in a big scheme of things, that is being controlled by someone higher. The idea that no one controlling it is more unravelling than the thought of someone controlling it. Like so many incidents these days (like 9/11) there are always people who go about finding theories and patterns and signs because the fantastical is sometimes more persuasive than the banal. To see the real in middle of all this noise and not misinterpret it or over analyse it and not give it a train of thought where it takes a life of its own. For now we can always take comfort in the fact that even with his lavish over-interpretation L. was able to solve, to prove to us that we can in fact ultimately see through the maze and reach the truth, even if at the cost of losing yourself.

Borges : The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (Summary)

This is another impressive work by Borges where he conceives a short two page detective story. He mentions the setting are unimportant, the plot could well be in any country, at any times. The story is told by a narrator named Ryan who is great grandson of heroic Irish resistance leader Kilpatrick who was mysteriously killed. Ryan attempts to uncover the truth regarding his death. Some things to him regarding his death seem cyclical as if to repeat events from different places and times, from history and from literature. Like a unopened letter warning Kilpatrick of the plot (similar to Caesar) and other events that appeared repeated from story of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. These parallels led Ryan to "imagine some secret shape of time, a pattern of repeating lines." He also toys with the idea that before Kilpatrick was Kilpatrick, he was Julius Caesar. Further details plunge Ryan into yet more deeper maze. Certain events on the day the hero died seems to have been picked up from the Macbeth. "The idea that history might have copied history is mind-boggling enough; that history should copy literature is inconceivable". Also known is the fact that a close comrade of Kilpatrick named Nolan had translated works of Shakespeare besides written a piece on "Festspiele which is a vast traveling theatrical performances that require thousands of actors and retell historical episodes in the same cities, the same mountains in which they occurred". It was also revealed that Kilpatrick signed a death sentence to a unnamed traitor just days before death. Ryan ultimately discovers that the killing was staged and entire plot was executed over many days in which entire city placed the role of theater. The actual sequence of events are this - the resistance leaders meet and realize that they have a traitor in their midst. Kilpatrick gives Nolan the task of uncovering the traitor. Nolan proves beyond doubt that the traitor was Kilpatrick himself. The leader signs his own death sentence, but pleads that his punishment should not harm the cause. So Nolan devised a plan where Kilpatrick's execution by unknown assassins would rally the support for the rebellion. Nolan being short on time, plagiarizes the scenes from Caesar and Macbeth and this act is played out over multiple days in the entire city. Each act of the traitor is carefully choreographed, hundreds of actors are involved. The act ended with the traitor-hero being shot by unknown assailants. "Ryan suspected that the author interpolated them so that someone, in the future, would be able to stumble upon the truth. Ryan realized that he, too, was part of Nolan’s plot.... After long and stubborn deliberation, he decided to silence the discovery. He published a book dedicated to the hero’s glory; that too, perhaps, had been foreseen."

In this crisp story the lines between reality and fiction are obscured and blurred. Each real day and it's events are played out as an act, each moment of the reality is at the same time is a moment of fiction as well. The falsehood is planned in such detail and such scheme that in close observation the truth could be realized and the truth is again to be buried. Not only does the life imitates the art, falsehood actually replaces the reality. In this falsehood itself somewhere lies hidden the reality waiting to be discovered and to be lost again. Also the difference between reality and drama is not absolute, neither is the difference between the hero and the traitor. Both are hostage to perception and the act of investigation. The truth play out irrespective of they are being perceived correctly or not. Is it the truth, the complete truth? What if I do not understand it? Would it still be the truth. It becomes a prisoner to the Observer. The act of perceiving defines what the truth is. It is similar to a idea that "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" What looks to be an dramatic act on a wider stage to Ryan may appear to be truth by someone else who has access to more or less layers of information about the events than Ryan had. Alternate levels of realities each deeper than the other may exist depending on how many layers you unravel. There is no end to the layers and each one adding more detail to the whole plot.Besides the indifference to the place and timings, the generalization of details tells us the universality of the theme.

Borges : Funes, His Memory (Summary)

