Borges: The Blind Visionary

Borges: The Blind Visionary Borges: The Blind Visionary

Introduction

Arguably, Jorge Luis Borges, throughout his literary career, has laid the foreground for what is today commonly referred to as postmodern fiction. In the words of Borges scholar Jaime Alazraki, "In the same way that much of contemporary Hispanic literature cannot be explained in its totality without keeping Borges in mind, it is not an exaggeration to say that the map of twentieth-century fiction would be incomplete without his name" (3).

What is particularly significant about Borges' writing is its visionary, postmodern tone. Coming of age as a writer at the height modernism, Borges, in his fiction, poetry, and prose, re-envisions, rather than reinscribes, the basic theoretical tenets of the modern literary tradition, perhaps best articulated by T.S. Eliot in his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent." To foreground this discussion and the major thrusts of this project, I will briefly outline some of the major themes of modernism (as articulated primarily by Eliot), and postmodernism (as articulated by Ihab Hassan). Although this discussion will be constricted and necessarily insufficient-- that is, the complexities of the modernist and postmodernist literary traditions cannot be sufficiently addressed within the confines of this paper-my analysis will nonetheless offer some important insights into the major theoretical premises which Borges subverts and embraces in his own writing. To focus this discussion and my proof, I will concentrate my analysis on Borges short story the "Circular Ruins," one of his more widely anthologized pieces. In short, I will argue that this story enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of "grand histoire" (Hassan 281), specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity.

Before navigating to the text of Borges' story, in which you will have the choice of pursing a number of different links, all of which exemplify my main argument, I would first recommend that you take some time to explore my links on Modernism and Postmodernism. When considering the rather diverse articulations of both of these terms, I think it especially important to consider my rendition of these signifiers, especially as they are relevant to this discussion on "The Circular Ruins."

Modernism

As stated in the introduction, the term modernism is in itself a slippery term, and any attempts to reduce it to one signifier is ultimately spurious, for at times, so-called modernist writers offer contradictory formulations of the term as well as its major theoretical premises.

But having acknowledged the limited nature of this discussion, I do agree with Selden, Widdowson, and literary theorists who suggest that however crude, there are some significant commonalties in the modernist approach to understanding literature. To elucidate these commonalties, I concentrate my discussion of T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." According to Selden and Widdowson, T.S. Eliot's the "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is perhaps "the singly most influential work in Anglo-American criticism" (Selden 11).

Selden and Widdowson argue that Eliot's assertions about literary criticism inaugurated (or perhaps codified) the literary tradition we know as modernism, with its emphasis on objectivity and reason. In his rather brief essay, Eliot forwards two of the major premises of modernist thinking, "he emphasizes that writers must have 'the historical sense'-- that is, a sense of the tradition of writing in which they must situate themselves; and in this process reinforces the necessary 'depersonalization' of the artist if his or her art is to attain the 'impersonality' it must have if it is 'to approach the condition of science'" (Selden 11). In considering the implications of Eliot's claims, I think it helpful to briefly consider the analogy that Eliot employs to exemplify his argument; perhaps not surprisingly, Eliot's analogy is a scientific one.

In "Tradition and the Individual Talent,"Eliot asks the reader to consider "the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulfur dioxide" (qtd in Richter 468). According to Eliot, "the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected . . . [it] has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged." Eliot goes on to argue that a mature poet, one deserving of the name, is "a shred of platinum" (qtd in Richter 469). More specifically, the objective of the poet is to remove himself and his emotions from his art. Instead, the poet should act as the neutral medium through which emotion is communicated.

What is startling about Eliot's claims is his insistence that the poet can somehow transcend his own historicity and thus achieve a scientific objectivity which, unbounded by human emotions, reaches the level of art. For Eliot, the depersonalized poet--or the disinterested one to use Matthew Arnold's term--is like the scientist who reaches objective truth by removing his personal bias, emotions, and ultimately self, from his scholarship. Like the scientist, the poet is the medium through which natural laws (literature) is communicated and understood. (Please note that I use the pronoun he in this discussion on Eliot not because there are (and were) no women poets and scientists, but rather because Eliot, in his theoretical formulations, does not explicitly include both genders in his discussion.)

