Below is an essay draft for the following question. Write a peer review and comment for the draft
What does Borges in his short story, “The Book of Sand,” want us to understand is his view of the nature of the universe?
The short story “The Book of Sand) (page 445) is from the book “Other voices, other vistas: short stories from Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America” by Solomon, Barbara H.
HINT: The universe is not, for Borges, a god-created, God-given world that reveals eternal meaning through a “holy book,” where we are recipients of meaning. Rather Borges’s universe requires that we, in an active way, because we want meaning, read our page, if we can find it, in the book of infinite pages we inhabit. The “Library of Babel” suggests that the universe is an infinite library of books each of which contains orthographic symbols (letters of an alphabet, for example) that we use to make meaningful human statements. We have to learn our alphabet so that what we finally say in language is meaningful. Link for book:
https://archive.org/details/othervoicesother00vari/page/444/mode/1up
Draft:
Both, in The Book of Sands and The Library of Babel by Luis Borges, people can see different interpretations of a mystic realm. I believe Borges interprets infinity in different ways to depict a perfect description of a place with no end nor beginning, therefore inclining towards an infinite linear cycling type model. Borges uses a lot of repetition in the word “infinite” to describe the complexity of perfection by using geometrical illustration of space, time and repetition.
We can see in The Library of Babel, that Borges description of a hexagonal shapewise infinite and repeated library, contains books, shelves, shafts, staircases, and bulbs. The description Borges uses to depict a room blooms the idea of a photographic memory to bring alive the idea of “perfection”. This imagination illuminates the path to a mystic realm since Borges correlates space and time together by using mathematical concepts, such as geometry to correlate it with an infinite equal space which therefore creates a cycling linear model. By entering this realm, one leads up to equal patterns in each of the same hexagonal rooms, however, the clock will still go forward which indicates that time is not circular but linear. It is all about repetition of patterns that Borges uses as an abstract technique of writing to revitalize this imagery of a mathematical, perfect, cyclic time model inside a fictional realm but also with a little of reality.
Furthermore, in The Book of Sands, Again the complexity of infinity arises. But this time, Borges first begins a tale in first person narrating the roots and principles of geometry. He then goes with his tale, when a nordic man comes to sell a bible to him. He already had English copies of it so the man decides to offer another ancient book which is some sort of harijan. As the narrator couldn’t understand the language, he began to take a look at it. In this part, Borges begins again with this fictional realistic realm that emerges from the complexity of the absolute infinity. Apparently this book had no beginning nor end, it didn’t have a numerical order in which he has conflicted himself, as a matter of fact, he starts to call it “diabolical” to create a connotation to the religious idealism of evil. This henceforth has unaligned his idea of perfection. However, he continues to see that the pages kept on going infinitely to procreate his idealism of infinite and cyclical time. Finally, he is able to portray again this abstract technique to describe a mystical realm from a fictional realistic style.
In the end, the absolute and infinite perception of space correlates with the mystery of time. Readers look at the inconceivable chamber of perfect geometrical patterns that define a cyclical linear time of reality in which Luis Borges perceives as his mystical realm. Books have coexisted with humans as an extension of the body perceiving wisdom and alteration of thoughts, hence the author has shown in both the The Book of Sands and The Library of Babel as a way to illustrate the path to the mystic realm.
The post Below is an essay draft for the following question. Write a peer appeared first on PapersSpot.
