#74 Sat (9/3/22) - Jorge Luis Borges: The universe as chaos and existence as chance

Jorge Luis Borges : The universe as chaos and existence as chance

The universe as chaos

The vision of the universe, in Borges, is that of a random, incomprehensible chaos, in which man struggles without the possibility of finding an order that exactly fits his nature (which he will not be able to know, of course).

This monstrous and chaotic reality has been exemplified by Borges in The Library of Babel, where the universe is symbolized in an infinite library, a hexagonal building like an endless tower, which contains all the books, but whose meaning, whose final meaning escapes those who they go through it and scrutinize it anxiously. And the irrational disorder that prevails in it corresponds to that of the whole world. The architecture of the building, its mirrors, the innumerable hexagonal galleries, the infinite wells, God, who is hidden under the forms of the circle and the sphere, are also a symbol of that unattainable reality that surrounds us. Because the world is a chaos that cannot be reduced to any law understandable to man. That is the meaning of the immeasurable palace that the Minotaur inhabits in "The House of Asterion", which is a labyrinth.

The labyrinth, in Borges, is a repeated motif that reappears in several of his fictions. On the one hand, it allegorically represents the universe; on the other it points to the human impossibility of understanding it.

We are in a world created by gods who are the only ones who can understand it. This has been very clearly explained by Borges when describing the palace of the Immortals in his admirable story "The Immortal":

"The clear City of the Immortals frightened and disgusted me. A labyrinth is a house carved to confuse men, its architecture, lavish in symmetries, is subordinated to that end. In the palace that I imperfectly explored, the architecture had no end. The dead-end corridor abounded, the tall unattainable window, the cumbersome door that led to a cell or a well, the incredible reverse stairs, with the steps and the balustrade downwards... the foolish city that I traversed": a kind of parody or reverse and also the temple of the irrational gods who rule the world "and of whom we know nothing, except that they do not resemble man..."

This idea is also conceptually expressed in Other Inquisitions: "The impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe cannot, however, dissuade us from planning human schemes, even if we know that these are provisional."

Existence as chance

This vision of the universe, skeptical and full of irrationality, is combined with a similar one referring to our existence and our destiny as men. It is very difficult for us to know exactly the reality of the world, but also the reality of our lives, their meaning, the difference between Good and Evil.
This thinking of human life as subject to an unknowable and uncontrollable fate has been masterfully concretized in The Lottery in Babylon. There we learned that the passion for the game of the Babylonians leads the organizers to include in the prizes not only money, fame, power and glory, but also death, ridicule, defeat and poverty. Thus, triumph or misfortune depend on hidden, unattainable powers (the Company), which decree the fate that will befall us in the games. At the end of the story we realize that we are reading an allegory of our own existence, of the chaotic chance that surrounds and governs us.

This conception of destiny itself as subject to the labyrinthine universe, has also been conceptually expressed by the author, in Discussion: "I believe that in our unthinkable destiny, in which infamies such as carnal pain rule, every bizarre thing is possible, even the perpetuity of a Hell."

The idea that destiny does not depend on us is already masterfully expressed in one of the stories of Universal History of Infamy. And he has a magnificent individual version in "The dead man". The protagonist triumphs, achieves power, love and success, only to discover in the end that everything has been a sinister mockery; They have allowed him to reach happiness and then kill him.
 
SOURCE: 
CEAL (Publishing Center of Latin America) No. 48. BUENOS AIRES, 1968.
CEAL (Centro Editor de América Latina ) nº 48. BUENOS AIRES, 1968.

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