As is clear in my discussion of postmodernism, many postmodern theorists, including Ihab Hassan, maintain that Eliot's call for a depersonalized poet, is, to use Haraway's term, a "political myth."

Postmodernism

Before offering any definition of the term postmodernism, I must emphasize the limits of such an attempt, for clearly, offering a definition of this term is especially problematic when considering some of the basic theoretical tenets of postmodern theory. However, in order to examine the ways in which Borges' "The Circular Ruins" enacts a postmodern paradigm, I must first briefly discuss that postmodern paradigm which informs my analysis. I rely on the work of Ihab Hassan to achieve this objective.

Hassan opens his essay, "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism," with a discussion of the historical development of the term postmodernism itself, and as the title of his article implies, he goes on to formulate his own concept of postmodernism. After acknowledging the limits of his own approach, he argues that there is in fact such a thing as a "postmodern tendency," and according to Hassan, this tendency can be best understood by a close consideration of the term: "indetermanence" (281). In discussing this term, Hassan splits his neologism into two components-indeterminacies and immanences--and goes on to consider the implications of each.

For Hassan, indeterminacies, a "complex referent" in itself (282), is a term that signifies: "decreation, disintegration, deconstruction, decenternment, displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction" and a number of other "d" terms which basically emphasize the questioning and rupturing of all commonplace, enlightenment, modernist assertions about objective truth, reason, science, ontology, history, etc. etc. The second component of Hassan's indetermanence, which is immanences, is more difficult a concept to grasp. The postmodern immanences that Hassan envisages are not transcendental in the religious sense of the word, but are rather those resonances, which "all derive from the emergence of human beings as language animals," that serve as a common point through which human being can communicate, play, and become interdependent.

In conflating these terms, Hassan directs the reader toward his concept of postmodernism, which I will argue bears some striking parallels to the images, motifs, and resonances that Borges' short- story, "The Circular Ruins," evokes. Note: If you have not yet read my discussion on Modernism I suggest that you do so before moving on to the The Circular Ruins

The Circular Ruins

I now move this discussion to what I consider to be the main- thrust of this project: a careful reading of "The Circular Ruins." By offering such a reading, I hope to elucidate the ways in which Borges' writing enacts a postmodernism which Eliot would decidedly discourage and Hassan would arguably openly embrace. (For a fuller discussion of Eliot and Hassan, please read my discussion on modernism and postmodernism.)

Below, you will find a copy of Borges' "The Circular Ruins." If you are not familiar with this short story, I would recommended that you read it in its entirety before exploring my links. As discussed in my introduction, I contend that Borges, in "The Circular Ruins," subverts modernist notions about literature and instead enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of "grand histoire" (Hassan 281), specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity. In offering a proof of this claim, I draw your attention to key terms throughout "The Circular Ruins" whose significance will be amplified by the scholarship that has been written about them. This scholarship, coupled with my analysis, will be utilized to substantiate my claims.

The Circular Ruins

And if he left off dreaming about you . . .

---Through the Looking Glass, VI.
No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night. No one saw the bamboo canoe running aground on the sacred mud. But within a few days no one was unaware that the taciturn man had come from the South and that his home had been one of the infinity of hamlets which lie upstream, on the violent flank of the mountain, where the Zend language is uncontaminated by Greek, and where leprosy is infrequent. The certain fact is that the anonymous gray man kissed the mud, scaled the bank without pushing aside (probably without even feeling) the sharp-edged sedges lacerating his flesh, and dragged himself, bloody and sickened, up to the circular enclosure whose crown is a stone colt or tiger, formerly the color of fire and now the color of ash. This circular clearing is a temple, devoured by ancient conflagration, profaned by the malarial jungle, its god unhonored now of men. The stranger lay beneath a pedestal. He was awakened, much later, by the sun at its height. He was not astonished to find that his wounds had healed. He closed his pale eyes and slept, no longer from weakness of the flesh but from a determination of the will. He knew that this temple was the place required by his inflexible purpose; he knew that the incessant trees had not been able to choke the ruins of another such propitious temple down river, a temple whose gods also were burned and dead; he knew that his immediate obligation was to dream. The disconsolate shriek of a bird awoke him about midnight. The prints of bare feet, some figs, and a jug told him that the people of the region had reverently spied out his dreaming and solicited his protection or feared his magic. He felt the cold chill of fear, and sought in the dilapidated wall for a sepulchral niche where he concealed himself under some unfamiliar leaves.

