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Sunday, April 11th, 2010

🦋 Cronicas Marcianas

Opening up Borges' Prólogos, one of the first things that caught my eye was his foreword to the Spanish edition of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, first published in 1955. I don't think of Borges as a science-fiction author though some of his stories certainly fit in the genre. Have not read Martian Chronicles since I was 15 or something!-- but I remember reading it a couple of times as a young kid... Perhaps it's worth revisiting.

In the first Century of our era, Lucian composed a True History, which contained among other things, a description of the Selenites, who (according to the truthful historian) spin and card metals and glass, remove and replace their eyeballs, and drink juice of air or fresh-squeezed air; at the beginning of the 16th Century, Ludovico Ariosto imagined a knight discovering on the moon all that had been lost on earth: the tears and sighs of lovers, time wasted in play, unsuccessful projects, unsatisfied longings; in the 17th Century, Kepler published his Somnium Astronomicum, presented as the transcription of a book read in a dream, whose prolix pages reveal the forms and habits of the moon-dwelling serpents -- they shelter themselves from the heat of the day in deep caverns, and emerge at dusk. Between the first and second of these imaginary voyages, one thousand three hundred years elapse; between the second and the third, some hundred -- the first two are, essentially, free, irresponsible invention, while the third seems weighted down by an effort at verisimilitude. The reason is clear: for Lucian and for Ariosto, a journey to the moon is the symbol or archetype of the impossible; for Kepler, it is already a possibility, as it is for us. Wouldn't universal language inventor John Wilkins soon publish his Discovery of a World in the Moone: a discourse tending to prove that 'tis probable there may be another habitable world in that planet, with an appendix entitled, Discourse on the possibility of a voyage? In the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, one reads that Arquitas, the Pythagorean, built a wooden dove which could fly through the air; Wilkins predicted that a vehicle of analogous mechanism would carry us one day to the moon.

In its anticipation of a possible or probable future, the Somnium Astronomicum prefigures (though I would not confuse one for the other) the new narrative genre which the Americans of the north term science-fiction or scientifiction* and of which these Chronicles are an admirable example. They deal with the conquest and colonization of the planet. This arduous enterprise of future men seems meant for epic treatment; Ray Bradbury prefers (without enunciating this choice, perhaps; the secret inspiration of his genius) an elegiac tone. The Martians, who at the opening of the book are horrific, merit pity by the time we reach their extinction. Humanity wins; the author does not rejoice in this victory. He speaks with mourning and disappointment of the future expansion of the human lineage over the red planet -- which his prophecy reveals to us as a vast desert of blue sand, checkered with the ruins of cities and yellow sunsets and ancient ships which sailed over the sand.

Other authors choose a date in the future and we do not believe them, for we know we're dealing with a literary convention; Bradbury writes 2004 and we feel the weight of it, the fatigue, the vague, vast accumulation of the past -- the dark backward and abysm of Time of Shakespeare's verse. Already it was heard in the Renaissance, from the mouths of Giordano Bruno and of Bacon, that we are the true ancients, not the men of Genesis or of Homer.

What did this man from Illinois do, I'm wondering, as I close the pages of his book, that these episodes of the conquest of another planet fill me with such terror and loneliness?

How can these fantasies touch me, and in such a close, intimate manner? All literature (I will dare to venture) is symbolic: there are a few fundamental experiences, and it makes little difference whether an author, in communicating them, chooses the "fantastic" or the "real," chooses Macbeth or Raskolnikov, chooses the invasion of Belgium in 1914 or the invasion of Mars. What is important about the novel, the novelty, of science-fiction? On this book, this apparent phantasmagoria, Bradbury has stamped his long, empty Sundays, his American tedium, his solitude, just as Sinclair Lewis stamped his on Main Street.

Perhaps The Third Expedition is the most troubling story in this volume. Its horror (I suspect) is metaphysical; the uncertainty over the identity of Captain John Black's hosts insinuates -- uncomfortably -- that we can know neither who we are nor how God sees us. I would like also to point out the episode entitled The Martian, which contains a pathetic variation on the myth of Proteus.

Around 1909 I read, with fascination and fear, in the darkness of an old house which is no longer standing, The First Men in the Moon, by Wells. These Chronicles, though very different in conception and in execution, have given me the opportunity to relive, in the last days of autumn of 1954, those delicious terrors.

* Scientifiction is a monstrous word in which the adjective scientific and the substantive fiction are amalgamated. Jocosely, the Spanish idiom generates analogous formations; Marcelo del Mazo speaks of gríngaro orchestras (gringos + zíngaros), and Paul Groussac of the japonecedades which obstruct the museum of the Goncourts.

