#41 Mon (8/1/22) - [OW] A web of minimal surprises; The Secret Miracle and The Wait, two Borges stories

In "The Secret Miracle" (Artifices, 1944) by J.L.B., a condemned man is given a divine reprieve at the moment of his execution in order to complete his life's creative work. Time stands still for a year and he experiences life solely as an internal intellectual exercise. Freed from the necessities of a body, he is able to exist in a pure literary creative state. He is aided only by memory, since of course (like a ghost) he cannot manipulate objects, cannot create a written record. His creation exists only in his mind, and when he completes it, time restarts and he, along with his work, is obliterated.

At a point in the story, while awaiting his execution, he is plagued by insistent imaginings of all of the particulars of this impending horrific event. He begins to dream or imagine all of the worst possible outcomes, thinking that to catalog them, means that they will not happen.  He imagines his execution hundreds or thousands of times before he is ever executed.  The internal multiplicity of living and reliving it, exceeds its actuality by a vast immeasurable scale, since in reality it will only happen once. 

... it occurred to him that reality seldom coincides with the way we envision it

beforehand; he inferred, with perverse logic, that to foresee any particular

detail is in fact to prevent its happening. Trusting in that frail magic, he

began to invent horrible details—so that they would not occur; naturally he

wound up fearing that those details might be prophetic.

The Borges' story "The Wait" found in El Aleph (1949) also deals with a man awaiting his execution, this time a criminal on the run from the reprisal for his previous act. He too engages in a series of dream-like imaginings of the particulars of his end, thinking that if he can imagine them, they will not occur. -- "it's easier to endure a terrifying event than to imagine it, wait for it endlessly." The ultimate act, when it occurs, is inferior to all his imaginings, almost an afterthought. 

"Years of solitude had taught him that although in one's memory days all tend to be the same, there wasn't a day, even when a man was in jail or hospital, that didn't have its surprises." In our memory, days tend to all seem the same, but in reality, even the most bland banal day is part of a web of minimal surprises.  

The Wait should perhaps be read in conjunction with Avelino Arredondo (Book of Sand, 1975), told from the point of view of the assassin who is also awaiting an appointment. "To a man in jail or to a blind man, time flows downstream, as if along an easy slope."

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Note

The actual text that I found from El Aleph reads:

Años de soledad le habían enseñado que los días, en la memoria, tienden a ser iguales, pero que no hay un día, ni siquiera de cárcel o de hospital, que no traiga sorpresas.   

 

Translated as:

Years of solitude had taught him that days, in memory, tend to be the same, but that there isn't a day, not even in jail or hospital, that doesn't bring surprises.

Elsewhere FB seen as:

 

Años de soledad le habían enseñado que los días, en la memoria, tienden a ser iguales, pero que no hay un día, ni siquiera de cárcel o de hospital, que no traiga sorpresas, que no sea al trasluz una red de mínimas sorpresas.

Translated as:

"Years of solitude had taught him that days, in memory, tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or hospital, that doesn't bring surprises, that isn't a web of minimal surprises.

Was it amended at some point to add this clause?