Hello everyone.
I promissed Bruno that i’m gonna join when i finally get the time. So here I am.
I’ve read Borges about three years ago. Before that, my readings almost exclusively consisted of Math and Physics books 
Then my friend lent me a book by Borges: The Book of Sand. I had never seen a book written like that!! I got so curious that I went out and bought another Borges book: Ficciones.
One funny incident about this book. I lent it to a friend of mine. He read it, returned it to me, and said he didn’t understand much. When i asked why, he replied: “well, who is this Pierre Menard for example? I’ve never heard of him!” 
The title is Fictions. But with that aside, my friend is not to blame for not recognizing Borges’ intention. As Bruno pointed out to in his first post here, Borges does not specify where reality ends and fictions begins. The lines are blurred.
I’ve dug up my copy and i’ll start reading again. hopefully we get to discussions soon 
I guess anything I say or do could from now on be considered a spoiler for this book because it has changed the way I now am- but I don’t think I’m being too revealing here… Just finished the first half of the book (or first book, I suppose, technically). I am absolutely sucked in and have been avoiding doing anything else when possible just so I can sit around and soak up these Ficciones. I think “the Lottery in Babilon” and “the Circular Ruins” are definitely favorites so far. The others seemed to drag a little because of the dense nature of the stories (and the introduction of many characters and works, imaginary or real) but I still think there were some amazing ideas and concepts in there (especially the part about copulation and mirrors). Can’t wait to really get into discussion about some of these ideas because this book is one of those works that makes you look at reality in a whole new way every time you finish a new story!
SPOILER - Click to view
::Pretty sure Bruno works for the Company::
I’ve actually taken myself in creating those verbal/adjective languages ! 
Anyhow, I always ended with making too complicated sentences to be manageable for me to convert, and stop it. And start from the beginning again xD Well, it ain’t that often it has happened, but well, I guess it may relate to the fact that I of some weird reasons have had a hard time feeling anything at all (pretty much exept frustration/loneliness at time) the last months/half year. It is really pretty depressing.
Anyways, I have just finished “Theme of the traitor and the hero now” 
Circular ruins spoiler
SPOILER - Click to view
The circular ruins were really a great story, but I don’t really get the meaning behind it. I mean, ok the guy dreams up someone, and everyting. And brings him to life. Later he finds he is dreamed up himself. What is he trying to say? (Is he trying to say something?).
Welcome aboard, Eric, kT, Will, and Nadim. 
He’s written quite a lot. 
But why did you order the whole collection, rather than just Ficciones, then?
Yes. Yes! It’s really good! (I’m frankly biased when it come to Borges, so read my opinions with a grain of salt 
). It’s the same kind of imagery (and humour) you’ll find in stories like “the Circular Ruins”, “the Lottery in Babylon” and “theme of the Hero and the Traitor”, but it’s a really wild idea.
It is a fabulous idea. 
I’ll come back to the library in a future post.
I’m glad you enjoyed it that much!
Mine as well, at least in the first book. (From the second, highlights would be “theme of the Traitor and the Hero”, “Three versions of Judas” and “the South”).
Yeah, Borges can be a tad too academic at times, but he’s got plenty of jaw-dropping ideas to expose.
Hahaha! We sure shall discuss the ideas. I’ll make a post tomorrow, and you of course can feel free to writing your thoughts anytime!
/me smiles secretly.
It’s one of my favourite stories. It’s rather simple, and doesn’t make much of a fuss around its main idea, but it got me to dig into Irish history books and articles on exotic carnivalesque traditions, and then I would sketch up thoughts and drawings forever.
[spoiler]The idea at play is that of recursion, and it pokes right at a couple of big metaphysical problems revolving around the notion of life. For instance: humans are capable of creation. Provided we were created, that is to say designed, it is valid to question ourselves: is our creator all-powerful and unbounded, or are they but a shadow of their own creator, as we are of them? If we are capable of creating intelligence, conscience, life — and, arguably, we are, we should be asking ourselves: are we really less than our God? Are we not gods ourselves?
Another way of reading the Circular Ruins: as a metaphor for freedom. We think we’re free and autonomous and acting based on our own free will. But what if the history of the universe has already been traced by the precise laws of physics, and we are just a simulacron, an automaton who behaves according to the grand design? Are we still free, then? Are we still human, or are we no more than a pile of atoms? (I offered a possible solution to this problem in an old topic about Free Will, in the Philosopher’s Cloud).