The purpose which impelled him was not impossible though it was supernatural. He willed to dream a man. He wanted to dream him in minute totality and then impose him upon reality. He had spent the full resources of his soul on this magical project. If anyone had asked him his own name or about any feature of about former life, he would have been unable to answer. The shattered and deserted temple suited his ends, for it was a minimum part of the visible world, and the nearness of the peasants was also convenient, for they took it upon themselves to supply his frugal needs. The rice and fruits of the tribute were nourishment enough for his body, given over to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.

At first his dreams were chaotic. They were dialectical. The stranger dreamt he stood in the middle of a circular amphitheater which was in some measure the fired temple; clouds of taciturn students wearied the tiers; the faces of the last rows looked down from a distance of several centuries and from a stellar height, but their every feature was precise. The dreamer himself was delivering lectures on anatomy, cosmography, magic: the faces listened anxiously and strove to answer with understanding, as if they guessed the importance of that examination, which would redeem one of them from his insubstantial state and interpolate him into the real world. In dreams or in waking the man continually considered the replies of his phantoms; he did not let himself be deceived by the impostors; in certain paradoxes he sensed an expanding intelligence. He was seeking a soul worthy of participating in the universe.

At the end of nine or ten nights he realized, with a certain bitterness, that he could expect nothing from those students who accepted his teaching passively, but that he could of those who sometimes risked a reasonable contradiction. The former, though deserving of love and affection, could never rise to being individuals; the latter already existed to a somewhat greater degree. One afternoon (now even the afternoons were tributaries of the dream; now he stayed awake for only a couple of hours at daybreak) he dismissed the entire vast illusory student body for good and retained only one pupil. This pupil was a silent, sallow, sometimes obstinate boy, whose sharp features repeated those of his dreamer. The sudden elimination of his fellow students did not disconcert him for very long; his progress, at the end of a few private lessons, made his master marvel. And nevertheless, catastrophe came. One day the man emerged from sleep as from a viscous desert, stared about at the vain light of evening, which at first he took to be dawn, and realized he had not dreamt. All that night and all the next day the intolerable lucidity of insomnia broke over him in waves. He was impelled to explore the jungle, to wear himself out; he barely managed some quick snatches of feeble sleep amid the hemlock, shot through with fugitive visions of a rudimentary type: altogether unserviceable. He strove to assemble the student body, but he had scarcely uttered a few words of exhortation before the college blurred, was erased. Tears of wrath scalded his old eyes in his almost perpetual vigil.

He realized that the effort to model the inchoate and vertiginous stuff of which dreams are made is the most arduous task a man can undertake, though he get to the bottom of all the enigmas of a superior or inferior order: much more arduous than to weave a rope of sand or mint coins of the faceless wind. He realized that an initial failure was inevitable. He vowed to forget the enormous hallucination by which he had been led astray at first, and he sought out another approach. Before essaying it, he dedicated a month to replenishing the forces he had squandered in delirium. He abandoned all premeditation concerned with dreaming, and almost at once managed to sleep through a goodly part of the day. The few times he did dream during this period he took no notice of the dreams. He waited until the disk of the moon should be perfect before taking up his task again. Then, on the eve, he purified himself in the waters of the river, worshipped the planetary gods, pronounced the lawful syllables of a powerful name and went to sleep. Almost at once he dreamt of a beating heart.

He dreamt it active, warm, secret, the size of a closed fist, garnet-colored in the half-light of a human body that boasted as yet no sex or face. He dreamt this heart with meticulous love, for fourteen lucid nights. Each night he saw it more clearly. He never touched it, but limited himself to witnessing it, to observing it or perhaps rectifying it with a glance. He watched it, lived it, from far and from near and from many angles. On the fourteenth night he ran his index finger lightly along the pulmonary artery, and then over the entire heart, inside and out. The examination satisfied him. The next night, he deliberately did not dream. He then took up the heart again, invoked the name of a planet, and set about to envision another one of the principal organs. Before the year was up he had reached the skeleton, the eyelids. The most difficult task, perhaps, proved to be the numberless hairs. He dreamt a whole man, a fine lad, but one who could not stand nor talk nor open his eyes. Night after night he dreamt him asleep.

