Analysis of the composition of Borges's essay The Blind. Borges's bright ideas

Argentine novelist, poet and publicist

short biography

Jorge Luis Borges(Spanish) Jorge Luis Borges; August 24, 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina - June 14, 1986, Geneva, Switzerland) - Argentine prose writer, poet and publicist. Borges is known primarily for laconic prose fantasies, often masking discussions about fundamental philosophical problems or taking the form of adventure or detective stories stories. In the 1920s he became one of the founders of avant-gardeism in Spanish-language Latin American poetry.

Childhood

His full name is Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo(Spanish) Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo), however, according to Argentine tradition, he never used it. On his father's side, Borges had Spanish and Irish roots. Borges's mother apparently came from a family of Portuguese Jews (the surnames of her parents - Acevedo and Pinedo - belong to the most famous Jewish families of immigrants from Portugal in Buenos Aires). Borges himself claimed that Basque, Andalusian, Jewish, English, Portuguese and Norman blood flowed in him. Spanish and English were spoken in the house. From an early age, Jorge Luis was interested in poetry, and at the age of four he learned to read and write. In 1905, Borges began studying English with a home teacher. The following year he wrote his first story in Spanish, "La visera fatal".

Borges began schooling at the age of 9, right from the fourth grade. It was an unpleasant experience for the boy, as his classmates made fun of him and his teachers were unable to teach him anything new.

At the age of ten, Borges translated Oscar Wilde's famous fairy tale The Happy Prince. Borges himself described his entry into literature as follows:

From my very childhood, when my father was struck by blindness, it was silently understood in our family that I should accomplish in literature what circumstances did not allow my father to accomplish. This was taken for granted (and such a belief is much stronger than simply expressed wishes). I was expected to be a writer. I started writing when I was six or seven years old.

Life in Europe

In 1914, the family went on vacation to Europe. However, due to the First World War, the return to Argentina was postponed and the family settled in Geneva, where Jorge Luis and his sister Nora went to school. He studied French and entered the College of Geneva, where he began writing poetry in French. In 1918, Jorge moved to Spain, where he joined the Ultraists, an avant-garde group of poets. On December 31, 1919, Jorge Luis's first poem appeared in the Spanish magazine "Greece".

Return to Argentina

Adolfo Bioy Casares,
Victoria Ocampo and Borges (1935)

Returning to Argentina in 1921, Borges embodied ultraism in unrhymed poems about Buenos Aires. Already in his early works he shone with erudition, knowledge of languages ​​and philosophy, and masterful command of words. In his hometown, Borges continues to publish, and also founded his own magazine, Prisma, and then another one called Proa.

In 1923, on the eve of a trip to Europe, Borges published his first book of poetry, The Heat of Buenos Aires, which included 33 poems, and the cover of which was designed by his sister.

Over time, Borges moved away from poetry and began to write “fantasy” prose. Many of his best stories were included in the collections Ficciones (1944), Labyrinths (1960) and Brodie's Message (El Informe de Brodie, 1971). In the story “Death and Compass,” the struggle of human intelligence with chaos is presented as a criminal investigation; the story “Funes, the miracle of memory” paints an image of a person literally flooded with memories, contrasting “supermemory” with logical thinking as a mechanism of generalization. The effect of authenticity of fictional events is achieved by Borges by introducing into the narrative episodes of Argentine history and the names of contemporary writers, facts of his own biography.

After a year in Spain, Borges finally moved to Buenos Aires, where he collaborated with several periodicals and acquired a reputation as a prominent representative of young avant-garde artists. Tired of ultraism, Borges tried to found a new genre of literature that would combine metaphysics and reality. But the writer quickly moved away from this, starting to write fantastic and magical works. In 1930, Borges met 17-year-old writer Adolfo Bio Casares, who became his friend and co-author of many works.

In the 1930s, Borges wrote a large number of essays on Argentine literature, art, history, and cinema. At the same time, he begins to write a column in the magazine “El Hogar”, where he writes reviews of books by foreign authors and biographies of writers. Since its first issue, Borges has been a regular contributor to Sur, Argentina's leading literary magazine, founded in 1931 by Victoria Ocampo. For the Sur publishing house, Borges translates the works of Virginia Woolf. In 1937 he published an anthology of classical Argentine literature. In his works since the 1930s, the writer begins to combine fiction with reality, writes reviews of non-existent books, etc.

The end of the 1930s became difficult for Borges: first he buried his grandmother, then his father. Therefore, he was forced to provide financially for his family. With the help of the poet Francisco Luis Bernardes, the writer became a custodian at the municipal library of Miguel Cane in the Almagro district of Buenos Aires, where he spent time reading and writing books. There, the writer almost died from sepsis, breaking his head. Borges later called his years of work as a librarian, 1937-1946, “nine deeply unhappy years,” although it was during that period that his first masterpieces appeared. After Perón came to power in 1946, Borges was dismissed from his library position.

