estoy en la biblioteca de babel

[kleenexwoman]

We're doing Borges in Freed's class. Today, we discovered that everyone's copies of The Library of Babel and The Garden of Forking Paths are all translated slightly differently. None of us realized this until we'd all spent fifteen minutes arguing over whether Borges was suggesting that time was sentient or a figment of the imagination or both or neither.

drworm and I have been attempting to watch "Sapphire and Steel." We got through the first episode and have been watching bits of pieces of the second while doing other things. It's very strange and slow and low-budget and is kind of like watching a transcript of a dream someone had; there are some parts that make sense in a logical way, some parts that make sense in a magical/archetypical way, and some parts that would probably make sense if the viewer had information that they're not given. Strangely, the second episode that we've been half-watching already makes much more sense than the first episode we paid attention to. It's definitely not like anything else I've ever watched. ...Sammi said it reminded her of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

I desperately want to go to this, because it seems to offer an opportunity to party and drink heavily with middle-aged ladies who share at least one of my current major interests, and I've always had a better time drinking heavily with middle-aged ladies than I have with groups of people my own age. Perhaps another year.

Comments

[blueeye-jedi.livejournal.com]

So, we did some Borges in one of my classes where the Prof tried valiantly (but vainly) to find a point to anything related to a discussion, but the class wasn't having it. I remember reading Garden of Forking Paths, but... Uh... I understand what's going on (sequentially) in the story, but still don't get the THOUGHT behind it. Can you enlighten me?

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

The simplest part of it is that it's about parallel universes; the "garden of forking paths" that doesn't actually appear in the story is time splitting, and sequences of events happening, and happening different ways in different universes. The book in the story is trying to express that without actually coming out and saying that it's about time, hence the bit about how a riddle whose answer is chess cannot use the word "chess." ...that's all I got. I'm used to the idea of parallel universes, so I got that right away, but I'm not entirely sure how to connect the idea of parallel universes with the idea of riddles.

[benprime.livejournal.com]

how about... riddles are often a collection of different ways of perceiving a thing, and the .. superimposition of those ways describes the thing itself, perhaps better than its name does. See, for example, the riddles from the Gollum/Bilbo riddle game (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/What-are-the-riddles-that-Gollum-asked-Bilbo-in-The-Hobbit-.id-305403,articleId-8003.html). my feeling of parallel universes is that they are all different expressions or perspectives of one.. origin or fundamental reality I suppose. Though that is a bit of an abstract (dare I say, platonic) way of looking at it.

It seems like the original spanish(?) would be the most authentic.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I like it. Although riddles are often deliberately misleading...but the misleading parts might reveal more about the object, or about the object's symbolism, than a strictly factual account of it would. Time as a labyrinth or time as a devourer of all is more interesting and more revealing than time as a scale measuring duration.

I could get a Spanish dictionary and try to puzzle the originals out. (Heh. Puzzle. As though it were a puzzle to be put together...which I suppose all stories are anyway.)