Jorge Luis Borges. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

{ "title": "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "summary": "", "body": "The discovery of Uqbar was facilitated by the combination of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The mirror, placed at the end of a corridor in a country house on the outskirts of Ramos-Mejía, seemed to emanate an unsettling glow. The encyclopedia in question was The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), a literal but belated reprint of the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica. This event occurred around five years ago. On that particular evening, I had dinner with Bioy Casares, and we engaged in a discussion about how to write a novel in the first person, where the narrator would omit or distort certain events, leading to contradictions that only a few readers could unravel. The mirror at the end of the corridor seemed to be watching us. Bioy Casares then recalled a statement by one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar: 'Mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of people.' I inquired about the source of this memorable phrase and was told it was printed in The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, in an article about Uqbar. We had a copy of this encyclopedia at home, which we had rented furnished. On the last pages of volume XXVI, we found an article about Uppsala; on the first pages of volume XXVII, an article about 'Ural-Altaic languages,' but not a single word about Uqbar. Bioy, slightly embarrassed, consulted the index volumes. He tried various possible transcriptions in vain: Uqbar, Uqbar, Ooqbar, Oukbar... Before leaving, he told me that Uqbar was likely a region in Iraq or Asia Minor. I nodded in agreement, feeling somewhat embarrassed. I suspected that this non-existent country and the nameless heresiarch were an improvised invention, which Bioy, out of modesty, wanted to justify his phrase. A fruitless examination of one of Justus Perthes' atlases reinforced my suspicions. The next day, Bioy called me from Buenos Aires. He said he had an article about Uqbar in front of him in volume XXVI of the Encyclopedia. The heresiarch's name was not mentioned, but there was a description of his teachings, formulated almost in the same words he had transmitted, although perhaps less successful from a literary point of view. He said, 'Copulation and mirrors are abominable.' The Encyclopedia text read: 'For one of these Gnostics, the visible world was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism. Mirrors and procreation are hateful, for they multiply and disseminate existing things.' I sincerely expressed my desire to see this article. A few days later, Bioy brought it. This surprised me, as the detailed cartographic indexes of Ritter's 'Erdkunde' did not even hint at the name 'Uqbar.' The volume brought by Bioy was indeed volume XXVI of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia. The words on the spine and cover were the same (Tor - Ups), but instead of 917 pages, it had 921. It was on these additional four pages that the article about Uqbar appeared, not provided for (as the reader surely understood) by the table of contents. Subsequently, we established that there were no other differences between the volumes. Both (as I have perhaps already mentioned) are a reprint of the tenth volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Bioy acquired his copy at an auction. We carefully read the article. The phrase mentioned by Bioy was perhaps the only thing that struck us. Everything else seemed very credible, was in the style of this edition, and (naturally) somewhat dull. Upon re-reading, we discovered a substantial uncertainty behind this strictness of style. Of the fourteen names mentioned in the geographical part, we found only three - Khorasan, Armenia, Erzurum - somewhat ambiguously included in the text. Of historical names, only one: the deceiver and magician Smerdis, mentioned rather in a metaphorical sense. The article seemed to indicate the borders of Uqbar, but the reference points were unknown - rivers, craters, and mountain ranges of this region. For example, we read that on the southern border lies the lowland of Tsai-Haldun and the delta of the Aksa River, and that on the islands of this delta, wild horses live. This was on page 918. From the historical section (page 920), we learned that due to religious persecution in the thirteenth century, believers hid on the islands, where their obelisks still exist, and their stone mirrors are often found. The 'Language and Literature' section was short. One thing caught attention: it stated that Uqbar's literature had a fantastic character and that their epics and legends never reflected reality but described imaginary countries, Mlechnas and Tlön... The bibliography listed four books, which we have not found so far, although the third of them - Silas Heyzlem, 'History of the Land Called Uqbar,' 1874 - is listed in the catalogues of Bernard Quaritch's bookstore. The first on the list, 'Lesbare und lesenwerthe Bemerkungen über das Land Ugbar in Klein Asien,' dated 1641, was written by Johann Valentin Andreae. This fact is not without interest: several years later, I unexpectedly came across this name in De Quincey ('Writings,' volume thirteen) and learned that it belonged to a German theologian who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, described a fictional Rosicrucian community - later founded by others following the pattern created by his imagination. That same evening, we went to the National Library. We vainly searched through atlases, catalogues, and annuals of geographical societies, travelers' and historians' memoirs - no one had ever been to Uqbar. In the general index of Bioy's encyclopedia, this name was also not mentioned. The next day, Carlos Mastronardi (whom I told about this story) spotted the black, gilded spines of the 'Anglo-American Cyclopaedia' in a used bookstore on Corrientes and Talcahuano. He entered the store and asked for volume XXVI. Of course, there was no Uqbar. A weak, increasingly fading memory of Herbert Ashe, an engineer serving on the Southern Railway, still lingers in the hotel in Adrogué, among