Deconstruction of Truth: Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

1. Fernando de Toro • Borges and the Construction of Reality: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

2. Borges and the Construction of Reality • In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” Borges challenges the veracity of any discourse that presents itself as Truth, particularly pertaining to master narratives such as philosophy and History, and engages in a deconstruction of these narratives. • In order to do this, Borges introduces a number of strategies: • a) the cancellation of the difference between fiction and reality, • b) the creation of a world based on a marginal comment of his own narration,

3. Borges and the Construction of Reality • c) the circulation and dissemination of discourse that pretends to have an ontological reality.

4. Borges and the Construction of Reality • a) The cancellation of the binarism fiction/reality • In the “Prologue” to Ficciones, Borges states: “I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. Such are “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain,” “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim” (1962: 15-16). • Thus, from the very beginning “Tlön” is characterised as a product of the imagination, with no ontological status whatsoever.

5. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Once he enters into the narrative Borges will introduce a number of statements which will cancel themselves, and it is this cancellation that, in turn, cancels the signs that pertain to fiction and reality: • I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The unnerving mirror hung at the end of a corridor in a villa on Calle Goana, in Ramos Mejía; the misleading encyclopaedia goes by the name of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), and is a literal if inadequate reprint of the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britanica. (1962: 17)

6. Borges and the Construction of Reality • A careful examination of this passage reveals the two different levels of operation of the statements: • first, Borges does not start with “Tlön”, as one may expect, but with Uqbar, and he refers to the ‘discovery’ of Uqbar by chance. • What could possible have in common a mirror and an encyclopaedia? • At first glance, nothing. But here Borges is operating with rhizomatic thinking (in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari, 1983), where randomness determine inter-relationships.

7. Borges and the Construction of Reality • This is the same thinking that appears in “The Analytic Language of John Wilkins” and in the Brodie’s Reportwhen he refers to the language of the Yahoos. • The statement is rather odd if one is not familiar with rhizomaticity, but even if that was the case, the statement has still has a veneer of unreality. • However, the next statement, provides an ontological status to the discovery by moving, from what one may called, the ‘fantastic’ writing to a ‘realistic’ one. • The mirror is in a street and a neighbourhood that the reader (Argentinian) recognises.

8. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Thus, the ‘fictional/unreality’ it is cancelled by a ‘realistic’ statement. • This narrative strategy will be operating all through the text. • Next, Borges refers to the encyclopaedia as ‘misleading’, and provides a transformation in the name, from encyclopedia to cyclopaedia. • He is playing with two signifiers which have a history in terms of their definition.

9. Borges and the Construction of Reality • As we know, the oldest term, ‘encyclopedia,’ which comes from the Greek “ἐγκύκλια παιδεία” (pronounced “enkyklia paideia”), literally, a “[well-] rounded education,” means “a general knowledge.” • Although the term ‘kyklopaideia’ was used first in 1541, it reappears in 1728 in England. • However misleading, a precise place and date of publication is given: New York, 1917, adding that “is a literal if inadequate reprint of the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica (1962: 17). • There is no Cyclopaedia published in 1917 or an original publication of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1902.

10. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Why The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia is misleading and is an “inadequate reprint” of the original, it is not known at this point. • Then, a pause, a clarification of sorts in order to link Uqbar to the Cyclopaedia: • The whole affair happened some five years ago. Bioy Casares had dined with me that night and talked to us at length about a great scheme for writing a novel in the first person, using a narrator who omitted or corrupted what happened and who ran into various contradictions, so that only a handful of readers, a very small handful, would be able to decipher the horrible or banal reality behind the novel. (1962: 17)]

11. Borges and the Construction of Reality • The ‘story’ is framed in the following precise temporality: • 1935: Bioy quotes a heresiarch (p. 21); • 1937: Ashe dies in Androgué and Borges finds the First Encyclopaedia of Tlön (p. 21); • 1940: Ends his narrative on Tlön (p. 30); • 1947: Postscript (p. 30); • 1941: A letter is found about the invention of Tlön (p. 30); • 1942: Objects from Tlön appear in the real world (p. 32); • 1944: Ends second narration and speaks of Orbis Tertius (p. 33). 

12. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Here Borges introduces a seemingly ‘realistic’ paragraph, by mentioning Bio Casares, a very well-know Argentinean writer and a close friend of Borges, and speaking about how they have dinned together and how Casares spoken a bout his novelistic project. • The paragraph is also metafictional since Borges’ own text is in first person and in the preceding paragraph he himself had run into contradiction (a misleading and inadequate reprint!). • He warns the reader that he will be facing a new type of writing and thus only very few will be able to actually recognise this writing.

13. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Then he introduces the ‘discovery of Uqbar and the relationship between the mirror and the Cyclopaedia: • From the far end of the corridor, the mirror was watching us; and we discovered, the inevitability of discoveries made late at night, that mirrors have something grotesque about them. Then Bioy Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man. (1962: 17) • Thus, the mirror leads Casares to remember, rhiomatically, a remarkable sentence from a heresiarch of Uqbar.

14. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Next, the Cyclopaedia is introduced almost by magic: the villa, miraculously, had a copy! • They search of the article on Uqbar, mentioned by Casares, it is not found. Borges assumes that it is an undocumented country (1962: 18). • He then examined the Justus Perthes atlases, one of the most prestigious atlases ever, with no better fortune. [Note Perthes]

15. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: Johan Georg Justus Perthes (1749-1816), was a German publisher and founder of the firm that bears his name. He was born in Rudolstadt. In 1785 he founded the Justus Perthes publishing firm in Gotha. In this, he was joined in 1814 by his son Wilhelm Perthes (1793-1853). On Justus’s death, Wilhelm took over the firm and laid the foundation of the geographical branch of the business, for which it is chiefly famous, by publishing the Hand-atlas from 1817-1823 of Adolf Stieler (1775-1836).Wilhelm Perthes engaged the collaboration of the most eminent German geographers of the time, including Stieler, Heinrich Berghaus (1797-1884), Christian Gottlieb Reichard (1758-1837), who was associated with Stieler in the compilation of the atlas, Karl Spruner (1803-1892), and Emil von Sydow (1812-1873).

16. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Next day Bioy Casares calls him and read to him the actual quotation of Volume XLVI of the ‘encyclopaedia’ (note the name change). • The text is in itself revealing because it refers to the very world that Borges is in the process of creating: • “For one of the gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extended it.” (1962: 18)

17. Borges and the Construction of Reality • So, the universe is an illusion, since the gnostics consider it as an illusion, a sophism, that is, a knowledge produced by illogicity and rhetorics. • Borges takes, here, a Platonist position with respect to the sophists, that is, apparently, a negative one. • Not satisfied with the ‘authenticity’ of the quotation, Borges consults yet another sources, this time Ritter’s Erdkunde, where, again, Uqbar it is not mentioned. [Note Ritter]

18. Borges and the Construction of Reality Note: • Carl Ritter (1779–1859) was a German geographer. Along with Alexander von Humboldt, he is considered one of the founders of modern geography (and of the Berlin Geographical Society). From 1820 until his death, he occupied the first chair in geography at the University of Berlin. Ritter's masterwork, the 19-volume Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen (The Science of the Earth in Relation to Nature and the History of Mankind), written 1817-1859, developed at prodigious length the theme of the influence of the physical environment on human activity. Despite its length, the work was left incomplete at the time of his death, covering only Asia and Africa.

19. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Again, he consulted one of the most prominent works on this subject without any results. • Finally Borges compares the number of pages of his version of the Cyclopaedia and that of Casares, and discovers that his version has 917 pages instead of 921. • This seemed to solve the mystery of Uqbar. • They carefully proceed to read the article on Uqbar, and they discover that

20. Borges and the Construction of Reality • [...] beneath the superficial authority of the prose, a fundamental vagueness. Of the fourteen names mentioned in the geographical section, we recognized only three –Khurasan, Armenia, and Euzurum- and they were dragged into the text in a strangely ambiguous way. Among the historical names, we recognized only one, that of the imposter, Smerdis the Magician and it was invoked in a rather metaphorical sense (1962: 19). [Note Khurasan, Euzurum and Smerdis]

21. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • Erzurum (also written as Erzerum in some texts until the early 20th century, formerly known as Arzen during the Roman period, Theodosiopolis during the Byzantine period and Կարին (Karin) in Armenian) is a city in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. The current name “Erzurum” derives from “Erzen-el-Rum” (literally Arzen of the Romans.)

22. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • Smerdis (also Bardia) was a son of Cyrus the Great whose name was allegedly usurped by an impostor, a magus (member of the magian priestly class) reportedly named Gaumata. Smerdis/Gaumata reigned as a Persian king over the whole Achaemenid Empire for seven months, before he was killed by Darius I in 522 BC.

23. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • Khorasan (Persian: خراسان) (also transcribed as Khurasan and Khorassan, anciently called Traxiane during Hellenistic and Parthian times) is currently a region located in north eastern Iran, but historically referred to a much larger area east and north-east of the Persian Empire. The name Khorasan is Persian and means “where the sun arrives from.” The name was given to the eastern province of Persia during the Sassanid empire (226-651). Khorasan was the largest province of Iran until it was divided to three provinces on September 29, 2004.

24. Borges and the Construction of Reality • This is again a metafictional comment on the vary nature of text Borges is writing in terms of the ambiguity, but the information he provides with respect of regions and the Magician is true since all ‘existed’, including Uqbar. • The series of various possibilities of spelling Uqbar at the beginning of the text, in my estimation, marks the displacement that the text will operate from Uqbar to Tlön, and also the fundamental deferral of meaning the the ‘original’ signifier whose signified becomes immediately another signifier: Uqbar: “Ukbar, Ucbar, Ooqbar, Ookbar, Oukbahr” (1962: 17). [Note Uqabar]

25. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • There are at least two real places with the name Uqbar, in Algeria, as well as a town called Ukbara in Iraq, each of which seems to have at least some aspects in common with Borges’s fictional Uqbar. These places may plausibly have inspired the name and some other aspects of the Borges’s Uqbar, although Borges’s description of its culture is of course fictional.

26. Borges and the Construction of Reality • This displacement of the narrative occurs when reading the language and literature sections of the article on Uqbar. • , and most readers, at first, do not quite pay attention to this brief mention, although it is a fundamental one. • Here Tlön is mentioned for the very first time, and in what follows, it will become central to the text.

27. Borges and the Construction of Reality • What is most particular about the ‘introduction’ of Tlön is how it is actually characterised: • The language and literature section was brief. There was one notable characteristic: it remarked that the literature of Uqbar was fantastic in character, and that its epics and legends never referred to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Mlejnas and Tlön.... (1962: 19) • Thus, Uqbar appears to have an ontological status since it can be located either in Iran or Algiers.

28. Borges and the Construction of Reality • However, its description has nothing to do with a concrete place, so it stands in an ambiguous status between fiction/reality. • Within this ambiguity, Borges states that its literature is fantastic and never refers to reality, but to two imaginary regions, one of which is Tlön. • So Tlön, from the very beginning, does not exist: is a product of the imagination. • These comments are also metafictional in as much as they refer to the very text Borges is writing, which also does not refer to reality but to one with no referent and constructed through a narrative.

