Week 22/23: Borges
Since we discussed the stories in a fair amount of detail in class, I'd rather look at Borgesian ideas in a slightly different context on this site:
I wrote on Borges prefiguring the hypertext for Rochelle's class, specifically on "The Garden of Forking Paths", where Borges describes "an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent and parallel times.” I don't want to cover that ground again, but I think as long as I stay away from Borges-as-literary-Cubist I should be fine.
Here's the picture that Barry found and sent to the class - I think we looked at it last year when we read "The Library of Babel":
Note that the site it's from (http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/) is a variant on the Discordian ('joke-worship' of Eris, goddess of chaos) idea, and includes extracts from the Discordian Bible-equivalent, the Principia Discordia. Reliable? Not really, but these people really appreciate a good story, especially one that Makes You Think.
In "The Total Library", Borges followed the infinite-monkey idea back to Aristotle's Metaphysics, where A explains Leucippus' views: basically that the world came about through random combinations of atoms... A adds to L's ideas, but mentions that atoms are effectively the same, and that the only differences are in the placing and order.
He follows the argument through people like Pascal and Swift - in 1939, when the essay was published, it was phrased that "a half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum." Borges, with his tendency to reduce things, notes that "strictly speaking, one immortal monkey would suffice."
Then, he continues:
"Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus' The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true nature of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat's theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn't publish, Urizen's books of iron, the premature epiphanes of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves — shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies — ever reward them with a tolerable page."
Fantastic.
Also, on infinite hypertext: The Electronic Labyrinth.
I wrote on Borges prefiguring the hypertext for Rochelle's class, specifically on "The Garden of Forking Paths", where Borges describes "an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent and parallel times.” I don't want to cover that ground again, but I think as long as I stay away from Borges-as-literary-Cubist I should be fine.
Here's the picture that Barry found and sent to the class - I think we looked at it last year when we read "The Library of Babel":
Note that the site it's from (http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/) is a variant on the Discordian ('joke-worship' of Eris, goddess of chaos) idea, and includes extracts from the Discordian Bible-equivalent, the Principia Discordia. Reliable? Not really, but these people really appreciate a good story, especially one that Makes You Think.
In "The Total Library", Borges followed the infinite-monkey idea back to Aristotle's Metaphysics, where A explains Leucippus' views: basically that the world came about through random combinations of atoms... A adds to L's ideas, but mentions that atoms are effectively the same, and that the only differences are in the placing and order.
He follows the argument through people like Pascal and Swift - in 1939, when the essay was published, it was phrased that "a half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum." Borges, with his tendency to reduce things, notes that "strictly speaking, one immortal monkey would suffice."
Then, he continues:
"Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus' The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true nature of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat's theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn't publish, Urizen's books of iron, the premature epiphanes of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves — shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies — ever reward them with a tolerable page."
Fantastic.
Also, on infinite hypertext: The Electronic Labyrinth.
posted by David | 5:30 PM
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