Yet another reading, just to give you the taste of Borges’ endless possibilities: the idea of dream can be expanded into the notion of “imagination” as a whole. I bring you then a problem which is similar to the first one (and depending on how you face it, equivalent). What we imagine, collectively or subconsciously, has a life of their own. Are those figments, those dreams and character — are the fictions of Borges really just fictions, shadows, or are they real? Are we, as personas, not precisely just as real as a figment of our own imagination? Where is reality’s limit? Where does reality stop and fiction begins?
These are just a couple of interpretations of the Circular Ruins. That story is serious food for thought.[/spoiler]
I have read the first chapter of Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and I’m already confused on whats happening. Its like he thinks we already know whats happening and we don’t. It seems it just dropped into a middle of a story.
I’ve just finished the book. In my edition, The South wasn’t included.
It’s even better written than I remembered. What a style! No doubt Borges is one of the very best writers of the XXth century. But I really don’t know what I could say about all this.
What don’t you understand? 
(Use spoiler tags if you need to ).
Aww, that’s a shame, it’s a great story. I love the way it becomes something completely unexpected and then renders into a big great wow. Your book is probably based in the first edition of Ficciones, then? “El Sur”, together with “La Secta del Fénix” and “El fin” were only introduced in a later edition. (My own edition, bought in a porteño newspaper booth, includes those three stories, but not Al-Mu’tasim).
It probably gets better as you grow older. I realise there’s a lot about those stories that I’ll only understand — or even acknowledge — at a later time.
Well, I don’t know. There’s actually a couple of things I’d like to discuss about Borges and which I never could, due to lack of interlocutor. For instance,
[color=#663366]“La lotería en Babilonia” spoiler below.[/color]
[spoiler]After reading the story a couple of times, a little phrase started to stand out to me… Wait, let me google the quotes in English.
[center]…Here we go. [/center]
Up to that point, I had been reading this story as I usually read Borges: letting the imagery blend into my life and give me that spooky feeling. But when I read this and realised what it meant, I started seeing the story under a whole new perspective: in effect, the narrator could be lying the whole thing, or important bits of it. The blurry lines of a story within the story became visible, but only barely so, to me.
Since then, the narrator of the la Lotería would fascinate me. I never actually sat down to analyze the story rigorously and apply theories to it. I’m sure a rhetorical reading of the text (something along the lines of what Reboul teaches), or an archetypal critical reading of it according to Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, or perhaps even a simple analysis of the narrator based on Norman Friedman’s ideas, would help me understand this underlying story. But I can’t be bothered transforming a great author in homework material.
On the other hand, I have never had the opportunity to discuss this narrator with anyone, and in that sense I’d really like to be able to discuss it now. While browsing a (mostly) Brazilian blog’s archive, I found a bunch of posts in what can be described as a blogging circle concerning Borges. There was one dedicated to “la Lotería”, and to no surprise, it had a couple of comments concerning the narrator. It was pointed out that not only does the narrator say he’s lied, he also begins the narrative stating: “[Concerning the Lottery’s] mighty purposes I know as much as a man untutored in astrology might know about the moon”. More: the narrator also hints at being a fugitive.
Reading those comments made me want to discuss this even more. What the hell is going on behind that story. If you think of it without the narrator, that is, just taking in consideration the “lottery” metaphor, it’s already darn meaningful, but when you start to think about him, whoa. It becomes an open ended detective story which I haven’t yet completely been able to comprehend, let alone figure out.
What do you think of it? Who is this narrator? What is the real story — what’s the truth, what are his lies, who is he running away from?[/spoiler]
Yes indeed. Curiously, “La Secta del Fénix” (not very good IMO) is included.
Too bad, it’s a wonderful story. I hadn’t read your comments about the Lottery in Babylon when I wrote my post, I’ll anwer your message later. 
(I don’t think there are really spoilers in the further lines. Now they may gravely endanger your own vision and understanding of Ficciones so that it’s certainly better to read them after having finished the book.)
If Bruno hadn’t asked me to, I wouldn’t have reread Borges. His pompous and quite latine style, his paradoxical and disenchanted way of thinking are too much contagious and, certainly too, too much recognizable when you hope to write something one day.