(I'm noticing as I work my way through this piece, my reluctance to divide a sentence where the original has a single sentence. I'm happy to change punctuation -- it seems to me like Spanish frequently reads better in English with stronger punctuation, semicolon where there is a comma or "and" in the original, dash where there is a semicolon -- but I am averse to putting in extra periods. Similarly -- even moreso -- with paragraph divisions.)

posted afternoon of April 11th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, April 10th, 2010

🦋 Reading material

We're back from vacation! Pictures soon. I have a whole lot of new reading material on hand...

While we were in Modesto I visited my childhood hangout Yesterday's Books (it seemed so much smaller...) and got a cheap copy of Paradise Lost, which Mark (on Good Friday!) convinced me I ought to read. It certainly is easy to read -- not sure how much I am getting out of it, but it rolls in through my eyes quite easily.

In San Francisco we visited Ellen's old friend Maryam, who gave us copies of her new book Returning to Iran -- a look at events there from an expatriate's eye. Reading the first few pieces I am interested and looking forward to the rest.

Also in SF, I visited Libros Latinos on Mission and 17th, and picked up a bunch of books. They are a used book store specializing in Spanish and Portuguese lit with (seemingly) an academic target market. Definitely worth dropping in if you are in the area, a beautiful selection. I got:

• Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos by Borges -- forewords that he has written for a wide variety of books, published in 1974. Cervantes, Whitman, Swedenborg, Martín Fierro, Ray Bradbury(!), his own translation of Kafka...
• Martín Fierro -- no idea if I will ever actually get to the point of understanding this, it seemed like a nice book to have on hand while I'm trying to understand Borges.
• Putas asesinos by Bolaño
• The black sheep and other fables by Augusto Monterroso (who will be the first author Bolaño has hipped me to) -- these are pleasant little fables about (mainly) animals. The blurbs on the back, from García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Isaac Asimov(!), might be the most compelling pull-quotes I've ever seen.
• I did not buy, because of the price, Borges Laberintos Dručmelić, which is "The Immortal" and "The Circular Ruins" illustrated with stunning color plates of the paintings of Zdravko Dručmelić -- if you're looking to buy me a present, look no further.
• The steep markdown which Libros Latinos offers on cash transactions meant I still had enough money in my pocket to stop at Nueva Librería México down the street and get a copy of Don Quixote.

...Arrived home lugging a big bag of books (Ellen and Sylvia also did some book shopping on the trip), and found on my doorstep a book I had ordered a while back from a used-book seller, Raul Galvez' From the Ashen Land of the Virgin: conversations with Bioy Casares, Borges, Denevi, Etchecopar, Ocampo, Orozco, Sabato. My shelves are full!

posted evening of April 10th, 2010: 2 responses
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Friday, April second, 2010

🦋 Some themes in Borges

I am not going to write any of these posts now (or for a while -- I am taking a little vacation from blogging this week) -- but these are some of the things I am thinking could be written about the stories in Borges' Collected Fictions:

• Images of Christ -- Collected Fictions makes nice reading for around Easter time. With reference to "3 Versions of Judas", "Paradiso, XXXI, 108", "A Prayer", and to the final portion of Bioy Casares' diary.
• Locality -- Buenos Aires, Argentina, Argentine history. Also Argentine literature, particularly Martín Fierro and Lugones. With reference to "Man on Pink Corner", "The End", "The South", "A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", "The Aleph", "The Mountebank", "Martín Fierro".
• Knife fighting (either by itself or as a subtopic of "Argentina in Borges' Stories")
• Problems of genre -- I think categorizing a subset of Borges' writings as "fictions" leads Hurley into some trouble. This piece would also talk about reading Borges' short-story collections as collections versus story-by-story. With particular consideration of The Maker and In Praise of Darkness, as books of poetry and prose, from which Hurley has taken the prose bits.
• Differences between Brodie's Report and his earlier work.

posted morning of April second, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, March 28th, 2010

🦋 Zahir/mantra

Años depsués, Taylor visitó las cárceles de ese reino; en la de Nithur el gobernador le mostró una celda, en cuyo piso, en cuyos muros, y en cuya bóveda un faquir musulmán había diseñado (en bárbaros colores que el tiempo, antes de borrar, afinaba) una especie de tigre infinito. Ese tigre estaba hecho de muchos tigres, de vertiginosa manera; lo atravesaban tigres, estaba rayado de tigres, incluía mares e Himalayas y ejércitos que parecían otros tigres. El pintor había muerto hace muchos años, en esa misma celda; venía de Sind o acaso de Guzerat y su propósito inicial había sido trazar un mapamundi.