In the gnostic cosmogonies, demiurges fashion a red Adam who never manages to get to his feet: as clumsy and equally as crude and elemental as this dust Adam was the dream Adam forged by the nights of the wizard. One afternoon, the man almost destroyed all his work, but then changed his mind. (It would have been better for him had he destroyed it.) Having expended all the votive offerings to the numina of the earth and the river, he threw himself at the feet of the effigy, which was perhaps a tiger or perhaps a colt, and implored its unknown help. That evening, at twilight, he dreamt of the statue. He dreamt it alive, tremulous: it was no atrocious bastard of a tiger and a colt, but both these vehement creatures at once and also a bull, a rose, a tempest. This multiple god revealed to him that its terrestrial name was Fire, that in this same circular temple (and in others like it) it once had been offered sacrifices and been the object of a cult, and that now it would magically animate the phantom dreamt by the wizard in such wise that all creatures except Fire itself and the dreamer�would believe the phantom to be a man of flesh and blood. It directed that once the phantom was instructed in the rites, he be sent to the other broken temple, whose pyramids persisted down river, so that some voice might be raised in glorification in that deserted edifice. In the dream of the man who was dreaming, the dreamt man awoke.

The wizard carried out the directives given him. He dedicated a period of time (which amounted, in the end, to two years) to revealing the mysteries of the universe and the cult of Fire to his dream creature. In his intimate being, he suffered when he was apart from his creation. And so every day, under the pretext of pedagogical necessity, he protracted the hours devoted to dreaming. He also reworked the right shoulder, which was perhaps defective. At times, he had the uneasy impression that all this had happened before.... In general, though, his days were happy ones: as he closed his eyes he would think: Now I shall be with my son. Or, more infrequently: The son I have engendered is waiting for me and will not exist if I do not go to him.

Little by little he got his creature accustomed to reality. Once, he ordered him to plant a flag on a distant mountain top. The next day the flag was fluttering on the peak. He tried other analogous experiments, each one more audacious than the last. He came to realize, with a certain bitterness, that his son was read--and perhaps impatient-- to be born. That night he kissed his child for the first time, and sent him to the other temple, whose remains were whitening down river, many leagues across impassable jungle and swamp. But first, so that his son should never know he was a phantom and should think himself a man like other men, he imbued him with total forgetfulness of his apprentice years. His triumph and his respite were sapped by tedium. In the twilight hours of dusk or dawn he would prostrate himself before the stone figure, imagining his unreal child practicing identical rites in other circular ruins downstream. At night he did not dream, or dreamt as other men do. The sounds and forms of the universe reached him wanly, pallidly: his absent son was being sustained on the diminution of the wizard's soul. His life's purpose had been achieved; the man lived on in a kind of ecstasy. After a tim--which some narrators of his story prefer to compute in years and others in lustra--he was awakened one midnight by two boatmen: he could not see their faces, but they told him of a magical man at a temple in the North, who walked on fire and was not burned. The wizard suddenly recalled the words of the god. He remembered that of all the creatures composing the world, only Fire knew his son was a phantom. This recollection, comforting at first, ended by tormenting him. He feared lest his son meditate on his abnormal privilege and somehow discover his condition of mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be the projection of another man's dream--what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo! Every father is concerned with the children he has procreated (which he has permitted) in mere confusion or felicity: it was only natural that the wizard should fear for the future of his son, thought out entrail by entrail and feature by feature on a thousand and one secret nights.

The end of his caviling was abrupt, but not without forewarnings. First (after a long drought) a remote cloud, light as a bird, appeared over a hill. Then, toward the South, the sky turned the rosy color of a leopard's gums. Smoke began to rust the metallic nights. And then came the panic flight of the animals. And the events of several centuries before were repeated. The ruins of the fire god's sanctuary were destroyed by fire. One birdless dawn the wizard watched the concentric conflagration close around the walls: for one instant he thought of taking refuge in the river, but then he understood that death was coming to crown his old age and to absolve him of further work. He walked against the florid banners of the fire. And the fire did not bite his flesh but caressed and engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him
.

