Reading a bio of Alan Turing : the Enigma (by Andrew Hodges). The guy who broke the Nazi code & invented your computer.
got me wonderin' about the likenesses between:
ring-structure
plot
symmetry/proportion
riddles
labyrinths, mazes
encryption (cipherment/decipherment)
the "abba" rhyme scheme
etc.
John Irwin wrote about (some of) this with great erudition (The Mystery to a Solution : Poe, Borges and the analytic detective story).
So did Alastair Fowler, in his books on number symbolism & structure in Renaissance poetry.
Showing posts with label Borges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Borges. Show all posts
2.23.2006
3.30.2004
AN UNFINISHED TALE BY BORGES*
O Domine, suavitas omnis dulcedinis
posuisti in libertate mea, ut sim, si
voluero mei ipsius.** – Nicolaus Cusanus
This tale depicts a young man named Borges,
terminally ill, slowly going blind, unable to
decide how to spend his last day. Should
he go outside before the sun goes down,
and lie in the sweet grass one more time,
and gaze up at clouds, passing slowly
across the face of the sky? Or should he
open the book he’s been meaning to read
(the green volume, waiting so patiently
there by his bed)? He begins to read.
The tale depicts a young man named
Borges, lying on his deathbed, unable to
decide whether to go outside, or continue
reading. Finally, the young man sets
aside his book, unfinished. The light is
going dim, golden. Trees are murmuring.
Soft air moves the curtains by the open
hospital window, next to his bed. Borges’
eyes are tired; he can no longer see... so
he shifts himself, slowly, aching, from bed
to wheelchair, forces the wheels to turn,
and rolls (wobbling, slowly) toward the door
* In the Spring 1943 issue of the Buenos Aires literary quarterly Jovanista,
a letter, purportedly written by J.L. Borges, signed “Julio Ciego”, referred
sarcastically to an unwritten (oral?) Borges parody, titled “An Unfinished
Tale by Borges,” performed one evening at the popular Café Manana by
the poet Ricardo Cesped.
** O Lord, the sweetness of all sweetness, you have given me freedom
to belong to myself, if I will.
11.17.2003
Finishing up John Irwin's splendid Mystery to a Solution. It occurred to me over the weekend that there's perhaps a certain blind spot in this study of blind spots.
Irwin investigates Borges' labyrinthine project of doubling/alternating Poe's trio of detective stories. Both writers reveal an intense fascination with the "reflexive" capacity of reflection - its tendency toward infinite regression/progression (the way a "complete" map located in a certain landscape would have to include an image of itself in that landscape). Irwin thematizes this aspect of reflection as inherent in the nature of self-consciousness : how we cannot "think" of ourselves without in some way splitting/doubling ourselves; how this binariness is incorporated in our physical structure (the 2 mirrored "halves" of the body); how the reflexiveness of art is epitomized by the mystery story, and can be traced back to, among other sources, Greek tragedy : ie., the double story of Oedipus - as the hero who proceeds from divining the Sphinx's riddle (the solution to which is "human being"), to becoming, due to the inherent blind spot of reflexivity, both the detective and the criminal he seeks.
Irwin shows how masterfully Poe incorporates reflexivity - the double-fold of "stories about themselves" - in "Purloined Letter" & "Murders in the Rue Morgue" - by (among a multitude of other means) reference to mathematics & the game of "even & odd". Just as the detective plays a guessing game with the criminal, the author plays a guessing game with the reader (a race between the reader & the detective to solve the mystery). Irwin traces how Poe elaborates "odd and even", "simple and odd", into an oscillation between the numbers 3 and 4, geometrized in a square "letter" folded once in half on the diagonal (thus a 4-cornered square becomes a 3-pointed triangle) : a diagonal which is an irrational number, a number which thematizes the incommensurability - the vertigo of infinity - in reflexivity itself. (David Foster Wallace has just published an enormous tome on Cantor's systematization of the infinite math involved here).
The sense one gathers from Irwin's presentation is of an art of infinite regression, ambiguity & recurrence, based on an irresolvable oscillation between self and other, even & odd, 1 and 2, 3 and 4 : an infinite which adds endless complexity and echo to every representation.