"Funes, His Memory" tells the story of a frictional Borges who meets a boy named Funes in Fray Bentos who he recalls as a one with a taciturn face, Indian features and an extraordinary remoteness. His recollections of him (on which this story is) are based on in all three interactions with Funes. In the first chance meeting, he asks him what time it is and Funes instantly replies the exact time without a blink. Funes is mentioned as someone who always knows what time it was, like a clock. Some years later Borges returns to Fray Bentos. It is revealed to him that Funes got crippled in a tragic horse riding accident. Borges meanwhile has started studying Latin and brought with himself some Latin books & dictionary. News of  this reaches Funes and he sends across a note asking if he could borrow some of the books and a dictionary as he wants to learn Latin. Borges in conceit as to if  Latin could really be mastered using just a dictionary sends across the most difficult book to remove any of Funes misconceptions.
Some days later, Borges receives a telegram and has to go back to Buenos Aires. Before leaving he recalls that Funes has some of his books and visits him to collect them. At his home, he is led to his room, which is in total darkness. Funes is heard speaking loudly, clear and perfect Latin, reciting a chapter of the book that Borges gave. The subject of the chapter was memory. In conversation with Borges, Funes lists the cases of extraordinary memory cited in the book and says he was amazed that such cases were thought to be amazing. Funes explains since the accident his memory has been so rich, so clear and so complete that he does not seem to take notice of his immobility. He for example can remember the shape of the clouds on a particular afternoon, or every leaf that he sees on a tree. "Nor were those memories simple — every visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, and so on. He was able to reconstruct every dream, every daydream he had ever had. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day; he had never once erred or faltered, but each reconstruction had itself taken an entire day." They talk into the night. Funes recalls that he once invented a numbering system where a different word had a particular numeric figure attached to it like 'leaf' for 99 and 'aah' for 203. Borges argued that is exact opposite of what number system was meant to accomplish(ie. bring order), but Funes somehow seem incapable of understanding. Funes also contemplates a language where he catalogs all mental images of his perception at any given time. Such a catalog would be total sum of his memory and a complete language to represent those memories in space and time. A book perceived today would be a different from one perceived tomorrow in this catalog and hence would have a different name. Both these projects though idiotic and meaningless, tell Borges about the fascinating and dizzying world that Funes lives in. A grandeur of endless possibilities. A simpler perceptive and sensory overload where order is sacrificed for detail. In-spite of such detail, Funes was incapable of general, platonic ideas. His world was not of abstraction, but of endless and mind numbing and yet perceptible details. "His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them. Funes could continually perceive the quiet advances of corruption, of tooth decay, of weariness. He saw — he noticed — the progress of death, of humidity. He was the solitary, lucid spectator of a multiform, momentaneous, and almost unbearably precise world." Such detail made Funes restless and unable to sleep at night. To sleep is to take one’s mind from the workings of the world. But for him, laying on a cot, he can picture every crack, every crevice in the wall of his house. "He had effortlessly learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract. In the teeming world of Funes there was nothing but particulars — and they were virtually immediate particulars." They talked the whole night. In the morning light, Borges saw his face, Funes all of nineteen years looks as monumental as bronze, as old as the Egypt's pyramids. "I was struck by the thought that every word I spoke, every expression of my face or motion of my hand would endure in his implacable memory; I was rendered clumsy by the fear of making pointless gestures." We are told that Funes did couple of years later of pulmonary congestion. End.

In the Funes fascinating world, there are only absolutes realities. There is this moment wrapped around the arrow of time, each of these moment having a set of unique and permanent mental images. Funes is able to perceive all this countless moments in extreme detail. Funes is incapable of generalizing or detail suppression. The details that he perceive in fact blur the subject's identity by focusing greatly on it. All is consumed by this detail. Funes forgets nothing, in his mind there is the sum total of all his perception that he has comes across. In his languages, there is the sum total of all his thoughts. Yet, he is unable of thinking, of reason for he is mired in particulars. He is the pinnacle of human mind and yet he is crippled by the absolute nature of his knowledge. He can not think, categorize, organize, abstract and logically differentiate anything. For him, any thing at any two different moments are two different thing. In fact, there is no general model of anything. Each thought as such is a unique model. We have created this world view because we can not remember or perceive all of it. I can not perceive if today is as hot as yesterday, so to help me I have create a model called the temperature scale to measure the hotness of the day. Funes has no such shortcomings. For him, these memories are his past, present and future. He has a perfect and total memory, but no imagination to create these generalizations and abstracts. For him all thoughts and events are equidistant, he will be unable to order them and act on them. He would not see a pattern in the world, he would not see a pattern in himself. He would not be able to hide thoughts or enhance thoughts but live his thoughts over and over again with nothing to imagine. A perfect prisoner to himself. We through imperfect memories, images and imagination we create an identity for ourselves. For Funes there will be no Self, but only a train of thoughts as same as the reality he lived.

Borges : Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (Summary)

Continuing with my extensive reading of Borges, I read this strange story where the narrator discovers a fictitious country (and latter a fictitious planet) that had been created as a part of a giant scheme by a secret society. The ideas of this false world later manifest themselves in this world and no longer we are able to make out the differences between these two and in essence - This our world becomes Tlön.

During a dinner with a friend, references to mysterious country named Uqbar come up. Not finding it in their encyclopedia copy, they find it mentioned in another copy of the same encyclopedia. The narrator is fascinated by Uqbar for the details around it add more mystery rather then solving it. Names, rivers, places all seem exotic, remote and unknown. He also notes "that the literature of Uqbar was one of fantasy and that its epics and legends never referred to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Mlejnas and Tlön". Chance references to that country keep cropping up. A family friend accidentally leaves him a substantial related work, "Encyclopedia of Tlön Vol XI". Now he had access to a vast fragment of an unknown planet's entire history, its philosophy, its algebra, its literature and everything in between. Tired of looking for the missing volumes, his colleagues propose that they undertake the task of reconstructing those missing pieces. From here the story delves into languages, maths and philosophy of Tlön. An extreme form of idealism is practiced in Tlön. "Their language and the derivations of their language - religion, letters, metaphysics - all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts". In one half on Tlön, the language have no nouns but verbs in place, in the other half adjectives are used instead. "The literature abounds in ideal objects, which are convoked and dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs. At times they are determined by mere simultaneity".

Psychology is the main discipline here. Universe is proposed as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time. In other world, they do not conceive that the spatial persists in time. Consequently causality is alien. Complete idealism invalidates all science. "Every mental state is irreducible: there mere fact of naming it - i.e., of classifying it - implies a falsification. There are no sciences on Tlön, not even reasoning. The paradoxical truth is that they do exist, and in almost uncountable number. The meta-physicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one such aspect. Even the phrase 'all aspects' is reject-able, for it supposes the impossible addition of the present and of all past moments. Neither is it licit to use the plural 'past moments,' since it supposes another operation."