--Translated by ANTHONY KERRIGAN

Conclusion

In the various links of this hypertext, I have argued that Borges' "The Circular Ruins" enacts postmodernism's severe questioning of "grand histoire" (Hassan 281), specifically in regards to monotheism and linearity. I substantiate my claims by carefully examining key phrases, motifs, and images in "The Circular Ruins" which help to exemplify my claims.

My choice to communicate my argument in a hypertext is a strategic one that I think merits discussion. Through my non- linear links, I too have attempted to enact postmodernism call (as articulated by Ihab Hassan) for nonlinear, multiple voices. This move is one that I think Borges would encourage, for clearly, in "The Circular Ruins," Borges suggests that both the universe and humankind is begotten not by one transcendental all-powerful being, but rather by a series of perhaps imperfect, even mortal, avatars. Although this insight may seem terrifying, the relief associated with the acceptance of this multiplicity and non-linearity does not leave the reader in a state of vertigo, but rather leads her/him to Borges' re envisioned "unitary sensibility" (Sontag qtd in Hassan 278), as discussed in my link on Gnostic cosmogonies.

In closing, I think it fair to say that Borges (and his fiction) was clearly ahead of his times; he created in an academic community in which the pervasive power of modernism manifested itself from the pampas of Argentina to the rolling country-side of England. However, as has been argued throughout this hypertext, Borges was not solely interested in resisting modernist literary techniques; he aimed to create anew. Martin Stabb writes, "It is true that he [Borges] wished to purge his poetry of certain specific modernista techniques and mannerisms, but like all good poets his objective was to affirm his own poetic values" (7). Throughout this hypertext, I have argued that Borges meets this objective in his "The Circular Ruins."

thing in his dreams

In briefly considering this short excerpt form Through the Looking Glass, it is clear that the idea of being "only a sort of thing in his dream" is not unique to Borges (specifically, by bringing the reader's attention to Carroll's story, Borges signals to the reader the recursivity of the theme). In his "Forms of a Legend," Borges traces the development of this notion of dreaming someone into existence, and he argues that "all religions of India, and in particular Buddhism, teach that the world is illusory" (126). If the world in is fact illusory--if our existence, like that of Alice and the magician's son, are no more (nor less) than the imaginings of another-then "[t]he life of Buddha on earth is a game or a dream, and the earth itself another dream" (126). More importantly for the sake of this discussion, if the earth is "itself another dream" (126), then the earth cannot be understood in terms of a rational, reasoned, paradigm, but instead must be thought of in terms of "antithesis," "dispersal," and "absence" (Hassan 281). For a fuller discussion of the implications of these terms (antithesis, absence, and dispersal), consider exploring my discussion in dialectical, Gnostic cosmogonies, and someone else was dreaming him.
To return to the text, click on the following link thing in his dreams

dialectical

The term dialectical is obviously a loaded one. In understanding the significance and relevance of Borges' use of it, I think it helpful to briefly outline the results of the magician's attempts to "dream a man" (69).

At the start of "The Circular Ruins," the reader is led to believe that the magician, who envisions a group of students--one of which has "a soul worthy of participating in the universe" (69)--is close to achieving his goal. However, the narrator informs that one day "a catastrophe came" (70). According to the narrator, the magician's initial attempts to dream a man into existence are futile: he has "realized [that] he had not dreamt" at all (70). Even though he is able to "get to the bottom of all the enigmas of a superior or inferior order"(70), he cannot achieve his ultimate objective--the creation of another spirit--through the use of the dialectic.

As "The Circular Ruins" progresses, the magician changes his tactics: he replenishes his forces, "abandone[s] all premeditation concerned with dreaming," and waits until the "disk of the moon should be perfect before taking up his task again" (71); upon doing so, he meets with immediate success: "[a]lmost at once he dreamt of a beating heart" (71).

The magician's initial failure and his subsequent accomplishment is significant. At stated above, his dialectical approach is ultimately faulty. More specifically, in "The Circular Ruins," the resolution of polar opposites do not, as Hegel suggests in Phenomenology of Spirit, lead to a theodicy, in which the absolute God becomes manifest to the universe (Lavine 225).

