Borges’ is a fictional story but also a philosophical reflection.
If you feel you don’t understand anything, it is important that you read the whole of it even if you have to browse through passages. Write down your questions but also write down what the story seems to be about, or what happens in it. If you have too many questions, or cannot formulate them, you may choose to post your version of the story.
The story is not meant to be taken as a prescription but as a provocation: questions (however vague) are more important than answers.
So your relation to the text can be very free and yet productive, just as long as you commit to it.
That is the homework towards next week: to engage with the story, to give it another try.
1. mirrors, illusion
for one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or more precisely a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe- a doctrine
-I’d like to think of this with images produced with a camera
details of Tlon – the world of Tlon
1)There are objects composed of two terms, one of visual and another of auditory character
-images in visual and audial forms
2)There are famous poems made up of one enormous word. This word forms a poetic object created by the author
-photographic images ‘created’ by a photographer?
3)the men of this planet(Tlon) conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.
-when we talk about memory captured with a camera, we often say ‘capturing a moment’ although this moment is about a place as well. Memory that we want to keep in images is very much related to ‘times’.
4)The metaphysicians of Tlon do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding.
-I think images we are producing are not for the truth but rather for the astounding sometimes.
5)it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present memory
-Is that why we want to capture a moment with a camera and keep a photo as a present memory(already becomes past) in the future?
6)These secondary objects are called hronir… The methodical fabrication of hronir has performed prodigious services for archaeologists. It has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past,… in those of the eleventh there is a purity of line not found in the original. … the hron of the twelfth degree begins to fall off in quality.
-I found this part very interesting since this part seems to describe the digital images.
7)intrusion of this fantastic world into the world of reality (in 1942).
-it happened in 1942 in the story.
and after around 1944 in the story, already the schools have been invaded by the primitive language of Tlon
-another reality in another world, which had created by men in the story, came into the the world people only knew. I think this implies the author already predicted (or wished) that another world(different world from the world people only knew), which was considered as fictional, became reality after people actually had experienced totalitarianism at the time of the story’s writing. And if we expend this idea of another world ‘Tlon’ created by men into the digital world, which also created by men, we see this digital world has become a part of our world and reality now.
8)this world was made by men, Tlon is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men
-the fiction in the digital image are devised by men, the fiction destined to be deciphered by men
*Quevedian translation-
http://www.readin.com/blog/?id=2255
*chess masters-
The reference to chess masters puts one in mind of the labyrinth motif which recurs throughout Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths collection. Chess is similar to a labyrinth in that the structure of a game is often as unclear and convoluted to the uninitiated as the path of a labyrinth; thus, a chess master can effectively construct the equivalent of a labyrinth around his opponent, who would inevitably lose. In this way, Borges describes the [illusion of the inevitable] (i.e., the false doctrines of Tlön) as a labyrinth imposed on unwitting people by an intelligent secret society.
http://www.gradesaver.com/jorge-borges-short-stories/study-guide/summary-tlön-uqbar-orbis-tertius
philosophy that mentioned in the story
George Berkeley’s idealism – subjective idealism – with God
the doctrine of materialism
the world of Tlon – idealism without God
Gnostics-the visible universe was an illusion or a sophism
Spinoza
monism or complete idealism
Eleatic paradox
reductio ad absurdum
pantheism
solipsism
Schopenhauer’s doctrine
Tao Te Ching
modus operandi
nihilism
the real place(s) vs the fictional place(s)
the real name(s) vs the fictional name(s)
Gnostics – the visible universe was an illusion or a sophism
visible vs invisible
conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia
the language of the southern hemisphere
the language of the northern hemisphere
space and time
the sophism of the nine copper coins
equality and identity