I’ll venture here two remarks which didn’t strike my mind when I’ve read Borges for the first time. Borges is without any doubt a master in the way of entangling tracks and making believe he had been influenced by philosophers he didn’t read, and never read writers which the most visibly acted upon his stories. Frank Kafka wrote a short story, quite a poem in prose - entitled The Messenger if I remember well - in which the messenger enters the Forbidden City in Beijing with an important message he will never be able to brought to the Emperor of China because, before he could enter the last golden portal which discovers the vast throne hall, he has to go through a previous portal, and through another portal through the last rampart, and another portal, and another rampart which protects the Son of Heaven from the common of mortals. In Ficciones, Kafka is never summoned, with the exception of The Lottery in Babylon - definitely a Kafka’s short story - in which his disfigured name adorns an urinal.
An incidental remark which most likely is no related to what was said above : Kafka was a Jew. Ficciones were written during the WWII. You possibly have noticed that jews are very present in the pages of Ficciones… but I prefer to immediatly stop here the godwinisation of Bruno’s thread and not to make observe that, in a paragraph in the Sect of the Phoenix, the word jews has been so obviously replaced afterwards by gypsies that inconsistencies remain in the development of the argument.
Idiotically pretending that Borges was antisemit is certainly not in my mind. As one of his specialities is writing from the point of view of a stubborn and pedantic narrator - like in Pierre Menard - it seems to me more logical to think that he’s just mocking the litterary publications of his epoch, when to look like interesting you would have to spread the word jew through your whole lines. In Tlön, Borges says: “ten years ago, any symmetry that may have the semblance of an order - dialectical materialism, antisemitism, nazism - was sufficient to entrance the minds of men.” And here comes my second remark :
Forgetting Ficciones were written during the WWII - I already said it - sounds like unforgiveable : the dates (perhaps true, most often false) are written at the end of each short story. Apart from Jews, three other themes cross this Borges’ work : cowardice, relativity - and eventually inanity - of human thought, justification of his own life. Tlön (circa 1940) describes a new and absurd idealism overwelming the world - at the same times when ideologies like stalinism and nazism were spreading, it was more often illustrated in fantastic litterature by UFO invasions. Those ideologies are overtly cited in the lines of Tlön. Tlön is the first story of the book.
So - in my opinion - Ficciones are war litterature. As war litterature, everybody would notice it’s not very committed. In The Secret Miracle (1943), the destiny of Jaromir Hladik (a jew, a writer) takes a tragical turn just because his publisher exagerated, for marketing purposes, his reputation on a book he translated. What to write when you know that any handsomely presented ideology is “sufficient to entrance the minds of men”, that in those conditions your friends of today may become your enemies of tomorrow, and you don’t want your life to quickly turn to tragedy because of war times ? You can justify your life - you know some other people are sacrifying theirs - you can justify your noticeable uncommitment by discussing the inanity of reason - a specialization of madness. You perfectly know that your justifications are as foolish and unfounded as the absurd ideologies which are killing millions of people. You can flee in a labyrinth of numerous misty theories refuting numerous misty theories. You can write stories about cowardice. You can write Ficciones.
[Edit: I corrected a mistake: a passage I cited by memory was not in The Death and The Compass but The Sect of the Phoenix. 
]
Reply to Bruno about the Lottery in Babylon:
SPOILER - Click to view
I can’t help seeing this short story as an allegory. Of what, I don’t know: human condition, God, governement? By the way, is it really important? Doesn’t it just describe the feeling that human life is ruled by random powers and that humankind always searches a logical explanation in what hasn’t?
From the moment Borges describes the life of Babylonians as governed by haphazardness and error, it’s sounds like “logical” that the narrator also precises that his description of the Lottery may be as arbitrary and untruthful as the Lottery itself. In true life, a man who says: “I lie” is a liar. In a perfectly logical world, it’s an impossibility.
The text is presented as written at the epoch of the Lottery. According to its content, if it had been written in Babylon, this description would be completely falsified. Or even impossible. It’s the reason why, in my opinion, it’s said to be have written outside of Babylon, far away from Babylon. You can only describe the chaos when you see it from the distance. It’s the required condition that makes this account vaguely believable, not just the tale of a mythomaniac - which wouldn’t be truly interesting, would it? Now the actual destiny of the narrator doesn’t really interest the author, quick indications about what is occuring just now are mainly put there as dramatic effects, I think.
