Jorge Luis Borges

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PERPLEX CITY, SEASON ONE
The search for the Receda Cube on Earth


A PXC Guide to the Works and Ideas of Jorge Luis Borges

This is still a draft version, with many details and sections yet to be added/fleshed out. However, I thought it might be useful to some as it is, so here we go. Feel free to discuss, although the "discussion" page is probably easier to use and follow here. - scribe

Stories, ideas and characters elaborated by Jorge Luis Borges ("JLB" or just "Borges" from now on) seem to be somewhat central in PXC. As such, this page sets out to summarise some of these, explain some of the ideas, and investigate how they relate to the world of Perplex City. Hopefully, parts of this page will be directly useful (in looking up a particular name, for example), while others may be either somewhat abstract, or of unclear usage until later.

However it works out, I must raise my hand in advance, and profess a love for Borges' work even outside of a PXC context. Any method that raises an interest in his tales, whether applicable to the game or not, is in my book a successful one. As Madame Bianca says, "go out and expose yourself to a few new ideas this week".

The list will be presented as a kind of "glossary", with notions presented in various categories, and cross-referenced as much as possible. I've tried to extract useful points and notes into bullet-points, for "easy" access. Look below, it'll make sense.

Stories

I'll try to summarise each story a little, and include some context, and a link to the text on the web where required/possible...

The Library of Babel

Full text

Wikipedia entry

The first story encountered in the PXC timeline (AFAIK), and probably one of the best known. It describes a "universe" consisting entirely of books, which are arranged in shelves within an infinite (or near-infinite) arrangement of hexagonal galleries. The books supposedly contain every single permutation of the 25 characters used within them and, as such, contain everything possibly imaginable, in any language using those characters. Most books, therefore, are "meaningless" to the author, yet every now and then some sequence of characters (or, less so, some book) has "meaning".

  • See Library of Babel page.
  • The Combed Thunderclap, along with The Plaster Cramp and Axaxaxas mlö are 3 titles of books within the author's "domain" that make "sense".
  • Axaxaxas mlö is in the language of Southern Tlön, translating (probably/roughly) as "river moon". See the 'Language' section of #Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
  • Combed Thunderclap refers to the other 2 books, and their lack of authorship, in his/her message To Begin.
  • Theme: The meaning/subjectivity of language, and hence the "Babel" refered to in the title, obviously reference the Tower of Babel. In other words, how can we derive our own #Meaning from Chaos?

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Longer than #The Library of Babel, this story is perhaps of most interest to the world of Perplex City from a TIAG/TINAG viewpoint. The author describes a friend recalling an encyclopedia entry about the country of #Uqbar, but when they look it up, they can't find it. Checking the friend's copy, they discover a few pages with various information, including reference to an imaginary region called #Tlön which is central to #Uqbar's fictional literature. Further exploration reveals nothing about the place.

A while later, the author discovers a volume of an Encyclopaedia of Tlön, prompting the author to wonder about who wrote it, and to describe facets of #Tlön in various detail, including, language, philosophy, and geometry (see below).

A postscript to the story attempts to shed some light on the origins of #Tlön. The discovery of a letter by #Gunnar Erfjord reveals a "secret and benevolent society" that set out to create an imaginary land (in the form of an Encyclopaedia) - originally a country, but eventually a whole planet - in extraordinary detail, and completely hidden from public view. Such an effort would take many people in specialised fields, as well as across many generations. The first version of the encyclopaedia was to be the basis for a second, called #Orbis Tertius.

The story ends with the description of some of the "imaginary" objects from #Tlön appearing in the author's world, and the ever-increasing influence of #Tlön culture on the real world, to the point where foreseeably none of the old ways are left...

Language

  • The Southern hemisphere of #Tlön uses a different language to the Northern hemisphere.
    • The Southern language consists entirely of descriptive terms

Philosophy

Counting

Hrönir

Notes

  • Uqbar appears on pages 918-921, Volume XLVI of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917).
  • Uqbar may also be spelt Ukbar, Ucbar, Ooqbar, Ookbar, Oukbahr, etc... Does 'Ooqbar' bear any link to the land of 'Ooroo' in James Thurber's "The Wonderful O"?
  • Various names from Combed Thunderclap's message To Begin crop up in this story:
  • Orbis Tertius" is Latin for "third world", "third circle" (possibly orbit) or "third territory". I'd draw an obvious parallel here with the Third Power, although perhaps only in name rather than function.
  • Theme: The difference between reality and the imaginary, cemented through the use of hrönir and by placing a story within a story, follows the theme of #Simulacra and Simulation. Fortunately, I don't think we have to imagine the cube first, before we can find it...

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Naturally, Don Quixote was originally written not by Menard, but by Cervantes. In this story, JLB explores the seemingly-nonsensical idea that the context through which a book is written affects how it is read, even though the words in the book are identical. Hence, the fictitious Menard in the story sets out not to copy Cervantes, but to produce some words which coincide with the original work.

Menard supposedly decides against merely imitating/becoming Cervantes' life (i.e. by learning old Spanish, fighting the Turks, etc) and instead sets out to "recompose" the book from his own "point of view" (whilst retaining exactly the same words). Borges goes on to highlight the differences in reading, going so far to compare two passages - one from each book - that obviously look the same, but get interpreted differently.

  • Theme: The idea that the world created, that we read/see, is dependent on how it came to be, even if it may look identical to another. This is the theme of #Simulacra and Simulation that crops up a lot.

The Aleph

Full text

People

Johannes Valentinus Andreä

Gunnar Erfjord

Silas Haslam

Pierre Menard


Books and Works

These are books and works, mostly probably imagined up by Borges, that are referenced within his stories.

History of the Land Called Uqbar

Don Quixote


Relevant Themes

Meaning from Chaos

The idea that seemingly random strings of characters, pixels, colours, etc have, in fact, some meaning to them will resonate deeply with crytographers and puzzlers alike. Finding the meaning is what keeps most PXers up at night. And at day.

However, the meaning of this, hinted at by Combed_Thunderclap in his 5th Message is as yet unclear.

Simulacra and Simulation

What is real? What is created in the shape of the real? What happens when the creation replaces the reality?

ITAG? ITNAG? WIAG? WINAG?

Read some Baudrillard (and note the reference to Borges in the first line). Watch the Matrix.


Further Reading

  • Borges in Umberto Eco's Work: contains information about Borges' ideas - and figure - appearing in various Eco stories. Contains spoilers :)
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