Fiction Makes the World in Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
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- Опубликовано: 13 дек 2024
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In this video, I do my best to navigate the labyrinth of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, the first story in Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentine literary genius and master of post-modern fiction.
This one is very heady and is a great example of metafiction that makes a profound statement about philosophy and how a philosophical lens organizes the world. Furthermore, Borges shows us how philosophical lenses and language and perception are fictions, but that doesn't make them any less consequential.
In spite of the heady themes, Borges brings the big ideas down to earth by the end showing how prominent (and often disastrous) ideas in the 20th century had profound effects on the world in spite of their fictitious nature.
I by no means had the time or the brain capacity to integrate every facet of this story into my analysis. Doing so would simply create a perfect copy of the story, or perhaps an analysis many times longer than the story. So, I focused on Tlön's language and the multiple layers of reality in this story and how they make statements about each other.
The images and music at the beginning are a part of a longer music video that can be found on my instagram: danielbackerauthor
The David Foster Wallace video I mentioned can be found here: • Philosophy in David Fo...
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9:01 This is the most concise statement about the themes in the story
13:04 Here, he brings all the heady ideas down to earth by showing how they have affected the world through history
This story contains one of my favorite Borges quotes:
"Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men"
One thing I love about RUclips videos is their persistence and the Babelic Library of thought forever being constructed. Recorded two years before I wrote this, I just came upon it now in 2023 and am compelled to commend the creator: What a great job explaining such a challenging and complex story. I dimly recall reading this one in lost life. So happy to rediscover it now. 🙏🙏🙏
Thanks so much for the kind words! If you know any one who would enjoy this video, feel free to share it with them.
Speaking of symmetries, which by the way, are predicated on order, the only time I’ve had issue with Borges in 38 years of placing only Proust above him….
I’ve read Tlon probably 20 times. The first time it was impossible to make sense of a single thing beyond impressions, as always with the peculiar sensuality of any Borges tale.
The next 19 times I was drunk.
I’d climb into loft bed after a weekly party in college, there would be my dog-eared copy of Labyrinth, and with the same hubris that might have led some other drunken college age kid get behind the wheel of a car, it was a grievous and regrettable pileup.
Now here i find what at first is a compelling and informed examination. It’s all going well, than I notice the bird on your shoulder. I’ve rewound five times already, and I still get nothing but oh my god that’s such a cute bird!
Symmetry is destiny until I can get past it and, I’m hoping, the Tristan chord sounds, and it’s cadence at last. Except Tristan and Isolde are dead. Guess I’d better rewind again
I'm so glad that someone actually took the time to make a video essay on this story. I'm gonna comment more later, but I think there are some interesting angles that you don't get into as far as how this story resonates with our world as we know it today.
Hey there, thanks for watching the video! I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the story’s relevance to the world of today, and I look forward to your comment.
The production on this looks great
🙏 thank you. I needed this.
You’re welcome!! Thanks for watching.
This was a very informative video, but the most striking thing I’m taking from it is that I’ve never seen a bird so comfortable around a person before.
Hehe, Pringle is a good boy. Linnies, this kind of bird are very docile, especially if you play with them a lot.
You haven't seen Gumi.
So Borges is at his impish best here, isn’t he? It’s interesting to contrast his notion of truths hard won, beyond the epistemological tease of Bioy Caesares quoting something enticing that Borges can’t at first find, and Pynchon. Borges finds an underlying design, except it’s yet another Tower of Babel. The aspirations of the ‘genius’ lead not to the reality but to the mind that interprets the map of reality. Then there are the apparitions of hronir, and forgive me but I think I might’ve had the right idea being drunk long ago when I attempt to factor them into a scheme. Or maybe that’s the idea.
Pynchon’s underlying reality by contrast, dissolves long before reaching the constructs of ‘it mooned’ and such.
Oh never mind, I get it. The hronir don’t exist the real world. They exist in Borges’ narrators’ world. Always the trickster, that Borges, luring us to the hook, then figuratively using that ‘abomination’ mirror to show us the hook he’s convinced us to sink in our mouths.