First of all, I would just like to thank Bruno for recommending this book for this month’s reader’s circle. All controversy aside (ahem), I thought it was a really fascinating and stimulating read. I haven’t seen much discussion going on, so I 'm just gonna go ahead and go for it. I should mention that these are not necessarily spoilers (?) but just brief passages from the book and some of my thoughts about them. I have only posted passages from the 1st half of the book (or the first book, technically), so hopefully some of you are at least that far along. [spoiler]I have decided to pick a few quotes/passages from the stories that I found especially fascinating or interesting. Before I do, though, I should also mention that I read these stories more literally than I imagine the average reader would. I plan on going back and rereading this book at some point and trying to really interpret it more and find the parallels it had when read more open-mindedly. I have a ton of these but I think I will just start with a few to see if anyone else wants to chime in. In the Babylon Lottery Borges said, “…if the lottery is an intensification of chance, a periodic infusion of chaos into the cosmos, would it not be desirable for chance to intervene at all stages of the lottery and not merely in the drawing? Is it not ridiculous for chance to dictate the death of someone, while the circumstances of his death-- it’s silent reserve or publicity, the time limit of one hour or one century-- should remain immune to hazard?” I think that was such a clever way to describe how the universe works and how it just briefly hints at the interconnectedness of the entire universe. I think this is the same concept that was flushed into a 2 hour blockbuster movie known as the Butterfly Effect but also a deeper understanding of how random and chaotic the universe is. I also really like when he really gets to playing with the concept of time and possible futures and parallel futures as well. I like the idea of parallel futures because I feel that to me would be incontrovertible evidence of free will, of whom’s existence I am more and more weary by the day… He really played with these ideas and the concept in the Garden of the Forking Paths and I loved it. Another passage I really enjoyed was from The Approach To Al-Mu’Tasim, “He knows that the vile man conversing with him is incapable of this momentaneous decorum; from this fact he concludes that the other, for the moment, is the reflection of a friend, or of the friend of a friend. Rethinking the problem he arrives at a mysterious conviction: some place in the world there is a man from whom this clarity emanates; some place in the world there is a man who is this clarity.” I have long believed that when we meet new people we are also meeting a part of ourselves that is “unlocked” by this new person. So, by meeting as many new and interesting people as possible, I believe it is possible to meet and expose more of one’s self. This was a really cool way to look at this concept from a different point of view it made me realize that I have met many people in my life who posses this clarity. Were they the sole source of this clarity or was it just channeled through them from someone elsewhere? There’s some really fun brain candy in this book if one was to really explore deeper into some of the concepts and really let some of the other details just fall where they land. I will post some more comments and quotes some time in the next day or two hopefully because there really are a lot of great ones in there. And anyone else who read the book please feel free to speak up! In reaction or of independent thought- whatever![/spoiler]
Hahaha, I don’t like that one either!
You’re right. There’s a je ne sais quoi in Borges’ fiction that sticks. I dare say his books are dark magic: upon reading them, one seems to summon a cretain Borgean bug. Borgesbugs, like their close cousins the Kafkabugs, once summoned will hide behind the reader’s ears, and stay put, waiting for a situation in which to whisper doubt and discord into your life. It is very hard, once you’re infected by a Borgesbug, to avoid the Borgean way of thinking.
And in that sense, I’d very much like to have a look at his essays, at some point in my life, and whatever pieces of specialised criticism there are on that particular matter.
By all means, throw whatever hypothesis you come up with on the table, this is a topic to discuss, and any new idea is very welcome. You’re right— re-reding La Secta del Fénix, it was clear to me as well that the mention of gypsies was a late, lousy edition made to the manuscript.
Borges himself made a point at claiming he was most definitely not one.
…but I don’t think this is his intention — not to spread the word Jew thoughtlessly, but rather (I think) to spread that structuralist (if not downright pseudo-biological) racist inquiry on the behaviour of different groups of people. Using a group, a culture, an identity as an argument — if this is so natural to the {gypsies, jews}, why not to the secret sect as well?, he would claim — sounds downright racist to a modern listener, but was a bit more reasonable, easy on the ear to a mid 20th century Western intellectual. Borges seems to be mocking this kind of mindset throughout his book: rather than anti-semitism, any prejudice, against any minority, as exposed in many points regarding many different minority groups.
