THIEM Borges Total Vision
THIEM Borges Total Vision
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JON THIEM
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11 One difficulty that Rabinowitz's otherwise useful model does not address
fully enough is the problem of split consciousness in the reader, which is similar
to the epistemological conundrum of self-deception. How, that is, can the reader,
identifying with both audiences, both know and not know something at the same
time? Why doesn't the authorial audience's knowledge affect and contaminate the
view of the narrative audience? These unanswered questions have made the argu-
ment of this paragraph exceptionally tentative. One might argue, for instance, that
the narrative audience views the narrator's account as unreliable and seriously
doubts that he saw an Aleph. The narrator himself calls into question the authen-
ticity of his account (169) : if the narrative audience believes the narrator, must
it not also mistrust him? Roberto Paoli goes so far as to argue that the narrator
was drugged and that his vision of the Aleph was hallucinogenic (37-42), which
shows the lengths to which moderns can go in order to reduce transcendental ex-
periences to a materialistic psychology. On the other hand, the narrative audience
might regard the narrator's doubts about his experience as an authentication of
his sound judgment, and thus of his testimony.
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13 Borges's fascination with the idea of infinity--cf. his ironic project of writ-
ing a history of infinity-stems in part from the spoiler role that infinity plays in
any drama of total enumeration ("Avatares de la tortuga" 149f).
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16 For modern discussions of the viability of the long poem see Poe and Linden-
berger. Croce's view of the Commedia as a group of lyrics embedded in a geo-
graphico-didactic schema is an extension of the modern rejection of encyclopedic
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epic. Borges, personally, is clearly fond of the epic. In the case of Whitman, for
example, he insists that Leaves of Grass is an epic rather than a mere collection
of lyrics (Barnstone 84, 135). Yet the fact that his favorite long poem of the last
two centuries is so often treated as a collection of lyrics is revealing in this con-
text. Cf. Borges's mention of Leaves of Grass as a precursor of "The Aleph" (The
Aleph 264).
17 Daneri's purpose, one might argue, was not to give the reader the experience
of total vision, but rather to reproduce its contents. True, but here the choice of
poetic purpose seems mistaken: the experience can be conveyed, the contents not.
Is Christ (12, 150), Lefebve (224), and McMurray (229-230) have observed
that Borges's stories in their condensed amplitude function like Alephs.
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... vi caballos de crin arremolinada en una playa del Mar Caspio en el alba, vi la
delicada osatura de una mano, vi a los sobrevivientes de una batalla, enviando
tarjetas postales, vi en un escaparate de Mirzapur una baraja espaniola, vi las
sombras oblicuas de unos helechos en el suelo de un invernaculo, vi tigres, embolos,
bisontes, marejadas y ej rcitos, vi todas las hormigas que hay en la tierra, vi un
astrolabio persa,... (165)
(... I saw in a backyard of Soler street the same floor tiles that I saw thirty years
before in the vestibule of a house in Frey Bentos, I saw bunches of grapes, snow,
tobacco, lodes of metal, steam, I saw convex equatorial deserts, and each one of
their grains of sand,....
I saw horses with swirling manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn, I saw the
delicate bone structure of a hand, I saw the survivors of a battle sending postcards,
I saw in a shopwindow of Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards, I saw the
oblique shadows of some ferns on the floor of a greenhouse, I saw tigers, pistons,
bisons, sea swells, and armies, I saw all the ants that there are on earth, I saw a
Persian astrolabe ...)
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Through the example of his own tale the author of "The Aleph" has
sought to define a modern poetics of total vision based on significant
omission. The apophatic omission of Dante's name in a story laden with
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Works Cited
.-- . A. Yeats.
Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Obras Coimpletas. 9 vols. Buenos Aires: Emece' Editores,
1965.
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?. ."La
*- "Delluna." El lahacedor.
rigor en ciencia." El hacedor.
-- "Epilogo." El hacedor.
-- . "La muralla y los libros." Otras inquisiciones.
*- . "La esfera de Pascal." Otras inquisiciones.
--. "La flor de Coleridge." Otras inquisiciones.
- . "Kafka y sus precursores." Otras inquisiciones.
- "Avatares de la tortuga." Otras inquisiciones.
- "Sobre el 'Vathek' de William Beckford." Otras inquisiciones.
- "El noble castillo de canto cuarto." La Naci6n, 22 Apr., 1951, sec. 2:1.
. "Mateo, XXV, 30." Selected Poems 1923-1967. Ed. and tr. N. Thomas di
Giovanni. New York : Dell Publishing Co., 1973. 92.
- "El otro tigre." Selected Poems 1923-1967. 128, 130.
-. " "La rosa." Selected Poems 1923-1967. 254.
- . "El verdugo piadoso." Sur 163 (May 1948) : 9-12.
Boyde, Patrick. Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Carlos, Alberto J. "Dante y 'El Aleph' de Borges." Duquesne Hispanic Review
5 (1966) : 35-50.
Christ, Ronald J. The Narrow Act: Borges' Art of Allusion. New York: New
York University Press, 1969.
Croce, Benedetto. La poesia di Dante. 1921 ; rpt. Bari: Laterza, 1966.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Tr. W.
R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Dante Alighieri. Paradiso : Italian Text and Translation. Vol. 3.1 of The Divine
Comedy. Tr. Charles S. Singleton. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977.
"Dante's Dimensions." Scientific American 243.9 (1980) : 98.
Devoto, Daniel. "Aleph et Alexis." Jorge Luis Borges. Paris: L'Herne, 1964.
280-292.
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