Jorge Luis Borges, together with Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, contributed to the creation of the Anthology of Fantastic Literature in 1940 and the Anthology of Argentine Poetry in 1941. Together with Bioy Casares, he wrote detective stories about Don Isidro Parodi; these works appeared in print under the pseudonyms “Bustos Domecq” and “Suarez Lynch”. Borges's work "Ficciones" received the Grand Prix of the Argentine Writers' Union. Under the title Poems (1923-1943), Borges published his poetic works from three previous books in the magazine Sur and the newspaper La Nación.

In August 1944, while visiting Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, Borges met Estelle Canto, with whom he fell in love. Estelle inspired Borges to write the story "The Aleph", which is considered one of his best works. Despite his mother's resistance, Borges proposed marriage to Esteli, but this never happened. In 1952 their relationship ended.

In the early 1950s, Borges returned to poetry; The poems of this period are mainly elegiac in nature, written in classical meters, with rhyme. In them, as in the rest of his works, the themes of the labyrinth, the mirror and the world, interpreted as an endless book, prevail.

The beginning of the 1950s was marked by recognition of Borges' talent in Argentina and beyond. In 1950, the Argentine Writers' Union elected him as its president, which he served for three years. The first translation of Borges into French, “Fictions” (Spanish Ficciones, 1944), was published in Paris. At the same time, a series of stories “Death and Compass” is published in Buenos Aires, where the struggle of human intellect with chaos is presented as a criminal investigation. In 1952, the writer published an essay on the peculiarities of Argentine Spanish, “The Language of the Argentines.” In 1953, some stories from the collection “Aleph” were translated into French in the form of the book “Intricacies” (French: Labyrinths). In the same year, the publishing house Emecé began publishing the complete works of Borges. In 1954, director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson made the film “Days of Hate” based on the story by Borges.

In 1955, after the military coup that overthrew the Perón government, Borges was appointed director of the National Library of Argentina (although he was already almost blind) and held this post until 1973. In December 1955, the writer was elected a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters. He writes extensively and teaches in the Department of German Literature at the University of Buenos Aires.

In 1967, Borges married his friend from his youth, Elsa Estete Milian, who had recently been widowed. Three years later, however, the couple separated.

In 1972, Jorge Luis Borges travels to the USA, where he receives numerous awards and lectures at several universities. In 1973, he received the title of honorary citizen of Buenos Aires and resigned as director of the National Library.

In 1975, the premiere of the film “Dead Man” by Hector Oliver based on the story of the same name by Borges took place. That same year, the writer’s mother died at the age of 99.

After the death of his mother, Borges was accompanied on his travels by Maria Kodama, whom he married on April 26, 1986.

In 1979, Borges received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious award for achievements in literature in Spanish-speaking countries.

Borges's later poems were published in the collections The Doer (El Hacedor, 1960), In Praise of the Shadow (Elogia de la Sombra, 1969) and The Gold of the Tigers (El oro de los tigres, 1972). His last lifetime publication was the book Atlas (Atlas, 1985) - a collection of poems, fantasies and travel notes.

In 1986 he moved to Geneva, where he died on June 14 at the age of 86 from liver cancer and emphysema. In February 2009, it was proposed to rebury the remains of Jorge Luis Borges in the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, but due to the decisive refusal of the writer's widow, this proposal was not implemented.

Creation

Borges is one of the founders and classics of new Latin American literature. Borges's work is metaphysical, it combines fantasy and poetic methods. Borges considers the search for truth futile; among the themes of his work are the contradictory nature of the world, time, loneliness, human destiny, and death. His artistic language is characterized by a mixture of techniques of high and mass culture, a combination of abstract metaphysical universals and the realities of contemporary Argentine culture (for example, the cult of the macho). His prosaic fantasies, often taking the form of adventure or detective stories, mask discussions of serious philosophical and scientific problems ; from his earliest works, the author shone with erudition and knowledge of many languages. His work is characterized by a play on the edge of truth and fiction, frequent hoaxes: references and quotes from non-existent works, fictional biographies and even cultures. Borges, along with Marcel Proust, is considered one of the first writers of the 20th century who turned to the problems of human memory.

Borges had a huge influence on many genres of literature - from the absurd novel to science fiction; His influence has been spoken about by such acclaimed writers as Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem.

Recognition and awards

Borges was awarded a number of national and international literary prizes, including:

• 1944 - Grand Prix of the Association of Argentine Writers
• 1956 - Argentine State Prize for Literature
• 1961 - International Publishing Prize "Formentor" (shared with Samuel Beckett)
• 1962 - Award of the National Foundation of the Arts of Argentina
• 1966 - Madonnina, Milan
• 1970 - Latin American Literary Prize (Brazil), nominated for the Nobel Prize
• 1971 - Jerusalem Literary Prize
• 1973 - Alfonso Reyes Award (Mexico)
• 1976 - Edgar Allan Poe Award
• 1979 - Cervantes Prize (shared with Gerardo Diego) - the most prestigious award for achievements in the field of literature in Spanish-speaking countries
• 1979 - World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement

Memorial plaque in Paris
at Beaux-Arts 13, where the writer lived in 1977-1984.