Firstly, a curiosity, why do you say most often the dates are false? As for your claim that Ficciones is a piece of war literature… I’ll agree with you that it is a clear aspect of it, but like you said yourself, it’s not the one Borges is the most commited to. Having lived through the first world war and writing those stories during the second, Borges spoke of the absurd of reality, and certainly war and prejudice play a big role in the absurd of reality — especially then.
But like you said, Hladík is chased and charged with death due to a merchant exaggeration of his writing, an unsuccessful marketing move. Capitalism, marketing, communism, fascism, war, prejudice, rationalism, relativism: everything Western seems to become a piece of unintentional humour to Borges’ eyes, and his stories share that big, grothesque joke with us through his stories.
I’m begging to disagree on a very small detail, but one which, in my opinion, matters: you, by identifying his effects as ironic (when not downright sarcastic) are lead to conclude that his fiction is war fiction. On the other hand, when I see his literary trickery not as ironic, but rather as humoristic, I’m lead to a perfectly opposite conclusion: Borges is, indeed, pointing out the absurd of reality, but not with opposition — rather, with resignation. The rhetoric of his text is that of pointing out an “unconvenient truth” leading the reader to prostration, to laugher. Like Kafka, and as opposed to, for instance, Dostoievski, Borges expresses pessimism, not resistence. So by reading him, the innocent reader (and, often, the not-as-innocent too) is lead to equal cynicism towards life, which is the perfect opposite of the resistence real war literature strives to achieve.
[spoiler]I see where you’re getting at, and I think you are right: it isn’t all that bold to claim, after all, that Borges is a late symbolist — Mallarmé would claim (you’ll probably recall my old forum signature) that “there must be enigma in poetry, and that’s the goal of literature—there aren’t any others: to evoke objects”. Hell, ain’t this kind of symbolic impressionism the very building block of Borges’ aesthetics?
I agree with you: his literature can be seen as some sort of extended metaphor, as some sort of extended symbol, at times, even. But you have to understand, this is the fourth or fifth time I read this book in the past year, and new forms of reading the same stories are bound to come up. I didn’t go much into a symbolic interpretation, really, rather I just put myself in the shoes of the narrator’s auditor: I pictured myself in a pub, listening to a half-stranger’s fantastic accounts of a land he is running away from — and listening to his constant claims of poor understanding and downright exaggeration of what he’s talking about.
I constructed this character, this passive character which is part of the story, and the very moment I put myself on their shoes, a new problem sprung from the text: the problem of the narrator. When you’re reading a Borges book, the form in which the story is told is often not as interesting as the ideas therein exposed. But this story has this form, and this form implies an auditor, and any audience implies an orator. I looked at the narrator, and instead of focusing on his words, I started seeing him for what he is. To me, a complete stranger filling me with fantastic humbug about a place he’s running away from. Doesn’t that set a completely different ground for reading that story? Doesn’t it give the story a completely new flavour?
What I’m thinking is, Borges’ fiction is outstanding because it always could be real. It’s not fantastic, but it’s also not realistic, we’re dwelling in the realms of strange and oneiric. If we take the Lottery of Babylon literally, hell, that’s a good reading to give it, and it’s sure guaranteed pleasure already. But then we forget that we live in a world where people sell their lives in online auctions with plans to leave their houses with the money from the auction, head to the airport and start over. Hell, couldn’t that man have been the narrator of the Lottery in Babylon? What’s there, in the text, to tell us more clearly about this narrator, about that man who left everything and ran away, that man who’s going to get on the ship and start over?.. What marks did he leave behind with his farewell speech, for us to understand his background and motivations?—[/spoiler]
I apologize. I’m suppose to keep this up, but I was caught by a couple of unexpected events and ended up not being as active as I had promised to.
[spoiler]Hahaha, the Lottery has definitely become the spotlight of this forum’s reading. This is interesting — this being a dreaming forum, and considering the kinds of things we discuss regularly here, I was sure the Circular Ruins would be a favourite, and yet it hasn’t been mentioned so far. Worth noting, also, that the Lottery is a recent favourite. By the time the book was published, the spotlight was on other stories that also haven’t gone as far as mentions here in this topic.