What occurred to me over the weekend, however, is that there is something missing from the math here. Something so simple, so obvious, so "hidden in plain sight" (like the purloined letter) - yet something which can't be left out of the cosmic literary design : ie. zero, nothingness.
The difference between zero and one, between nothingness and something, trumps the difference between 1 & 2. The difference between nothing and something is greater than the difference between a thing and its image.
Strangely, it's on this most basic difference that identity - self-identity - finds its ground. & one might say that the deepest verbal "reflection" - the Bible, the Book of Genesis - is grounded on this difference : both in terms of the question of creation from nothing, and in terms of the prohibitions against graven images.
One might also extrapolate a theory of Incarnation on this same basis. The doubleness of human being in a sense contains both "fallenness/salvation" since being made "an image of God" is inherently contradictory. How can you have an image of the imageless? You can, if human being is inherently both fallen (a "mere image") and redeemed (an integral, unknowable, unimaginable self-like-god, a "one"-where-there-was-nothing).
Thus the self can be understood as integral rather than "simply" split & doubled : but only on the ground of unknowable creation-from-nothing, and only in relation to an "imageless", unknowable numero uno.
[p.s. addendum : I guess I'm being somewhat contradictory myself in closing sentences here, re the doubleness/integral(?) character of the self. What I'm trying to say is that the mind/body problem, or the doubleness of fallenness/salvation, or the mirror-like bilateral symmetry of the body - all this "doubleness" is resolved or trumped by the notion of creation-from-nothing. In other words, again, the difference between zero and one is greater than the difference between 1 and 2 or self and other. I see I have doubled a previous statement here (I see I have doubled a previous statement here).]
Irwin investigates Borges' labyrinthine project of doubling/alternating Poe's trio of detective stories. Both writers reveal an intense fascination with the "reflexive" capacity of reflection - its tendency toward infinite regression/progression (the way a "complete" map located in a certain landscape would have to include an image of itself in that landscape). Irwin thematizes this aspect of reflection as inherent in the nature of self-consciousness : how we cannot "think" of ourselves without in some way splitting/doubling ourselves; how this binariness is incorporated in our physical structure (the 2 mirrored "halves" of the body); how the reflexiveness of art is epitomized by the mystery story, and can be traced back to, among other sources, Greek tragedy : ie., the double story of Oedipus - as the hero who proceeds from divining the Sphinx's riddle (the solution to which is "human being"), to becoming, due to the inherent blind spot of reflexivity, both the detective and the criminal he seeks.
Irwin shows how masterfully Poe incorporates reflexivity - the double-fold of "stories about themselves" - in "Purloined Letter" & "Murders in the Rue Morgue" - by (among a multitude of other means) reference to mathematics & the game of "even & odd". Just as the detective plays a guessing game with the criminal, the author plays a guessing game with the reader (a race between the reader & the detective to solve the mystery). Irwin traces how Poe elaborates "odd and even", "simple and odd", into an oscillation between the numbers 3 and 4, geometrized in a square "letter" folded once in half on the diagonal (thus a 4-cornered square becomes a 3-pointed triangle) : a diagonal which is an irrational number, a number which thematizes the incommensurability - the vertigo of infinity - in reflexivity itself. (David Foster Wallace has just published an enormous tome on Cantor's systematization of the infinite math involved here).
The sense one gathers from Irwin's presentation is of an art of infinite regression, ambiguity & recurrence, based on an irresolvable oscillation between self and other, even & odd, 1 and 2, 3 and 4 : an infinite which adds endless complexity and echo to every representation.
What occurred to me over the weekend, however, is that there is something missing from the math here. Something so simple, so obvious, so "hidden in plain sight" (like the purloined letter) - yet something which can't be left out of the cosmic literary design : ie. zero, nothingness.
The difference between zero and one, between nothingness and something, trumps the difference between 1 & 2. The difference between nothing and something is greater than the difference between a thing and its image.
