January 16, 2025 • 41 mins
We're going back to the Borgesian Labyrinths with "The Garden of Forking Paths." My guests today are Varsha (from Reading by the Rainy Mountain), Jarrod (from The Fantasy Thinker), and Britton (aka SomeOkieDude).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth
(00:04):
that would encompass the past and the future.
This is one of many thoughtful beats around time, decisions and multiverses
presented in a classical short story, The Garden of Forking Past, by Jorge
Les Borges. Let's get this book and done.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books and Done. I'm your host, Livia J.
(00:34):
Elliott. And today, guests take over yet again to discuss another of Jorge
Luis Borges' short stories, no more and no less than the famous The Garden of
Forking Past. Therefore, let me introduce you to my guests.
I'm Jared. I run the fantasy thinker YouTube channel and I'm also on podcasts
(00:55):
called speculative speculations and other fine podcasts on the page
chewing.com website.
Hi, I'm Varsha. Thank you for letting me take over again. I run the YouTube
channel reading by the Rainy Mountain, some of the podcasts that Jared
mentioned, including speculative speculations. Excited for another Borges
discussion.
Hello, I'm Britton. I run the channel, Samohee Dude. I run a couple of
(01:17):
podcasts. This is actually my first Jorge Luis Borges story. So fun times.
Glad to be here.
As a bit of trivia, let me share that The Garden of Forking Past was
originally published in 1941 and republished in its entirety in 1944
through the collection called Ficciones. Curiously, it appeared in
(01:37):
Ellen's Queen Mystery magazine in August 1948. And in 1958, it was
translated into English by Donald A. Yates and published in the Michigan
Alumni Quarterly Review Spring of 1958. In theme, it is considered similar
to two stories we have already discussed in previous guest talks,
(01:59):
Thlone, Uckbar, or Bistertius and the Library of Babel. Now, before diving
into the discussion, let me tackle some disclaimers. As usual, there are
spoilers in this podcast. This is a 10 pages short story, and it will be
very difficult to discuss it without spoilers. So listen with caution.
Likewise, what you will hear is our subjective interpretation of this
(02:22):
text. And it can be pretty different to what you were expecting. That's
okay. We can all have different opinions. Let me do a short question
to get started. What point or concept within this story resonated with
you the most?
One of the things that really stood out to me right away was the line
only in the present do things happen. So with a title like God, another
(02:44):
forking paths, you have this sense of choices made can affect outcomes. So
that line only in the present do things happen, kind of reflects upon things
happening now as the only reality that matters to the people who it is
happening to and that both the future and the past are kind of mutable.
(03:07):
That's kind of what stood out to me right away about this story. It's
kind of a common theme that Bojas likes to tackle.
I liked when he said everything happens to a man precisely, precisely
now. As you said, it's like we have history, each of us, depending how
much time we have been here. But sometimes what only matters is what
we are doing now. Like the things that are happening now, even if like,
(03:29):
if we weren't happy before, if we were sad before, it doesn't matter the
happiness that we have in the moment, or the sadness that we have in the
present. It kind of like overrides everything else.
Yeah, something I picked up on was, um, causality. It actually reminded me a
lot of, um, Philip K. Dick's novel, uh, the man in a high castle, which is
(03:49):
an alternate history book. I remember reading through this and just seeing,
you know, kind of the Asian influence in the story. And I thought, I
wonder if Philip K. Dick read this story. I did read, apparently he was
influenced on some bit by, uh, Borges, but I don't know that for sure.
Yeah, I think what I love the Borges story is that we've been reading so
far. This one, uh, like all the others seems to have what I thought, some
(04:12):
representation of real world science or scientific theories embedded in the
story. And that's what the theory of time felt like to me, like some, a
metaphor for the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
It turns out that one wasn't proposed until 1950 or so, and this was
published in 1941. So it's pretty cool that he thought of that. And, and
(04:34):
now I'm curious about whether this was a philosophical idea that was present
well before the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics was a
thing. And if that was leeching off of, uh, inspired by the previous
philosophies of time. But anyway, I think that's the part that typically
has been resonating the most with me in any Borges story is the part about
the concepts that he explores around time. And this one was no different.
(04:57):
So the title of the short story, the garden of working paths, refers to
Sui Peng's idea that infinite realities are created as people face
decision points. And he basically tried to write that down in a story
that is within the book. And we don't really find out about what the
(05:17):
content of it, but on it, each decision creates a new path and the outcomes
of those decisions create more opportunities for choices that are
split into their own paths, but they all exist at the same time. And
that's a point of the story that the forking is over time and it still
exists regardless of whether you quote unquote chose that path or not.
(05:39):
Do you think it can be like a precursor of the concept of multiverses?
That's kind of something I picked up on is kind of, yeah, this could be a
sort of take on alternate universes, parallel universes, like what if this
event happened? How would things change?
Yeah, I think I agree. Like I brought up the many worlds interpretation.
(06:01):
I don't know if that translates to the existence of the multiverse also,
but yeah, it does seem like this is foreshadowing or playing with that
idea of multiple universes. Like he talks about, or the possibility that
you and I don't exist in some versions of the story and in others, we are
enemies and in others we are friends.
(06:22):
Yeah, I think causality is a big theme of the story just in terms of how
certain events affect a timeline, which is like a big thing in like time
travel stories, but I don't really think this is a time travel story.
This is more about like causality in terms of like alternate realities.
Yeah, it's like everything you didn't do becomes a different timeline.
(06:44):
Basically a new multi-universe or whatever responds from there.
Speaking of causality, the order in which this, he has come up with this,
right? Like this seems to be some, this is something that is sort of really
ingrained in our, I think everybody knows or understands the concept of
multiverse today, but I bet at its time, it was a very revolutionary thought
(07:08):
perhaps. I think it's really cool that he came up with that then.
Yeah, absolutely. The words of his, the book, The Garden of Forking Pass was
by his, his ancestor. I forget how it was related.
It was funny that his ancestors name was, I don't, can't pronounce the first
word, but it was pen. It was Sui Pen, you know, and of course he, he made
several references to calligraphy and to pens throughout the, uh, throughout
(07:32):
the course of the story.
But he wrote right in there that he believed in infinite series of times
in a growing and dizzying network of divergent, convergent and parallel
times. And so that sense of decision making, creating divergent timelines
and divergent and parallel timelines, uh, definitely infiltrated his writing
(07:52):
in this sense. You know, that's what his ancestor was kind of proposing to him,
but it's kind of amusing that he's reading about his ancestor proposing
this multiple timeline, but he's kind of resigned to being caught by Richard
Madden the whole time. And he eventually does get caught by him, if I'm not
(08:13):
mistaken, right? And so you would think that he would use his knowledge to try
to divert that outcome, but right off the bat, he says, I'm going to suffer
this fate of either being arrested or killed. And so it's kind of contradictory
in a way that he's kind of trapped in this outcome, but yet he's talking about
all these divergent choices leading to parallel outcomes.
(08:33):
Well, you have that scene in which you're soon he's sitting on the couch,
talking to the researcher and he actually sees all the people, all of the
other variants of them in the garden outside the house. He actually wrote,
it seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely
saturated with invisible people. Those persons were Albert and I secret,
(08:57):
busy and multi-form in other dimensions of time. I'm not sure, but it is either
he's going mad and believing that all of these other realities exist or the
realities are converging. And he actually for a brief moment sees them all in the
garden.
It's like there are all these possibilities and one of them could become true,
(09:18):
right? It reminded me of that scene in Tune that I couldn't spoil a scene.
I'll reference it obliquely, but there's a scene, a duel, I think, and they sort
of consider all the options and our character is able to see the future from
many different options and sees which one might lead to the outcome he wants. I
(09:40):
think this reminded me of that, except like obviously the person we are
following here doesn't have quite that level of insight into what might happen.
It's just that like it's teeming with possibilities and anything could happen,
which I guess is true philosophically and is true of life in general.