Saying the Lottery of Babylon is a metaphor for the workings of the universe is not as literal and shallow a reading as you have claimed it was. Two reasons: the first, that any argumentation in order to ground what you said, like the parallels you draw between that story and the Butterfly Effect (seriously — I would expect you to draw parallels with Donnie Darko, not the Butterfly Effect! ), demand a certain intelectual immersion into the story.
Second, more important but perhaps not nearly as obvious, because your simple statements are grounded on loads. On understatements, on ready-made value judgments (on social values, even). When you and I and many others pick the Lottery as a favourite nowadays — even though it wasn’t a favourite at the time of its publication — this means there is something in our thought which is consonant to this story, to what it symbolises. When you say this is the metaphor for the universe — and not “Tlön, Uqbar” as it was said back when the book was published — this means something has changed in our understanding (or rather, our perception) of the universe. Any selection, any shallow argumentation is interpretative: because Borges, with his abstract symbolism, is a distorted mirror which reflects whatever we already have in mind.
Think about that. [/spoiler]
I have to leave now, with an unfinished reply to Double o Darko. I’ll finish this when I get back.
Now you answered, I’ve to reveal that my critic of Borges’ work was second degree and mainly an example of what you call the Borgesbug. It means, not to believe a word from what you write, making as if all the human concepts even the most stupid ones were equal, prefering spectacular and paradoxical summaries cause true theories are too long to explain hence boring. “Every man, out of his domain of specialization, is credule”. I don’t remember in which short story of Ficciones Borges wrote this. That’s the very principle who is used by Borges when writing his stories.
First, Borges is a liar. Second, these dates are often related to the narrator time. In Pierre Menard, I suppose you won’t believe this work has been written in Nîmes. Then why should the associated date be right?
I think we agree on the principle. But what you call humour, I call it irony. I think Borges is doing a sort of disenchanted irony. We reach the same conclusion, “it is the perfect opposite of the resistence real war literature strives to achieve” cause his pessimism tends to resignation. Hence the only way of “justifying his life” is doing irony to say he disagree, but a subtle irony so that it’s not understood by the reader.
Now if the narrator was a mythomaniac, would he throw himself the doubt about his story? At the same time, Pline was writing incredible accounts about Cimmerians hunting the gryphyns which guard the gold mines. I’ve the feeling the story this traveller tells is far more rationalistic. Let’s imagine an evaded prisoner or fugitive in exile who earns his life by making believe he was a consul of a foreign land, due to its incredible customs. I’m unsure this trickster would feel the need to write his story just when sailing away. Moreover, as I said above, if he lied once, he may lie twice: why would we believe him when he says he leaves the country? And you talked about the auditor who may be important too. Who is supposed to receive this letter? Cause this story is not told in a pub.
You have to notice it’s just a point of view (for instance, one of the many and unconcerned points of view which could have been emitted by the “Tlönian sect”). Moreover this is a point of view of a man for who life would have lost any meaning and would just be a matter of randomness. I think an interesting paradox (yet just a paradox) is the moment when the Company realizes that randomness should be introduced in any subpart of any event, what suggests (and just suggests cause it’s not developped in the story) a questioning about what defines an event. It looks like a new version of the Achille and turtle paradox.
[title]Lottery in Babilon[/title]
[spoiler]Among the stories in this book, there are two rather amusing funny birds, and that would be “Tlön” and “Lottery”. Concerning the first, in order to avoid spoilers, lets just say it dissolves our linguistical barriers to free thought, by means of a thought experiment and exposed by that very language. A thought experiment in which what we perceive as pilars of real become pilars of language and the broader universe, Nietzsche’s abyss, smiles to you. (“In order to avoid spoilers”, I say, in spite Borgean fiction not being particularly teleologic for spoilers to even be an issue). As for “the Lottery”… What dogma does play around with? Destiny, one would argue: the Company as the allegorical opposite of maktub.
The imposition of random determination to the facts over which we have no control means: the imposition of free will, or at least of no exterior (divine) influence. Presto: a theory of the Company as an anti-god, as the antithesis of Divine Providence. But this is a rhetorical argument, that is, one ruled by the fundamental law of rhetoric: δισσοι λογοι. That is to say that for this given piece of doxa there is a corresponding piece of doxa beyond, a para-dox, which is equally as possible (if not downright equally as plausible) that can be also argued for. That is to say, it is at least equally as possible that the Company is a metaphor to destination. And here’s where “the Lottery” becomes really of interest.
