Paramo 1

Rodrigo Paramo

Professor Hatfield

LIT 3382

22 September 2015

The Gossamer Nightmare:

Borges & Temporal Subjectivity

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

-Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths seems to have a vested interest in

providing multiple contradictory answers to the questions it itself raises. When faced with the

question of time in particular, Garden chooses to refuse interpellation, rendering its answers

largely illegible for those hoping to derive any prescriptive claim. These contradictions are

central to a reading of the text, whose prime argument is contingent on the impossibility of an

objective reading of time. For Borges (or more accurately, for Borges Tsun and Albert), time is

infinite (and linear), free will is omnipresent (and predestined), and the subject is always already

one of many multiplicities.

There are three places Borges notes the possibility of times infinite existence. Each one

prefigures an interpretation of the universe that sees all possible timelines co-exist. The first is

the text within the text Ts'ui Pens novel is an instantiation of Borges larger argument, an

illumination of multiple contradictory potentialities that exist simultaneously. After his exposure
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to the text, Dr. Tsun becomes aware of his own reality Tsun feels all about [him] and within

[his] obscure body an invisible, intangible pullulation. His awareness of these immaterial forces

is not expounded upon until immediately before Alberts death, when he witnesses an infinite

number of figures in Alberts garden. Representative of every potential timeline that he and

Albert could inhabit, this moment is the physical iteration of infinity and the only time Borges

comes close to an explicit affirmation of time as an unending concept. These three moments

highlight what a world of infinite time looks like, and implicitly begin to interact with the second

question Borges poses in this text that of free will.

Before moving into free will, its important to note that Borges work is difficult to read

in any singular manner. The meaning of his texts is difficult to derive objectively, as the number

of translations that his stories have undergone means there are multiple permutations of his work,

complicating the interpreters task. In many ways, this has no impact on those working to

understand Borges conception of time. It is consistently inconsistent throughout his canon,

meaning that even inconsistencies across different translations do not preclude an understanding

of Borges and time. Free will in Garden however, poses a very different problem, as different

translations lead to mutually exclusive interpretations of the story. Thus, his argument about free

will is impossible to derive by interpreting a singular iteration of Garden. Work to understand

Borges and free will necessitates the reading of multiple versions of the story; here this will

mean Borgess original, Andrew Hurleys translation, and Donald A. Yates translation.

The bulk of Gardens narrative follows Dr. Tsun, which makes the opening paragraphs

inclusion perplexing. It is difficult to discern any thematic meaning from Borges discussion of

Liddell Hart until one notices the discussion of dates. Harts report that the attack was slated for

the 26th, delayed by rain, and did not occur until the 29th complicates the value of Tsuns mission
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and raises an important question about the narrative of the story. If the attack that drives the story

was an English bombing of a German town, then Tsuns warning is valuable because of the

delay it gave the German Leader enough time to take precautions against the attack. If

however, the attack was a German bombardment of an English town, then Tsuns mission can be

understood as largely irrelevant the attack was pre-destined and although Tsun would like to

claim agency/responsibility for his role in communicating with the Leader, this agency would be

misplaced.

Resolving this issue requires an analysis of Tsuns reflections after killing Albert one

line in particular sheds light on who was leading the attack. Andrew Hurleys 1999 translation

finds Tsun recounting

I have most abhorrently triumphed: I have communicated to Berlin the secret

name of the city to be attacked. Yesterday it was bombed (127).

Hurley emphasizes Tsuns communication, but does little to clarify who is carrying out

the attack. This ambiguity has allowed for Hurleys text to be read as Tsun warning Berlin of an

impending attack. This is confusing given the towns name is Albert, a decidedly English

name, but highlights why ambiguity is so problematic in text that is begging to be interpreted.

Exploring previous permutations of Borges work leads one to Donald A. Yates 1964

translation, which rids itself of Hurleys ambiguity and resolves the question of who led the

attack much more clearly:

I have won out abominably; I have communicated to Berlin the secret name of
the city they must attack. They bombed it yesterday (29).

Yates concludes clearly in the opposite direction of Hurleys readers, an incongruence

that does little to help clarify Borges original intent. To ascertain Borges purpose here thus
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requires a return to the original text: 1941s El jardn de senderos que se bifurcan. In his

original short story, Borges writes:

Abominablemente he vencido: he comunicado a Berln el secreto nombre de la

ciudad que deben atacar. Ayer la bombardearon.

Comparing this to Hurley and Yates poses some problems due to the language barrier, which

requires a literal translation of Borges to be compared to the original two excerpts. Translating

Borges brings one to this final iteration of the line:

Abominably, I have succeeded: I have communicated to Berlin the secret name

of the city that they should attack. Yesterday they bombed it.

This literal reading of the text lends credence to the claim that Albert was selected to

subtly convey the English location of the town, and confirms that Tsuns mission was to

communicate a location to be bombed. To understand the significance of this revelation, Tsuns

murder of Albert must be related to the attack along the Sierre-Montabaun line that Hart

describes at the beginning of the story. Borges original text makes this much clear: first, the

original battle on the Sierre-Montabaun line was an English attack against German fortifications,

second, Tsun communicated Albert as the name of an English city to be attacked so as to take

out the English divisions and artillery assigned to the first attack, and third (and most

importantly), the German attack on the English artillery did little to prevent the first attack it

continued as planned, the delay a result of the weather and not of Tsuns actions. The effects of

pre-destination as a general principle here preclude the existence of free will in any singular

timeline the inevitability of the British attack, which Tsuns message did nothing to delay,

serves as proof of this. In fact, this under current of predestination is present in the story from its

beginning: Tsun describes an invisible force directing him to go through his pockets, and tells

himself to understand himself as already having succeeded at his task. This self-deception on his
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part works to reinforce the idea that infinite time requires events to occur concurrently,

necessitating an understanding of free will that views it as fundamentally incoherent with

contemporary conceptions of human agency.

Understanding the narrative in this linear fashion confirms that Borges claim about time

directly impacts his understanding of free will; infinite timelines mean that free will is illusory.

Although in any given timeline, the subject following that path will believe that they have made

an autonomous choice, the concurrent existence of every possible choice removes the possibility

for the existence of free will in the first place.

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Works Cited

Borges, Jorge Luis. El jardn de senderos que se bifurcan. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1941. Print.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Garden of Forking Paths. Trans. Donald A. Yates. Labyrinths:

Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York:

New Editions, 1964. pp. 19-29. Print.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Garden of Forking Paths. Trans. Andrew Hurley. Collected Fictions.

New York: Penguin, 1999. pp. 119-128. Print.

Eliot, T.S. "Four Quartets." David Gorman. June 2000. Web. Sept. 17, 2015.

www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/index.htm