Yeah, he does speak of being a child in the symmetrical garden in Hafez.
In Hafez, and he wonders about wonder he's going to die now.
(10:04):
And then every time he seems to contemplate these different outcomes,
the horse like face of Madden suddenly shows up in his brain as if that's,
that's the only thing that's going to actually happen. You know,
every time he tries to contemplate something else in this garden,
different outcome for himself,
the Madden character always just shows up front and center.
(10:24):
And I wonder,
is that a sense of fate that cannot be diverted at all? Did he have no choice?
Is that fate set in stone, so to speak? At what point was that fate set in stone?
You know,
what decision did he make earlier that could have diverted him being hunted
down by this Madden character?
That's very interesting because I think we all sometimes end up thinking that
(10:48):
our, the consequences of our actions are immediate.
That if we do something and we don't see any consequence,
then that's it. It's going on. Sometimes it may take 10 years.
It's because you're studying something that 10 years after you end up doing
something on some decisions,
they are actually slow born to use a more modern term in what you reference.
(11:10):
Jarrod made me think like,
what decision did you soon take so many years ago that now basically made it
impossible for to avoid Richard Madden.
Yeah. And he carries on with that theme later too,
when he says that he's talking about some of the atrocities that are committed
in war and by people during these times where he says,
(11:30):
I foresee that man will resign himself every day to more atrocious enterprises
so that soon they'll only be warriors and bandits.
And he says that in order for these people to do this,
they must impose on themselves a future that is irrevocable as the past.
And so they have to have that future in their mind in order to even accomplish
(11:52):
these atrocious enterprises.
And with that kind of singularity of thought,
do they accomplish that path for their future?
It's kind of a scary thought that people had to do that in order like soldiers
might've had to do that in order to follow orders and stuff like that.
And I think he was kind of touching on that irrevocable fate that is kind of
(12:12):
created by the mind itself as it as it go forward in order to maybe just deal
with the situation.
It kind of sounds like 12 monkeys with how you're describing it, Jared,
you know, where he, well, I won't spoil in case anyone here hasn't seen 12 monkeys.
Yeah. Well, 12 monkeys is a wild head trip, but.
Yeah.
(12:34):
Can you elaborate a bit more because I haven't seen it.
There's actual time travel in 12 monkeys.
There is actual time travel. Yeah.
But there is that kind of theme of you have a fate, you can't escape it.
That kind of that's what I was referring to.
Did you guys read the footnote?
What do you guys think of that?
He actually uses that a lot.
Like in all of his stories, there are a lot of footnotes.
(12:57):
That's basically because at least in my interpretation, Borges does a lot of
discussion in terms of fiction and nonfiction and tries to present fictional
stories as nonfiction.
So we get on this one, the first two paragraphs that are the nonfiction part
and those are the setting for the frame narrative that comes after.
(13:20):
Actually, the battle that he's mentioning in there, it doesn't exist,
but there were so many battles in World War I that if you don't know too much
of history, like it's okay.
It may seem like a real battle, right?
So it gives you that vibe of it's nonfiction.
And what follows after is an account.
So it's a frame narrative of Yusun.
(13:41):
But the footnote that you mentioned, it actually comes when he's mentioned an
additional event and it's basically, it meant that Runeberg has been arrested
or murdered, so he's conjecturing.
And the footnote is actually some character that we don't know, which is
actually adding details to the death of a character, perhaps to make it pretend
(14:05):
that it's actually real, especially because the footnote is signed as
editor's note.
And it's not the editor of the story.
It's a character editor who is fictional and who is pretending that this other
character, Runeberg, was not fictional.
So I think it's more of them that way he writes.
To pick elements of reality as he did on Clone, like he would pick things that
(14:29):
are nonfiction places that we know, in this case, World War I, to give a sense
of this is real to a story that is fully fictional.
And in this case, to me at least, he's also crafting a labyrinth with the story.
So not only the in-book story is a labyrinth in time, this is also a labyrinth
in time, the one that we are reading, because we, the readers, we have to pick
(14:54):
these pieces apart and assemble the timeline of the first two paragraphs that
are in the future and then we go back in the frame narrative and start moving
into the future and then it actually goes back again to tell us the story of the
grandfather and everything converges into the present because things only
happen in the present.
It gives more of the vibe that this is like an academic, you know, looking over
(15:15):
this like, what is this, you know?
The book that's being referenced then that also doesn't, probably doesn't exist
because it's referencing a fictional war, the history of the world, or battle, I
mean, the history of the world war, Little Heart tells us on page 242.
Is that an actual book then?
What I found is that the battle dimension, it didn't exist.
(15:37):
Okay.
I didn't search for the specific dome, but in again, in Tlonuc where they were
messing around with the British encyclopedia, which actually existed.
So I love how, I love how he picks those elements, you know, to blur the lines
between and perhaps make us believe that this is real.
And touching on what Prydon says that this reads as an academic, I think is
(16:02):
because he was aiming for this being the confession of a person who is going to
be killed.
And this is actually the account or the translation or whatever from another of
the officers there who were studying it.
So it has this formal vibe that I think adds to the mood of it.
Yeah.
I think the historian who wrote this book about the supposed battle, there is a
(16:28):
professor who apparently found this and they are repeating it here to add some
more light on that battle.
Yeah.
So the book actually exists and it was published in 1930.
Okay.
The book that starts.
So I'm not, I have no idea if on page 22, it actually mentions that.
(16:50):
So if you're okay to change topics, I have a question for you, Olivia.
Yeah.
The book that the ancestor supposedly wrote with all the possibilities and all
the choices, it reminded me a little bit of your story of choices, stories with
choices.
I wanted to ask what you thought of that and if you resonate with that aspect of
the book here.
I really liked it, especially because I think it's a reference to how we control
(17:15):
agency.
If you're writing a narrative for a game, even when you are doing for a tabletop
game, you have to give the players the illusion of agency, but you still have to
narrow it down because otherwise it gets out of control.
So they really don't have agency.
They are just playing on the sandbox that you created.
And I think that in this case, he was sometimes making an illusion to it,
(17:38):
mentioning that, yeah, the agency that we have is limited in reality as well
because of the context that we live on, because we have legislations, we have
rules, we have cultural elements that sometimes may prevent us to doing
something.
So in that case, those are also constraints that limit our agency.
And sometimes we say, like, perhaps we could have done differently.
(18:00):
And that is one pass on this labor in time that he mentions.
But the answer may be not really, because there may have been like a cultural
element in there blocking us or saying like, yeah, we may dream of doing that,
but we are not doing it because of our culture, you know, or loss or whatever
other element is there.
Yeah, I thought it was incredibly accurate for what it is narrative in games,
(18:25):
even though this was written in 1941.
I'm not sure, Jarrod, what do you think of it because you are generally a DM,
right?
I am. See, I got my shirt on.
You're absolutely right.
It's creating the illusion of choices that a lot of the times you have to do
is when you're running one of these games is you have to create that illusion
of choices, even though you are only prepared.
(18:48):
You can only prepare so much for what the players do.
You still have to create the illusion that that what they can do encompasses all
possibilities.
But in reality, there's only so many possibilities where people will be in the
same place at the same time or there's a lot of possibilities when none of those
people will be there.
And there's a lot of possibilities where only one of them would be there.
(19:09):
And so you narrow down the possibilities where if you're running a whole group
of characters, say, sort of in a game, there's only so many possibilities where
all those characters will be on a certain path.
And those paths only exist in a finite path.
And so it's funny that it kind of relates to this theme of illusion of choice
because this guy who eventually, like he said in the very beginning, all he sees
(19:35):
is Captain Madden coming at him.
Like he doesn't have any more choice left.
He's going to be arrested.
He's going to die.
But he completed his mission.
And maybe because he completed his mission is where that choice was taken away.
And his fate is sealed with Captain Richard Madden.
And so it's just fascinating all the possibilities that could have happened.
