Borges - Labyrinths (1641)

[Mr. Tea]

@woops is correct, it's the basic premise of Small Gods from, I dunno, 1988 or thereabouts.

 

[luka]

It's not an idea anyone can really lay claim to. Which is why it's so important to invent a name for it and trademark that name. Hyperstition.

 

[luka]

Mvuent sort this thread out out them to shame

 

[mvuent]

The secret to Borges' prodigious reading is here, that he regarded everything as a branch of fantastic literature. This for me is a kind of ideal, it's what I want to access because once unlocked all texts become charmed and reading biology or geology is as magical as reading poetry.

And then as adjunct that the world rests on these fictions which are arbitrary and can be exchanged. That there are a billion ways to dream the world.

"The poet is only distinguished from the crank - and the distinction is very difficult to discern - because the poet avoids literal belief. All becomes metaphor and image, and there is no real division between history and myth. Neither should be taken literally. The poetic tradition flows within this liminal state. It can be traced in history, it can be traced in myth, it can be traced in biography, in ecology, in geology, but the thread is lost when it is taken too literally. It is an inside joke of the most dangerous cosmic tricksters passed down only to those in the know, and those who know are precisely those who have seen and touched it. And when it is touched, it is discovered everywhere."

yeah thats an idea that gotten into my head since joining here. that poetry pays attention to everything because it can find resonance in everything, no matter how dry or supposedly antithetical to poetry. but in way that's exactly what i've always loved about dreams. how even stuff you never payed active attention to turns out to have resonance and magic.

so that's why i think the urge to have art without narrow confines, that can draw on all sorts of things, is important. it's not a sign of megalomania, it's a sign of dreaming.

as I was going to point out in version's morton feldman thread, stockhausen once told feldman "your music could be a moment in my music". maybe that's the issue with minimalism and proper tunes generally. they impose as permanent constraints what could be only temporary ones in a romantic context. for example, proper tunes-ism dictates that you always need a catchy hook. non-pop music can have that, but it doesn't have to at all times. you're free to invent your own rules and go wherever you want. the downside is that this dilutes focus on perfecting Proper elements, which is why proper tunes can often be more compelling in practice that other stuff.

but the potential to assimilate the strengths of proper tunes is why I'd put myself fully in the romantic camp. your music could be a moment in my music.

 

[luka]

Love how you sum it up with a long quote by you. The dissensus spirit!

 

[luka]

I was feeling very jaundiced about this dad joke place but I'm more positive now I feel an uprush of spirt

 

[mvuent]

Borges is creeped out by mirrors. Both the mirror and the encyclopaedia exist as extensions of the world as reproductions of the world but also as other worlds and doorways into other worlds and things get odd when they start to diverge, your own reflection starts acting independently, refuses to mimic your movements, the encyclopaedia sprouts new regions of the world, meticulously accounted for, from their poetry to their mathematics.

i like the insight that it’s not just that these things aren’t literally the same, it’s that the difference can create a portal effect. a “flawed” copy doesn’t just exist alongside the original, it can also open up an entire “flawed”—new, different—universe. through the looking glass.

so what i would say is, absorb this information if you must, but then do something interesting with it. make something up. a fun game we can play or something.

As a rule people want to understand things so they can dismiss them. Or they want to understand them to gain status,or to add ammunition to a debate club arsenal.

Those things are not very useful to me. But I do find it useful to create disjunctions and I find it useful to create decelerations, intensifications, various modulations of experience and consciousness. Ways to trip up, humble, awe, humiliate, that irritating relentlessly verbal part of the self that wants to understand things, defeat them, flatten them and move triumphantly onwards

 

[mvuent]

borges mentions the whole “unreliable narrator” thing, which tbh i never totally understood. the tripping point for me in school was always that whenever we discussed this possibility, the class collectively would conclude that if they might have lied about one thing, then we couldn't trust anything the narrator said... it might all be made up. which took us back to square one since we were talking about a fucking novel.

so in order to construct “a labyrinth in which all men would get lost” you have to lead the reader on, convince them that there really is a way through. they can’t just say “fuck this maze it's not going anywhere” and call in a helicopter to carry them out. they have to think they can see the exit. furthermore, to catch everyone you’d need to create multiple (infinite?) such paths to draw people in, yet also make sure that none of them fully resolved. it almost seems possible.

 

[luka]

That's a good point point mvuents

 

[version]

Why did you put 1641 in the title?

 

[luka]

Yeah good question. A Borgesian move. But confusing

 

[woops]

Presumably labyrinths was written in 1641 then rewritten word for word, but different, by JLB, like in the Pierre Menard one which I've never understood

 

[version]

Borges sometimes strikes me as Lovecraft minus the horror. His stories often end with some sort of revelation, but there's no descent into madness or horrifying abyss. You're just confronted with some sort of phenomena, sleight of hand or even just time and space, and there's no indication whether it's good or bad - it just is.

He's got a great knack for angles too. He's able to present well-worn stories and concepts and tilt and twist them into the light like the faces of a puzzle box. Three Versions of Judas completely floored me in that respect. It seemed so clear and obvious after I'd read it, but I don't think it would ever have occurred to me had he not shown me.

 

[linebaugh]

Borges sometimes strikes me as Lovecraft minus the horror. His stories often end with some sort of revelation, but there's no descent into madness or horrifying abyss. You're just confronted with some sort of phenomena, sleight of hand or even just time and space, and there's no indication whether it's good or bad - it just is.

I group rilke in with those two as well. Similiar grey morality in the face of infinity

 

[version]

Lovecraft seems to view cosmic indifference as hostile whereas Borges seems to view it as neutral.

 

[luka]

I group rilke in with those two as well. Similiar grey morality in the face of infinity

Wtf

 

[Mr. Tea]

Lovecraft seems to view cosmic indifference as hostile whereas Borges seems to view it as neutral.

"Hostile" only in the sense of not conducive to our happiness/sanity/survival. In the scheme of things, it's "nothing personal".

 

[linebaugh]

Wtf

I dont understand. This seems self evident to me.

 

[linebaugh]

Pynchon referenced Rilke and borges to make the same connections in GR. A matched pair

 

[luka]

Mad.