THE DEEP ONES: "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges

2papijoe
set. 11, 2022, 12:50 pm

Looking forward to covering one of my all time favorites. Will be reading in Collected Fictions

3papijoe
set. 14, 2022, 2:46 pm

The story starts with some pretty clear references to The Divine Comedy. Beatriz/Beatrice. Daneri/DANte AlighERI. In the original Spanish the words vana and vanidad keep cropping up and my Hurley translation sagely keeps the more obvious cognates rather than "futility" as I've seen in some translations. This to me suggests Ecclesiastes and King Solomon, who brings the Kabbalistic baggage with him.
One can reconcile the tension between the two traditions by considering the esotericism of The Divine Comedy(think of the vision of the Rose at the end of The Paradiso)
I bring all this up because I think Borges delivers, without any assistance of the Lovecraft tradition, a tale of truly cosmic horror. I propose that he does this by inverting the tradition of esotericism. Unlike the mystery cults and secret societies where the adept ascends, here as in the Lovecraftian tradition initiation leads to dread and microcosmic insignificance.
Another way to look at it: Instead of spiritualizing his unrequited and unconsummated love for Beatriz, as Dante did with Beatrice, the Aleph illuminates a vision of obscenity and decay.
The are also hints of Poe. There is an exoteric climax of horror when the narrator is convinced Daneri has lured him into the basement to murder him, in the vein of The Cask of Amontillado. Only then does he see the true cosmic horror.

4semdetenebre
Editat: set. 14, 2022, 4:26 pm

I was getting more than a few chuckles at narrator-Borges's scathing, dismissive swipes at Carlos Argentino's poetry and then was even more delighted to find the tables absolutely turned a bit later when the reality of the situation was revealed. The "capture" of the Aleph-images is quite a feat of description on the author's part and the brief explanation that they were actually seen simultaneously rather than successively is both necessary and gracefully done. Narrator-Borges's reeling reaction and quick descent into forgetfulness not long after is in the Lovecraftian mode, especially HPL's famous line "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

I liked this one very much, and am going to read the other tales in The Aleph and Other Stories. In his afterword to that volume, JLB notes that the H.G.Wells story "The Crystal Egg" was an influence. There might still be time to nominate it for the Fall schedule, if we haven't already discussed it.

5paradoxosalpha
set. 14, 2022, 6:01 pm

>4 semdetenebre: if we haven't already discussed it
I don't think we've ever treated a Wells story.

6papijoe
set. 14, 2022, 10:18 pm

>4 semdetenebre: The depiction of Daneri is a hilarious send up of the Italianate influence on the Argentines. There is a tradition in Latin American of jokes about the excessive self- satisfaction of Argentinos (“Why do Argentinos look up and smile when they see lightning? - Because they think God is taking their picture!”).
I was delighted to see the link in the notes to the Weird Studies episode on Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. It’s one of my favorite podcasts.

7AndreasJ
Editat: set. 15, 2022, 3:00 am

>1 semdetenebre:

That online audio link has to be wrong.

I read this story about ten years ago, but I'd forgotten the actual story almost completely, only recalling the Aleph itself and its baneful influence on Daneri's poetry. Which is a disturbing idea on its own - the price of omniscience is an inability to focus.

It may be pointed out that "Iskander Zu al-Karnayn, or Alexander Bicornis of Macedonia" is Alexander the Great. "Iskander" with variants is the form of his name in various Near Eastern languages, the initial "Al-" having been interpreted as the Arabic infinite article, and Zu al-Karnayn (modern standard transcription: "Dhu al-Qarnayn"; you also see variants like "Zulkarnain" etc.) is a Quranic figure usually identified with Alexander. The name means "He with two horns", of which "Bicornis" is the Latin equivalent. The name comes from Alexander having himself depicted with the horns of Ammon.

And a minor annoyance: The Swedish translation treats "aleph" as common gender, whereas my intuition is it should be neuter (like all the Latin and Greek letters). Unfortunately I can't find a dictionary that deigns to opine on the gender of Hebrew letters ...

8semdetenebre
Editat: set. 27, 2022, 10:59 am

>6 papijoe:

Thanks for the explanation! I still have to listen to the entire podcast.

>7 AndreasJ:

Now how'd that happen? I found a fine reading with a Brian Eno soundtrack to replace it with.

9housefulofpaper
set. 17, 2022, 7:05 pm

I discovered Borges some time in the 90s, around the same time as I read M R James' Collected Ghost stories. Their erudition in obscure subjects and "forgotten lore" was a big part of their appeal to me.

That said, I don't believe that I read this story until the Collected Fictions came out in 1999 (that's the UK publishing date). So I have only read the Andrew Hurley translation. I think the first time I read it I focused on the intellectual and mystical angles - eternity, infinity and so on being recurring preoccupation in Borges' writing.

This time, though, I was more aware of the human parts of the story - Borges' unrequited love, the social comedy of the Argentine literary scene, the trivial use to which the Aleph was put and the bathetic way in which it was destroyed. I did read it as more comedy that horror, this time, but maybe it will strike me differently the next time I read it.

I'm kicking myself for missing the allusions to The Divine Comedy!

10papijoe
set. 17, 2022, 11:24 pm

>9 housefulofpaper: It’s definitely the most personally poignant story I’ve read from Borges. For me this is the saddest line in all literature, and manages to be even more so in the original Spanish:
“Beatriz, Beatriz Elena, Beatriz Elena Viterbo, Beloved Beatriz, Beatriz lost forever, it’s me, it’s me, Borges.”