• 1980 - Chino del Duca International Literary Prize
• 1980 - Balzan Prize - international award for excellence in science and culture
• 1981 - Prize of the Italian Republic, "Ollin Yolitzli" Prize (Mexico)
• 1981 - Balrog Award for Fantasy. Special Award
• 1985 - Etruria Prize
• 1999 - National Book Critics Circle Award

Borges was awarded the highest orders of Italy (1961, 1968, 1984), France (Order of Arts and Letters, 1962, Legion of Honor, 1983), Peru (Order of the Sun of Peru, 1965), Chile (Order of Bernardo O'Higgins, 1976), Germany (Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1979), Iceland (Order of the Icelandic Falcon, 1979), Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE, 1965), Spain (Order of Alfonso X the Wise, 1983), Portugal (Order of Santiago , 1984). The French Academy awarded him a gold medal in 1979. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1968), and an honorary doctorate from leading universities in the world. In 1990, one of the asteroids was named en:11510 Borges.

After death

Borges died in Geneva on June 14, 1986 and was buried in the Geneva Cemetery of the Kings, not far from John Calvin.

In 2008, a monument to Borges was unveiled in Lisbon. The composition, cast from a sketch by fellow writer Federico Bruc, is, according to the author, deeply symbolic. It is a granite monolith in which Borges's bronze palm is inlaid. According to the sculptor who made a cast of the writer’s hand in the 80s, this symbolizes the creator himself and his “poetic spirit.” The opening of the monument, installed in one of the parks in the city center, was attended by the writer's widow Maria Codama, who heads the foundation named after him, and prominent figures of Portuguese culture, including the writer Jose Saramago.

The Borges archive is housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.

Borges and the work of other artists

In 1965, Astor Piazzolla collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges, composing music for his poems.

More than thirty films have been made based on Borges's works. Among them is the film “Invasion” directed by Hugo Santiago, filmed in 1969 based on the story by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. In 1970, Bernardo Bertolucci's film "Strategy of the Spider" was released, based on the Borges story "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero."

In 1987, based on the story by H. L. Borges “The Gospel of Mark,” the film “The Guest” was shot (directed by A. Kaidanovsky).

Analysis of Borges's story "The Garden of Forking Paths"

"I leave to various (but not all) future times my
"The Garden of Forking Paths"
"The Garden of Forking Paths", Borges

When you write about this Borges story, it is difficult to stick to a specific plan. You can only try to find the right path, but who will give the exact answer: is it the right one or not?
"The Garden of Forking Paths" was written in 1941. The date itself evokes certain associations and reflections. The World War was in its third year, even more brutal than the previous one, which was partly reflected in the story. Borges could not help but feel the atmosphere that reigned in the air, even though he was in calm Buenos Aires. He could not help but recall memories and associations with the time of his youth; after all, throughout the First World War he lived in Europe, in the heart of a conflict that killed and maimed millions of people. From there, perhaps, those important details that help convey the atmosphere at the beginning of the story: “The platform was almost empty. I walked through the carriages: I remember several farmers, a woman in mourning, a young man deep in Tacitus’s Annals, a bandaged and contented soldier.”
The author of The Garden of Forking Paths himself called the period of his life from 1937 to 1945 “nine deeply unhappy years.” And he had reasons for this: he was lonely, poor (despite all the advantages of being a librarian, they were paid little then) and he began to have health problems (the process of deteriorating vision, which later led to complete blindness, was already making its first appearance signs).
If we briefly retell the plot, it may, at first glance, seem too simple. 1916, the Chinese Yu Tsung, working for German intelligence in England, writes, while imprisoned and sentenced to death, about how he killed sinologist Stephen Albert, whose death became the signal for the German army to bomb the city of Albert, where the new British artillery park was located .
But is it really that simple? Let's take a closer look: Borges begins his story with a reference to page twenty-two of the History of the World War, which talks about the delay in the offensive of July 24, 1916. This is a good technique that ties us to the idea of ​​​​the “reality” of what is happening. This is where this “reality” begins and ends - the reality of a documentary fact, an event. And then there is a sharp turn and a reference to the reality of the story, the reality “dictated, read and signed by Dr. Yu Tsun.” An alternative trail begins.
Yu Tsung, a Chinese in the service of German intelligence, learns of the exposure of Runenberg, his boss, after which: “In the telephone directory, I found the name of the only person who could convey my news: he lived in the outskirts of Fenton, half an hour away by rail.” At the same time, he fears persecution by Captain Madden, who, in fact, is his double and partly psychological twin, a hostage of the time and place, “an Irishman in the service of the English.” They are driven by approximately the same motives. Yu Qing writes the following: “I fulfilled my plan because I felt: the boss despises the people of my blood - those countless ancestors who are fused in me. I wanted to prove to him that yellowface could save the German army. And finally, I had to run away from the captain." The captain himself, “a man who was accused of lack of zeal, and even of treason,” does not want to miss the opportunity to curry favor with the British. This is where the principle of duality of characters begins. We will talk about it a little later.
Yu Qing goes to Dr. Steven Albert with the sole purpose of killing him. Borges describes this path in great detail; the very image of the road, on which you can get confused and choose the wrong direction, precedes the image of a labyrinthine garden in which you can get lost. But this path flows into that strange feeling that takes possession of Yu Qing, and this is a mixture of premonition, memories, hope and something else... this is again a labyrinth, a labyrinth of thoughts and feelings: “I thought about a labyrinth of labyrinths, a winding and growing labyrinth , which would cover the past and the future and, by some miracle, contain the entire Universe. Absorbed by ghostly images, I forgot my fate as a fugitive and, having lost the sense of time, felt myself to be the very consciousness of the world.” Then the labyrinth of thoughts flows into the orderliness of sounds, and sounds that are native to Yu Qin: “And then I realized: the music was coming from here, but what’s most incredible is that it was Chinese. That’s why I perceived it without thinking, unconsciously. I don’t remember if the gate had a bell, a bell, or if I just knocked. The melody kept shimmering."
The moment of the meeting between Yu Qing and his victim is difficult to analyze; it is especially difficult to evaluate the calmness, the feeling of incomprehensible submission to fate and chance with which Stephen Albert greets his future killer:
“I see that the pious Xi Peng considered it his duty
brighten up my solitude. Perhaps you want to see the garden?
He called me by the name of one of our messengers, and I
repeated after him in confusion:
- Garden?
- Well, yes, the garden of forking paths.
Something flashed through my memory and with an inexplicable
I said with confidence:
- This is the garden of my great-grandfather Qu Peng.
- Your great-grandfather? So you are a descendant of this illustrious
person? Ask."