And a weak argument for “the Lottery” as an allegory to destination is… precisely the Company. Its designations, unknown to the inhabitants of Babylon and irrationable (that is to say, ineffable), the figure of its agents, its secretive elite consolidate a figure of power, in which a seemingly random event might account for a greater purpose — for a Grand Design, so to speak. That might be the underlying reason for there to be dissidents in that seemingly democratic utopia: rather than being afraid of the thrilling risks there are to a obscenely random lifestyle, our narrator and his friend would be running away from Babylon because of something they’ve seen and understood. And indeed does the narrative hint at that possibility, in countless occasions.
But intermediate rhetorics teaches us a third way of looking at doxa. For whilst speeches (usually) take sides, literature (usually, ma non troppo) develop on paradoxes, and the reader will take sides. This is usually harmless, but when it comes to Borges it is universal truths we’re taking sides about, so it is interesting to look beyond. Once you have identified the underlying paradox there is to a given fiction, it no longer affects you like a distorted mirror, reflecting what you already expect to see — rather, it gives you insight at the non existence, in the Real World, of such paradox.
Determination: what does that mean, pragmatically? The Lottery, that is, random determination, means: free will. By analogy, destination, that is, intentional determination, means: lack of freedom. Modern men define themselves by their (sense of) freedom. There are fundamental aspects of life over which we have absolutely no control: you cannot choose whether you’ll be born a filthy-rich ivy-league Yank [size=100]WASP[/size] or a poor, scared, starved Palestinian condemned at birth to give continuation to the very loop which makes you poor and scared and starved. Unless both conditions are no longer determined by your place of birth, but rather by a secret, ever-changing universal lottery.
So the figure of determination not only represents lack of freedom, it also accounts — depending on its configuration — for freedom itself: the truly-random Lottery is the extreme crystalization to the concept of freedom. So destiny, the concept at play in this story, is only one side of the coin in the doxa of determination, and determination itself now represents the underlying form to the concept of freedom. You look at that form and you see a reflex of how the Universe works, citing the Butterfly Effect as a solid example of the real-life Lottery. But lets take a look at real life once again.
There is no solid foundation to claiming the existence of Universal Determination — whether or not it is random. We are determined by our place of birth to a certain number of possible lifes, out of which we can choose one or even a few (quoth Trainspotting: “choose a life…”). There is no solid evidence to destination, however; in fact, the single biggest struggle any form of Western religion faces is the fact that there is in fact evidence opposite to the existence of determination. Which leads us to paradoxes like that of Free Will.
Now if we plasmate “the Lottery in Babylon” into the real world, what we see is that it demonstrates, consistently, how the notion of “determination” itself is humbug. We are destined at times, randomly determined (therefore free) at others and yet neither some (I dare say, most) of the time. But if determination, the figure which gives form to the substance of freedom, is humbug, then freedom itself is humbug as well.
The problem with that is: like I said a couple of paragraphs above, modern men define themselves by their (sense of) freedom. (I make a stop here to point out that this analysis comes from a boy well-versed in rhetoric and whose ideology of choice is Anarchism, so I ask you to listen to everything I say with a grain of salt). If freedom is but a figment of our imagery, then we define ourselves by means of something unreal — if freedom does us the discourtesy of not existing for real, then life itself is undefined and, thus, meaningless. The concept this fiction toys with, in my humble opinion, is the Meaning of Life™. Which explains why it was rather overlooked by the time of its publication and yet moved so many readers many years later — us, now, in the Post-Modern world.
Go back to the story. Read the first paragraphs. Look at our narrator’s hand, lacking a finger, look at his background and all he has lived. Look at the inner workings of the Lottery, which he so throughoutly explains after claiming no certainty about his words, and before advising you not to trust his letters. What does that story represent, if not the most terrifying notion that life itself bears no meaning?
(Wow, that’s a lot of ideas I just pulled out of the hat, I… I think I could write a paper on that! Yay, thanks for the insight, Darko and Bas! I’ll run a preliminary version of that paper — if I get around to writing it — to you guys, in order to see if I have permission to quote and (mis)represent your views, ok? )[/spoiler]
But now I owe addressing as much of your post as I did before writing this one. I didn’t manage to move to the next quote.