Years later, Taylor visited the prisons of this district; in the one at Nithur, the governor showed him a cell on whose walls, on whose floor, on whose vault a Muslim fakir had laid out (in barbarous colours which time, not yet ready to wipe them clean, was refining) a sort of infinite tiger. This tiger, this vertiginous tiger, was composed of many tigers; tigers ran across it and radiated outward from it; it contained seas and Himalayas and armies which appeared as other tigers. The painter had died many years before, in this same cell; he came from Sindh or perhaps from Gujarat, and his initial intention had been to draw a map of the world.

"The Zahir"

Más de una vez grité a la bóveda que era imposible descifrar aquel testo. Gradualmente, el enigma concreto que me atareaba me inquietó menos que el enigma genérico de una sentencia escrita por un dios. ¿Qué tipo de sentencia (me pregunté) construirá una mente absoluta? Consideré que aun en los lenguajes humanos no hay proposición que no implique el universo entero; decir el tigre es decir los tigres que lo engendraron, los ciervos y tortugas que devoró, el pasto de que se alimentaron los ciervos, la tierra que fue madre del pasto, el cielo que dio luz a la tierra. Consideré que en el lenguaje de un dios toda palabra enunciaría esa infinita concatenación de los hechos, y no de un modo implícito, sino explícito, y no de un modo progresivo, sino inmediato. Con el tiempo, la noción de una sentencia divina parecióme pueril o blasfematoria. Un dios, reflexioné, sólo debe decir una palabra, y en esa palabra la plenitud. Ninguna voz articulada por él puede ser inferior al universo o menos que la suma del tiempo.

More than once, I screamed at the vaulted ceiling that it would be impossible to decipher this testament. Gradually, the immediate riddle confronting me came to trouble me less than the general riddle: a sentence written by a god. What sort of sentence (I asked) would an absolute consciousness construct? I reflected: even in the languages of humanity there is no proposition which does not imply the entire universe; to speak of the tiger is to speak of the tigers which begot it, the deer and turtles which it ate, the pasture on which the deer nourished themselves, the earth which was mother of the pasture, the heavens which gave forth light onto the earth. I reflected: in the language of a god, every word must bespeak this infinite concatenation of things, not by implication, but explicitly; not in a progressive manner, but in the instant. With time, the notion of a divine sentence came to appear puerile, blasphemous. A god, I reasoned, would only be able to say a single word, and in this word would be everything. No voice, no articulation of his could be inferior to the universe, could be less than the sum of all time.

"The God's Scripture"*

What I remembered about "The Zahir" before I reread it today, was the broad arching theme of it, the object which is a manifestation of God, which cannot be forgotten, which drives people mad; I had totally forgotten what a great story it is, the characters, the local flavor of Buenos Aires.

* Update -- Thinking further, I would rather translate this story's title -- "La escritura del dios", which Hurley renders literally as "The Writing of the God" -- simply as "Scripture".

posted evening of March 28th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, March 27th, 2010

🦋 First conversation

Creo que mi amistad con Borges procede de una primera conversación, ocurrida en 1931 o 32, en el trayecto entre San Isidro y Buenos Aires. Borges era entonces uno de nuestros jóvenes escritores de mayor renombre y yo un muchacho con un libro publicado en secreto y otro con seudónimo. Ante una pregunta sobre mis autores preferidos, tomé la palabra y, desafiando la timidez, que me impedía mantener la sintaxis de una frase entera, emprendí el elogio de la prosa desvaída de un poetastro que dirigía la página literaria de un diario porteño. Quizá para renovar el aire, Borges amplió la pregunta: —De acuerdo —concedió—, pero fuera de Fulano, ¿a quién admira, en este siglo o en cualquier otro? —A Gabriel Miró, a Azorín, a James Joyce. —contesté. ¿Qué hacer con una respuesta así? Por mi parte no era capaz de explicar qué me agradaba en los amplios frescos bíblicos y aun eclesiástios de Miró, en los cuadritos de Azorín ni en la gárrula cascada de Joyce, apenas entendida, de la que levantaba, como irisado vapor, todo el prestigio de hermético, de lo extraño y de lo moderno. Borges dijo algo en el sentido de que sólo en escritores entregados al encanto de la palabra encuentran los jóvenes literatura en cantidad suficiente. Después, hablando de la admiración por Joyce, agregó: —Claro, es una intención, un acto de fe, una promesa. La promesa de que les gustará —se refería a los jóvenes— cuando lo lean.