You can talk and write about their conversation, about this transfusion of metaphors and ideas for a long time, I confess - I’m afraid to get confused in it, because behind every word there is a labyrinth, you can follow it and lose your way, from the thoughts that you wanted to convey initially . Let me give just a short example: “The pavilion of unclouded Solitude stood in the center of a garden, most likely neglected; This must have inspired the idea that the labyrinth is material. Qu Peng died; no one in his vast domain came across the labyrinth; the confusion of the novel led me to believe that this was a labyrinth. The correct solution to the problem was suggested to me by two circumstances: the first was a curious legend that Qu Peng had conceived a truly endless labyrinth, and the second was an excerpt from a letter that I discovered.”
And then there was murder, and then arrest and execution.

How did Borges manage to construct such, dare I say it, a brilliant story? Based on the principle of binary, binary code: binary characters, binary destinies, binary reality and even books within the narrative, this is approximately what this system looks like:

Yu Qing and Captain Madden are similar in their motives, in the very position in which time has placed them. Both are forced to do terrible things under his pressure.
Qu Peng and Stephen Albert: both gave up whatever they were doing to pursue art. But they made this decision themselves; time did not dictate anything to them. This is their desire, their will. And they both ended up being killed by foreigners.
Books Are Doubles : Within the story, the Annals of Tacitus, some of which were lost, and the Lost Encyclopedia, which was never published, are mentioned. Yu Qin's story itself can be compared with them, because it is also incomplete, two pages of it are lost.
Reality is bifurcated: there is our reality (it is well shown in “The History of the World War,” an excerpt from which is given at the very beginning) and the reality of Yu Qin’s story.
Finally, we come to the main thing in Borges’ story, and this is time, the image of time, which at first glance is omnipotent:
But what does the word “time” itself mean within both the novel and the story?
“Philosophical controversies occupy a significant place in his novel. I know that no problem worried or tormented him more than the inexhaustible problem of time. And what? This is the only problem he did not mention in the pages of The Garden. He doesn't even use the word "time" even once. How do you explain this stubborn silence?”
“The Garden of Forking Paths” is a grandiose charade, a parable, the key to which is time; This hidden reason prohibits mentioning it.
Philosophy of time according to Qu Peng and reality: “In one of them (worlds), when a lucky chance fell on me, you came to my house; in another - you, walking through the garden, found me dead; in the third, I pronounce the same words, but I myself am a mirage, a ghost.”
“At any time,” I said, not without trembling, “I am grateful and grateful to you for the resurrection of Qu Peng’s garden.
“Not in any way,” he muttered with a smile. - Eternally branching, time leads to innumerable futures. In one of them, I am your enemy."
But what is subordinate to what? What is more important: characters, time, space (place)? What decides everything? Time is a constant. A person is a variable, he decides and does not decide what action to perform, as in a novel, as in a story, and in life. But what does it affect? What comes from what?
The image of a labyrinth deserves special consideration. One could cite a huge number of quotes, but isn’t the story itself a labyrinth?
We can summarize:
The lines in the story are equivalent and interpenetrating
The selection of details and placement of accents, but also the style of the text itself makes the paradoxical ending absolutely organic.
The reality of characters, time and place with their unreality
Borges managed to create a brilliant work that was many years ahead of its time. For example, how can you create hypertext before hypertext?
I hope I was on one of the right paths.