Arguably, Borges, in this short story, cleverly deconstructs one of the more potent political myths of enlightenment thought, specifically that God is the unitary center and creator of the universe. As is clear in my discussion of Gnostic Cosmogonies, the universe that Borges envisions is not one bounded by the notion of a fixed center. Additionally, if God is not the center of the universe, then perhaps the center of a text is not the text itself.
To return to the text, click on the following link: The Circular Ruins

Gnostic Cosmogonies

According to Borges critic Martin Stabb, "Gnosticism [is] a philosophical current that has shaped much of Borges's thought" (11). The term Gnosticism itself has been reinterpreted by many scholars and thinkers since it was first deployed to describe an early heretical sect of Christianity; to focus this discussion, I will briefly discuss two conceptualizations of this world-view. In my analysis, I suggest that Borges' use of the term is a clear signifier of his critique of monotheism and linearity.

In his "A Vindication of the False Basilides," Borges adumbrates the philosophical word-view of one Gnostic philosopher in particular, Basilides. Alazraki, in his analysis of this essay, writes:

According to this Gnostic doctrine, there are 365 floors

of the sky between God and human reality; each sky is

presided over by seven subordinate deities; the deficient

angels of the lowest sky founded the visible sky, they

molded the immaterial earth which we walk on, and they

divided it among themselves. (10)

The analogs between "A Vindication of the False Basilides" and Borges' "The Library of Babel" would be interesting to explore; however, to focus this discussion, I would like to emphasize 1) the imperfect nature of at least some of Basilides' gods, and 2) the polytheism embedded in his rendition.

The second Gnostic system that I would like to explore, "that of Valentinus," involves "a fallen goddess, Achamot, [who] has two children by a shadow who are the founder of the world and the devil" (Alazraki 10). Borges, commenting on Valentinus' Gnostic formulations comments: "An admirable idea: the world imagined as an essentially futile process, as a lateral and lost reflection of old celestial episodes, the creation as an accidental fact" (qtd in Alazraki 10).

Borges' seeming approval of Valentinus' conceptualizations is not surprising, especially when considering the actions that occur within "The Circular Ruins" itself. Clearly, the magician, who is a spirit, a god of some sorts, is himself imperfect. Not only do his initial attempts to procreate result in failure, he himself is mortal, nothing more than the dream of another (a copy of a copy, to evoke Walter Benjamin here). Clearly, one of the more potent political myths of our time is problematized in Borges' rather short short-story. For Borges, God is flawed and multiple. The grand narrative of the just, rational, unitary, transcendental God is thus undermined. Before moving in my this discussion, I think it important to consider some of the implications of Borges' deconstruction; in my estimation, Borges' subversion does not lead to a relativity of sorts. Like Hassan, Borges does not:

rest . . . on the assumption that postmodernism is antiformal,

anarchic, or decreative; for though it is indeed all these, and

despite its fanatic will to unmaking, it also contains the need

to discover a 'unitary sensibility' (Sontag), to 'cross the

border and close the gap' (Fiedler), and to attain, as I have

suggested, an immanence of discourse, an expanded noetic

intervention, a 'neo-gnostic im- mediacy of mind.' (278)
Borges scholar Newman Kinzie maintains that Borges enacts Hassan's postmodern call in his work. According to Kinzie, "'The Circular Ruins'" is an affirmation of faith in the metaphysical or magical nature of art, but without the salvation such faith customarily guarantees'" (59). Kinzie argues that Borges' work does in fact deconstruct, decreate, and decenter (Hassan 281) modernist formulation of literature, but in so doing, he offers the reader a Hassanian immanence; the world is infinite, circular, and recursive. This recursivity is evidenced in his re conceptualization of the Golem in "The Circular Ruins." For a further discussion of this recursivity, please refer to my links on circularity and the Golem. To return to the text, please click on the following link: The Circular Ruins

Golem

As Borges' "The Circular Ruins" reaches its denouement, the reader is informed that the magician's son is "ready--and perhaps impatient--to be born" (73). Although the magician does not refer to his son as a Golem, the case could be made that Borges' re- conceptualization bears some striking resemblance to the tale of the Golem, which is "based on a cabalistic legend about a Prague rabbi who creates a creature out of mud and makes him his servant" (Monegal 136). According to Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Borges' introduction to the tale of the Golem predates his writing of "The Circular Ruins."