Editor’s Note: Sorry it took me so long to post here… I just kept looking at this page everyday waiting for something magical to happen or something! Bruno- you know you can quote me and my simpleton ramblings without discretion at any point in time, for I have no shame or reservations about what other people think about me or my ideas. I am kicking myself for not seeing the connection to Donnie Darko instead of Butterfly Effect, as you did, but this is the beauty of communication. I think it’s funny that you expected the Circular Ruins to be more popular on this forum… so did I!!! I also found it funny but I do recall someone mentioning this story in an earlier post (or was that a dream? is this?). That was actually the first story that I read that made me feel like I might actually be able to make it through the book and even make some sense of it. There are more things about this book I would still like to discuss even though the month is over. Should we maybe start a “Borges, Continued” topic, or a “Ficciones, Cont’d.” topic or something? And while it is probably too late to have a successful one for April, Bruno, would you consider hosting a May Reader’s Circle. I know I would enjoy it, even if no one lese did! I will save my new discussions for either a new topic or a new post as this is one seems to be getting a trifle long!
Haha.
Ah well, I’ll poke Will to unsticky this topic, but it doesn’t need to get locked. We had our month, people read (or reread) the book, but past that month, we don’t magically forget what we read about — especially when it comes to Borges. Sure, lets keep it alive! 
As for the next moon — now that you have participated in one, you can actually host as well. Interested? 
I’ll always have a couple of suggestions in mind, what with being a student of Liberal Arts and all, but it would be nice to see someone else put a suggestion forward and host a book for a month. What do you say?
Lol, There are more things is the title of another short story by Borges (not in Ficciones), which is inspired by Lovecraft’s work.
The content of There are more things makes me think of Escher’s drawings, and I realise that there is something “escheresque” in Ficciones. It’s not the visual perspective which is distorted but we could say the temporal perspective, the causal perspective, etc. are. Like in Escher’s works there are infinite loops that bug the narrative scheme. The Library of Babel IS an Escher’s illustration in itself. The Circular Ruins have something fractal and from the story of one man we finally induce a story in which individuality is just a detail of an infinite background. In The Garden of Forkening Paths the relations between the two protagonists are not the same once the story of the Garden is told. The meaning of the act is different cause they are now two characters in the Garden. This is just some examples but I think we could find many other cases of this escherization of Borges’ litterature.
Curiously, Escher began to draw in this particular way around 1937, which is quite the date of the first stories in Ficciones. This is rather curious and perhaps Escher and Borges were just two visible details of a vaster plan whose recursive motives extend through time and space.
[size=75](This conclusion was just another painful effect of the terrible Borgesbug. )[/size]
I don’t really know what to debate or what not about the book. But I have to say I enjoyed it a lot 
Ok, sweet, that’s awesome that this topic is going to stay open, I plan to post some more interesting points I thought he made in the next day or so. I still really need some crutch people around that have read the book that can hopefully help me draw as much from this first run through it as I can. Basilu- very interesting parallel indeed! I went to google images and pulled up some Escher and sat and pondered the similarities for a little while. Then I though about how cool it would be to listen to Borges on audio tape and look at Escher drawings at the same time. Might have to do this is in Lucid Dream (although in that case, I would probably just have Borges read it to me). Petter- this isn’t necessarily a contest or a who’s right or wrong forum or anything- we are just discussing what stood out to out or how we interpereted some parts of the book we found interesting. Don’t let the highly intellectual nature of a few individuals in this topic discourage you, I’m not terribly bright myself and have still been engaged in some discussion (at least to the point that I am mentally capable). Bruno- do you really think think that I am a suitable host for May’s Reader’s Circle? I would love to host May (which is my birth month) but I feel that people might get less out of it with a less distinguished host such as myself. However, I think if you help me here and there, I just might be able to pull it off. Yes, I would definitely need some recommendations on material, especially cause I’m a stupid American who doesn’t really know as many books printed and/or translated into other languages than English as I should. If you think I can do it and not totally kill the momentum the Reader’s Circle has built up this past month I am totally up to the challenge!
Dude, chill, you’re fine— you’re just fine!
Oh, by all means nor do I. I only managed to pull that off thanks to our most valuable friend, Wikipedia. (And, yeah sure, a very very very limited knowledge of Norwegian — but you can do better than that and just go to chat and ask for help).
