In The Garden of Forking Paths Borges (or maybe Ts’ui Pen’s) minimalist style mirrors that of Tacitus’ Annales; in addition to Borges tumult of other literary references. His use of unique grammatical forms, frequent ellipsis, inventive circumlocution, and diction expects the reader to take an active role in the creation of the story rather than be directed by the author. Borges contradicts history with fiction pitting Platonism vs. One Thousand and One Nights, Principles of War vs. Morality, and intellectual property vs. honesty, and truth vs. reality. His purposeful contradiction and self-acknowledgement creates a referential field of outside works that are historically accurate, while remaining in the fiction and layering the narrative through the use of reflexive signs and ideologies shown by the characters in the story and in the stories within the story.
The possibility of this vision is created in the same principles of a haiku: the juxtaposition of two different images that are convergent on a single idea that relates them; the idea is often expressed by a verbal punctuation which marks the moment of subversion. Here is a haiku that can be considered conversant with The Garden of Forking Paths:
“The low yellow
moon above the
Quiet lamplit house” –Jack Kerouac
Kerouac’s haiku faces the words “yellow” to “moon” and “Quiet” to “lamplit,” creating an instance of light in nature and comparing it to a light created by man. The location of the moon is significant because it is low, but above the house (which can alternatively be a “chamber” such as a lamp can), thus amplifying and connecting the ‘lamp’ to the moon and nature to man visually by its geographic location within the haiku. These sort of convergent juxtapositions form a succinct which illustrates one or more instructive principles just as Barthes fiction does.
Borges choice of genre for example, creates subversion; his vision creates such a hypertext that it becomes magic realism. The story begins without a sign of clear magical attributes and is expressed in a real setting, yet the characters breaks the rules of the real world. Borges uses real life historical figures such as Liddell Hart, to frame a realistic yet fictional conflict between Dr. Yu Tsun and Captain Richard Madden. This situation is recounted by a statement made by Yu Tsun and is purposefully not intact within the narrative. Borges includes a multitude of narrative references parallel to historical literature that often include multiple parts; several of which are missing parts or are stories that are framed within another story or plan just like Borges own work as well as the work of Ts’ui Pen (which very well may be one in the same). This choice in genre allows Borges to access parallel networks of morals, philosophies, and techniques to construct narrative layers that link to his own fiction.
Borges starts the story with a fragment, his main character Yu Tsun admitting to holding a secret. Yu Tsun also admits to having a letter which he “resolved to destroy immediately (and which [he] did not destroy)…” (Borges 2). Stephen Albert adds to this motif when he realizes two circumstances that lead to his own determination of Ts’ui Pen’s labyrinth in a fragment of a letter Albert discovered (Borges 7). This motif of fragmenting is continued throughout Borges use of inventive circumlocution and diction. Yu Tsun’s reaction to Albert’s letter fragment, Yu Tsun states “the fame of Ts’ui Pen as a calligrapher had been justly won. I read, uncomprehendingly and with fervor, these words written with a minute brush by a man of my blood.” Yu Tsun uses uncomprehendingly and fervor in contradiction in order to emphasize the structural choices of Borges in the rest of the sentence, which pushes the reader towards believing the document was signed in blood. Both physically and metaphorically, the reader is reminded of Yu Tsun and his relation to Albert’s findings, as well as Goethe’s Faust, because of Borges preemptive contradiction.
Borges continues using literary references to create cycles in his story, as well as reflecting back to Yu Tsun’s heritage. The story of Fang returns Yu Tsun back to when he hears “Chinese music” on the winding path of left turns, which turns back to Albert’s discussion of creating a labyrinth within a story and his comparison of cyclical story structure. He compares Ts’ei Pen’s labyrinth to the One Thousand and One Nights, and the linear Platonic structure such as hereditary/historical work “in which each new individual adds a chapter or corrects with pious care the pages of his elders” (Borges 7). These outside references become internalized to the story in its style such as its similarity to the “Socratic Dialogues,” Borges enforces the extent of his literary prowess by naming his short story after his own character’s fictional labyrinth, a possible metaphor to say Ts’ei Pen constructed the entire text. The move here is Platonic in terms of Borges style, yet cyclical in his execution of technique. Borges has produced a text which commentates upon itself and recognizes itself as a story, thus constructing a methological field within it; a story that knows it’s going to be read.
Albert also speaks to what can be considered Goethe; Yu Tsun directs the idea before the reader even meets Albert: “Besides, I know a man from England–a modest man–who for me is no less great than Goethe. I talked with him for scarcely an hour, but during that hour he was Goethe . . .” (Borges 3). Borges leaves this idea with ellipses; he is stylistically punctuating his reference to the Annals of Tacitus, much similar to the way Kerouac does when he uses the word “Quiet” in his haiku. When Albert is mirrored to Goethe the reader can discern him as juxtaposition to Gretchen in Goethe’s Faust. In the real world Albert is a fragment of a document; only a section of a fragmented narrative. While fictionally he operates in the plot to the same degree as Gretchen of Faust. They both suffer from the transactions of outside forces, Gretchen to Faust and Mephistopheles (The Devil) and Albert to Yu Tsun and Captain Madden. In the end they are both subject to a higher power or a power of another plane of existence; God in Faust and the Chief in The Garden (Albert subjugation to the Chief was in life and in code for Yu Tsun’s necessity). There is a tonal shift in Albert’s language that utilizes first person possessive adjectives and includes Yu Tsun and himself in “periphrases” suggesting several outcomes of their own interaction and even their own existences in the parallel, yet chaotic convergence of time between fiction and in reality. Because of Albert’s language shifts, there is a further implication of hermeneutics in the tradition of Goethe, while the work hinges upon structuralism in light of what seems to be a semiotic structure of parallels that mirror and converge. Both theories address implied author, but hold different opinions on its function.