Reviews

Thank you for the article. I would like to note that the image of the labyrinth has clear parallels with the Chinese philosophy of Tao. One of the goals of great work in internal alchemy is to obtain the elixir of eternal life. The basis of Chinese alchemy is the combination of external and internal, i.e. the problem of duality, which has been raised in metaphysical treatises since antiquity, in Chinese alchemy this results in the great limit - yin and yang, from which the “ten thousand things” originate, which in turn is reflected in another classical Chinese work, the I Ching - a book of changes, the basis of which is a binary code - a combination of straight and broken lines. The I-Ching itself is traditionally represented as fortune-telling, but its philosophy lies much deeper and represents an attempt to model the future through interpretation, the meaning of which has an individual meaning for each individual person, due to the subjective meanings invested in the interpretation. In my opinion, Borges may have intended similar parallels in his work.

Early 60s 20th century - the discovery of Latin America and interest in its literature. Since the mid-twentieth century, the Eurocentrism of literature has been dealt a mortal blow - Latin American literature has entered the world stage (the countries have suffered less from the war, the economic situation is favorable for writers). Latin America is a mixture of European culture with local Indian and African slave culture. Catholicism as the main religion, the greater authority of the church, but also a close connection with folklore.

Borges Jorge Luis(1899 - 1986) was born in Argentina in Buenos Aires, on the eve of the twentieth century, in 1899. His father, being a lawyer, was fond of literature. Borges's family included English, Spaniards and Jews. The child has been bilingual since childhood. Borges himself became interested in literature and began writing at the age of six. At eight, he translated Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Happy Prince” into Spanish, so much so that the translation was immediately published by one of the leading literary magazines. In 1914, the Borges family went to Europe, where Jorge Luis received an education and began his literary career as a poet.

In 1921, the family returned to Buenos Aires, and Borges began to publish in various magazines, publishing two books of poetry and two books of essays. Already in his early works he shines with erudition, knowledge of philosophy and languages ​​(in addition to Spanish and English, Borges knew Latin, French, Italian, Portuguese, German perfectly), and has a masterful command of words.

In 1937, Borges got a job in a library in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in order to have at least some kind of regular income. The irony of fate was that at that time he was quite widely known as a writer - but not in the library. One day one of the employees noticed the name of a certain Jorge Luis Borges in the encyclopedia - he was very surprised by the fact that the names and dates of birth coincided, but for everyone it remained only a coincidence.
In 1955 (until 1973) Borges was director of the National Library of Argentina, and in the same year he headed first the department of German and then English literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In addition, he annually travels to various countries in Europe and America, where he gives lectures on Argentine literature. At the end of the 1920s. Borges's eyesight noticeably deteriorated (blindness was hereditary in his father's family), and by the mid-50s, when he became head of the National Library, he was almost completely blind.
For the last 20 years of his life, Borges was unable to read or write. “I said to myself: the dear world of the visible has been lost; I must create another world instead of the visible one, forever lost,” Borges will say. He will begin to study ancient languages ​​“by ear,” which opened up to him the whole world of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon literature. Borges is the winner of many literary awards, the authority of his name actually revolutionizes Latin American literature and brings it to the world level.

Borges as the first postmodernist: Appeal to the genres of mass literature - detective in different forms (intellectual - "Death and Compass" spy - “The Garden of Forking Paths”). Detective Eric Lönnrot, a parody of Auguste Dupin, tries to discover the logic of the criminal; a simple explanation (murder by mistake) does not satisfy him. The motive of the game is that the criminal plays along with the detective and sets a trap for him; Lönnrot does not prevent the crime, but unwittingly assists it (unmasks the location and becomes the victim). All human life is a game. We pretend that we believe in the reality of people; they are the creation of the author's imagination. The writer's job is to make us play this game without thinking about the fact that we are playing it. Now there is no difference between reality and fiction - everything is a game. The motif of the labyrinth (villa “Trist-le-Roi”, where Lönnrot found his death) is a spatial labyrinth, the search for the logic of the crime is an intellectual labyrinth invented by Red Scharlach, the conversation about meeting in new rebirths is a temporal labyrinth. The motif of the mirror is the mirrors in the villa. The motives of the book and the library - it was the library of the murdered rabbi that helped Lönnrot build a logical chain. Taking it as an axiom that a criminal thinks in myths and commits murders according to the logic of myth.

"The Garden of Forking Paths"- a connection between a book and a labyrinth in a spatial and temporal sense. A book like an infinite number of possibilities, this short story is the beginnings of ideas about hypertext. Human life is constantly branching paths and, according to Borges, each option is realized, but in a different dimension (removing responsibility from the hero for the choice). Yu Tsun kills the person who revealed this truth to him, because this version of the outcome also has a right to exist. The novella can be read on two levels: as a spy story and as a philosophical essay about time. The author deliberately creates a text so that there are many levels of reading. No one level dominates - there is no hierarchy. The biggest truth is that there is no truth.

