(no subject)

[proximoception]

Wasn't looking for them there, but found a couple exegetical hints like that Goethe one in Borges' An Introduction to English Literature.

1st: In [Browne's] greatest work, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, the subject is a mere pretext for learned and lengthy disquisitions on music in which what he says is far less important than what he implies.

Borges ends "Uqbar" with a bizarre, seemingly non-sequitur ad for Urn Burial. After the discovery of the whole encyclopedia has unleashed a fad-chaos of absurd Idealisms into the world--during the peak years of a never mentioned WWII--the Borges of the story washes his hands of all of it:

Then English, French, and mere Spanish will disappear from this planet. Our world will be Tlon. All this means nothing to me; here in the quiet of the Hotel Adrogue I spend my days polishing a tentative translation in Quevedo's style - which I do not propose to publish - of Sir Thomas Browne's Urne-Buriall.

A hint, then, that what is implied is the main thing in this story also? Things as they are are ignored by Uqbarren systems, for which everything must stem from us--including other people, so everything must logically exfoliate from Me. I read the story as veiledly criticizing fascism, the fascistic versions of communism, and the theology-descended continental philosophy that they squinted themselves into existence out of. And maybe the hubris of those philosophers in the first place, however innocent they were of intention that blood be shed--they forgave themselves some corner-cuttings, becoming the precedent for all kinds of self-flattering indulgences of belief. I'd like it to directly attack religion, too, but I'm not the least bit sure it does. I suppose most Argentinian Nazi-sympathizers were Catholic, though? Or am I missing something more deeply implied.

2nd: Blake "speaks to us of 'a region of interwoven labyrinths'". This sounds close to what I noticed about "The Library of Babel," that it could be two (or more?) infinite labyrinths woven together.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

For the record, I'll read anything you write on Borges.

"When I was a young man, I played the sedulous ape to Sir Thomas Browne. I tried to do so in Spanish. Then Bioy-Casares and I translated the last chapter of Urn Burial into seventeenth-century Spanish - Quevedo. And it went quite well in seventeenth century Spanish..."

Poe uses a quote from Browne as the epigraph to "Murders in the Rue Morgue," a story in which (spoilers!) an ape kills some people. Several witnesses in that story think the noises the ape makes are some foreign tongue, but none can translate it - since it's not human speech. One major theme of Urn Buriall is the difficulty of translating - not language but meaning - from the past to the present. I'm pretty sure Irwin goes into this in deep detail in his Borges book. These fellows are all chummy.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

That's great! That there are translations that seem to work is one of the more effective arguments against the solipsisms he's targeting--or anyway having fun with. Borges tended to see Quevedo and Browne as analogues of one another, on a style level: how we can be so like each other without being each other is a challenge reincarnation, pantheism, solipsism, most-any-isms all seem to dodge. When in doubt deny the self and/or the other, or estrange them infinitely by using terms like the self and/or the other.

Yeah, Borges must have gotten to De Quincey and Browne through Poe. Poe always finds ways to make excuses for himself.