Strangely, it's on this most basic difference that identity - self-identity - finds its ground. & one might say that the deepest verbal "reflection" - the Bible, the Book of Genesis - is grounded on this difference : both in terms of the question of creation from nothing, and in terms of the prohibitions against graven images.
One might also extrapolate a theory of Incarnation on this same basis. The doubleness of human being in a sense contains both "fallenness/salvation" since being made "an image of God" is inherently contradictory. How can you have an image of the imageless? You can, if human being is inherently both fallen (a "mere image") and redeemed (an integral, unknowable, unimaginable self-like-god, a "one"-where-there-was-nothing).
Thus the self can be understood as integral rather than "simply" split & doubled : but only on the ground of unknowable creation-from-nothing, and only in relation to an "imageless", unknowable numero uno.
[p.s. addendum : I guess I'm being somewhat contradictory myself in closing sentences here, re the doubleness/integral(?) character of the self. What I'm trying to say is that the mind/body problem, or the doubleness of fallenness/salvation, or the mirror-like bilateral symmetry of the body - all this "doubleness" is resolved or trumped by the notion of creation-from-nothing. In other words, again, the difference between zero and one is greater than the difference between 1 and 2 or self and other. I see I have doubled a previous statement here (I see I have doubled a previous statement here).]
11.08.2003
late late Fri night (harvest moon) reading J. Irwin's great & marvelous book, Mystery to a Solution. . . about the function of the mirror labyrinth double axe design of nature (the two halves of the body & their disequilibria) & Jorge Luis Borges. . . has anyone noticed the Minotaurean-monstrous (a)symmetry of Borges' own name? I'm sure.
"The idea of a house built so that people could become lost in it is perhaps more unusual than that of a man with a bull's head, but both ideas go well together and the image of the labyrinth fits with the image of the Minotaur. It is equally fitting that in the center of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant." (Borges)
Irwin describes how Borges' ambition for a South American literary origin shaped his design, his ambivalence/attraction to Poe, a fellow "Southerner"/military/alien from the "North" - yet a Northern (American) rival. . .
the amazing thing is the finesse & subtlety with which Borges played these games. . . & Irwin's ability to discern them. . .
my own affinities (as a North-Easterner from old New England North Star State military family) despite these glories tend toward Walt Whitman and Abe Lincoln. . .
but No-body in Maliceville will notice.
"The idea of a house built so that people could become lost in it is perhaps more unusual than that of a man with a bull's head, but both ideas go well together and the image of the labyrinth fits with the image of the Minotaur. It is equally fitting that in the center of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant." (Borges)
Irwin describes how Borges' ambition for a South American literary origin shaped his design, his ambivalence/attraction to Poe, a fellow "Southerner"/military/alien from the "North" - yet a Northern (American) rival. . .
the amazing thing is the finesse & subtlety with which Borges played these games. . . & Irwin's ability to discern them. . .
my own affinities (as a North-Easterner from old New England North Star State military family) despite these glories tend toward Walt Whitman and Abe Lincoln. . .
but No-body in Maliceville will notice.
- some star - like the articulate
ghost of my fathers and of yours, who
could not speak in life, but in the owlish
afterlife - Ba, Ka, Crow, Lamb. . . tracked
upstream to Ethiopia, the truth of it -
manuscripted messenger, papyrus
Pappy or Osiris sire, Moses ripened
in the wilderness). Mountain oak-tree.
Cedar. Pitch-black tar (for
mordant). Bebi, General of the Asiatics.
Quick-runner, wasp. Pharaoh's taxi-
driver. He Who Controls The Rat-
God's Offspring. Latecomer,
fast-talker. Journalist for Delta
Crescent. Walker of the tiled
ink-paths, typesetter. Market-
rent-collector, solitaire, free-
speaker. Literal, exact, exacting
horsetrading slavestealing tax-
gathering figure of a reefer-
man, fearful, a-feared.
Goes down ghost-trails
under live-oak lairs
of rattlesnakes. . . adrift
in jagged eddies of nude alphabets.
Murmuring to himself, saliva-
white, spume-frothing blanched
avalanche easily frozen, baffled, back-
stabbed - easily beloved, won-over.
