Reality (What a Concept)
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Dr. Bordelon's The Short Story: On Campus |
Reality (What a Concept) Titles, Page Numbers and date published Introduction His vision amounts to a probing of the limits of language, and an examination of just what reality, time, and even being consists of. His predilection for using fiction as a vehicle to illustrate philosophical ideas and conundrums, makes his work a kind of meta-fiction, or a work which explores the nature of fiction itself. Similar to Tim O'Brien, Borges enjoys playing with reality and fiction, constantly shifting the boundaries between the two in an attempt to illustrate their arbitrary and ultimately unknowable nature. In Borges' work you'll find, as in O'Brien’s, a mixture of the "real" and the "fictional." For instance, Bioy Casares, who you meet in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," was an Argentinean writer and friend of Borges. Similarly, "The Garden of Forking Paths" opens with a reference to an actual book, Liddell Hart's History of World War I. The events that unfold in each story, while seemingly fantastic, have a placid reality that belies their sensational qualities. Everything, it seems, is "true" – though it's the same truth that allows O'Brien to write that he can tell his daughter he did not kill anyone in the war and tell the reader he did – and not be lying in either case. One adjustment readers of his fiction have to make is to understand that Borges delights in subverting many of the Western conventions and ideas that we granted. Take the concept of time for instance. For most people it progresses in a linear fashion, with events proceeding in an orderly, cause and effect manner. Yet for Borges, the concept of time is not so simple. In an essay entitled "A New Refutation of Time," Borges argues that "Time, if we can intuitively grasp such an identity, is a delusion: the difference and inseparability of one moment belonging to its apparent past from another belonging to its apparent present is sufficient to disintegrate it" (226-27). Borges considers time not as a entity in and of itself, but as a mental construct, a concept first postulated and then defined by man. To prove the non-existence of time, in the essay he sets up and then solves a problem with precise logic:
Given his formulation of the problem – note that for him time exists only in the mind – the only answer is a bewildered "Uh . . . okay." This view of time is thus not the world of hours and days but the world of ideas. As he notes in the same essay, his playing with the idea of time is a narrative ruse to allow readers
While this may sound like the babbling of a erudite yet eccentric professor, in a sense he’s correct. I mean, is there really such a thing as time or is it a construct of man? Who died and decided that time on earth should be ruled by its diurnal course around a dying star? In large part, this interest in the ideas of time stems from his deep interest in idealist philosophy. Idealist philosophers, such as George Berkeley and David Hume, argue that reality lies not in the material realm of objects, but in the mental realm of postulation and being. In their worldview a thought or mental image of a table is real; the rectangular object with legs and a top is not-real. Borges' short stories can be read as philosophical parables illustrating the tenets of idealism and Platonism, principles which exalt the life of the mind. Borges’ interest in these same idealist philosophies, explains the blurring of distinctions between the real or material world, and the ideal or mental world found in his stories. In an essay entitled "Verbiage for Verses," Borges offered the following thoughts on language’s inability to fully capture reality:
Yet even with this well articulated and reasoned argument, he realizes that ideas such as this are rarified mind games. In the essay cited earlier, "A New Refutation of Time," Borges qualifies his argument on time even before he makes it, carefully distancing himself from his own reasoning: "I myself do not believe [it], but [it] regularly visits me at night and in the weary twilight with the illusory force of an axiom" (218). Indeed, he sees the dangers in creating such an idealized world. Even though he creates a language that allows a word for the cow bells and the sunset in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," he recognizes its tendency towards totalitarianism and evil and has the narrator settle for the mundane task of translating an obscure work by an English poet into Spanish. If all of this sounds like a lot to cram into a short story, it is; Borges' work is among the most challenging of any writer, alive or dead. Yet with that challenge comes concomitant rewards. Yes, your mind will be reeling as you enter and wander in the labyrinths of his fiction, but if you emerge alive, you'll have looked at the world in a different way. Click here for a long list of Borges's themes – and for the fascinating new game, "Name That Theme!" Works Cited Borges, Jorge Luis. "A New Refutation of Time." Labyrinths: Selected
Irby, James E. "Borges and the Idea of Utopia." Jorge Luis Borges. Ed.
–-. Introduction. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Jorge
Questions to mull over as you interpret the story "The Garden of Forking Paths"
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"
Group Questions Question #1 "Garden" Question #2 "Garden" Question #3 "Garden" "Toln" Question #1 ("Tlon" Assignment #7) "Toln" Question #2 ("Tlon" Assignment #7) "Toln" Question #3 ("Tlon" Assignment #7) "Toln" © 2008 David Bordelon
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