(19:56):
But he feels that he's done with the choices he's already made.
And also in terms of choices, what he mentions here is sometimes the choices
that are taken implicitly or taken for us that we don't control.
Because, for example, Yutsun, he has the ability.
(20:17):
He cannot actively choose to follow this plan to go to this place and kill this
Albert person to signal the location.
But there are also hints of choices that they don't really take, but that set them on a path.
Richard Madden being Irish and working for the British, he doesn't really have a choice.
He has to be the way he is.
Otherwise, he could be worse.
(20:38):
But that is probably not a choice he actively took.
Likewise, he didn't choose to be Irish.
That was a choice that quote unquote the destiny took for him, but set him on a path nonetheless.
Yeah, it's funny because with with the Richard Madden, he he's he's he's also a character of contradictions
because an Irishman working for the English, he's accused of lukewarmness, whatever that means.
(21:04):
Right. Doesn't mean he's just kind of like meh, like just like we would probably say nowadays.
Yeah. And perhaps of treason.
But he ends up being completely loyal to the English gods.
And so that those contradictions are inherent in that character.
They're inherent in the main character because he's talking about all these different choices leading to different timelines.
(21:27):
Yet he's also trapped in being caught by Madden.
And so it's contradictions of human nature seems to be a thing that Borges is playing with a lot here.
Yeah. And there is also, you know, putting this a bit on context,
Argentina was always quite a multicultural country.
Like we have a lot of immigrants, especially from Europe.
(21:49):
And I think Borges was like blending that context and also trying to make a worry.
Would somebody be different had they been born somewhere else?
Would Madden be different if he weren't Irish?
Like he was trying to. And I think that's again because of a cultural background in Argentina.
But also it makes me wonder how much those additional decisions, quote unquote,
(22:12):
that are placed because of our culture, the country, the time and age we live on have affected us.
They are part of us. They made us who we are, you know?
Yeah, I see what you mean. There's also like a hint of colonialism in this story.
We're kind of talking about contradictions and loyalty.
Like there's like, though it falls from the perspective of these two outsiders, you know,
(22:33):
one's like this Asian guy and the other is an Irish guy who works for the British, you know,
kind of a Wellington, you know, Lord Dunsaney type who, you know, very Irish,
but also loyal to the British crown. I don't know if that's just me reaching though,
but I kind of got a colonialism subtext out of the story.
There is a lot of prejudice because there is a thought you soon have regarding how the British were,
(22:57):
yeah, prejudiced against the Irish.
But there is also a bit of the discussion on how the Germans were prejudiced against the Chinese
and how that basically changed his path and his actions.
And I think the main character was also a bit sour that he had to be all the time
proving himself to a man who hated him, which was basically his boss.
(23:19):
And I imagine that in colonized nations, anyone who wanted to, say,
gain the favor of the ruling people, they'd have a similar attitude towards expressing more loyalty,
showing that they can do more than the people who they tend to trust more so that they can win said trust.
(23:43):
Yeah. And what do you think of the idea of a book being a labyrinth?
Isn't that kind of one of the points of a book or a piece of art?
It's kind of like this, you know, you read it and you try to figure out what it means or try to figure out how to get out of it.
I think you're onto something there, Britton.
I think that art can be its own labyrinth in a way because you can read something, think a certain way about it, reread it, think a different way about it.
(24:12):
And that can go on almost infinitely, really.
And so he mentions in here about when you're in a labyrinth, you consistently take, you know,
the old adage is to take left turns to try to find your way out of that.
So he's kind of hinting at it's a common procedure for discovering the central courtyard in certain labyrinths.
But how does how does taking a left turn work with a piece of art or piece of literature or a book?
(24:39):
How do you interpret a left turn intellectually rather than physically in a labyrinth?
And so I think you're onto something like he's trying to figure out this aspect of taking left turns in a labyrinth
when it comes to making choices that can have possible divergent futures and possible different leanings into a written work like that.
(25:00):
Well, if I really want to go deeper into this, is free will even a thing?
That's kind of what this asks as well.
Yeah, I was going to try to answer your question of how do you take a left turn when interpreting art.
And to me, if I go to the idea of left being outside of the norm, then it will be I will try to interpret the art, trying to go wild.
(25:25):
Like imagine the wildest thing that the artist was trying to put up there.
Like if I'm looking at Picasso, he was literally trying to break out the norm of his time.
There is a lot of art that has always been created, even songs or literature or even visual art
that has been created with the idea of putting up a comment there about the social order or the political structure that was kind of covert, but not quite so.
(25:52):
So in that case, the labyrinth will be trying to answer what did the artist truly mean through this piece?
Yeah. And I think that ties into when he brought up the theme of chess, what's the forbidden word in chess.
And the word is the is the name of the game chess.
And he was saying it was the same thing with time.
(26:14):
When you're writing a book about time, the forbidden word is time.
And so it makes you wonder in this story, what is Borgias' forbidden word?
What is it that he's not writing here that this story is actually about?
What a story is about is the words that are excluded from it.
And so it makes you sort of skirt around it.
(26:37):
I think some of the more subtle stories that we read tend to sort of skirt around the themes without really talking about them explicitly, or at least sometimes that's done when it doesn't hammer home the themes, as some people say.
And the context of art and labyrinth, I think that also was interesting that stories with the subtle themes that we leave to interpretation or poetry, for instance, things that aren't explicitly mentioned, that could also be the puzzle or riddle that's referenced in the story.
(27:08):
You made me think of something.
When we have those stories within stories, if we try to find those stories within the stories in our life, those could be like the different things that we do.
Like we have one story is our day job, another story is our family, another story is our hobby.
And we are also working on labyrinths between one or the other, and they are always intertwining and creating these labyrinths of life.
(27:34):
Perhaps that's also the theme he's mentioning because we have a lot of subplots in here.
We have the subplot of Richard Madden, we have the subplot of the battle and where all of the equipment was put up.
We have the subplot of ancestor in here that we end up finding.
We have the subplot of the conversation, we have the subplot of the chase, you know, and they are all weaving and creating a labyrinth that is more plot-wise and not only in time.
(28:02):
Some of them continue a bit and they get both while another one continues, but in reality they are all happening, even if we are just not reading about them because this is told from the biased perspective of a single character.
Yeah, you said biased characters. So you think our narrator here, I forget his name, but you think he's an unreliable narrator?
I think he's a biased narrator. I don't know. I think he's reliable within his own self-context, but I think he's biased.
(28:30):
I think he's both biased because he has a preference and a loyalty that is making him narrate the events in one particular way, but he's also unreliable because he must have been under a lot of distress.
Even if he comes up as very calm, this is a framed narrative. Like he's narrating this before he's killed and there is a piece, a part of it in which he says something like,
(28:55):
the distress doesn't mean anything now that my neck yearns for the news. So it's like, I'm dead, who cares? This is the story.
He comes across as calm, but through the events, he must have been incredibly distressed. Kind of like we have both states of the character throughout the narration. So yeah, to me he's both biased and unreliable because of that.
(29:18):
The narrator, he has left a letter at the end, right? Just before he's killed with the news. So I do think that he is reliable in that sense. Like he believes that he's telling the truth.
But I wonder if like first person narratives are inherently unreliable narratives. Of course, the author has to make good use of that unreliability for the story to become about the unreliable narrator.
(29:44):
But I do think in general, there is a case to be made that first person narratives could always be unreliable narratives.
And in that case, we are also the unreliable narrator of our own life.
True. Yes.
Well, yeah, I mean, inception is mind blown.
Yeah. Britton, what do you think? Is it biased or unreliable narrator? The one in the story?
(30:09):
Well, yeah, biased probably because, you know, he's like that jerk Richard Madden. Try not to swear here. He captured me. I can't do nothing about it.
And also there's the hint that he might be a little something's wrong with him. So, yeah, I would say he's probably a little bit unreliable.