Twenty-five years later [after Borges read and wrote

about Gustav Meyrink's The Golem], Borges wrote a story

about an Indian mystic who worships fire and creates a

disciple to propagate his faith. "The Circular Ruins,"

collected in Ficciones (1944), can be seen as an anticipation

of the poem on the Golem that Borges mentions in his

"Autobiographical Essay."(137)

Monegal's insights regarding the genesis of "The Circular Ruins" further amplify the cyclical, recursive nature of Borges' fiction. Although in "The Circular Ruins," the magician's prot�g� does not sweep the floors of the circular ruins that his "father" occupies, the dream son, like the Golem, is brought into existence, not by the transcendental Judeo/Christian god, but rather by an apparition taking the form of a man. Arguably, the actions that occur within "The Circular Ruins," as well as the form that the short-story assumes, embraces postmodern notions of "dispersal,""play," and "chance" (Hassan 281-282). For an additional discussion of the significance of this move, refer to my discussion on circularity, modernism, postmodernism, and someone else was dreaming him. To return to the text, please click on the following link The Circular Ruins

someone else was dreaming him

Borges closes his story as he opens it: with the realization that existence, at least for the wizard and Alice of Through the Looking Glass is illusory. As discussed in my link on Borges' epigraph, And if he left off dreaming about you, Alice sadly comes to realize that she is nothing more (nor less) than a dream of another. In the closing sentence of "The Circular Ruins," the wizard learns that he too shares Alice's fate. Although Alice is disappointed with this knowledge, the wizard�s feelings are more contradictory: "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him" (74).

I highlight this final sentence of "The Circular Ruins" because Borges' bringing of the reader full-circle exemplifies the type of circularity I have examined throughout this hypertext (please take some time to explore my links on modernism; postmodernism, and circularity as starting points for a fuller discussion in which I support my thesis claims as articulated in my introduction). In short, I have argued that Borges'"The Circular Ruins"enacts a postmodern paradigm which re envisions modernist assumptions about linearity and reason. Furthermore, the postmodern tone, imagery, and motifs of "The Circular Ruins" coincide with some of the basic theoretical tenets of postmodernism, as articulated by Hassan. A hypertext seems an especially appropriate medium in which to articulate my arguments on Borges' fiction; I offer a discussion of this choice in my Conclusion

contradictory

To briefly exemplify the contradictory nature of the term modernism, consider the differences between Leavisite and Beardsley criticism. F.R. Leavis, "profoundly influenced by Matthew Arnold and by T.S. Eliot" (Selden 21), maintains that Literature and literary theory should not be theorized. According to Selden, Leavis "defends his refusal to theorise his work saying that criticism and philosophy are quite separate activities and that the business of the critic is to 'attain a peculiar completeness of response [in order] to enter into possession of the given poem . . . in its concrete fullness'"(22). In contrast, some American modernists, including Beardsley and Wimsatt, have written and forwarded highly theoretical modernist formulations, despite "Leavis's refusal to theorise his position or engage in 'philosophical' extrapolation" (Selden 17). Arguably, Beardsley and Wimsatt's theoretical formulations enable some of their Yale colleagues and successors to later embrace and forward a postmodern paradigm which in many important ways undermines the premises Beardsley and Wimsatt forward. The connection between postmodern and modern literary theory will be further explored in my discussion on postmodernism, but for now, I ask you to keep in mind that despite the holistic discussion on modernism that follows, the term itself is a complex signifier.
To return to my discussion on Modernism, please click on the following link Modernism

historical development

In Hassan's opening discussion on postmodernism, he makes a provoking point, one that I think needs to be elucidated here. He argues that there is no clear dividing line between the terms modernism and postmodernism: "Modernism and postmodernism are not separated by an Iron Curtain or Chinese Wall" (277). Although in the discussion that follows, I concentrate my discussion on the polarities and the differences of each approach, I do think it important to recognize that "we are all . . . a little Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern, at once" (Hassan 277). Newman Kinzie, a Borges scholar, wittingly or not, exemplifies this claim. In offering a comparison between Borges and Eliot, he writes: "Although there is some coincidence between Eliot's and Borges' views of literary tradition as a two-way system (Homer influences Virgule, but our reading of Virgil influences our reading of Homer), Eliot underlines the stately aspect of this system, while Borges emphasizes the paradoxical nature of it" (115).
To return back to my disucssion on postmodernism, please click on the following link Postmodernism

