Borges' Magical Labyrinths - "The Garden of Forking Paths"

There is an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation called "Parallels." Worf is returning to the Enterprise from a bat-lek tournament (which he's won), and he's a bit apprehensive because it's his birthday; he's afraid that his friends have planned a surprise party for him, and Klingon's aren't really that sort of party animal.

He needn't have worried; there is no party on the ship. There are, however, mysterious changes that seem to follow him around--a painting on one wall appears on another then becomes a different painting altogether; people seem to have changed positions and relationships (eventually he even discovers he's married to Deanna Troi!). The world as he remembers it is shifting around him. Everyone else seems content that all's right with the world; some suspect that poor Worf is having a breakdown.

Eventually the problem is traced to an anomoly, a tear in space/time. Worf has crossed a thin membrane separating his version of life, the universe and everything and a parallel life/universe/everything. The situation changes as he moves through several parallel universes.

Data speculates that there are in reality billions of parallel universes--all minor or major variations of one another. In one Jean-Luc Picard has been captured and killed by the Borg; in another he has retired; in yet another he's never been born. Worf is single, married; he's friend, foe depending on which universe he finds himself in.

The whole mess gets sorted out pretty quickly, and we go right to scenes of next week's episode.

The idea isn't new.

It's part of the premise of Groundhog's Day, Run, Lola, Run, and The One. It's the central idea of Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths."

The editor of our text points out

The story refutes the notion of present time as the only one which contains "reality," and, therefore, the only significant time.

"The Garden of Forking Paths" effectively blurs most of the categories we use to "know" the world--especially the distinction between reality and fiction. The story begins with Borges blurring the traditional distinctions between author, narrator, and character. We are told in no uncertain terms by someone who appears to be the author of an historical essay that on "page 22 of Liddell Hart's History of World War I" we will read about a particular military attack, "planned for the 24th of July, 1916" which had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th because of "torrential rains"(p. 1914). The scholarly authority of the voice in this opening passage--the voice of the historian--suggests that the information delivered belongs to the world of fact, outside of fiction altogether. Further, the matter-of-fact authority of this narrative voice tends to make the sections which follow, consisting entirely--except for a footnote--of Yu Tsun's narrative, into a revelation important only in that it "throws an unsuspected light" on the postponement of the battle. The "author" of the "essay" reveals no interest whatsoever in the extraordinary qualities of Yu Tsun's narrative itself.

If we look at Liddell Hart's book, we notice that what our "scholar" says is not what Liddell Hart reports: there was such a battle, but there is no mention of its postponement, and the torrential rains did not fall until November. The "author," then, is as much a fiction as Yu Tsun, Stephen Albert, Captain Richard Madden, Ts'ui Pen, or any other character in the story. Even the "editor," presumably the "editor" of the "journal" which published our "author's" scholarly revelation, is exposed as simply another character in Borges' story when he is offended by Yu Tsun's version of Viktor Runeberg's death and then proceeds to comment auhoritatively on the "real" events behind that death. What we have, then, is a fictional editor taking offense at a fictional account of a fictional death of a fictional spy in a footnote to a fictional historical essay called "The Garden of Forking Paths" written by a fictional author who was created by Jorge Luis Borges in a piece of fiction called "The Garden of Forking Paths." [bold font added by me]

This layering of connections between author->editor->narrator->character->??? is reminiscent of Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Borges' fiction is every bit as philosophically-driven as Pirandello's. "The Garden of Forking Paths" has an added historical element that isn't found in Pirandello's play. In essence, Borges' story invites us to examine the nature of history and challenge the idea of history as really-real. On any major subject there are multiple history texts written and read, taught and studied. Not all agree on every point; in fact, some are wildly different. Selection of detail, storytelling technique, subjectivity, access to new and/or different information--all shape (or at least shade) historical accounts. Fictional editors may not "get it right" as often as real ones; then again, our notion of "right" may be so limited that only an imaginary editor could approach an understanding of reality.

Borges is always fun or mind-numbingly frustrating; it depends on your point of view. And maybe that's the point--we're back where Pirandello had us, wondering if our individual consciousness (idios kosmos) is wrong because it doesn't fit a common world view (koinos kosmos) or if the only reality is what we perceive. Borges gives us the added dash of satire--the slap in the face of that majority-rules-view-of-reality that science, history, insititutions, cultures are so smug about.

Garcia-Marquez's Magical Realism - "Death Constant, Beyond Love"

Gacia-Marquez
"Fiction is reality represented though a secret code."

Magical Realism (so-called) is a clear product of a Latin American sensibility. The stories of Garcia-Marquez, Allende, Esquival and others blend elements of folclorico and social/political concerns. The impossible (a paper butterfly suddenly takes wing and later appears to be a painting on a wall) is as reasonable here as a singing harp or fire-breathing dragon in a folk tale--the reader suspends disbelief for the duration of the story. Most of the stories are satirical, taking pokes at government, religion, tradition, etc.

The blend is not new. We've seen it in Pushkin and Kafka (in fact, Garcia-Marquez commented that Franz Kafka had the most profound influence on his writing); others such as Nikolai Gogol were writing this sort of fiction long before the tradition emerged in Mexico, Central and South America. And that's not all that surprising. This is not Chicano literature; it borrows heavily from European writing and thinking.

The style is generally direct and simple, though there are some wonderously puzzling passages. For a close textual analysis of the rich opening of the story, take a look at Sarah Lawall's piece here. There are other descriptive gems in the story: "Laura Farina sat down on a schoolboy's stool. Her skin was smooth and firm, with the same color and the same solar density as crude oil" (2593). The tenor and vehicle of the metaphor are more imaginative than logical; still, the picture of her dark, smooth skin emerges from the comparison; it somehow makes sense.

For all it's illusory simplicity, "Death Constant Beyond Love" is a rich layering of literal and symbolic. The story is about illusion and its inability to disguise reality indefinitely.

We open with an "illusory" village--Rosal del Virrey, a town so dreary and sordid that "even its name was a kind of joke, because the only rose in that village was being worn by Senator Onesimo Sanchez himself" (2558). And the Senator's rose is illusory--it hints of growth and promise and love and beauty, but he brings only props and shills that suggest his campaign promises are as empty and illusory as the desert town. He carries lust, not love, in his heart, and his body carries impending death, not the bloom of youth.

Laura Farina (her name meaning wheat or cereal or grain--like Demeter, goddess of grain to the Ancient Greeks, Ceres to the Romans) sustains and survives. She represents grace and life and nature with her soft, young body and her "woods-animal armpit" (2595) which the dying Senator tries to take refuge in. Like the tricker tricked in a folk tale, her father bests the Senator by locking Laura in a chastity belt; what appears to be an easy seduction is not; the simple, earthy folks of the village and the simple reality of poverty and death eventually win out over the Senator's meaningless pomp and puffery.

The penultimate irony of the story (death itself provides the ultimate irony to a life built on pretense and a notion that position equals power) is the scandal that chases the Senator to the grave:

Six months and eleven days later he would die in that same position, debased and repudiated because of the public scandal with Laura Farina and weeping with rage at dying without her. (2595)

Laura never did go back to get the key. But gossip and rumor (and perhaps the tabloids nowadays) create illusion every bit as effective as the props that a small-time politician can erect to fool a gullible constituency.