But, you know, I don't know what it what even is a reliable narrator. Like that's the real question.
(30:30):
Even omniscient narrators, for instance, like they could be withholding information from you to. So I guess the more interesting question is what do literary critics mean when they say unreliable narrator?
Because, yeah, everybody's like in the wise words of House MD, everybody lies.
(30:51):
Never thought I'd get a house reference, but all right. Yeah.
Yeah, I just think you have to look at the level of bias that the narrator has, because I think that he's reliable in the truth that he's relating as he sees it.
I don't think he's deliberately trying to tell us a falsehood from how he sees things.
In this case, I think he's he may be unreliable in his perception of things as we all are in one way or another. But I think that as a last act of what he knows his fate coming.
(31:25):
So I think he is intellectual enough to say this is an account. I'm going to try to make this as accurate as possible in the way that I see it.
And of course, he's bragging a little bit about I got the secret out and I got my message out and he's you know, so you take that bragging into account that he succeeded in his mission.
You can conjecture on whether or not he felt as calm as he says he did when he says I've put distress aside and what have you.
(31:53):
You can debate whether or not he actually felt that or if he was just writing that down just to make himself look better in the in the account.
His account seems intellectual enough to seem to reasons enough that you think that the events are as accurate as somebody who is doing this can portray them within, you know, within the sense of self.
(32:15):
That's that's what I got out of it. That makes sense.
But I did have moments throughout wondering whether he wasn't say over reading the situation, so to speak.
For instance, like, was he really being chased by Richard Madden or was he just so freaked out that he saw shadows like that he saw enemies in his shadows?
And for all we know, the bombing of the city of Albert had nothing to do with the obscure message he sent out by killing this guy named Albert.
(32:41):
It's possible he just thought that he succeeded when, in fact, maybe they got information from elsewhere.
In that sense, it's possible that he's an unreliable knight and that his view of the world he has is not sufficient to tell us whether what he knows is, in fact, accurate.
Yeah, but we'd have to really delve deep into like clues and stuff to figure out if he's lying to himself and if he's lying, you know, that that would be hard to do.
(33:08):
Maybe I'll back up. Maybe he's not unreliable.
I do think he's being honest in like how he's, you know, sees things. But like it does seem like it's one of those like, again, kind of Lovecraftian, oh, he goes mad from the revelation.
It's interesting. But we also have, I think, a degree of unreliability on the story itself and in how it is set up.
(33:30):
For example, on the first paragraph, it says that the attack planned for a specific date had to be postponed until the morning of the 20th.
Which means the torrential rains, Captain Liddellhart commands, caused this delay.
The question is, do the torrential rains or are they a metaphor for the bombing of Albert that actually delayed everything?
(33:52):
Or is it literal rain and as Varsha said, you soon actually got it wrong.
The bombarding in Albert didn't happen.
I was saying more that it did happen, but not because of the information he thought he gave, but from elsewhere. But oh, that's a whole new angle that it didn't actually happen.
He just thinks it did. Yeah, it sets us up because we don't know those first two pages.
(34:15):
Yeah, the possibilities are there. I was going to say like that whole battle they mentioned at the beginning didn't even happen.
So you're just kind of like, or well, at least in our timeline, maybe in another time. Probably the latter.
That's the best. And that leads me to another point.
Is that first paragraph with the torrential rains sugar coating reality for the masses as it often happens with accounts of war?
(34:44):
Or is it just hiding information to make a government look better as you don't try to do with himself?
I'm going to guess or bet that they don't care that much about the masses and their delicate perception.
It's like, yeah, we better we better clean this up. We can't have can't have us looking incompetent in front of the world.
(35:06):
It makes me wonder if it was him narrating all the time, like the frame narrative that comes from paragraph three onwards, because it says something that it is signed by him.
Yeah. But who is telling it? It could be some random guy there.
Man, you know, we got to we got to lie to the people. They won't care.
Yeah, it could have been like somebody else made up the confession. So made up confession is not that strange.
(35:33):
I'm not too sold on that theory because we do get clues that he was thinking about his culture and things like that.
That will be a bit difficult to replicate unless somebody else was trying it.
But I think it shows layer upon layer of unreliability on the story itself.
Like as Borges sometimes does, he will like make you doubt about the story he's writing as well, not only about the plot of it.
(35:58):
I feel like we've ended up here every single time we've had a discussion.
We're in the labyrinth now.
Yeah, all those left turns lead to madness, I guess.
That's something that I really love of him. Like, yeah, the theme of the stories are labyrinths or of a lot of stories.
(36:22):
That's why there is a collection called Labyrinth. But also the stories themselves are presented like labyrinth.
And this one in case is on time because we have all the different changes on the timeline within the story.
Death on the Compass, as you mentioned, Varja, it was a labyrinth but of clues because there were clues about the ending very early at the start.
(36:43):
And it was a murder mystery. So it makes sense.
He was putting a lot of effort on the structure of the story as a way to reinforce the theme of it.
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And also, we sort of spiraled in our discussion to get here, kind of like in a labyrinth.
And there's also like this sort of low descent into madness. If you stay in a labyrinth long enough, I imagine there will be a slow descent into madness where you start to question everything, including the nature of reality.
(37:13):
So we've started to question the story itself. Like Britton said, we are in the labyrinth now.
I have one more question for you. I have been reading a lot of books around the theme of memory as of late.
You soon, as he narrates, he will often say that he recalled something. This part in particular, he said,
Something has stirred in my memory and I uttered with incomprehensible certainty the garden of my ancestor, Sui-Pen.
(37:40):
So he's basically in the present, right? But he recalls something and that thing clarifies something in the present.
And that's how memory works. Basically, when we recall something, we create a new memory of the memory,
which is basically us recalling the memory and we add information to it. So we live in the labyrinth of our minds.
And a lot of the times you soon is narrating, he's mentioning like, I recall something I remember this time or I remember this other story.
(38:09):
He's also weaving this timeless labyrinth of memory through the story and which is basically himself,
because we will say that the collection of our memories, everything with them is us, what make us, us.
It's interesting because it makes you wonder if do memories in and of themselves create alternate timelines
(38:30):
when your memories are not, you know, nobody's memories complete, you know.
So when you remember something differently than what somebody else remembers it as, is that also an alternate timeline, an alternate reality?
And on top of that, sometimes even if we recall the events, we tend to forget the order of the events,
especially if you go far back in the past, like, you know two things happened, but you're not quite sure which one came before or after.
(38:57):
And that's also another alternate reality. And in those cases with memory, time doesn't exist because it's a memory of a memory of a memory.
Yeah. Yeah. The human mind is a weird thing. Like you'll be like telling a story and be like, oh yeah, that happened too.
And then this happened. And oh yeah, that happened too. Memories is a strange thing too,
(39:19):
because, you know, you're telling the story and other details pop up that you forgot, you know.
That's right. Only the present is happening.
Precisely. I'm precisely now.
Yeah. Even history people sometimes can't, can't agree on what, which history is right.
Especially history. Yeah.
Where do we get history from? The accounts of people who were there, which maybe not all of it is correct.
(39:43):
You know, it's, you know, I don't want to go in that rabbit hole today. That's another labyrinth for another time.
And on that note, thank you everyone for joining me again and for taking over this podcast. It was a mind blowing discussion.
Before we sign off, let's do a round of photos so that the listeners know where to find you.
Yes, I'm Jared. You can find me at the Financie Thinker YouTube channel and you can find me on podcasts like speculative speculations and other fine podcasts on page two.
(40:10):
I feel like Jared was on to X speed. But yeah, I'm Varsha. You can find me on the YouTube channel reading by the rainy mountain, the podcast speculative speculations and hanging out on the patron forum where we plan a lot of reading groups like this one.
So come check that out. Yeah, I'm some oaky dude on YouTube, basically anywhere else. Twitter, Instagram, Blue Sky, even though I don't use it very much. Good Reads and Letterboxd. That's where you can find me.