One school negates time as says the present is indefinite and future has no reality other than as a present memory. Another says that all time has elapsed & we live in only in remembrance. Many school abound, each more fantastic than the other. The basis of its mathematics is the notion of indefinite numbers. They maintain that the very act of counting modifies the quantities and converts them from indefinite into definite sums. The basis of their geometry is not the point, but the surface. Their fiction contains a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Both the thesis and the antithesis are present in it. A book which does not contain its counter book is considered incomplete. Even perceived reality is changed to exert this idealism. Physical objects are created just by the force of imagination. The 'past' becomes hostage to the present. The present become hostage to perception and perceiving. "Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater."

In the postscript, it is revealed that the narrator and the world now know that Tlön & Ubqar are fictitious, invented by a secret society. The society worked for three hundred years and came up with a imaginary planet Tlön with an understanding that will have no relation with Christ as proposed by later financier of this project. As Tlön is revealed to the world, later objects from Tlön begin to appear in the real world. Soon all the forty volumes of Tlön are revealed and the ideas Tlön starts to take hold on the earth. Mankind is obsessed by it. "Ten years ago any symmetry with a resemblance of order - dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism - was sufficient to entrance the minds of men. How could one do other than submit to Tlön, to the minute and vast evidence of an orderly plant? It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws - I translate: inhuman laws - which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men. The contact and the habits of Tlön have disintegrated this world. Enchanted by its rigor, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigor of chess masters, not of angels." The narrator predicts in a hundred years, earth will lose its languages and countries to those of Tlön. This world is Tlön now. End.

The story is more a philosophical take on idealism than a fantasy. In this imaginary planet, causality is not possible for time does not exist. A consequence of that is there is no identity. There is nothing to connect a thing to others or to itself as it is passing through space. A extension of no identity means that there is no equality. A thing that no one sees or senses, is not perceived to exist. Any learning is impossible now and so are the sciences. Perceiving is supreme and the underlying reality is denied. In Tlön, what I hold in hand today is different from what I had in my hand yesterday (Even though I am holding the same thing). As Identity is missing, so is Equality. No two things are same. No two things are connected. A thing 'lost' means a duplication is created that we will 'find'. Lost and Found are not actions, but just remembrances. In a sense, there is no underlying reality to anything. Everything is what the mind perceives and outside of it, there is none. Everything becomes hostage to the perception and even physical objects that do not exist are created by sheer thought. A lost object can be found by two person in two different places because they are looking for it. To deal with this world, they proposed that there is only one supreme subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity. The other person finds it because he already knows he lost it. This all knowing subject takes the place of God in Tlön. Among other ideas the story explores, is the reality itself can be created. Like God, we have created the whole planet Tlön and its entire workings and this imagined reality is so powerful & simulating that in it we begin to lose the actual reality of earth. Probably God's reality is too complicated for us to see through, what interests is the model created by us, however bizarre though seemingly orderly and simple. For everything there is down to an irreducible state that can not be any more simpler. A labyrinth created by humans for humans, as opposed to the one created by God.

Borges : The Garden Of Forking Paths (Summary)

Continuing with my extensive readings on Borges, I read his short story "The Garden of Forking Paths". This is said to be a detective story. The story starts with Dr.Yu Tsun, a German spy in England realizing that he is being pursued by a British agent(Madden). Dr. Yu is privy to information about the location of England's new artillery park which somehow he has to convey to his leader in Germany. We are told that Dr. Yu is doing this not for any love for Germany, but out of desire to prove that a yellow man (whose race his leader so belittles) can save the armies of Germany. Realizing that time is of essence, he scans a telephone book for a name (Dr Stephen Albert) and leaves to meet him on the train. He narrowly misses Madden pursuing him in the station. Yu is elated for he has frustrated his enemy's plan and it has provided him with ample head-start to achieve his goals. He proceeds to Dr Albert home down the solitary road, reflecting on the road that reminded him of labyrinths. It is revealed that Dr Yu is the great grandson of Ts’ui Pen, The governor of Yunnan province who renounced worldly pleasures to undertake two tasks. One to write a vast novel and second to create a labyrinth that no men can solve (practically infinite). Yu lost in these thoughts imagines a labyrinth of rivers and provinces and kingdoms, of past and future and of stars. "He for an unknown period of time, felt as an abstract perceiver of the world." On reaching the gate, a man greets him in his own language and ask if he desires to see the garden that Ts’ui Pen created. Yu discloses that Ts’ui Pen was his ancestor. They both deliberate over chaotic chapters that Ts’ui wrote which no one could understand and the labyrinth which is now untraceable. Dr Stephen reveals that he has solved both these mysteries. The novel was the labyrinth, they were one and the same. To strengthen his argument, Stephen shares a letter written by Ts’ui which says

"I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths."

The Garden of Forking Paths is a un-ordered novel, where the situations fork in time, not in space. In the novel, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses simultaneously all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge. Stephen explains that the novel is an infinite maze whose theme is time which causes the author to prohibit the use of the word 'time' in its pages. Ts’ui conceived it as an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times unlike a linear and absolute Time. Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. Dr Yun shows his gratitude to Stephen for unraveling the mystery.In the garden, he could see Madden approaching. Yu asks for the letter to be shown again. Dr. Yu fires at Stephen in the back killing him immediately. Madden arrests Yu and is later sentenced to be hanged, but we are told that his task was accomplished. He had communicated to Berlin the name of the city. It was revealed as a riddle of murder of noted Sinologist Stephen Albert who was murdered by a stranger, one Yu Tsun. The Chief encrypted the message for he knew the task was to get the the word Albert out, and Yu found no other way to convey this but to kill a man of that name. End.