Philological essays-hoaxes: "Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote"- supposedly memories of a certain writer who decided to re-write Don Quixote, word for word the way Cervantes did it. At first he wanted to repeat and reconstruct Cervantes in himself (he learned 17th century Spanish, passed as a devout Catholic), but rejected this experience as too easy. Menard decided to come to his book through his own life experience. The point of the experiment is how the perception of the author’s personality leaves an imprint on the reading of the book. Menard's text is much richer in content and gives rise to more associations, because it was written by a man of the early twentieth century. "Three versions of the betrayal of Judas"- a review of the book by Nils Runeberg, who tries to interpret the act of Judas: in the first edition, betrayal is the sacrifice of man (the fall of Christ to man requires the fall of man to the traitor), in the second – asceticism and mortification of the spirit (Judas committed the most vile crime, showing tremendous humility) , in the third, it was Judas who was the son of God (he took on the appearance of a man with all his baseness and imperfection). Postmodernism pushes us to look at life with a new perspective and change our stereotypes.

Myth-making: " Tlen, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius"- the idea that fiction can have magical powers. First, an article about the fictional country of Ukbar in the encyclopedia, why a story about the literature of this country, which did not reflect reality, but created it (encyclopedia of the country Tlön), then a conspiracy of scientists who decided to create an encyclopedia of the fictitious Third World, another planet. In the Third World, thoughts materialize and things can split into two (two people look for a pencil and both find it). Fiction becomes reality and displaces reality: people begin to find things from this world, children learn its language and history at school instead of the history and language of their peoples. The world becomes decay. The author tries to hide from this in his own literary work.

Basic metaphors and symbols: a labyrinth (spatial or temporal, as a model of the world and a metaphor for human life), a book and a library (as a concentration of human experience and civilization), a mirror (as another world, where our ideas and ideas are unacceptable, the multivariance of the world).

Novels by Borges- an intellectual riddle where the reader must be active, like a decipherer. Borges understands perfectly well the consequences that can lead to the fear of the inhabitants of the Library of Babel, which has prevailed over the power of reason. Avoiding harsh didactics, Borges refutes their fearful decision with a number of clues. For example, the novella states that the library contains a correct catalog, as well as a catalog that proves it is false. Having compared the facts, the reader comes to the conclusion that the book, supposedly containing all the truths of the infinite world-library, must have its antipode - another book, in relation to which the first will look like a brilliant example of a lie. In his essay “On the Classics,” Borges wrote that “every preference may turn out to be a prejudice.” This also applies to the inhabitants of the Library of Babylon, who preferred one book.

The main character of the novel “The Library of Babylon”“- a kind of really existing library that embraces the entire world space. It's as confusing as a labyrinth. The books echo each other in it, mirroring each other. Compared with this library, the legendary Tower of Babel is a pitiful pretense of the human imagination to grandeur. The library consists of sections, the sections are shaped like hexagons and serve simultaneously as book depositories and reading rooms. Each hexagon is pierced by a spiral staircase that goes up and down. The concepts of beginning and end do not apply to everything that is in the library, and to itself: infinity is its main characteristic. The inhabitants of this bizarre universe - people who read, of course - were once frightened by the cold infinity of their world and the task facing them to understand it and humbly agreed with someone's dubious idea that there was a book in the library that "contains the essence and summary of all the others."

"The Garden of Forking Paths" was written in 1941. The date itself evokes certain associations and reflections. The World War was in its third year, even more brutal than the previous one, which was partly reflected in the story. Borges could not help but feel the atmosphere that reigned in the air, even though he was in calm Buenos Aires. He could not help but recall memories and associations with the time of his youth; after all, throughout the First World War he lived in Europe, in the heart of a conflict that killed and maimed millions of people. From there, perhaps, those important details that help convey the atmosphere at the beginning of the story: “The platform was almost empty. I walked through the carriages: I remember several farmers, a woman in mourning, a young man deep in Tacitus’s Annals, a bandaged and contented soldier.”

The author of “The Garden of Forking Paths” himself called the period of his life from 1937 to 1945 “nine deeply unhappy years.” And he had reasons for this: he was lonely, poor (despite all the advantages of being a librarian, they were paid little then) and he began to have health problems (the process of deteriorating vision, which later led to complete blindness, was already making its first appearance signs).

If we briefly retell the plot, it may, at first glance, seem too simple. 1916, the Chinese Yu Tsung, working for German intelligence in England, writes, while imprisoned and sentenced to death, about how he killed sinologist Stephen Albert, whose death became the signal for the German army to bomb the city of Albert, where the new British artillery park was located .

But is it really that simple? Let's take a closer look: Borges begins his story with a reference to page twenty-two of the History of the World War, which talks about the delay in the offensive of July 24, 1916. This is a good technique that ties us to the idea of ​​​​the “reality” of what is happening. This is where this “reality” begins and ends - the reality of a documentary fact, an event. And then there is a sharp turn and a reference to the reality of the story, the reality “dictated, read and signed by Dr. Yu Tsun.” An alternative trail begins.