I believe my friendship with Borges stems from our first conversation, which occurred in 1931 or 32, in transit between San Isidro and Buenos Aires. Borges was at that time one of our best-known young authors; I was a boy with one book published in secret and another one pseudonymously. Asked a question about my favorite authors, I took the floor and (defying the shyness which was making it difficult for me to get a coherent sentence out), set off on an unfocussed panegyric in praise of the poetaster who edited the literary supplement of a Buenos Aires newspaper. Perhaps to clear the air, Borges expanded his question: -- Certainly -- he admitted -- but outside of Fulano, whom do you admire, in this century or some other? -- Gabriel Miró, Azorín, James Joyce. -- I replied. What to do with such a response? For my own part, I would not have been able to explain what appealed to me in the cool, spacious, biblical -- even ecclesiastical -- works of Miró, in the rustic tomes of Azorín, nor in the garrulous cascade of Joyce -- even given, as I was taking for granted, like a rainbow in the air, all the prestige of the hermetic, the strange and modern. Borges said something to the effect that only in authors committed to the bewitching effect of the word do young people encounter literature in sufficient quantity. Later, speaking of my admiration for Joyce, he added: -- Clearly, it's an intention, an act of faith, a promise. The promise that they will like it -- referring here to young people -- when they read it.

I had not realized Bioy Casares was so much younger than Borges; had always assumed they were about the same age. (I have not yet read anything by Bioy Casares either by himself or in collaboration with Borges; I know him mainly from mentions in Borges' stories.) When they met in 1931, Borges would have been in his early thirties and Bioy Casares a teenager -- Borges was a mentor more than a peer -- this totally changes my picture of the dinner at the beginning of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," where Bioy Casares recalls the teaching of a heresiarch of Uqbar, the first intrusion of Tlön into the life of the narrator.

There is a bit of meat in this brief exchange. I'm not sure what to make of Borges' statement about the "bewitching effect of words" -- sounds a bit like hand-waving to keep his young interlocutor from having to explain himself and feel embarrassed. I don't know Miró or Azorín at all; I'm wondering if the trio of authors Bioy Casares names here is meaningful or if it is just the first three names that come to mind as he is struggling to master his timidity. Totally unsure about my reading "like a rainbow in the air," I don't know what the meaning is here. The picture of Borges here is very pleasing; and it's such an exciting thing to imagine this meeting, in 1931, with the whole history of their literary collaboration as yet unborn.

posted morning of March 27th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, March 22nd, 2010

🦋 A labyrinth of fire

"The Theologians" offers an alternate vision of eternity:

Months later, when the Council of Pergamo was convened, the theologian entrusted with refuting the errors of the Monotoni was (predictably) John of Pannonia; his learnèd, measured refutation was the argument that condemned the heresiarch Euphorbus to the stake. This has occured once, and will occur again, said Euphorbus. It is not one pyre you are lighting, it is a labyrinth of fire. If all the fires on which I have been burned were brought together here, the earth would be too small for them, and the angels would be blinded. These words I have spoken many times. Then he screamed, for the flames had engulfed him.

It is (perhaps) not immediately obvious that eternal recurrence entails the same extension of the present moment I discussed in my last post -- it was not immediately obvious to me. But if the present moment is going to be repeated an infinite number of times, it must have eternal duration. And indeed you can visualize the universe of eternal recurrence with the same four-dimensional model; but instead of a straight vector, the 3-space which we inhabit has to follow a cyclical orbit.

I found the end of "The Theologians" confusing:

The end of the story can only be told in metaphors, since it takes place in the kingdom of heaven, where time does not exist.* One might say that Aurelian spoke with God and found that God takes so little interest in religious differences that He took him for John of Pannonia. That, however, would be to impute confusion to the divine intelligence. It is more correct to say that in paradise, Aurelian discovered that in the eyes of the unfathomable deity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox and the heretic, the abominator and the abominated, the accuser and the victim) were a single person.

* (And what a marvelous, breathtaking statement this is.)

posted evening of March 22nd, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, March 21st, 2010

🦋 Billy Pilgrim's Progress: Visions of Eternity

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and his death many times, he says, and paid random visits to all the events in between.

He says.

Slaughterhouse-5: or, The Children's Crusade

In Appendix III to his Christelige Dogmatik, Erfjord rebuts this passage [i.e., Runeberg's claim that it would be blasphemous to limit the Messiah's suffering to "the agony of one afternoon on the cross."] He notes that the crucifixion of God has not ended, because that which happened once in time is repeated endlessly in eternity. Judas, now, continues to hold out his hand for the silver, continues to kiss Jesus' cheek, continues to scatter the pieces of silver in the temple, continues to knot the noose on the field of blood. (In order to justify this statement, Erfjord cites the last chapter of the first volume of Jaromir Hladík's Vindication of Eternity.)