To think of this as a simple detective story would be an oversight. As with Borges nothing is what it looks. In this story we are told of a novel that has infinite plots and is ever expanding. The novel looks disjointed and non-linear. It is like a labyrinth that is unsolvable. But instead of a physical labyrinth laid out on a garden, this one is written out. Time as we know moves linearly, from yesterday to today and to tomorrow. It has a definite progression, an order of passing. In this novel, “The Garden of Forking Paths” rejects the notion of time itself being linear. In fact, it forks and the new branches exist and continue and represent possibilities of future. All possible results are part of this "future" landscape where time continually forks. (and sometimes diverges). Each moment in Time becomes branches into many possibilities. It is like a "hypertext", like a page on the internet where one can read from top to bottom or he could click on any links available on the page to get into entirely new page and context. Those new pages link to yet new pages or can link back to previously traversed pages. Labyrinth has been a recurring themes in Borges work. But instead of a spatial, this one is spaced out in time. Time is growing out like a ever-growing ripple of water when the stone hits the water surface leading to multiple worlds and multiple realities. In a way each Time is the point of creation for new multiple worlds, but in the same scheme Time looses its significance as there is no singular line of reference now. Time creates Time but Time looses centrality. Any things are possible in these multiple futures, but we are aware and limited by our sequence of time or context. In the story Yu says to Stephen that in all futures, he would be grateful to him for revealing these mysteries, to which Stephen replies that it is not possible as in one possible future we are going to be enemies. It also brings the question of fate & free will as all possibilities exist simultaneously and are being action-ed, so whatever I choose does not matter for there are worlds where I made the other choice. The characters are bound to act on all possible choices hence forking into multiple futures. Choice is not more a choice. It seems uncanny that Yu finds his ancestor's secrets in England's country side (of all the places). Also the killing of an innocent man to convey a encoded message which someone may or may not understand sounds odd. But then aren't these actions one of the countless possibilities that can happen. And we and Borges somehow existed on this plane of time to write and read it.

Borges - The Library of Babel - Part II (Summary)

I last month posted a brief summary of the Borges's famous story "The Library of Babel". It is such a vast expanse of very dense words. Ideas so vague that they stretch to the very edges of universe in thin ether and yet realistic enough for each and every one to make some sense of them.. for themselves. I will briefly touch on some themes that I could pick up among the infinite this story touches.

In the story, The Library is said to be "Total". It contains all that is written, all that is unwritten and everything in between. The narrator lives all his life in middle of this infinity trying to make sense of it, ultimately dying in the hope that this monstrosity is not meaningless, it is not random. It has an order, a purpose and a meaning. The order gives it a meaning. The existence gives it a purpose. Probably we are the purpose of its existence. We are the music that plays out of this celestial flute. Otherwise what would be the Library without the people trying to decipher the books? Why would it even exist if there is no one to flip through the pages. It would be a indefiniteness of perfectness and yet total absurdity in the absence of a Librarian. Are not we in the same plane as narrator trying to find a similar sense here? In this Our Universe. The self, the horror is all here as well, very perceptible and quivering and in midst of us.

All the hexagons of this Library are similar, in a way, this whole said Universe is symmetrical and yet there is randomness to the extreme present in the books. Both the perfect symmetry and perfect randomness is extrapolated to the utmost. Since the symmetry is perfect, hence the rule came that Library is Total and permanent. Near perfectness awes. To most it reveals the hand of creator. Near randomness despairs. To most it reinforces faith in the creator or higher power. Isn't it a metaphor for this universe where we see both these exist in similar fashion. There is this general symmetry and beauty and pattern in nature, and this turbulence and indefiniteness and chance and causality in human behavior and action. Symmetric yet random in the same canvas.The two parts of a Whole.

The Library has near infinite number of books, most meaningless. For every line that made sense, there are shelves and shelves of near nonsense. In this glut of "information", pretty much everything becomes useless. How does one know that a sudden appearance of meaningful text is not a chance play akin to monkeys scribbling haphazardly on paper. Does not this flood of text compromise whatever little made sense? Isn't this what's happening with the hyper-reality that plays out on media and arts these days? Isn't noise consuming us all? Isn't noise replacing reality?

This Library has books that have all combinations 25 symbols and each book is said to be unique. That means all possible knowledge is already in the books. Everything is already known. All possible actions and reactions are known. The truth, the falsehood, the proof of truth & the proof of falsehood. All. But can we comprehend? And then there is the question of - are we fated? Is everything foretold? The people trying to decode this books assumed majority of the text to be nonsense. Can it really be nonsense? Could it be some language that we don't know? It can be also said every book in this Library is understandable provided it is deciphered right. So all possible text could have a meaning in some remote language that we know not of. Could it also be that the text was written just for writing and was never meant to be understood? The act of writing now becomes disassociated from the act of understanding and whatever little we understood was a mere chance. Could the whole Library be like Voynich manuscript written for the sake of writing and the librarians are trying to understand something which never had sense to begin with. Could our Universe be same? A similar creation? In this enormity, can we understand the reality when we can not make sense of it completely? Is complete knowledge even possible when we do not see the complete picture. We have just bits and scraps of so-called information in midst of this glut. Do we even understand the language? Do we even understand what we are reading? How do we know for sure that this story was not a guide to catching fish without a bait?

