Borges - Labyrinths (1641)
sus
Moderator
Try ctrlcreep
i feel like i've definitely read it, or at least have a read a few from it, like babel, so I would be game at some point.
I did make a point of reading 'a universal history of iniquity' a few years ago, which is short vignettes of criminals and murderers.
It was when i was in a big Bolano phase and he said he based his own 'Nazi literature in the Americas' (short portraits of different nazis in S.America basically) on that one.
I did make a point of reading 'a universal history of iniquity' a few years ago, which is short vignettes of criminals and murderers.
It was when i was in a big Bolano phase and he said he based his own 'Nazi literature in the Americas' (short portraits of different nazis in S.America basically) on that one.
mvuent
Void Dweller
tough question isn't it. but you've already made a thread about the garden of forking paths. and bc i do everything in life at a glacial pace, i've only read the first three stories. so i say we start with Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
The Garden of Forking Paths
The mathematical theory of bifurcation originated in the seminal work of Henri Poincaré on systems of non-linear differential equations. The term bifurcation was coined by Poincaré to designate the emergence of several solutions from a given solution. Whenever the solution to an equation, or...
www.dissensus.com
plus, maybe these threads will converge somewhere...
mvuent
Void Dweller
sometimes when you read a story, it's helpful if you can envision a path of imagination that could have led to its being created. over quarantine i've been skimming through an old architecture textbook i found at a university book store years ago, and some of the claims it makes about the worldviews of ancient civilizations are so strange. you wonder if people could really have practiced those customs, or if what you're reading is merely the product of some historian's overactive imagination. i can almost envision reading a paragraph about Tlön in it.
mvuent
Void Dweller
we learn a lot about the insane(?) perspective of the imaginary people of Tlön, and the consequences of that perspective, but we never really get to experience it for ourselves. what would these epics set in Tlön be like if they were translated into our language? are there any writers whose work operates in a comparable way? joyce maybe? luke davis? tite kubo???
luka
Well-known member
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I was going to quote the concluding paragraph of this story because it's the Borges-bit that always haunts me, but I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it. I don't think it's in Labyrinths.
luka
Well-known member
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.
Dreaming in books, dreaming in and round and with words, is a huge part of what Borges is about. This is a story which dreams of world building without being crass enough to actually do it. It's the kind of dreaming you get from suggestion, to read the place name Nineveh and be transported.