"Three Versions of Judas"

In my first year of college I spent a lot of time thinking about physics. One thing that particularly got my attention was the idea of time as a fourth dimension. My understanding of this (and listen, I never got very far with physics) was that the universe could be visualized as a four-dimensional space containing everything that ever happened or will happen, and the three-dimensional universe we inhabit as a three-dimensional space moving through this hyper-space at a constant rate -- this motion is what we experience as "time," and the present moment is the intersection of our 3-space with Reality. (I think this idea may have been laid out more fully in Edwin Abbot's Flatland.**) This picture of physical reality, which is Erfjord's conception of reality in the footnote to "Three Versions of Judas" -- taken in combination with an idealism that sees thought as existing separately from physical reality -- makes possible the chrono-synclastic infundibulum; Billy Pilgrim's experience takes as read that our "present moment" is something which has extended, eternal existence.

Well: I got upset about this. It became very important to me, to show that 3 physical dimensions are all there is -- that motion is reality, not an illusion. (I still can't answer the question, Well, what would be the difference anyway?) That past and future have existence only in our memories and expectations -- that the fourth axis is a convenient way of representing motion, nothing more. What does this entail? There is a danger of solipsism in this view -- since every perception of mine is a perception of something that has happened, and every communication reaches its object after it is uttered, saying that only the present moment "really exists" can be a way of saying that only my consciousness really exists -- and we're back to idealism. I worked through that, and my solution was materialistic -- consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the material objects that exist, that are moving -- but it never got very coherent given my lack of philosophical chops.

So there you have it, for a long time now I've been walking around with this vision of eternity, but never really committed it to paper or (since freshman year) even talked about it much, since it seemed kind of silly and pointless. It's brought back to mind by the Borges reading I've been doing recently, I thought I might as well write it down.

* ("Phase"? Well it's true, I read his books way more frequently and obsessively two decades ago than I do now; OTOH I have repeatedly been surprised, going back to them, at how well they have held up, at how strongly they continue to engage me. Though I see looking back through my blog, I have not written much at all about them.)

** (Or thinking further, this imagery might actually have been in Slaughterhouse-5.)

posted evening of March 21st, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, March 20th, 2010

🦋 The City of the Immortals

That day, all was revealed to me. The Troglodytes were the Immortals; the stream and its sand-laden waters, the River sought by the rider. As for the city whose renown had spread to the very Ganges, the Immortals had destroyed it almost nine hundred years ago. Out of the shattered remains of the City's ruin they had built on the same spot the incoherent city I had wandered through -- that parody or antithesis of the City which was also a temple to the irrational gods that rule the world and to those gods about whom we know nothing save that they do not resemble man. The founding of this city was the last symbol to which the Immortals had descended; it marks the point at which, esteeming all exertion vain, they resolved to live in thought, in pure speculation. They built that carapace, abandoned it, and went off to make their dwellings in the caves.

posted evening of March 20th, 2010: Respond
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🦋 Borges the storyteller

Reading both "The Secret Miracle" and "Three Versions of Judas" -- I am identifying strongly with the main characters (Hladík and Runeberg) -- but instead of identifying with the narrator, I am identifying the narrator as Borges -- the "position of the reader" in which I find myself, is listening to him telling a story. (This reminds me of how much I enjoyed reading his lectures, picturing him addressing the class.) The third person works very well here.

These two stories go together very well, and are moderately distinct from the rest of the fictions -- both are strongly dependent on religious content*; both narrate the composition of a work which vindicates the main character -- Hladík's "grand invisible labyrinth," Runeberg's heresy -- and the character's death. "The Secret Miracle" seems to me the closest in style to Poe of any of Borges' fictions.

*I was going to call them "deeply religious," but I don't think that's quite right -- Runeberg is "deeply religious," Hladík's experience is one of religious ecstasy; understanding each story requires a willingness to identify with religious sentiment but not, I think, any personal commitment to religious thinking. I have always assumed Borges was an atheist (and a lapsed Catholic) but I don't know if that is accurate.

posted morning of March 20th, 2010: Respond

Friday, March 19th, 2010

🦋 The position of the reader

Hladik's first emotion was simple terror. He reflected that he wouldn't have quailed at being hanged, or decapitated, or having his throat slit, but being shot by a firing squad was unbearable. In vain he told himself a thousand times that the pure and universal act of dying was what ought to strike fear, not the concrete circumstances of it, and yet Hladik never wearied of picturing to himself those circumstances.

"The Secret Miracle"

posted evening of March 19th, 2010: Respond

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