The meaningless pursuit of wisdom in the books leads zealots, fanatics, blasphemers and mystics to run riot. Various theories are made. Some claims abandoned, other that still persist. Cults are created, Messiahs and false prophets abound. Some ideas becomes the cornerstone for the society of Men. Maybe they called it Religion. The multitude of Gods fighting the oneness of The Library. Some ideas that gave them hope, some that lead to their death and destruction.Truth is hard to come by here, Complete Truth is near impossible. What we are left with is a Great Mystery and our meaningless existence in it with no hope of ever understanding it fully. It is Near Omnipotence and Yet Nowhere near Omniscient! That is the fate of the mankind in this Universe.

Borges : The Library Of Babel - Part I (Summary)

This is another of Borges more famous works - The Library of Babel, a true Borgesian construct if I may say. This is a small brief on a fascinating story. I will try to analyse it in my next write up.

In this story there exists a Universe, which is called a Library and is composed of infinite number of hexagonal rooms with air shaft in between surrounded by low railing from where one can see the other hexagons on all other floors up and down. The Library is said to be unending. These hexagons had five book shelves on four sides of the room (which cover the walls up to the low roof). One free side had a hallway that leads to another identical hexagon and two small closets for sleeping and bodily functions. There is a spiral stairway which allows to move vertically to all places in this vast conundrum. Also present in this minimalist room was a "mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances". The mirror to narrator is a sign of the infinite extent of the Library. The narrator says that he has traveled widely in his youth amid this Library to search for meaning of all these books or for a catalog of books to decipher the meaning of this enormity, but now that he is old,near blind and preparing to die (not far from where he was born though). Once dead, he would be flung over the railing and his grave would be the unfathomable air in a fall that will be infinite. Some says the Library is infinite, some others claim that "The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible." some others say the universe is incomprehensible in any other form (like triangle) other than hexagon for any other concept of space is inconceivable. Other still claim it as a circular chamber containing a circular book, whose spine follows the complete circle of the walls. The circular book being God.

Each shelf has 35 books of similar format (i.e. each is of 410 pages and each page of 40 lines and each line of 80 black letters). Each book has a title that does not say what the book actually contains. After countless centuries, they come up with two broad canons about this Library. Foremost being that the Library exists from times immemorial. Second that all the text in the books is made of 25 symbols (including space comma and period). From these two axioms was demonstrated the fact that Library will exist in foreseeable future. A implication from above was that Man can be a product of chance, but this vastness of order, of its perfectness, of symmetry can only be work of a God."To perceive the distance between the divine and the human, it is enough to compare these crude wavering symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book, with the organic letters inside: punctual, delicate, perfectly black, inimitably symmetrical.". Also known was the fact (from the knowledge of these symbols), the books are formless and mostly random. For each sentence that made sense, there were countless others that lacked clarity. Some even swore that books meant nothing, and finding sense in them was like understanding disorderly lines of one's palm.

Such grandeur led to lot of speculation on the Library and its origins. Some believed that the language of the books had gone extinct as the first librarians used a language quite different from today and language spoken elsewhere in this maze is radically different from what's spoken here. However many said that any language however primitive can not meaningfully write 410 pages of just "MCV" to present a narrative or meaningful text. Some even hinted ciphers. But ages after ages of analyzing, a genius librarian came up with the fact that the building blocks of all books was essentially same (i.e. those 25 symbols). It was also speculated that there are no identical books. So the Library was "total" and had all books written, or will ever be written or were not written. It has all the truth, all the falsity, all the evidence of the falsity and everything that was to be said or unsaid. It is 'Complete' and all encompassing.

"Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books."

The feeling of it being total, made the existence of Library seem vindicated to many. Some seemed euphoric. There was no problem whose solution could not be found in those books. The Library gave happiness for men felt overlords of such knowledge and it saddened some for it extinguished the "unlimited dimensions of hope". Also existed in the midst of these was book of Vindications for each man that has the story of their lives and wisdom for their future. Men set out like crazy to find them in the Library. Lot were killed. Others went mad in search of that elusive book of Vindications. A sense of despair followed the optimism. Such enormity, such vastitude and yet almost certainly meaningless and gibberish, except a small hope of finding a meaningful book made men mad. Now no one expects to find anything useful here. Deception was practiced. Some went to great length to create orderly books by creating disorder. Some argued that it is possible, to come up with a meaningful book by endlessly juggling the characters. A sect arose that went around destroying works that did not seem meaningful to them (to sanctify the library) though this did not actually made much of an impact given the size of the library.

Another persistent belief was born that there existed a "Man of the Book" who has found a book that was a catalogue of catalogue. A key to all other books. Many wandered to search for him. The human soul was exhausted and battered and conflicts, suicide and pillaging have ravaged the Library. Such meaningless adventures have consumed and wasted his (narrator) whole life as well. And yet in this despair, the author rejects that any book is this Library was meaningless. For him, the Library contained all variations of those 25 characters, but it does not contain a shred of nonsense. Any text must have a meanings that we're not aware of. The seven letters "Library" here means this, but it could mean different in another language. It has to have meaning is some hidden language of the Library. Do we even understand the language? Do we even know that language? I beg that such a "Man of the Book" existed for he will be understand the beauty of the scheme. If the honour was not mine, then let it be of someone else. Let the Library be justified for at least someone. I do not pity the Library for it will forever exist, ever perfect and secret and Infinite and random. I pity the human race. The burden has brought our decimation. I say Library "Infinite" for even with limited number of books, it will be never-ending It will just repeats itself. This universe is periodic. The repetition of disorder here creates an Order. And This belief gives me hope.

"I say that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end -- which is absurd. Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have such a limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order). My solitude is gladdened by this elegant hope."