(40:37):
That said, if you like the episode, please like and subscribe. And if you want to get by size pros analysis, short semantic discussions and other bookish musings, then subscribe to my newsletter at LiviaJElio.com.
By doing so, you will also get a free ebook for my novella, The Genesis of Change. I will leave the link in the episode subscription. Thank you for listening and happy reading.
I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth
(00:04):
that would encompass the past and the future.
This is one of many thoughtful beats around time, decisions and multiverses
presented in a classical short story, The Garden of Forking Past, by Jorge
Les Borges. Let's get this book and done.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books and Done. I'm your host, Livia J.
(00:34):
Elliott. And today, guests take over yet again to discuss another of Jorge
Luis Borges' short stories, no more and no less than the famous The Garden of
Forking Past. Therefore, let me introduce you to my guests.
I'm Jared. I run the fantasy thinker YouTube channel and I'm also on podcasts
(00:55):
called speculative speculations and other fine podcasts on the page
chewing.com website.
Hi, I'm Varsha. Thank you for letting me take over again. I run the YouTube
channel reading by the Rainy Mountain, some of the podcasts that Jared
mentioned, including speculative speculations. Excited for another Borges
discussion.
Hello, I'm Britton. I run the channel, Samohee Dude. I run a couple of
(01:17):
podcasts. This is actually my first Jorge Luis Borges story. So fun times.
Glad to be here.
As a bit of trivia, let me share that The Garden of Forking Past was
originally published in 1941 and republished in its entirety in 1944
through the collection called Ficciones. Curiously, it appeared in
(01:37):
Ellen's Queen Mystery magazine in August 1948. And in 1958, it was
translated into English by Donald A. Yates and published in the Michigan
Alumni Quarterly Review Spring of 1958. In theme, it is considered similar
to two stories we have already discussed in previous guest talks,
(01:59):
Thlone, Uckbar, or Bistertius and the Library of Babel. Now, before diving
into the discussion, let me tackle some disclaimers. As usual, there are
spoilers in this podcast. This is a 10 pages short story, and it will be
very difficult to discuss it without spoilers. So listen with caution.
Likewise, what you will hear is our subjective interpretation of this
(02:22):
text. And it can be pretty different to what you were expecting. That's
okay. We can all have different opinions. Let me do a short question
to get started. What point or concept within this story resonated with
you the most?
One of the things that really stood out to me right away was the line
only in the present do things happen. So with a title like God, another
(02:44):
forking paths, you have this sense of choices made can affect outcomes. So
that line only in the present do things happen, kind of reflects upon things
happening now as the only reality that matters to the people who it is
happening to and that both the future and the past are kind of mutable.
(03:07):
That's kind of what stood out to me right away about this story. It's
kind of a common theme that Bojas likes to tackle.
I liked when he said everything happens to a man precisely, precisely
now. As you said, it's like we have history, each of us, depending how
much time we have been here. But sometimes what only matters is what
we are doing now. Like the things that are happening now, even if like,
(03:29):
if we weren't happy before, if we were sad before, it doesn't matter the
happiness that we have in the moment, or the sadness that we have in the
present. It kind of like overrides everything else.
Yeah, something I picked up on was, um, causality. It actually reminded me a
lot of, um, Philip K. Dick's novel, uh, the man in a high castle, which is
(03:49):
an alternate history book. I remember reading through this and just seeing,
you know, kind of the Asian influence in the story. And I thought, I
wonder if Philip K. Dick read this story. I did read, apparently he was
influenced on some bit by, uh, Borges, but I don't know that for sure.
Yeah, I think what I love the Borges story is that we've been reading so
far. This one, uh, like all the others seems to have what I thought, some
(04:12):
representation of real world science or scientific theories embedded in the
story. And that's what the theory of time felt like to me, like some, a
metaphor for the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
It turns out that one wasn't proposed until 1950 or so, and this was
published in 1941. So it's pretty cool that he thought of that. And, and
(04:34):
now I'm curious about whether this was a philosophical idea that was present
well before the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics was a
thing. And if that was leeching off of, uh, inspired by the previous
philosophies of time. But anyway, I think that's the part that typically
has been resonating the most with me in any Borges story is the part about
the concepts that he explores around time. And this one was no different.
(04:57):
So the title of the short story, the garden of working paths, refers to
Sui Peng's idea that infinite realities are created as people face
decision points. And he basically tried to write that down in a story
that is within the book. And we don't really find out about what the
(05:17):
content of it, but on it, each decision creates a new path and the outcomes
of those decisions create more opportunities for choices that are
split into their own paths, but they all exist at the same time. And
that's a point of the story that the forking is over time and it still
exists regardless of whether you quote unquote chose that path or not.
(05:39):
Do you think it can be like a precursor of the concept of multiverses?
That's kind of something I picked up on is kind of, yeah, this could be a
sort of take on alternate universes, parallel universes, like what if this
event happened? How would things change?
Yeah, I think I agree. Like I brought up the many worlds interpretation.
(06:01):
I don't know if that translates to the existence of the multiverse also,
but yeah, it does seem like this is foreshadowing or playing with that
idea of multiple universes. Like he talks about, or the possibility that
you and I don't exist in some versions of the story and in others, we are
enemies and in others we are friends.
(06:22):
Yeah, I think causality is a big theme of the story just in terms of how
certain events affect a timeline, which is like a big thing in like time
travel stories, but I don't really think this is a time travel story.
This is more about like causality in terms of like alternate realities.
Yeah, it's like everything you didn't do becomes a different timeline.
(06:44):
Basically a new multi-universe or whatever responds from there.
Speaking of causality, the order in which this, he has come up with this,
right? Like this seems to be some, this is something that is sort of really
ingrained in our, I think everybody knows or understands the concept of
multiverse today, but I bet at its time, it was a very revolutionary thought
(07:08):
perhaps. I think it's really cool that he came up with that then.
Yeah, absolutely. The words of his, the book, The Garden of Forking Pass was
by his, his ancestor. I forget how it was related.
It was funny that his ancestors name was, I don't, can't pronounce the first
word, but it was pen. It was Sui Pen, you know, and of course he, he made
several references to calligraphy and to pens throughout the, uh, throughout
(07:32):
the course of the story.
But he wrote right in there that he believed in infinite series of times
in a growing and dizzying network of divergent, convergent and parallel
times. And so that sense of decision making, creating divergent timelines
and divergent and parallel timelines, uh, definitely infiltrated his writing
(07:52):
in this sense. You know, that's what his ancestor was kind of proposing to him,
but it's kind of amusing that he's reading about his ancestor proposing
this multiple timeline, but he's kind of resigned to being caught by Richard
Madden the whole time. And he eventually does get caught by him, if I'm not
(08:13):
mistaken, right? And so you would think that he would use his knowledge to try
to divert that outcome, but right off the bat, he says, I'm going to suffer
this fate of either being arrested or killed. And so it's kind of contradictory
in a way that he's kind of trapped in this outcome, but yet he's talking about
all these divergent choices leading to parallel outcomes.
(08:33):
Well, you have that scene in which you're soon he's sitting on the couch,
talking to the researcher and he actually sees all the people, all of the
other variants of them in the garden outside the house. He actually wrote,
it seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely
saturated with invisible people. Those persons were Albert and I secret,
(08:57):
busy and multi-form in other dimensions of time. I'm not sure, but it is either
he's going mad and believing that all of these other realities exist or the
realities are converging. And he actually for a brief moment sees them all in the
garden.
It's like there are all these possibilities and one of them could become true,
(09:18):
right? It reminded me of that scene in Tune that I couldn't spoil a scene.
I'll reference it obliquely, but there's a scene, a duel, I think, and they sort
of consider all the options and our character is able to see the future from
many different options and sees which one might lead to the outcome he wants. I
(09:40):
think this reminded me of that, except like obviously the person we are
following here doesn't have quite that level of insight into what might happen.