Circular

The title of Borges' story is significant and merits discussion. Arguably, the term "circular" immediately signals to the reader a sort of recursivity, perhaps even a circular cycle which is apt to repeat itself. This notion of circularity is personified in the actions that occur within the story itself. In the closing sentence of "The Circular Ruins," the narrator informs the reader that the wizard (magician) is himself the dream of another, "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that someone else was dreaming him" (74). After learning that the narrator himself is nothing more than an apparition (which might be anticipated after reading the epigraph of this story), the reader is led to believe that the process of dreaming another into existence occurs ad infinitum. According to Borges critic Jaime Alazraki, this "insistence on the infinite character of the dream is not fortuitous. Besides being a recurrent motif which in greater or lesser degree appears in almost all his stories, the infinite is translated on the stylistic level as an insistent adjective whose repetition permits us to define it as a 'linguistic tic'"(21).

Although Borges' use of the term circular may seem innocuous or perhaps unimportant, when considering the larger theoretical context in which Borges was publishing, Borges' choice of words becomes immediately significant. More specifically, one of the major thrusts of modernism (according to Hassan, Selden and others), regards the notion of center, that is, that there exists a center, a focal point from which all else emanates; in terms of literature, the modernist would argue that the center is "'the text itself,''the words on the page,' nothing more nor less'" (Selden 11). Borges, by intimating to the reader that the dreaming of another into existence is an infinite, cyclical process--an idea that will be further examined throughout the links in this hypertext-- undermines the notion that one single center, creator, universe (etc. etc.) exists. Consequently, in the first words of this short story, Borges seems to question one of the major premises of modernist thought.
To return to "The Circular Ruins," click on the following link The Circular Ruins

Dreaming

As exemplified in my discussion of Borges' use of the term circular, Borges--by opening "The Circular Ruins" with a quotation from Lewis Carroll's children's classic Through the Looking Glass--offers further evidence for my thesis statement, as articulated in my introduction.

The chapter from which Borges quotes is the one in which Tweedledum and Tweedledee inform Alice that she is nothing more than the dream of the Red King. Tweedledee explains that the sounds that Alice hears are those of the King, who is snoring. Tweedledee goes on to ask:

"Who do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess."

"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands

triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you,

where do you suppose you'd be?"

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd

be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"

"If that there King was to wake," adds Tweedledum, "you'd go

out--bang!--just like a candle!" (Chapter VI, Through the

Looking Glass)

When reading the above excerpt from Through the Looking Glass and briefly considering the actions which take place within "The Circular Ruins," the parallels between each story become immediately evident. Both Alice and the son of the wizard are dreams of their creators. Neither is a transcendent, autonomous, character, and similarly, their creators bear little resemblance to the Judeo/Christian transcendent maker of Adam and Eve; rather, both Alice and the wizard's son are begotten by temporal and flawed beings.

It is also important to note that opening a short-story with an epigraph from a children's book is in itself avant-guard, especially considering the fact that Borges published "The Circular Ruins" in Ficciones in 1944, when Eliot's modernist call for scientific, objective prose was (and for many academics still is) very much in vogue. Consequently, in the opening lines of this short story, Borges immediately intimates to the reader that his project, his story, will not conform to Eliot's modernist standards.
To return to the "The Circular Ruins," click on the following link The Circular Ruins

Bibliography

Alazraki, Jaime. Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Columbia UP, 1971.

Borges, Jorge Luis. A Personal Anthology. Grove: New York, 1967.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "Traditional and the Individual Talent." The Critical

Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. ed. David Richter.

New York: St Martin's, 1989.

Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.

New York: Routledge, 1991.

Hassan, Ihab. "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism." eds. J. Natoli and L.

Hutcheon. A Postmodern Reader. New York: Suny, 1993.

Kinzie, Newman. Prose for Borges. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1972.

Lavine, Thelma. From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophical Quest. Toronto:

Bantam, 1984.

Monegal, Emir Rodriguez. Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography.

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970.

Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson. A Reader's Guide to Contemporarybr>

Literary Theory, Third Edition. Kentucky: Kentucky UP, 1993.

Stabb, Martin S. Borges Revisited. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

---. Jorge Luis Borges. Boston: Twayne, 1970.