Borges : The Lottery In Babylon (Summary)

In this fictional story, Borges imagines a world where the lottery is a major element of reality. It is all the society and it is all the Government  It started out as an unremarkable lottery where a lucky draw is pulled to choose a winning number. Soon the lottery started loosing interest as well as money. For

"They had no moral force whatsoever; they appealed not to all a man's faculties, but only to his hopefulness."

The lottery was re-devised so that not only it had loosing numbers but also a fine associated with those loosing numbers. Now one had a two-fold chance. Either you could win or you could pay a fine. This added risk rejuvenated the Lottery. It soon become a necessary requisite for everyone to participate as those who do not risk being an outcast. The public discourse found new aversions. The one who did not play and one who lost and paid. The Lottery expanded to protect the interest of the winners. It started prosecuting those who lost and did not pay. It 'awarded' them jail terms. This gave the Lottery powers beyond its domain of just issuing tickets and holding draws. Very soon it skipped the fines and started printing the number of days each losing number has to spend in jail.

"Certain moralists argued that the possession of coins did not always bring about happiness, and that other forms of happiness were perhaps more direct."

So the Lottery was reviewed again. It allowed for winnings and loosing that expanded beyond money and jail terms allowing for a whole new meaning to winning and loosing. Also the Company running the Lottery assumed all state and civil powers. The Lottery became the State and the State became The Lottery. Every man automatically took part in the drawing that decided his destiny until the next drawing. The lottery exerted itself in all aspects of Government, society and human life. The whole society became its realm. It became the end all and be all. As the range of its outcomes grew more complex and vivid it penetrates every aspect of life to generate those complex outcomes. Reality become a outcome of Chance. More and more input was needed to generate the results. Chance became the ether of life. It was what that became so fundamental to running the System. Chance found its way into all aspects of this world to correctly find the outcome. Now not only you can win jail terms, you can 'win' being a proconsul or imprisonment of your enemy and every other possible outcomes. Even routine working like a bird's call was supposed to be an outcome of its drawing. But how does all the outcome can be result of one Chance?

"In reality, the number of drawings is infinite. No decision is final; all branch into others.Sometimes a single event--the murder of C in a tavern, B's mysterious apotheosis--would be the inspired outcome of thirty or forty drawings. If the Lottery is an intensification of chance, a periodic infusion of chaos into the cosmos, then is it not appropriate that chance intervene in every aspect of the drawing, not just one? Is it not ludicrous that chance should dictate a person's death while the circumstances of that death--whether private or public, whether drawn out for an hour or a century--should not be subject to chance?. The Lottery is an interpolation of chance into the order of the universe, and observed that to accept errors is to strengthen chance, not contravene it."

As the lottery intensified Chance and induces randomness to the Universe, even mistakes are attributed to Chance and possibly deliberately introduced. Mistakes were just kinks in an expected pattern. If the whole pattern is based on Chance, then mistakes are just as part of the scheme as correct working is. Deliberate falsification was widely practiced now. Even the company's history and its documents are tainted. This could have a two fold purpose. One it makes difficult to conjecture Company's working and history and second, it forces the Lottery's iteration to remove errors in its working. The Lottery ever enlarging circle each consuming its previous adaptation and ever more complex slowly pervading the whole Universe.

In a way, the reality was the result of infinite drawing. All customs, all behavior is now steeped in Chance. With each iteration, the Lottery becoming ever vast and complex to such an extent that ultimately one fails to understand the underlying reality or even if there is a reality associated. No one knows for sure if its just outcome of just fate or outcome of the lottery's drawings. Every attempt to find the Truth will now fail, as Lottery transcends all. It goes past truth, reality and knowledge. Babylon suffers this epic collective delusion. Some deny the Lottery ever existed. Some surrender to it. Some doubt if it is that omnipotent and powerful. Some say it does not matter for there is no escape from it for Babylon is nothing but a infinite game of Chance.
Once can interpret this story as a metaphor of the role chance plays in everyday life. Is there a pattern to the events that play out? Is there a all knowing and all powerful authority that runs this Universe or it is just a play on probability? Can we actually comprehend it? Don't we also suffer from the same paranoia as Babylon? Do we accept that life is in our hands or like them accept that some all powerful force runs it? And what of causation? What of seeking reason in this inherent disorder and ultimately failing in it?

Borges : The Circular Ruins (Summary)

I read another fantastic piece of Borges called as "The Circular Ruins". It's a small 3-4 page short story that I read on my train ride to home and multiple times over subsequent days, each time reading ever less and thinking ever more.

In the story, we are told a man arrives on a shore from the south. On this shore lay the ruins of a magical circular temple that served the abode for our man. The man had a mission that drove him here, He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose him on reality. It was the sole purpose of his life and which had come to fill his whole heart. Initially he dreams of being a teacher in a circular amphitheatre where student's faces hung in cosmological distances and yet still clearly visible. He choose one student from the class that showed potential and attempted to dream him in ever greater detail. But after some days of dreaming, he fails. He starts again after a gap and this time start to dream a complete man, piece by piece. He dreams a heart. Each passing day he dreams it with ever more clarity. After 14 nights he touches the heart and marvels at his creation. He now starts on other organs. Feature by feature, in an year he completes (dreams) most of the Man, but he can not make him open his eyes.