It's just that like it's teeming with possibilities and anything could happen,
which I guess is true philosophically and is true of life in general.
Yeah, he does speak of being a child in the symmetrical garden in Hafez.
In Hafez, and he wonders about wonder he's going to die now.
(10:04):
And then every time he seems to contemplate these different outcomes,
the horse like face of Madden suddenly shows up in his brain as if that's,
that's the only thing that's going to actually happen. You know,
every time he tries to contemplate something else in this garden,
different outcome for himself,
the Madden character always just shows up front and center.
(10:24):
And I wonder,
is that a sense of fate that cannot be diverted at all? Did he have no choice?
Is that fate set in stone, so to speak? At what point was that fate set in stone?
You know,
what decision did he make earlier that could have diverted him being hunted
down by this Madden character?
That's very interesting because I think we all sometimes end up thinking that
(10:48):
our, the consequences of our actions are immediate.
That if we do something and we don't see any consequence,
then that's it. It's going on. Sometimes it may take 10 years.
It's because you're studying something that 10 years after you end up doing
something on some decisions,
they are actually slow born to use a more modern term in what you reference.
(11:10):
Jarrod made me think like,
what decision did you soon take so many years ago that now basically made it
impossible for to avoid Richard Madden.
Yeah. And he carries on with that theme later too,
when he says that he's talking about some of the atrocities that are committed
in war and by people during these times where he says,
(11:30):
I foresee that man will resign himself every day to more atrocious enterprises
so that soon they'll only be warriors and bandits.
And he says that in order for these people to do this,
they must impose on themselves a future that is irrevocable as the past.
And so they have to have that future in their mind in order to even accomplish
(11:52):
these atrocious enterprises.
And with that kind of singularity of thought,
do they accomplish that path for their future?
It's kind of a scary thought that people had to do that in order like soldiers
might've had to do that in order to follow orders and stuff like that.
And I think he was kind of touching on that irrevocable fate that is kind of
(12:12):
created by the mind itself as it as it go forward in order to maybe just deal
with the situation.
It kind of sounds like 12 monkeys with how you're describing it, Jared,
you know, where he, well, I won't spoil in case anyone here hasn't seen 12 monkeys.
Yeah. Well, 12 monkeys is a wild head trip, but.
Yeah.
(12:34):
Can you elaborate a bit more because I haven't seen it.
There's actual time travel in 12 monkeys.
There is actual time travel. Yeah.
But there is that kind of theme of you have a fate, you can't escape it.
That kind of that's what I was referring to.
Did you guys read the footnote?
What do you guys think of that?
He actually uses that a lot.
Like in all of his stories, there are a lot of footnotes.
(12:57):
That's basically because at least in my interpretation, Borges does a lot of
discussion in terms of fiction and nonfiction and tries to present fictional
stories as nonfiction.
So we get on this one, the first two paragraphs that are the nonfiction part
and those are the setting for the frame narrative that comes after.
(13:20):
Actually, the battle that he's mentioning in there, it doesn't exist,
but there were so many battles in World War I that if you don't know too much
of history, like it's okay.
It may seem like a real battle, right?
So it gives you that vibe of it's nonfiction.
And what follows after is an account.
So it's a frame narrative of Yusun.
(13:41):
But the footnote that you mentioned, it actually comes when he's mentioned an
additional event and it's basically, it meant that Runeberg has been arrested
or murdered, so he's conjecturing.
And the footnote is actually some character that we don't know, which is
actually adding details to the death of a character, perhaps to make it pretend
(14:05):
that it's actually real, especially because the footnote is signed as
editor's note.
And it's not the editor of the story.
It's a character editor who is fictional and who is pretending that this other
character, Runeberg, was not fictional.
So I think it's more of them that way he writes.
To pick elements of reality as he did on Clone, like he would pick things that
(14:29):
are nonfiction places that we know, in this case, World War I, to give a sense
of this is real to a story that is fully fictional.
And in this case, to me at least, he's also crafting a labyrinth with the story.
So not only the in-book story is a labyrinth in time, this is also a labyrinth
in time, the one that we are reading, because we, the readers, we have to pick
(14:54):
these pieces apart and assemble the timeline of the first two paragraphs that
are in the future and then we go back in the frame narrative and start moving
into the future and then it actually goes back again to tell us the story of the
grandfather and everything converges into the present because things only
happen in the present.
It gives more of the vibe that this is like an academic, you know, looking over
(15:15):
this like, what is this, you know?
The book that's being referenced then that also doesn't, probably doesn't exist
because it's referencing a fictional war, the history of the world, or battle, I
mean, the history of the world war, Little Heart tells us on page 242.
Is that an actual book then?
What I found is that the battle dimension, it didn't exist.
(15:37):
Okay.
I didn't search for the specific dome, but in again, in Tlonuc where they were
messing around with the British encyclopedia, which actually existed.
So I love how, I love how he picks those elements, you know, to blur the lines
between and perhaps make us believe that this is real.
And touching on what Prydon says that this reads as an academic, I think is
(16:02):
because he was aiming for this being the confession of a person who is going to
be killed.
And this is actually the account or the translation or whatever from another of
the officers there who were studying it.
So it has this formal vibe that I think adds to the mood of it.
Yeah.
I think the historian who wrote this book about the supposed battle, there is a
(16:28):
professor who apparently found this and they are repeating it here to add some
more light on that battle.
Yeah.
So the book actually exists and it was published in 1930.
Okay.
The book that starts.
So I'm not, I have no idea if on page 22, it actually mentions that.
(16:50):
So if you're okay to change topics, I have a question for you, Olivia.
Yeah.
The book that the ancestor supposedly wrote with all the possibilities and all
the choices, it reminded me a little bit of your story of choices, stories with
choices.
I wanted to ask what you thought of that and if you resonate with that aspect of
the book here.
I really liked it, especially because I think it's a reference to how we control
(17:15):
agency.
If you're writing a narrative for a game, even when you are doing for a tabletop
game, you have to give the players the illusion of agency, but you still have to
narrow it down because otherwise it gets out of control.
So they really don't have agency.
They are just playing on the sandbox that you created.
And I think that in this case, he was sometimes making an illusion to it,
(17:38):
mentioning that, yeah, the agency that we have is limited in reality as well
because of the context that we live on, because we have legislations, we have
rules, we have cultural elements that sometimes may prevent us to doing
something.
So in that case, those are also constraints that limit our agency.
And sometimes we say, like, perhaps we could have done differently.
(18:00):
And that is one pass on this labor in time that he mentions.
But the answer may be not really, because there may have been like a cultural
element in there blocking us or saying like, yeah, we may dream of doing that,
but we are not doing it because of our culture, you know, or loss or whatever
other element is there.
Yeah, I thought it was incredibly accurate for what it is narrative in games,
(18:25):
even though this was written in 1941.
I'm not sure, Jarrod, what do you think of it because you are generally a DM,
right?
I am. See, I got my shirt on.
You're absolutely right.
It's creating the illusion of choices that a lot of the times you have to do
is when you're running one of these games is you have to create that illusion
of choices, even though you are only prepared.
(18:48):
You can only prepare so much for what the players do.
You still have to create the illusion that that what they can do encompasses all
possibilities.
But in reality, there's only so many possibilities where people will be in the
same place at the same time or there's a lot of possibilities when none of those
people will be there.
And there's a lot of possibilities where only one of them would be there.
(19:09):
And so you narrow down the possibilities where if you're running a whole group
of characters, say, sort of in a game, there's only so many possibilities where
all those characters will be on a certain path.
And those paths only exist in a finite path.
And so it's funny that it kind of relates to this theme of illusion of choice
because this guy who eventually, like he said in the very beginning, all he sees
(19:35):
is Captain Madden coming at him.
Like he doesn't have any more choice left.
He's going to be arrested.
He's going to die.
But he completed his mission.
And maybe because he completed his mission is where that choice was taken away.