And adhesive through the crane bone
into the gravity waves (nacreous
mob of carnelian nouveaux
baubles all around the funereal
sunken canopy of maudit covenants,
rumors, glittering knives -
ressentiment scripted into feral runes).
- from July
11.07.2003
Coffeeshop, on break, reading John Irwin Mystery to a Solution, on differential mirroring of opposites in chess (Borges strategy of mirroring Poe detective stories). The room cleared out, only two customers left, facing each other, reading, making notes, not looking at each other: Henry & CD Wright. (As I type this my department supervisor says with a chuckle to her supervisor, "I know I'm just a pawn in the chess game.")
I found a postcard of an old photo (the last taken) of E.A. Poe, stuck inside the special edition Raven from Berlin. Now it presides over my cubicle (which I may be leaving soon).
As if on the wrong side of the mirror,
He yielded, solitary, to his rich
Fate of fabricating nightmares. Perhaps,
On the wrong side of death, solitary
And unyielding, he devises more
Magnificent and atrocious marvels still.
- Borges, "Edgar Allan Poe"
11.06.2003
The philosophical "paint-myself-into-a-corner" problem shows up in chess games all the time. The critic-polemicist enters the game as White Knight. Of course the ultimate checkmate is to tip over the board itself : but this is another form of one-upmanship. . . Ultimate Pacheesi. Prof. Hinkel, by by the way way, has written extensively (extenenenenensively. . .) about the cheese/chess oscillation conundrum. See his article in Amazing A-Mazes, "Cheddar Man in Petersburg : Prehistoric White Night?"
The player, too, is captive of caprice
(the sentence is Omar's) on another ground
crisscrossed with black nights and white days.
God moves the player, he, in turn, the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
of dust and time and dream and agonies?
- JL Borges, "Chess"
4.21.2003
"Picardy Third" : when a composition in a minor key ends with a shift to a major chord.
The minister yesterday talking about how the Gospel of Mark ends starkly with three women fleeing from the empty tomb, "for they were afraid." Later a more upbeat epilogue was tacked on, with the disciples meeting Jesus in Galilee (as the "young man in white" at the empty tomb predicts they would, earlier in Mark). Said this epilogue acts as a sort of "Picardy Third".
The earlier, very stark & abrupt ending (after the "young man" promises they'd find him in Galilee) sends the reader back to the beginning of that Gospel, to Jesus' origins in Galilee. So in a sense the sharpness of the ending is a literary maneuver, encouraging the reader to re-read : a "circular text" phenomenon.
As I was listening to the sermon I was reminded of John Irwin's Mystery to a Solution (a wonderful book), which discusses how Borges & Poe got around the problem of the ephemeral nature of mystery tales, ie. how do you get people to RE-read a tale that works somewhat mechanically to solve a puzzle? Why would a reader re-read a mystery if they already know the meaning of the "clues"? Very Borgesian, the idea of a circling text, endlessly re-read.
Was also thinking as he spoke of the article in Saturday NY Times by Edward Rothstein, about current interest among some theologians (including the new Archbishop of Canterbury) in the "productive ambiguity" of the resurrection texts. The Big Mystery : where's the Body? "Where the body lies, there the eagles (or vultures) will gather."
That the earliest gospel might work as a "circular" text would seem to be of special interest to writers. If the empty tomb scene is not one of triumphalism but of fear & trembling, & while sending the disciples back to a literal Galilee, sends the reader back to the beginning of the narrative, to a literary Galilee - this would seem to appeal to a certain sense that writers have, of the interpenetration of text & "life". That is, writers would find, or re-discover, the "Resurrected Life" particularly in the written record, the recounting, the news of that life's beginning actions.
But this sense of "re-reading" reality has consequences for our notions of time & history, immanence & transcendence. Eternity & transcendence & resurrection might interpenetrate time & mortality & history in a way analogous to the way we "read" reality in texts : as though everything is there, in front of us, but hidden, until we're able to "read" it right. Reading as perception (listening).
