Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Sources: Maynard Mack, Sarah Lawall, et al., Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 6th ed. (W.W. Norton, 1992), pp. 1916-1926.

Main points from Sarah Lawall's introduction (pp. 1916-1919):

• born in Buenos Aires, August 24, 1899, wealthy family, famous ancestors, English grandmother
• travel in Europe, family caught in Geneva at start of World War I
• attended school in Switzerland
• multilingual: Spanish, English, French, German
• moved to Spain after war
• association with experimental poets, the Ultraists
• 1921 return to Argentina, founded Argentinian Ultraists group, mural review Prisma
• association with philosopher Macedonio Fernandez, interest in pure thought and linguistic intricacies
• contributor to avant-garde review Martin Fierro, "art for art's sake"
• Universal History of Infamy (1935)
• head injury and operation in 1938
• The Garden of Forking Paths (1941), intellectual and idealist tendencies, central idea: philosophical concept
• opposition to military dictatorship of Perón; punished in 1946 with dismisal from librarian's post and offer of chicken inspector job
• The Aleph (1949)
• 1955 appointed Director of the National Library after fall of Perón
• increasing blindness
• 1961 shared International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett
• 1967 married Else Astete Milan
• detective stories, "search for an elusive explanation"; "art of puzzles and discovery, a grand code that treats our universe as a giant library where meaning is locked away"; idea of parallel worlds, multiple identities
• "history, fantasy, and science fiction as having equal claim on our attention"; "equally real"; "a world of pure thought"; "everything is possible"; "no need for the artificial constraints imposed by conventional artistic attempts to represent reality"

"The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941)

Garden of the Daisen-in of Daitoku-ji, Kyoto. Soami (d. 1525)

Discussion issues (Source: Fidel Fajardo-Acosta):

• background of World War I
• fictionality and inaccuracy of official history; a personal (seemingly insignificant) event holds the key to the understanding of events on a much larger scale
• race, ethnic identity, subordination, desire to please the oppressor, Chinese man serving the Germans, Irishman serving the English
• absoluteness of the present, focus on the moment
• determinism of situation ironically related to personal choices and actions: "The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past"; change does not occur, possibilities are not realized because of a necessity which is self-imposed; the world is a hell of our own making, a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Ts'ui Pên analogous to Stephen Albert, both murdered by strangers
• Oedipal situation, a riddle is posed related to the identity of the anonymous stranger: murder of the anonymous other and revelation of surprising concealed identity: Albert's existence is intimately connectec to Yu Tsun's past, present and future; murder of the other is self-destruction, suicide; underlying theory of universal connectedness and kinship; Albert holds the key to Yu Tsun's own repressed identity (individual, racial, cultural); the death of Albert closes the door to many possible and better futures for Yu Tsun, for his race, for humanity as a whole
• the fact that Yu Tsun becomes a 'writer' (as he dictates account of his own adventures and arrest) suggests a transformation, in prison he becomes Ts'ui Pên
• final lesson is recognition of error (hamartia): "he does not kow (no one can know) my innumerable contrition and weariness"; the word 'innumerable' dramatizes the devastating effects of the murder of Albert, the annihilation of myriad identities, many of them corresponding to the self
• riddle of the story, suppression of term which is key to the solution of the riddle: emphasis on proliferation of possibilities and forking paths has paradoxical effect of suggesting covergence toward total connectedness, unity and identity of all being; in the last analysis radical multiplicity is identity: All is One; ethical, spiritual, and critical implications for a world in state of war and division
• art's suggestion: we live in a universe of our own construction; if we don't live in paradise (the garden of Eden) it is simply because we don't want to; the role of art in this case is to point out that if everything is possible (indeed art is the construction of alternative worlds) then paradise is one of the choices; with nothing fixed by external necessity, the road to paradise is wide open
• Time is solution to the riddle of Ts'ui Pên's novel in the sense that its passage levels down all barriers to understanding of universal identity and connectedness, in time all truth is revealed, all events realized, all outcomes reached; while mortality is the great equalizer, immortality (of the human race) is the natural result of an existence based on the recognition of the kinship of all beings; ironically perhaps, existence in the awareness of unity is timeless, completely outside of history; the artist lives forever in a garden beyond the world of suffering and violence

Han Dynasty (207 BC-220 AD), Roof Tile Rubbings

Chinese Music:

• Liang Shanpo and Zhu Yingtai ("The Butterfly Lovers"), 3:56 min
• Jasmine, 2:03 min