The beginning of the readings within Borges’ The Labyrinth drew upon the ideas of many other texts, and I think the way Borges progressed from text to text reflects his philosophy surrounding the uncertainty of their meanings. Besides his second-guessing of the texts he had just wrote about, and constant revisions of his thoughts on them, also I enjoyed his focus on how giving meaning to a word or text falsifies that meaning of the word or text. I think language plays a large part in the falsification of meanings, since there is no perfect one definition of an item that can be written out in language. Very fittingly, I am finding it difficult to properly articulate what I mean. To give an example, lets say a person tries to give a name and description to an emotion. Based on the language they write in, and their own subjective experience of that emotion, the meaning is more or less only true to them, and is therefore not a universal meaning that accurately reflects what the given person tried to describe.
I also liked Borges’ input on the progression (or lack of progression) of time. When he discusses time explicitly, he often mentions the writings of others, like the excerpt “that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory” (23). However, in his short stories, time is more of a motif and theme carried across, with its purpose changing slightly between each. He uses time as a way to distort reality in some stories, while in others as a way to lengthen or shorten the duration of a person’s existence, or their perception of existence. This theme of time is what has made Borges the most interesting reading for me as well, as his perspectives on it are for the most part new to me, and were interesting to think about.
Besides time, I also took notes on the commentary Borges made on the connection (and disconnections) between the mind and the body, or possibly better put, consciousness and the brain. Both Borges and I, and The Secret Miracle, use the separation between the physical and mental worlds to their advantage. While the short story The Secret Miracle focused more on time and magical realism, Borges and I was certainly more a contemplation of reality, and I think the latter story held a more grave energy, even though both had equally deep thoughts.
I personally had to take some time reading some of these short stories, as I found the inconsistencies Borges purposefully creates sometimes difficult to comprehend. So, what was the most confusing short story you read and why?
I think you have managed to penetrate one of Borges’s literary mechanisms: the imaginative use of philosophical arguments, as starting points for other types of fiction, where precisely the connection between language and reality. You wrote that this reading made you think and that you took notes. That is already a “borgesian” way of reading.