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[proximoception]

Another one: "House of Asterion" is Borges' rewrite of Kafka's Metamorphosis, the great masterpiece of self-pity.

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[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of that - fits the outside/sun/fate/death/Theseus connection. His 'house' is just an abyss through which something real passes. A much darker version of Eliot's sweller of a scene or two. And theology exposed as merely a one-sided game with fate, which is merely death. The irony of astrology being only astronomy, but with a fate readable in astronomy as well, from how things are, and 'influences' raining down on us from our awareness of that. Different personalities as different reactions to death? That path isn't followed here - he explored it pretty thoroughly in the first few Ficciones stories, among other places.

"Caliban Upon Setebos"! Kafka plus Browning - the most Borgesian of linkages.