These convergences create the dense flurry of philosophies that Borges suggests. Looking at Stephen Albert as an implied author who extrapolates solutions to the labyrinth from several different philosophies, the reader can determine several ethical connections within the multiple frames of the story. The stories initial details give the reader a real life historical figure: Liddell Hart the English soldier, military historian, and inter-war theorist. Known for the principles of war he addressed in his reaction to the high casualty rates of World War I (which frames the setting of Yu Tsun’s story). Liddell restates: “The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men,” a quote that is derived from Sun Tzu (Coincidental anagram for Yu Tsun? I think not), famous scholar of the military arts and strategist whom Liddell Hart has studied. Liddell is also claims to be responsible for the initial plans that had become the Blitzkrieg attack. Borges appears to be making both a commentary of warfare and of the claim to intellectual property and acknowledging literary predecessors by subverting these two instances within one person’s actions.
Borges creation of the document with missing pages skews the story, but he couples Albert the learned Sinologist to Chinese music, the Fang story, the war strategist Sun Tzu, and most of all: Yu Tsun’s heritage. In addition, Borges provides numerous images such as the use of the sun and moon in accordance with time and reflection, the “famille rose” vase and Persian inspired vase that also extend to the moralistic controversy of inspiration and intellectual property are contextual clues that clearly direct the reader to Chinese ideology (Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucius).
. Ts’ui Pen seeks to surpass Hung Lu Meng’s semi-autobiographical Dream of the Red Chamber; which is generally recognized as the pinnacle of Chinese fiction. Hung Lu Meng’s themes are reflected in Borges’ text which prove to be metaphysical and realistic; pairing reality and illusion in a manner that blurs the lines between the two. Borges work is intrigued by the nature of truth and reality, providing insight to the depiction of the Chinese culture, including descriptions of several era’s manners, expectations, and consequences; such as the Tientsin Massacre and the Boxer Rebellion. Borges allusions include several links to different Chinese dynasties, which may be a reflective response to his reference of Tacitus’ Annals. Yu Tsun hears Chinese music playing upon his entrance to Albert’s house and observes that “from the rear of the house within a lantern approached,” both of which are signs that remind the reader of Albert’s occupation and are also present in the Kerouac haiku. The Chinese music in connection to Albert’s use of the name Fang initiates the reference to historical music theorist, mathematician, and astrologer Jing Fang. Fang presence made know again through Sinology for his avocation of the theory that the light emanating from the spherical Moon (as seen from Earth) was merely a reflection of sunlight.
Upon their meeting, Yu Tsun mentions “the hand of a stranger murdered [Ts’ui Pen]–and his novel was incoherent and no one found the labyrinth” (Borges 4). Albert later states that he had been a missionary in Tientsin before becoming a Sinologist; thus inferring his presence in the controversial Tientsin Incident as a Western missionary learning the same guidelines as Chinese Buddhist and Taoist religious institutions. Albert further illustrates that “When [Ts’ui Pen’s] died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manuscripts. His family, as you may be aware, wished to condemn them to the fire; but his executor–a Taoist or Buddhist monk–insisted on their publication” (Borges 6). This array of clues, in relation to the Fang story and Albert’s revelation of its correlation to his and Yu Tsun’s meeting, ties him to the Hung Lu Meng fiction through the time period of the Qing Dynasty. These clues also suggest the possibility that Albert had murdered Ts’ui Pen. Whether the murder is instructed by Ts’ui Pen for the sake of his novelistic labyrinth or for Stephen Albert’s own benefit is up for debate. Through these possibilities and because of them Stephen Albert defies the laws of the real world and obtains an oblique existence in the fiction; in addition he “usurps” a philosophical controversy.
If Ts’ui Pen indeed instructed Albert to murder him in order to leave a chaotic novel, this theory questions martyrdom and its justification. Tacitus’ writings show no sympathy towards martyrdom through vain suicides. The suggestion of Albert as a Missionary in Tientsin does not necessarily oppose martyrdom, but it confronts religious conflict as well as nationalism. While Borges also includes through Albert the comparison of the cyclical story structure of One Thousand and One Nights and the Platonic hereditary linear structure. Also through Albert states that Ts’ui Pen’s story is neither under Newtonian nor Schopenhauer’s belief of a uniform, absolute time (Borges 9).
Borges reflects Plato through his use of a “Socratic dialogue,” speaking either to his own or at the very least Yu Tsun’s admiration to a mentor: Albert and/or Goethe. Plato is the progenitor of Western didactic criticism and theory: the idea that literature should serve moral and social function (Leitch 44). Yu Tsun’s documentation reveals his admiration to Albert and/or Goethe, Albert reveals admiration of Ts’ui Pen and his labyrinth, and Ts’ui Pen admires Hung Lu Meng. Each of which broadening the others literary palette in search of their correlations, just as Plato wrote of Socrates and the countless other historians Borges references. It is clear that Borges style creates signifiers of parallel of ideologies that are in the same instance agreeing, yet in another disagreeing; this subversion in addition to Borges own self reflexivity produces a methological field in what Roland Barthes would consider a text (Barthes 1327). Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths that questions itself and its moral justification, while at the same time justifies itself in its adeptness to solve Yu Tsun’s problem and “indicate (through the uproar of the war) the city called Albert,” with its solution to “kill a man of that name” (Borges 10).
Joshua J. Way 