the lush honeysuckle and the supposed depth of the mirrors. During his lifetime, like many Englishmen, he led an almost ghostly existence; after death, he was no longer even a ghost. He was tall, thin, with a rare rectangular, once red beard, and, as I understand, a childless widower. Every few years, he would travel to England to see (judging by the photographs he showed us) sundials and a group of oak trees. My father befriended him (perhaps too strong a word), and their friendship was quite English - one that began with a refusal of confidential confessions and soon dispensed with dialogue. They exchanged books and newspapers, often played chess, but silently... I remember him in the hotel corridor, with a mathematical book in hand, gazing at the unique colors of the sky. One evening, we talked about the duodecimal system (in which twelve is denoted by 10). Ashe said he was working on recalculating some duodecimal tables into sexagesimal ones (in which sixty is denoted by 10). He added that he had been commissioned by a Norwegian in Rio Grande do Sul. For eight years we knew him, and he never mentioned being in those places... We discussed pastoral life, 'gauchos,' the Brazilian etymology of the word 'gaucho,' which some old men in the east still pronounce as 'gaucho,' and - forgive me, God! - there was no more talk of duodecimal functions. In September 1937 (we were not in the hotel at that time), Herbert Ashe died from a ruptured aneurysm. A few days before his death, he received a sealed and stamped package from Brazil. This was a book in octavo. Ashe left it in the bar, where - many months later - I found it. I began to flip through it and suddenly felt a slight dizziness - I will not describe my astonishment, for it is not about my feelings but about Uqbar and Tlön and Orbis Tertius. As Islam teaches, on a certain night called the Night of Nights, the secret gates of heaven are flung open, and the water in pitchers becomes sweeter; had I seen these open gates, I would not have felt what I felt that evening. The book was in English, 1001 pages. On the yellow leather spine, I read a curious inscription that was repeated on the dust jacket: 'A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön, vol. XI. Hlaer to Jangr.' The year and place of publication were not specified. On the first page and on a sheet of cigarette paper covering one of the color tables, a blue oval was printed with the following inscription: 'Orbis Tertius.' Two years have passed since I discovered a brief description of the fictional country of Tlön in a pirated encyclopedia; now, chance has offered me something more valuable and laborious. Now, I held in my hands an extensive, systematically composed section with the entire history of a whole unknown planet, with its architecture and disputes, with the fears of its mythology and the sounds of its languages, with its rulers and seas, with its{ "title": "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "summary": "The article discusses the fictional world of Tlön, created by a secret society, and its gradual invasion into the real world.", "body": "Defenders of common sense initially limited themselves to refusing to believe in the plausibility of the anecdote. They argued that it was a verbal trick based on the unusual use of two neologisms, not fixed by custom and alien to strict logical reasoning, namely the verbs 'to find' and 'to lose', which imply the identity of the first nine coins and the subsequent ones. They recalled that every noun (man, coin, Thursday, Wednesday, rain) has only a metaphorical meaning. The cunning description 'slightly rusted due to the rain on Wednesday' was exposed, where it is assumed what needs to be proven: the continuity of the existence of four coins between Tuesday and Thursday. It was explained that one thing is 'likeness' and another is 'identity', and a reductio ad absurdum or hypothetical case was formulated, when nine people experience severe pain for nine consecutive nights. Is it not absurd, they asked, to assume that this pain is always the same? They said that the heresiarch had only one incentive - the blasphemous intention to attribute the divine category of 'being' to ordinary coins - and that he either denies multiplicity or acknowledges it. The argument was brought: if likeness implies identity, it would also be necessary to assume that nine coins are one and only one coin. These refutations were not the last, however. A hundred years after the problem was formulated, a thinker, no less brilliant than the heresiarch, but belonging to the orthodox tradition, expressed an extremely bold hypothesis. In his successful assumption, it is stated that there is a single subject, that this indivisible subject is each of the beings of the universe, and that all of them are organs or masks of the deity. X is Y and Z. Z finds three coins, as he remembers that they were lost by X; X discovers two coins in the corridor, as he remembers that the rest have already been picked up. The Eleventh Tome shows that the complete victory of this idealistic pantheism was due to three main factors: the first - aversion to solipsism; the second - the possibility of preserving psychology as the basis of sciences; the third - the possibility of preserving the cult of gods. Schopenhauer (passionate and crystal-clear Schopenhauer) formulates a very close teaching in the first volume of 'Parerga und Paralipomena'. The geometry of Tlön consists of two slightly different disciplines: visual and tactile. The latter corresponds to our geometry and is considered subordinate to the first. The foundation of visual geometry is not a point, but a surface. This geometry does not know parallel lines and states that a person, moving, changes the surrounding forms. The basis of Tlön's arithmetic is the concept of infinite numbers. Particular importance is attached to the concepts of greater and lesser, which are denoted by our mathematicians using > and <. The mathematicians of Tlön assert that the process of counting itself changes the quantity and transforms it from indefinite to definite. The fact that several individuals, counting the same quantity, come to the same result, is an example of association of ideas or good memory exercise