Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” Fictions, 1944
I repeat: in order for a book to exist, it is sufficient that it be possible.
Gottfried Leibniz
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
Tag Archives: fictions
Counterbook
Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Fictions, 1944
A book that does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete.
Faint But Not Undecipherable
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Fictions, 1944
I have reflected that it is legitimate to see the “final” Quixote as a kind of palimpsest, in which the traces — faint but not undecipherable — of our friend’s “previous” texts must shine through. Unfortunately, only a second Pierre Menard, reversing the labours of the first, would be able to exhume and revive those Troys…
Vague Foreshadowing of a Yet Unwritten Book
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Fictions, 1944
My general recollection of the Quixote, simplified by forgetfulness and indifference, might well be the equivalent of the vague foreshadowing of a yet unwritten book.
Notes on Imaginary Books
Jorge Luis Borges, Foreword, Fictions, 1944
It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — serring out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle’s procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler’s in The Fair Haven — though these works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.
ANDREW GALLIX 