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Mar. 31st, 2010 02:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionThough some of these are presumably just repetitions--like Tlön, Babylon and Ruins all apparently involving noplaces between Asia Minor and Iraq. Borges always preferred his noplaces there or, Kafka-style, China, though "The Immortal" is set in Northern Africa I think.
Paradise is of course the original Middle Eastern noplace. Huh, just occurred to me for the first time why the Library of Babel might be called that: language itself is both the doomed, hubristic attempt to overgo God and its punishment, at least in its present form as a phenomenon relying on variation. Scattered bits and scraps of meaning, enough to promise the lost, unified plenitude and drive us mad for it. No hint there about why we were punished, unlike in Genesis, but then if the whole world is "the communication of a lesser god to a demon" (Tlön, I think?), that's not for us to interpret.
Paradise is of course the original Middle Eastern noplace. Huh, just occurred to me for the first time why the Library of Babel might be called that: language itself is both the doomed, hubristic attempt to overgo God and its punishment, at least in its present form as a phenomenon relying on variation. Scattered bits and scraps of meaning, enough to promise the lost, unified plenitude and drive us mad for it. No hint there about why we were punished, unlike in Genesis, but then if the whole world is "the communication of a lesser god to a demon" (Tlön, I think?), that's not for us to interpret.