To realise his task, he invokes the Gods of the Circular Ruins who agree to animate the dreamed phantom in such a way that all creatures, except Gods and the dreamer would believe him to be a man of flesh and blood. The Gods further instruct to send him to the other ruined temple down shore to glorify God's name there. In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke. The dreamer starts teaching the now real phantom (he calls him Son for he is his creation) with the mysteries of the universe. Slowly he began accustoming him to reality and the world around him. Then one day, he orders him to go to the other temple as the Gods said. Before he left, he destroyed in him all memory of his years of apprenticeship.

He is a happy man now for he has realised his purpose in life and spends time wasting away on the banks. Years passed. One day, two faceless oarsmen tell him about a mystic in the temple in North who could walk on fire and not get burned. The dreamer satisfied initially dreaded if his creation would reason on why he is blessed and may figure out that he is just an imagination. He is just another man's dream. The dreamer's worries ended suddenly one day, when in midst of great tumult the Circular Ruins are destroyed in fire. The dreamer thought initially of taking refuge in water, but realising that his life's goal was complete and he can joyfully embrace death as a crowning jewel and rewards of his laboured existence. He walked into the fire, but it does not burn him. In this moment, the terror, the awareness, the humiliation that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him came across him. End.

Borges comes up with such thought provoking story that questions the very basis of existence, perception, reality and self-awareness. One person's existence can be extension of another person's thought. In same way, one person existence can be extension of another person's existence. The dream can not exist outside the dreamer. The dreamt does not have a life outsider the act of dreaming. Where does the boundary lie between real and dream? In in the story, the whole universe is a dream dreamt up by someone who in turn is being dreamt. The dreamer is as unreal as the dream. Were the space time real in the absolute sense of word Real? Did the dreamer had control over what he dreamt for he himself he is creation of someone else. Could he had done something else? Could he have envision something else for his dreamt Son than what the one who is dreaming the dreamer provisions it? Could he have lived forever as a life in a dream? He played God and creating a complete Man, organ by organ but in fact he is just a conduit for someone else's control. The setting of the story (the circular ruins) and circular dreams and the supposed circular reality adds strangeness to this work. The dreamer comes from the south and sends his dreamt son to the north and his circular dreaming continues upstream until say maybe the ingress falls into singularity or maybe they never reach singularity for they each live in their individual universe. This infinite regress is like holding the mirror to the mirror and seeing a candle light in it. Everything in this universe (or set of universe) is illusionary, the Self is illusionary, even the realisation about self is illusionary for someone else dreamt it. This loss of Self at the same time as the realization of being Creator produces such paradox that to define an order or semblance of order to this universe, to define the Creator and Created, the dreamer and the dreamt, being dreamt and of dreaming, of cause and causality will just ultimately fail. But it in a sense that is what the Universe is. It is infinitesimally complex. The center is everywhere and everything is the center. Reality in this universe is created and viewed by each center (dreamer). Remove the center and this reality is meaningless. It's like when one looks for into the mirror. The image has no self and no existence outside when one looking into the mirror. Similarly, what is in this universe is meaningless and does not exist independent of the observer. The dreamer ("I") has to be there to dream it ("Universe") and outside it none exists. The sole purpose of dreamer is to dream and of Universe is to exist both in concurrence and both aware.

As James Jean truly said, "The Universe is a Giant Thought instead of a Giant Machine."

Borges : Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (Summary)

I have been occasionally reading Borges these days and each story unfolds itself like a labyrinth. Ever perplexing as to what those scant pages meant or said. I finished reading "Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote". Like many other stories, it's a literary hoax i.e. to say that Pierre Menard does not exist. The construct is the same as last story, imagine such a book or writer exists and weave an idea around it.

The story is written as a literary piece about Pierre Menard that begins with brief introduction about him and a exhaustive list of his works that range from symbolist literature to algebra. But this is not the focus of the story. The story is about the Menard's seemingly impossible and absurd task of rewriting the Cervantes's Don Quixote. The rewrite is not to be a manual reproduction, but rather coming up with the same work word by word and line by line. He did not want to create another Quixote, but the Quixote itself. The way he attempted this was to learn Spanish language and its cultures, return to catholic faith, forget about events in Europe in these intervening three hundred years and write Quixote through the experiences similar to that of Cervantes but he forgo of this approach (as it seemed less interesting) and instead choose to live in 20th century (with current ideas and ideals) and write Quixote through the experiences of Menard.

In the end the narrator reviews the couple of chapters of first part of Don Quixote that Mernard was able to create. He says that these chapters are infinitely richer to what Cervantes wrote (even though they matched word to word) due to the fact that Menard was able to accomplish this against all obstacles like huge historical and cultural events that have changed human perspective in the intervening years. The same lines now give a reader a much different meaning due to a different context (made possible by the all the world changing events that modern world saw) in which the reader is. So it is the reader who defines the narrative rather then the narrator. The context is the driver channeling the reader response. Thus Quixote written today will be a lot different in meaning to the one that was written in 1600's even though they match the word to word. It is the reader who gives meaning to a work. It is he who is not a passive agent, but rather an active agent in this process. The words may be eternal and unchanging, yet the perception they create on the reader's mind are ever changing with no finality to it. In a way any book in any given time isn't some static collection of pages written by the author, instead it is this packet/case that holds the book and the one reading it and their thoughts and their meanings and there are countless such packets out there. Each packet true and valid to the substance of the book. Borges says that ultimately even the most brilliant books are relegated to the old libraries and says Mernard was a brave man to attempt such a impossible task to keep the book relevant.

A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter—if not a paragraph or a name—in the history of philosophy. In literature, this eventual caducity is even more notorious. The Quixote —Menard told me—was, above all, an entertaining book; now it is the occasion for patriotic toasts, grammatical insolence and obscene de luxe editions. Fame is a form of incomprehension, perhaps the worst.