And his fate is sealed with Captain Richard Madden.
And so it's just fascinating all the possibilities that could have happened.
(19:56):
But he feels that he's done with the choices he's already made.
And also in terms of choices, what he mentions here is sometimes the choices
that are taken implicitly or taken for us that we don't control.
Because, for example, Yutsun, he has the ability.
(20:17):
He cannot actively choose to follow this plan to go to this place and kill this
Albert person to signal the location.
But there are also hints of choices that they don't really take, but that set them on a path.
Richard Madden being Irish and working for the British, he doesn't really have a choice.
He has to be the way he is.
Otherwise, he could be worse.
(20:38):
But that is probably not a choice he actively took.
Likewise, he didn't choose to be Irish.
That was a choice that quote unquote the destiny took for him, but set him on a path nonetheless.
Yeah, it's funny because with with the Richard Madden, he he's he's he's also a character of contradictions
because an Irishman working for the English, he's accused of lukewarmness, whatever that means.
(21:04):
Right. Doesn't mean he's just kind of like meh, like just like we would probably say nowadays.
Yeah. And perhaps of treason.
But he ends up being completely loyal to the English gods.
And so that those contradictions are inherent in that character.
They're inherent in the main character because he's talking about all these different choices leading to different timelines.
(21:27):
Yet he's also trapped in being caught by Madden.
And so it's contradictions of human nature seems to be a thing that Borges is playing with a lot here.
Yeah. And there is also, you know, putting this a bit on context,
Argentina was always quite a multicultural country.
Like we have a lot of immigrants, especially from Europe.
(21:49):
And I think Borges was like blending that context and also trying to make a worry.
Would somebody be different had they been born somewhere else?
Would Madden be different if he weren't Irish?
Like he was trying to. And I think that's again because of a cultural background in Argentina.
But also it makes me wonder how much those additional decisions, quote unquote,
(22:12):
that are placed because of our culture, the country, the time and age we live on have affected us.
They are part of us. They made us who we are, you know?
Yeah, I see what you mean. There's also like a hint of colonialism in this story.
We're kind of talking about contradictions and loyalty.
Like there's like, though it falls from the perspective of these two outsiders, you know,
(22:33):
one's like this Asian guy and the other is an Irish guy who works for the British, you know,
kind of a Wellington, you know, Lord Dunsaney type who, you know, very Irish,
but also loyal to the British crown. I don't know if that's just me reaching though,
but I kind of got a colonialism subtext out of the story.
There is a lot of prejudice because there is a thought you soon have regarding how the British were,
(22:57):
yeah, prejudiced against the Irish.
But there is also a bit of the discussion on how the Germans were prejudiced against the Chinese
and how that basically changed his path and his actions.
And I think the main character was also a bit sour that he had to be all the time
proving himself to a man who hated him, which was basically his boss.
(23:19):
And I imagine that in colonized nations, anyone who wanted to, say,
gain the favor of the ruling people, they'd have a similar attitude towards expressing more loyalty,
showing that they can do more than the people who they tend to trust more so that they can win said trust.
(23:43):
Yeah. And what do you think of the idea of a book being a labyrinth?
Isn't that kind of one of the points of a book or a piece of art?
It's kind of like this, you know, you read it and you try to figure out what it means or try to figure out how to get out of it.
I think you're onto something there, Britton.
I think that art can be its own labyrinth in a way because you can read something, think a certain way about it, reread it, think a different way about it.
(24:12):
And that can go on almost infinitely, really.
And so he mentions in here about when you're in a labyrinth, you consistently take, you know,
the old adage is to take left turns to try to find your way out of that.
So he's kind of hinting at it's a common procedure for discovering the central courtyard in certain labyrinths.
But how does how does taking a left turn work with a piece of art or piece of literature or a book?
(24:39):
How do you interpret a left turn intellectually rather than physically in a labyrinth?
And so I think you're onto something like he's trying to figure out this aspect of taking left turns in a labyrinth
when it comes to making choices that can have possible divergent futures and possible different leanings into a written work like that.
(25:00):
Well, if I really want to go deeper into this, is free will even a thing?
That's kind of what this asks as well.
Yeah, I was going to try to answer your question of how do you take a left turn when interpreting art.
And to me, if I go to the idea of left being outside of the norm, then it will be I will try to interpret the art, trying to go wild.
(25:25):
Like imagine the wildest thing that the artist was trying to put up there.
Like if I'm looking at Picasso, he was literally trying to break out the norm of his time.
There is a lot of art that has always been created, even songs or literature or even visual art
that has been created with the idea of putting up a comment there about the social order or the political structure that was kind of covert, but not quite so.
(25:52):
So in that case, the labyrinth will be trying to answer what did the artist truly mean through this piece?
Yeah. And I think that ties into when he brought up the theme of chess, what's the forbidden word in chess.
And the word is the is the name of the game chess.
And he was saying it was the same thing with time.
(26:14):
When you're writing a book about time, the forbidden word is time.
And so it makes you wonder in this story, what is Borgias' forbidden word?
What is it that he's not writing here that this story is actually about?
What a story is about is the words that are excluded from it.
And so it makes you sort of skirt around it.
(26:37):
I think some of the more subtle stories that we read tend to sort of skirt around the themes without really talking about them explicitly, or at least sometimes that's done when it doesn't hammer home the themes, as some people say.
And the context of art and labyrinth, I think that also was interesting that stories with the subtle themes that we leave to interpretation or poetry, for instance, things that aren't explicitly mentioned, that could also be the puzzle or riddle that's referenced in the story.
(27:08):
You made me think of something.
When we have those stories within stories, if we try to find those stories within the stories in our life, those could be like the different things that we do.
Like we have one story is our day job, another story is our family, another story is our hobby.
And we are also working on labyrinths between one or the other, and they are always intertwining and creating these labyrinths of life.
(27:34):
Perhaps that's also the theme he's mentioning because we have a lot of subplots in here.
We have the subplot of Richard Madden, we have the subplot of the battle and where all of the equipment was put up.
We have the subplot of ancestor in here that we end up finding.
We have the subplot of the conversation, we have the subplot of the chase, you know, and they are all weaving and creating a labyrinth that is more plot-wise and not only in time.
(28:02):
Some of them continue a bit and they get both while another one continues, but in reality they are all happening, even if we are just not reading about them because this is told from the biased perspective of a single character.
Yeah, you said biased characters. So you think our narrator here, I forget his name, but you think he's an unreliable narrator?
I think he's a biased narrator. I don't know. I think he's reliable within his own self-context, but I think he's biased.
(28:30):
I think he's both biased because he has a preference and a loyalty that is making him narrate the events in one particular way, but he's also unreliable because he must have been under a lot of distress.
Even if he comes up as very calm, this is a framed narrative. Like he's narrating this before he's killed and there is a piece, a part of it in which he says something like,
(28:55):
the distress doesn't mean anything now that my neck yearns for the news. So it's like, I'm dead, who cares? This is the story.
He comes across as calm, but through the events, he must have been incredibly distressed. Kind of like we have both states of the character throughout the narration. So yeah, to me he's both biased and unreliable because of that.
(29:18):
The narrator, he has left a letter at the end, right? Just before he's killed with the news. So I do think that he is reliable in that sense. Like he believes that he's telling the truth.
But I wonder if like first person narratives are inherently unreliable narratives. Of course, the author has to make good use of that unreliability for the story to become about the unreliable narrator.
(29:44):
But I do think in general, there is a case to be made that first person narratives could always be unreliable narratives.
And in that case, we are also the unreliable narrator of our own life.
True. Yes.
Well, yeah, I mean, inception is mind blown.
Yeah. Britton, what do you think? Is it biased or unreliable narrator? The one in the story?
(30:09):
Well, yeah, biased probably because, you know, he's like that jerk Richard Madden. Try not to swear here. He captured me. I can't do nothing about it.