for psychologists. We already know that in Tlön the object of knowledge is unique and eternal. In literary customs, the idea of a single object also reigns. The author is rarely indicated. There is no concept of 'plagiarism': it is taken for granted that all works are works of one author, timeless and anonymous. Criticism sometimes invents authors: two different works are chosen - for example, 'Tao Te Ching' and 'One Thousand and One Nights', attributed to one author, and then the psychology of this curious homme de lettres is conscientiously determined. Their books are also different from ours. Fiction develops a single plot with all conceivable permutations. Philosophical books invariably contain a thesis and antithesis, strictly observed 'pros' and 'cons' of any doctrine. A book that does not have its anticbook is considered unfinished. Many centuries of idealism did not fail to influence reality. In the most ancient regions of Tlön, cases of duplication of lost objects are common. Two people are looking for a pencil; the first finds it and says nothing; the second finds another pencil, no less real, but more corresponding to his expectations. These secondary objects are called 'hrönir', and they are somewhat less elegant, but more convenient. Even until recently, 'hrönir' were random offspring of absent-mindedness and forgetfulness. It is difficult to believe that the methodical creation of 'hrönir' has barely been around for a hundred years, but this is stated in the Eleventh Tome. The first attempts were unsuccessful. However, the modus operandi deserves mention. The commandant of one of the state prisons informed the prisoners that there were ancient burials in the old riverbed and promised freedom to those who found something valuable. A few months before the start of excavations, they were introduced to photographs of what they had to find. This first attempt showed that hope and greed could interfere: after a week of work with a shovel and pickaxe, no 'hrön' was found, except for a rusty wheel, from an era later than the time of the experiment. The experiment was kept secret and then repeated in four colleges. In three, there was a complete failure, and in the fourth (whose director suddenly died at the very beginning of the excavations), the students dug up or created a golden mask, an ancient sword, two or three clay amphorae, and a greenish, crippled torso of a king with an inscription on his chest, which could not be deciphered. Thus, the unsuitability of witnesses who know about the experimental nature of the search was revealed. Large-scale searches produce objects with contradictory properties; preference is now given to individual, even improvised excavations. The methodical development of 'hrönir' (stated in the Eleventh Tome) has provided archaeologists with an invaluable service: it allowed them to embellish and even change the past, which is now no less plastic and obedient than the future. A curious fact: in 'hrönir' of the second and third degree - that is, 'hrönir' derived from another 'hrön', and 'hrönir' derived from the 'hrön' of 'hrön' - there is an increase in distortions of the original 'hrön'; 'hrönir' of the fifth degree are almost similar to it; 'hrönir' of the ninth degree can be confused with the second; and in 'hrönir' of the eleventh degree, the purity of lines is observed, which is not found in the originals. The process here is periodic: in the 'hrön' of the twelfth degree, deterioration already begins. More surprising and pure in form than any 'hrön' is sometimes the 'ur' - an object produced by suggestion, an object extracted from nothingness by hope. The magnificent golden mask I mentioned is a striking example. Things in Tlön are duplicated, but they also tend to fade and lose details when people forget about them. A classic example is the threshold that existed as long as a certain beggar stepped on it, and disappeared from view when he died. It happened that some birds or a horse saved the ruins of an amphitheater from disappearing. In 1940, I published the above article in its original form, without abbreviations, except for several metaphors and a kind of jocular conclusion, which now sounds frivolous. So many events have occurred since then!.. I will limit myself to a brief list of them. In March 1941, a handwritten letter from Gunnar Erfjord was found in a book by Hinton belonging to Herbert Ash. The envelope had a postmark from Ouro Preto; the letter fully explained the mystery of Tlön. The beginning of this brilliant story was laid on a certain evening in the first half of the XVII century, either in Lucerne or London. A secret benevolent society was founded (among its members were Dalgarno and then George Berkeley) with the goal of inventing a country. The early program included 'hermetic studies', charity, and cabala. This early period includes a curious book by Andree. After several years of discussions and preliminary generalizations, the members of the society realized that one generation would not be enough to recreate a whole country. They decided that each member of the society should choose a pupil to continue the work. Such a 'hereditary' system proved effective: after two centuries of persecution, the brotherhood revived in America. In 1824, in Memphis (Tennessee), one of the participants started a conversation with the millionaire-ascetic Ezra Buckley. The latter, with some disdain, let him speak and mocked the modesty of their plan. Buckley said that it was absurd to invent a country in America and proposed inventing a planet. To this grandiose idea, he added a second, a product of his nihilism: it was necessary to keep the giant plan secret. At that time, twenty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were released; Buckley proposed creating a methodological encyclopedia of a fictional planet. Let them describe as much as they want the gold-bearing mountain ranges, navigable rivers, meadows with bulls and bison, Negroes, public houses, and dollars, but with one condition: 'This work will not enter into an alliance with the deceiver Jesus Christ'. Buckley did not believe in God, but wanted to prove to the non-existent God that mortal people were capable of creating a whole world. Buckley died of