“Thinking, analyzing, inventing (he also wrote me) are not anomalous acts; they are the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional performance of that function, to hoard ancient and alien thoughts, to recall with incredulous stupor that the doctor universalis thought, is to confess our laziness or our barbarity. Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

Borges : The Approach to Al Mu'tasim (Summary)

For those who know Borges, knows what kind of density and imagination he packs in the magical and short tales he spins. I have not read much of his work but whatever I have has a certain sense of strangeness to it. A concept, a stretch of imagination that could be used as a construct to make bigger stories or can be left just an idea hanging there. I read another of his short works called "The Approach to Al Mu'tasim". This story is part of the bigger book called "The Ficciones". As with Borges, the focus is on an idea with not much of a prose to work on the idea. The obsession with whats real and what's not, with mirrors and labyrinths is very much in play. The foreword states that instead of writing huge books about an idea that can be stated in five minutes, a far better idea would be to assume that such huge book exists and then write a summary or commentary on them. This story is based on the similar construct. The writer assumes that such a book is already published and provides a commentary on it.

That imaginary book called "The Approach to Al Mu'tasim" set up in per-independent Bombay. The hero (a muslim) caught up in a communal riot, kills (or thinks he killed) a hindu. Fearing that he will be pursued, he runs to the edge of city. There he meets a wretched soul who raids graves for gold teeth. Shaken by the events, the hero decides to lose himself in the vastness of India. In this journey, the hero adopts the evil ways of the underclass. Here in these vile ways, he comes across a companion who has a sudden change of heart, "a certain moment of tenderness". He concludes that that guy is actually echoing someone else, a friend, or the friend of a friend. He deduces that somewhere in this earth, a person exists from whom the light emanates and this gets reflected to any person who gets in touch with him and some light gets on this person who in turn reflects it to whoever he comes across. And so his colleague also come across a person who had that light that came to him reflected by that One. He calls the One Al Mu'tasim. Thus the journey becomes one of a soul looking for that elusive light, which sometimes nearer made the divinity of the mortal soul more profound, but they were still the mirrors reflecting the true light. Finally the hero comes to a door, and behind a curtain is a shining light. He calls out for Al Mu'tasim and enters the door. The novel ends here.

In the footnote the author refers to the poem Mantiq ut-Tair (The Colloquy of the Birds) by the Persian mystic Mohammad ibn-Ibraham Attar. In the poem the king of birds, the Simurgh, drops one of his splendid feathers somewhere in the middle of China; on learning this, the other birds, tired of their age-old anarchy, decide to seek him out. They know that the king's name means 'thirty birds'. Setting out on epic journey, Thirty, purified by suffering, reach the great peak of the Simurgh. At last they behold him; they realize that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each of them and all of them.

Reading the footnote, the story becomes clear. The hero was Al Mu'tasim. The seeker was the one that was being sought. The search for truth becomes the search for one's identity. The travails of the life reflected on him incrementally to make him the one. Each experience, each moment, each meeting contributed in making him a complete perfect man, The Al Mu'tasim. In a way Borges uses an actual poem and an imaginary novel to come up with an idea on search for one's identity. The one that we do not see on the mirror everyday. The one who though not visible in the clarity of the mirror, yet shins out so brilliant that its reflects its brilliance all around. Where one loses oneself into enormity to discover oneself. Where the searcher takes the iota of the sought slowly by slowly to ultimately become one that is being sought. As Nietzsche puts it, when you stare at the abyss it stares back at you. As you know about things, you take a piece of it and ultimately become a part of it. Come to think of it, each one of us is the God and god is each One of us. 

Day Dreaming

This is the second poem that I have written, this is an allegory with tribute to symbolism and fantasy.
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this is a story of a boy who used to walk everyday aimlessly on the stony shore
amid screaming seagulls one day, he finds a lovely shell that he could ever explore

with this shell in his clumsy hand, he climbs down the rabbit hole in his backyard
escaping from the giant locust who eyes the elegant sea shell, he runs feeling scared

down in the bright underground, he sees on the wall a pegasus sitting cross-legged
to the boy's surprise, humpty dumpty was his name, the pegasus hesitantly divulged

the boy tells he wants to go to eden, to the place where he gets to keep his shell
the white pegasus offered to give him a ride till there, in return of a little help

the beast wants leaves from the tree of eternal life, to heal his broken feather
the boy agrees to his simple wish, all he wants is the sea shell and he together

the boy is playing with his shell, on the way they met pinocchio sitting tight
they ask for the way, he babbles while his nose gets longer that gives them a fright

they ran & wander along the red sea, coming across the crying queen of hearts
she points us towards a red big balloon floating, and cries - o my king of hearts

they all rode towards the flying king, catching it just before the dark forest
the queen united with her queer king, thanks us and enquires about our quest

they tell her about the pursuit, she wands her stick and a black faun appears
she says it will guide us, but somehow the faun in place of eyes had only tears

on way forward they meet a princess, who offered them grail in return for the shell
the boy held it close to his heart, which made her disappear as it broke the spell

at last they all reached garden of eden, the boy climbed the fabled eternal tree
as soon as the peagasus had the leaves, the white beast morphed into a nymph free

the beauty asked what he wished, the boy cried asking to be with his shell forever
she altered the shell to a sea maiden, and granted they will be separated never

the boy held the beautiful sea maiden's hand close to his heart, and asked her name
"hope" she quivers, they gently kiss with the full moon shining in back of the frame