#66 Fri (8/26/22) - [OW] From "What is Lost," on esoteric and encyclopedia knowledge

The last three stanzas of What is Lost (Lo perdido) by J.L. Borges:

In the minutes of the sand I believe
I feel the cosmic time: the history
That memory locks up in its mirrors
Or that magic Lethe has dissolved.

The pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire,
Carthage and Rome and their crushing war,
Simon Magnus, the seven feet of earth
That the Saxon proffered the Norway king,

This tireless subtle thread of unnumbered
Sand degrades all down to loss.
I cannot save myself, a come-by-chance
Of time, being matter that is crumbling.

[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harold Morland]

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It strikes me as amazing and wonderful that in the space of just four lines, Borges manages to effortlessly reference the Battle of Stamford Bridge - a victory for King Harald that preceded his defeat at Hastings by only 3 weeks - the span of the Punic Wars with Hannibal and all his elephants, the mysteries of the Old Testament, and the controversial founder of Gnosticism. The references are so dense that they need the kind of intensive hyperlinking that only wikipedia provides. Without the benefit of footnotes or annotations, it seems impossible to get all of these allusions. It is a lost art, in the age of Google, to actual know what these things would be referring to, without an inordinate amount of reading. Today, a quick search yields up all the references, at your fingertips. 

Simon Magus is again referenced in Borges' "A Defense of Basilides the False:"  

In the account of Valentinus-who did not claim the sea and silence to be the beginning of everything-a fallen goddess (Achamoth) has, by a shadow, two sons who are the founder of the world and the devil. An intensification of the story is attributed to Simon Magus: that of having rescued Helen of Troy, formerly first-born daughter of God and later condemned by the angels to painful transmigrations, from a sailors' brothel in Tyre.[1]

 [1]Helen, dolorous daughter of God. That divine filiation does not exhaust the connections of her legend to that of Christ. To the latter the followers of Basilides assigned an insubstantial body; of the tragic queen it was claimed that only her eidolon or simulacrum was carried away to Troy. A beautiful specter redeemed us; another led to battles and Homer. See, for this Helenaic Docetism, Plato's Phaedrus, and Andrew Lang, Adventures among Books, 237-248, Chapter XII.

I feel like there is something worth exploring between the notion of esoteric and encyclopedic knowledge or wisdom. I am curiously drawn to the little known, the revealed, the anecdotal. All knowledge before it becomes well know, familiar, and commonplace seems to be esoteric. Not esoteric in the mystical or secret sense of the word, although there is something of that in it as well. No, there is nothing esoteric about the Punic Wars, and yet to know of it, seems somehow to mark one out as special and different. To discover some detail of a battle fought some 1000 years ago, seems wondrous and fantastic! One feels privileged to know what Harald Godwinson replied to Hardrada. Having seen countless simulacra in fiction and drama of contestants issuing bravado threats before a battle, I have never encountered one quite so glib and well crafted for the occasion as Harald's.

 Borges has a mind which has cultivated and collected these gems of slight regard. He was incredibly well read, but of the kinds of things that few others would have the time or patience to actually read. He wields references to Anglo-Saxon poetry, mythology, obscure philosophy, philology, Christian heresy, the remote, the exotic, the Oriental. And yet, he is equally at home with the well-known and oft-cited; Shakespeare, Dante, the Quixote, The Arabian Nights. I suppose that everything in the encyclopedia is little known until first encountered and then it becomes integrated into a broader and deeper tapestry of knowledge. That there are still so many things that one can purport to know and yet still be largely in the dark about, with regard to the myriad details, incidences and particulars, is awe inspiring and humbling. We used to hold a classical education in some regard, and yet now it seems quaint and outdated. Knowledge for its own sake, is scarcely merited. Quoting Shakespeare is something that only a specialist in that field of literature would be expected to do. Anyone else doing so might seem pretentious or cliched.

I love discovering through the mechanism of the encyclopedia the kinds of knowledge that would be difficult to obtain any other way, short of simply reading everything. The links provide and easy path that encourages further exploration. The encyclopedia harnesses all of the interconnections and makes it easy to follow a link to see what other curious and interesting things lie at the other end. It is a machine for making connections, just like the human brain. It mirrors the way we think, organize, and integrate knowledge. The magic of the encyclopedia is its referential richness. This same richness exists in some well read and well school minds as a natural, or cultivated, trait or predilection. There are minds that by their nature, form and retain this rich connectivity, that the encyclopedia is a reflection of. 

In some ways Encyclopedias are Games, they have game-like structures.  They create paths of exploration and provide rewards in the form of knowledge for continuing on the journey. The knowledge provided is valuable in itself and also provides a key to take another turn in the game, by pointing to the next step.