Borges Short Stories

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Metafiction Narrator talks about how he was discussing how one might write a
book in the first person and omit/distort/contradict things so that a very few
readers might divine the horrifying or banal truth this in itself is a
contradiction
Mirror
o At the end of the hallway, mirrors distort things (they flip the image)
o Mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of
mankind The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia
When checked in the encyclopedia, Uqbar doesnt exist
Bioy, the guest, finds the actual quote, which says: For one of
those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more
precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are hateful because
they multiply and proclaim it.

Two copies of the book, but Bioys has the article on Uqbar
o Uqbar seems not to exist in any other copy besides Bioy
Herbert Ashe engineer for Southern Railway Line lingers in the mirrors in the
hotel at Adrogue
o Duodecimals transalting to sexagesimals?
o Ashe received a book printed in octavo major from Brazil, written in
English, 1001 pages, called A First Encyclopedia of Tlon. Vol. XI. Hlaer
to Jangr
o Book describes Tlon, a planet
The citizens of Tlon were idealistic
Southern Hemispere - impersonal, the world is not a
collection of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of
independent acts
Northern Hemisphere language is adjectival
Borges goes on to describe the culture of Tlon
sphere of literature the idea of a single subject is all powerful,
books are rarely signed and plagiarism does not exist all is the
work of a single author who is timeless and anonymous
It is revealed that Tlon is a work of fiction created by a fraternity
Library of Babel
The Universe = indefinite, infinite numbers of hexagonal galleries
Mirror duplicates appearances, Men infer from this mirror that the library is not
infinite why then should there be illusory replication?
The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose
circumference is unattainable
The library has existed forever
There are twenty five orthographic symbols

For all rationality, there is a lot of chaos

There are no two identical books
infinite it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite

Garden of Forking Paths

Context: an allied offensive against the Serre-Montauban line had been planned,
but had to be pushed back because of torrential rates this is an account by a
former professor of English
Professor is a spy for the German Empire and realizes that he has been caught but
wants to tell his German handlers before he is captured
He does not do it out of love for Germany, but because he wants to prove to his
racist masters than an Asian is intelligent enough to obtain the information needed
to save their soldiers
Tsui Pen, Tsuns ancestor, was to create a vast and intricate novel and labyrinth,
but was murdered before completing either
Mystery of{
+

tious writer Nils Runeberg presents to the world three versions of Judas Iscariot using
his two books.

In his final book Den hemlige Frlsaren, Runeberg comes up with the argument that
as God in human shape would be "made totally man, but man to the point of iniquity",
committing a sin would also not be beyond Him. More importantly, Runeberg states that
a sacrifice limited to only one afternoon on the cross does not compare with the sacrifice
of accepting shame and revulsion for the rest of history. Thereby, Runeberg concludes
finally that He chose Judas as his incarnation. "God became a man completely, a man to
the point of infamy, a man to the point of being reprehensible - all the way to the abyss.
In order to save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the
uncertain web of history; He could have been Alexander, or Pythagoras, or Rurik,
or Jesus; He chose an infamous destiny: He was Judas."