Yu Tsung, a Chinese in the service of German intelligence, learns of the exposure of Runenberg, his boss, after which: “In the telephone directory, I found the name of the only person who could convey my news: he lived in the outskirts of Fenton, half an hour away by rail.” At the same time, he fears persecution by Captain Madden, who, in fact, is his double and partly psychological twin, a hostage of the time and place, “an Irishman in the service of the English.” They are driven by approximately the same motives. Yu Qing writes the following: “I fulfilled my plan because I felt: the boss despises the people of my blood - those countless ancestors who are fused in me. I wanted to prove to him that yellowface could save the German army. And finally, I had to run away from the captain." The captain himself, “a man who was accused of lack of zeal, and even of treason,” does not want to miss the opportunity to curry favor with the British. This is where the principle of duality of characters begins. We will talk about it a little later.

Yu Qing goes to Dr. Steven Albert with the sole purpose of killing him. Borges describes this path in great detail; the very image of the road, on which you can get confused and choose the wrong direction, precedes the image of a labyrinthine garden in which you can get lost. But this path flows into that strange feeling that takes possession of Yu Qing, and this is a mixture of premonition, memories, hope and something else... this is again a labyrinth, a labyrinth of thoughts and feelings: “I thought about a labyrinth of labyrinths, a winding and growing labyrinth , which would cover the past and the future and, by some miracle, contain the entire Universe. Absorbed by ghostly images, I forgot my fate as a fugitive and, having lost the sense of time, felt myself to be the very consciousness of the world.” Then the labyrinth of thoughts flows into the orderliness of sounds, and sounds that are native to Yu Qin: “And then I realized: the music was coming from here, but what’s most incredible is that it was Chinese. That’s why I perceived it without thinking, unconsciously. I don’t remember if the gate had a bell, a bell, or if I just knocked. The melody kept shimmering."

The moment of the meeting between Yu Qing and his victim is difficult to analyze; it is especially difficult to evaluate the calm, the feeling of incomprehensible submission to fate and chance with which Stephen Albert greets his future killer.

The image of a labyrinth deserves special consideration. One could cite a huge number of quotes, but isn’t the story itself a labyrinth?

We can summarize:

The lines in the story are equivalent and interpenetrating

The selection of details and placement of accents, but also the style of the text itself makes the paradoxical ending absolutely organic.

The reality of characters, time and place with their unreality

Borges managed to create a brilliant work that was many years ahead of its time. For example, how can you create hypertext before hypertext?

I hope I was on one of the right paths.

49. “The Name of Troy” by U. Eko

Intertextuality, according to W. Eco, is present in every text; its echo will be heard in the process of working on the work. In other words, the writer quotes or refers to already known plots, images, techniques, but now in order to parody or reevaluate them.

U. Eco's novel “The Name of the Rose” brought worldwide fame. In his works devoted to the study of the problems of the Middle Ages, U. Eco constantly draws parallels with the present and claims that “The Middle Ages are the roots of all our modern “hot” problems.” Such problems of the late 70s as the confrontation between two ideological systems, the arms race, extremist movements, the general state of fear and uncertainty prompted W. Eco to write a novel about the distant past - and about the present.

The novel is accompanied by “Marginal Notes” of “The Name of the Rose”, in which W. Eco explains the basic concepts of postmodernism, its historical and aesthetic origins. The author notes that he sees the Middle Ages in the depths of any subject, even one that seems not to be connected with the Middle Ages, but is in fact connected. Everything is connected. In medieval chronicles, W. Eco discovered the “echo of intertextuality,” for “all books talk about other books, every story retells a story that has already been told.”

Already in the “Prologue” the writer begins to play with “someone else’s text”. Thus, the first phrase “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” brings to mind the Gospel of John. Until the very end of the novel, the texts of the works of medieval authors “sound”, and the author boldly introduces Latin. Here the reader immediately learns about the main character, brother Wilhelm, who “was driven by a single passion - for the truth, and suffered from a single fear that the truth is not what it seems at the moment.” Wilhelm was taller than average, but he seemed even taller because of his thinness. the look is sharp, penetrating. A thin, slightly hooked nose conveyed a wary look to the face. The chin also showed a strong will. He is about fifty years old, he knows periods of vigor and prostration, during which he takes drugs. His words seem devoid of logic, but in fact they are filled with deep meaning.

Brother Wilhelm amazes with his knowledge – and the contradictory nature of his passions. William of Ockham is a logician and the hero created a method for combining contradictory hypotheses under his influence. Roger Bacon, whose name is often mentioned in the novel and who was for the hero the embodiment of the all-conquering power of science, is known as an opponent of logic. Finally,

The full name of the learned Franciscan is William of Baskerville, and his student's name is

Adson is a more than transparent hint. From the first hour of his first day in the monastery, Wilhelm uses the famous deductive method of Sherlock Holmes.