29. Borges and the Construction of Reality • In the same section they find four volumes listed in the bibliography, which, according to Borges, he has not ever seen:

30. Borges and the Construction of Reality • The bibliography listed four volumes, which we have not yet come across, even although the third – Silas Haslam: History of the Land Called Uqbar, 1874 – appears in the library catalogues of Bernard Quatrich. The first, *Lesbare und lesenwerthe Bermerkungen über das land Ukkbar in Klaein-Asien, is dated 1641, and is a work of Johann Valetin Andreä. The fact is significant; a couple of years later I ran across that name accidentally in the thirteenth volumen of De Quincy’s Wirtings, and I knew that it was the name of a German theologian who, at the beginning of the seventeen century, described the imaginary community of Rosae Crucis- the community which was after founded by others in imitation of the one he had preconceived. (1962: 19-20) *Readable and worth reading observations on a country called Ukkbar in Asia Minor

31. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Bernard Quatrich was indeed a collector or rare books and produce various catalogues of his collection and of rare books in general. [Note Quatrich]

32. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note • Bernard Quaritch (1819-1899 was a German-born British bookseller and collector. After being apprenticed to a bookseller, he went to London in 1842. In 1848 he started to issue a monthly Catalogue of Foreign and English Books. About 1858 he began to purchase rare books, one of the earliest of such purchases being a copy of the Mazarin Biblie and within a period of forty years he possessed six separate copies of this rare and valuable edition. In 1873 he published the Bibliotheca Xylographica, Typographica et Palaeographica, a remarkable catalogue of early productions of the printing press of all countries.

33. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note • He became a regular buyer at all the principal book-sales of Europe and America, and from time to time published a variety of other catalogues of old books. Amongst these may be mentioned the Supplemental Catalogue (1877), and in 1880 an immense catalogue of considerably over 2,000 pages. The last complete catalogue of his stock was published in 1887-88 under the title General Catalogue of Old Books and Manuscripts, in seven volumes, increased with subsequent supplements to twelve. All these catalogues are of considerable bibliographical value. By this time Quaritch had developed the largest trade in old books in the world.

34. Borges and the Construction of Reality • However, Silas Haslam is a fictional author and so is his work. • Thus, again we have the introduction of real author (Quatrich) and a fictional one, place on the same ontological status. • The situation regarding Johann Valetin Andreä is a very unique and revealing one: He, in fact, was a German theologian who claimed to have written the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Weddeing of Christian Rosenkreutz). [Note Andreä]

35. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • Johannes Valentinus Andreä ( 1586-1654, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Weddeing of Christian Rosenkreutz) one of the three founding works of the Rosicrucians, a legendary esoteric Order publicly documented in the early 17th century. This hermetic Order is viewed among earlier and many modern Rosicrucianists as a “College of Invisibles” from the inner worlds, composed of great Adepts, aiming to give assistance in humanity’s spiritual development. His role in the origin of the Rosicrucian legend is controversial.

36. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • In his autobiography he indicated the Chymische Hochzeit as one of his works. However, in his later works, alchemy is the object of ridicule and is placed with music, art, theatre and astrology in the category of less serious sciences.

37. Borges and the Construction of Reality • The situation regarding Johann Valetin Andreä is a very unique and revealing one: He, in fact, was a German theologian who claimed to have written the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Weddeing of Christian Rosenkreutz). • Thus, the author is a historical figure, but the work attributed to him by Borges, Lesbare und lesenwerthe Bermerkungen über das land Ukkbar in Klaein-Asien (1641), it is not. (Comentarios legibles y dignos de ser leídos Readable comments and wothwhile to be read about the country Ukkbar Klaein in Asia)

38. Borges and the Construction of Reality • However, there is something in common with the two works: both are imaginary created worlds, and both proved the base for a ‘real world’ which simulates the texts.[Note on Adreä’s book]

39. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • Just a few years before the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) a series of anonymous works appear around the Knight Christianus Rosencreutz, born, perhaps, in 1378. These works came from a group of friends of the theologian Johannes Valintinus Andreae of Tubingen.

40. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • [...] The work [Chymische Hochzeit] follows the general tone of the tradition of allegorical narrations related to dreams such as Hyptomachia Polophilio de Francesco Colonna (1433-1527) and of apocryphal lives of alchemist literature. [...] Andreae’s work shares with Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius of being a fictional work with scientific pretensions, the fantastic with pretension of truth [...]. (1992: 168)

41. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Andreä’s writes a book from which a community will emerge; Borges writes a text that gives rise to the world of Tlön, as we will see later on. • As a final option, Borges and Bioy Casares visited the National Library in Buenos Aires but they found no reference to Uqbar.

42. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Finally, Carlos Mastronardi, a friend of Borges, “caught sight, in a Corrientes and Talcahuano bookshop, of the black and gold bindings, of The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia” (1962: 20) and there was no mention of Uqbar. • Here the first section of Borges’ text ends (20), and ends without having found any further information pertaining Uqbar. It seems that it only existed in Bioy Casares Cyclopaedia.

43. Borges and the Construction of Reality • In fact, he has fabricated a ‘world’ whose ontological status is undecidable, and therefore it makes it impossible to determine its status.

44. Borges and the Construction of Reality • b) The creation of Tlön • Section two (20-30) is the rhizomatic introduction and creation of Tlön. Rhizomatic • Borges discovers, by accident, in 1937, a volume that had been sent to a Herbert Ashe, who was staying at the same hotel where Borges and his father were staying. • The volume had as a title A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön. Volume XI containing entries between Hlaer and Jangr.

45. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Few lines before, Borges states that the volume is about Uqbar and Tlön and Orbis Tertius (1962: 21), and a stamp inscription: ORBIS TERTIUS. • The very fact that this is volume XI implies that there are ten volumes preceding and perhaps many others following:

46. Borges and the Construction of Reality • The book was written in English, and had 1001 pages. On the yellow leather spine, and again on the title page, I read these words: A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön. Volume XI. Hlaer to Jangr. There was nothing to indicate either date or place of origin. On the first page and on a sheet of silk paper covering one of the colored engravings there was a blue oval stamp with the inscription: ORBIS TERTIUS. It was two years since I had discovered, in a volume of a pirated encyclopaedia, a brief description of a false country; now, chance was showing me something much more valuable, something to be reckoned with.

47. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Now I had in my hands a substantial fragment of the complete history of an unknown planet, with its architecture and its playing of an unknown planet, with its architecture and its playing cards, its mythological terrors and the sound of its dialects, its emperors and its oceans, its minerals, its birds, and its fishes, its algebra and its fire, its theological and metaphysical arguments, all clearly stated, coherent, without any apparent dogmatic intention or parodic undertone. (1962: 21-22) • These comments about the ‘discovery’ the Encyclopaedia of Tlön are marked by sarcasm, irony and metafictional elements.

48. Borges and the Construction of Reality • First, Borges establishes an (in)direct parallel between the Encyclopaedia and the One Thousands Nights(the Encyclopaedia has 1001 pages as the Nights has 1001 stories. • Furthermore, the Nights are fictional stories, and this fictionality is shared with the Encyclopaediawhich is about an imaginary region of the fantastic literature of Uqbar. • Secondly, the volume XI has articles between the letter H (Haler) and J (Jangr).

49. Borges and the Construction of Reality • This letters are not innocent since they are Icelandic words meaning to laugh (Hlaer) and a puzzle (Jangr). • Hlaer is a form of the verb “hlæja”: to laugh and Jangr also means a difficult knot to unite, a great problem. • So, what Borges is doing here, is actually laughing vis a vis our surprise when reading the story, and at the same time refers back to the difficulties this text presents for the reader’s understanding. • This difficulty was already clearly stated at the beginning of the narration when Borges refers to the handful of readers capable of understanding his work. [Note]

50. Borges and the Construction of Reality • Note: • I say ‘understanding’ and not interpretation. In my estimation there is nothing to interpret in Borges’ work, since there is no hidden meaning to be uncovered by the reader. • What his works demand, is an understanding of the issues he has placed in them, issues such as the nature of the linguistic sign, or of writing, etc.