The minister yesterday talking about how the Gospel of Mark ends starkly with three women fleeing from the empty tomb, "for they were afraid." Later a more upbeat epilogue was tacked on, with the disciples meeting Jesus in Galilee (as the "young man in white" at the empty tomb predicts they would, earlier in Mark). Said this epilogue acts as a sort of "Picardy Third".
The earlier, very stark & abrupt ending (after the "young man" promises they'd find him in Galilee) sends the reader back to the beginning of that Gospel, to Jesus' origins in Galilee. So in a sense the sharpness of the ending is a literary maneuver, encouraging the reader to re-read : a "circular text" phenomenon.
As I was listening to the sermon I was reminded of John Irwin's Mystery to a Solution (a wonderful book), which discusses how Borges & Poe got around the problem of the ephemeral nature of mystery tales, ie. how do you get people to RE-read a tale that works somewhat mechanically to solve a puzzle? Why would a reader re-read a mystery if they already know the meaning of the "clues"? Very Borgesian, the idea of a circling text, endlessly re-read.
Was also thinking as he spoke of the article in Saturday NY Times by Edward Rothstein, about current interest among some theologians (including the new Archbishop of Canterbury) in the "productive ambiguity" of the resurrection texts. The Big Mystery : where's the Body? "Where the body lies, there the eagles (or vultures) will gather."
That the earliest gospel might work as a "circular" text would seem to be of special interest to writers. If the empty tomb scene is not one of triumphalism but of fear & trembling, & while sending the disciples back to a literal Galilee, sends the reader back to the beginning of the narrative, to a literary Galilee - this would seem to appeal to a certain sense that writers have, of the interpenetration of text & "life". That is, writers would find, or re-discover, the "Resurrected Life" particularly in the written record, the recounting, the news of that life's beginning actions.
But this sense of "re-reading" reality has consequences for our notions of time & history, immanence & transcendence. Eternity & transcendence & resurrection might interpenetrate time & mortality & history in a way analogous to the way we "read" reality in texts : as though everything is there, in front of us, but hidden, until we're able to "read" it right. Reading as perception (listening).
3.21.2003
The Kwinter paragraph (see below) sorta stopped me too, Jordan (post of today), though perhaps for different reasons. I mean it seems very schematic, would have to be fleshed out before I "get" it.
His description of the possible as a kind of diagram of the real - the traditional way we think of an idea or theory becoming a mirror of what we accept as reality - and the shortcomings of this idea : and how he opposes it to this more dynamic or unpredictable concept of how real things happen -
anyway I get the feeling this is an echo of old philosophical debates between immanence & immanentists versus transcendence & transcendentalists. . . Bergson's time-vitalism has had sort of a recurrent vogue for artists. . . for me time has to include both stillness & movement somehow, vitality, change - it's not one OR the other. . . but I will be curious to see how Kwinter develops all this.
John Irwin's book about Borges & Poe (Mystery to a Solution) comes to mind. When is a poem NOW but not simply a flash in the pan? According to Irwin, Poe & Borges figured out how to write mysteries we'd want to come back to and READ AGAIN (even though we already know the answer to the whodunit). Here's a question for poetics : what values sustain a poem in its own NOW??? & transport that now into different time-environments?
His description of the possible as a kind of diagram of the real - the traditional way we think of an idea or theory becoming a mirror of what we accept as reality - and the shortcomings of this idea : and how he opposes it to this more dynamic or unpredictable concept of how real things happen -
anyway I get the feeling this is an echo of old philosophical debates between immanence & immanentists versus transcendence & transcendentalists. . . Bergson's time-vitalism has had sort of a recurrent vogue for artists. . . for me time has to include both stillness & movement somehow, vitality, change - it's not one OR the other. . . but I will be curious to see how Kwinter develops all this.
John Irwin's book about Borges & Poe (Mystery to a Solution) comes to mind. When is a poem NOW but not simply a flash in the pan? According to Irwin, Poe & Borges figured out how to write mysteries we'd want to come back to and READ AGAIN (even though we already know the answer to the whodunit). Here's a question for poetics : what values sustain a poem in its own NOW??? & transport that now into different time-environments?
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