His novel is a multifaceted structure, a kind of labyrinth in which there are many passages ending in dead ends - and the only way out, which Theseus - William of Baskerville - ultimately discovers, while demonstrating the ability to think logically - and paradoxically!

This hero, in the course of the novel, performs two missions: firstly, he investigates a murder that plunged into horror, and secondly, he, belonging to the Franciscan Order, was drawn into a dispute with the papal curia about the poverty or wealth of Jesus Christ - and, therefore, In the ideal of church life, Wilhelm belonged to Occam's group, which demanded reforms of the church.

The idea, truth, and consequences of fanatical service to it are also shared by U. Eco in the novel. The best intentions can lead to dire consequences if the thin line that separates good from evil is not observed. In this sense, the story of Brother Dolcin, which Ubertino told Adson, is especially indicative.

It is the author’s dream to call the novel “Adson of Melk,” because this hero stands aside, takes a kind of neutral position. The title “The Name of the Rose,” notes W. Eco, suited him, “because the rose, like a symbolic figure, is so full of meaning that it has almost no meaning. The title, as intended, disorients the reader. The title should confuse thoughts, not discipline them. In this way, the writer emphasizes that the text lives its own life, often independent of it. Hence new, different readings and interpretations, to which the title of the novel should set the mood.

“Perhaps world history is the history of various
intonation when pronouncing several metaphors"

Jorge Luis Borges, essay "Pascal's Sphere"

Argentine writer. He wrote stories, essays, poems, but Not wrote not a single philosophical treatise, although his works are often cited by cultural scientists and philosophers.

Jorge Borges born in 1899 in Buenos Aires, into a family where they spoke Spanish and English. “I spent most of my childhood in the home library,” Borges wrote in his “Autobiographical Notes,” “and sometimes it seems to me that I never left the confines of this library.”

In 1914, the Borges family moved to Geneva, where H.L. Borges received an education. In 1921, the whole family returned to Buenos Aires.

“In 1923, his father gave him three hundred pesos for the publication of the first book. The next year brought a pleasant surprise: it was sold 27 copies of his "Passion for Buenos Aires". When he told his mother about this, she commented on the event with a categorical conclusion: “Twenty-seven copies is an unimaginable number! Jorge, you're becoming famous." Four years later, he published a second book of poems, Opposite the Moon. And in 1929, “The Notebook of San Martin” was published, in which he talks about Palermo.”

Volodya Teitelboym, Two Borges: life, dreams, riddles, St. Petersburg, “Azbuka”, 2003, p. 41.

“They were met at the port by an old friend and fellow student of Borges Sr. Macedonio Fernandez. And then the conversation turned to the future of Argentine literature. From that day on, Macedonio became for many years the object of Jorge’s worship, his spiritual teacher. Borges later wrote: “In those years I almost rewrote it, and my imitation resulted in ardent and enthusiastic plagiarism. I felt: “Macedonio is metaphysics, Macedonio is literature.” However, Macedonio could only be called a writer relatively. A regular in the capital's cafes, a favorite of bohemia, a lecturer, he himself did not bother to publish a single line. Everything that Macelonio spoke about at his lectures was collected and prepared for publication by admirers of his talent. But this was enough for Borges to admire his extraordinary personality. Following his teacher, he called philosophy a branch of fantastic literature, and the only reality was the realm of dreams and imagination. His famous aphorisms “Reality is one of the hypostases of sleep”, “Life is a dream that God dreams”, “When we wake up, we dream again” - these are essentially statements inspired by Macelonio’s philosophical reflections. From him the writer adopted an ironic attitude towards culture, books, readers, but most importantly, self-irony, which Macedonio brilliantly realized in the form of paradoxes. In one of his letters to Jorge Luis, he apologized as follows: “I was so absent-minded that I was already on my way to you, but on the way I remembered that I had stayed at home.” Such paradoxical judgments are characteristic of many of Borges’s own works.”

“Unlike most writers, whose work is based on their own experience or is a fusion of experience and culture, Borges’s work has its main source of books, as well as imagination and fantasy. It was books that determined the range of his ideas and feelings, it was from them that his Universe was derived - a harmonious and perfect world, directly going back to philosophy Schopenhauer. Borges often refers to other philosophers, especially Plato, Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Swedenborg, on the eastern sages. But his metaphysics is undoubtedly close to that presented by Schopenhauer in his book “The World as Will and Representation. […] Borges's philosophical world does not consist of objects and events, but rather of texts, "intellectual information, cultural concepts and aesthetic theories." It is from ready-made texts that his works are created, which are “boxes” of quotes and thoughts.”

Chistyukhina O.P., Borges, M., “March”, 2005, p. 10 and 20.

Myself H.L. Borges in the story “The Utopia of a Tired Man” he writes about quotes:

"- This quote? - I asked him.
- Of course. There is nothing left for us except quotes. Our language is a system of quotations."

In adulthood, the writer began to go blind...