And also there's the hint that he might be a little something's wrong with him. So, yeah, I would say he's probably a little bit unreliable.
But, you know, I don't know what it what even is a reliable narrator. Like that's the real question.
(30:30):
Even omniscient narrators, for instance, like they could be withholding information from you to. So I guess the more interesting question is what do literary critics mean when they say unreliable narrator?
Because, yeah, everybody's like in the wise words of House MD, everybody lies.
(30:51):
Never thought I'd get a house reference, but all right. Yeah.
Yeah, I just think you have to look at the level of bias that the narrator has, because I think that he's reliable in the truth that he's relating as he sees it.
I don't think he's deliberately trying to tell us a falsehood from how he sees things.
In this case, I think he's he may be unreliable in his perception of things as we all are in one way or another. But I think that as a last act of what he knows his fate coming.
(31:25):
So I think he is intellectual enough to say this is an account. I'm going to try to make this as accurate as possible in the way that I see it.
And of course, he's bragging a little bit about I got the secret out and I got my message out and he's you know, so you take that bragging into account that he succeeded in his mission.
You can conjecture on whether or not he felt as calm as he says he did when he says I've put distress aside and what have you.
(31:53):
You can debate whether or not he actually felt that or if he was just writing that down just to make himself look better in the in the account.
His account seems intellectual enough to seem to reasons enough that you think that the events are as accurate as somebody who is doing this can portray them within, you know, within the sense of self.
(32:15):
That's that's what I got out of it. That makes sense.
But I did have moments throughout wondering whether he wasn't say over reading the situation, so to speak.
For instance, like, was he really being chased by Richard Madden or was he just so freaked out that he saw shadows like that he saw enemies in his shadows?
And for all we know, the bombing of the city of Albert had nothing to do with the obscure message he sent out by killing this guy named Albert.
(32:41):
It's possible he just thought that he succeeded when, in fact, maybe they got information from elsewhere.
In that sense, it's possible that he's an unreliable knight and that his view of the world he has is not sufficient to tell us whether what he knows is, in fact, accurate.
Yeah, but we'd have to really delve deep into like clues and stuff to figure out if he's lying to himself and if he's lying, you know, that that would be hard to do.
(33:08):
Maybe I'll back up. Maybe he's not unreliable.
I do think he's being honest in like how he's, you know, sees things. But like it does seem like it's one of those like, again, kind of Lovecraftian, oh, he goes mad from the revelation.
It's interesting. But we also have, I think, a degree of unreliability on the story itself and in how it is set up.
(33:30):
For example, on the first paragraph, it says that the attack planned for a specific date had to be postponed until the morning of the 20th.
Which means the torrential rains, Captain Liddellhart commands, caused this delay.
The question is, do the torrential rains or are they a metaphor for the bombing of Albert that actually delayed everything?
(33:52):
Or is it literal rain and as Varsha said, you soon actually got it wrong.
The bombarding in Albert didn't happen.
I was saying more that it did happen, but not because of the information he thought he gave, but from elsewhere. But oh, that's a whole new angle that it didn't actually happen.
He just thinks it did. Yeah, it sets us up because we don't know those first two pages.
(34:15):
Yeah, the possibilities are there. I was going to say like that whole battle they mentioned at the beginning didn't even happen.
So you're just kind of like, or well, at least in our timeline, maybe in another time. Probably the latter.
That's the best. And that leads me to another point.
Is that first paragraph with the torrential rains sugar coating reality for the masses as it often happens with accounts of war?
(34:44):
Or is it just hiding information to make a government look better as you don't try to do with himself?
I'm going to guess or bet that they don't care that much about the masses and their delicate perception.
It's like, yeah, we better we better clean this up. We can't have can't have us looking incompetent in front of the world.
(35:06):
It makes me wonder if it was him narrating all the time, like the frame narrative that comes from paragraph three onwards, because it says something that it is signed by him.
Yeah. But who is telling it? It could be some random guy there.
Man, you know, we got to we got to lie to the people. They won't care.
Yeah, it could have been like somebody else made up the confession. So made up confession is not that strange.
(35:33):
I'm not too sold on that theory because we do get clues that he was thinking about his culture and things like that.
That will be a bit difficult to replicate unless somebody else was trying it.
But I think it shows layer upon layer of unreliability on the story itself.
Like as Borges sometimes does, he will like make you doubt about the story he's writing as well, not only about the plot of it.
(35:58):
I feel like we've ended up here every single time we've had a discussion.
We're in the labyrinth now.
Yeah, all those left turns lead to madness, I guess.
That's something that I really love of him. Like, yeah, the theme of the stories are labyrinths or of a lot of stories.
(36:22):
That's why there is a collection called Labyrinth. But also the stories themselves are presented like labyrinth.
And this one in case is on time because we have all the different changes on the timeline within the story.
Death on the Compass, as you mentioned, Varja, it was a labyrinth but of clues because there were clues about the ending very early at the start.
(36:43):
And it was a murder mystery. So it makes sense.
He was putting a lot of effort on the structure of the story as a way to reinforce the theme of it.
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And also, we sort of spiraled in our discussion to get here, kind of like in a labyrinth.
And there's also like this sort of low descent into madness. If you stay in a labyrinth long enough, I imagine there will be a slow descent into madness where you start to question everything, including the nature of reality.
(37:13):
So we've started to question the story itself. Like Britton said, we are in the labyrinth now.
I have one more question for you. I have been reading a lot of books around the theme of memory as of late.
You soon, as he narrates, he will often say that he recalled something. This part in particular, he said,
Something has stirred in my memory and I uttered with incomprehensible certainty the garden of my ancestor, Sui-Pen.
(37:40):
So he's basically in the present, right? But he recalls something and that thing clarifies something in the present.
And that's how memory works. Basically, when we recall something, we create a new memory of the memory,
which is basically us recalling the memory and we add information to it. So we live in the labyrinth of our minds.
And a lot of the times you soon is narrating, he's mentioning like, I recall something I remember this time or I remember this other story.
(38:09):
He's also weaving this timeless labyrinth of memory through the story and which is basically himself,
because we will say that the collection of our memories, everything with them is us, what make us, us.
It's interesting because it makes you wonder if do memories in and of themselves create alternate timelines
(38:30):
when your memories are not, you know, nobody's memories complete, you know.
So when you remember something differently than what somebody else remembers it as, is that also an alternate timeline, an alternate reality?
And on top of that, sometimes even if we recall the events, we tend to forget the order of the events,
especially if you go far back in the past, like, you know two things happened, but you're not quite sure which one came before or after.
(38:57):
And that's also another alternate reality. And in those cases with memory, time doesn't exist because it's a memory of a memory of a memory.
Yeah. Yeah. The human mind is a weird thing. Like you'll be like telling a story and be like, oh yeah, that happened too.
And then this happened. And oh yeah, that happened too. Memories is a strange thing too,
(39:19):
because, you know, you're telling the story and other details pop up that you forgot, you know.
That's right. Only the present is happening.
Precisely. I'm precisely now.
Yeah. Even history people sometimes can't, can't agree on what, which history is right.
Especially history. Yeah.
Where do we get history from? The accounts of people who were there, which maybe not all of it is correct.
(39:43):
You know, it's, you know, I don't want to go in that rabbit hole today. That's another labyrinth for another time.
And on that note, thank you everyone for joining me again and for taking over this podcast. It was a mind blowing discussion.
Before we sign off, let's do a round of photos so that the listeners know where to find you.
Yes, I'm Jared. You can find me at the Financie Thinker YouTube channel and you can find me on podcasts like speculative speculations and other fine podcasts on page two.
(40:10):
I feel like Jared was on to X speed. But yeah, I'm Varsha. You can find me on the YouTube channel reading by the rainy mountain, the podcast speculative speculations and hanging out on the patron forum where we plan a lot of reading groups like this one.
So come check that out. Yeah, I'm some oaky dude on YouTube, basically anywhere else. Twitter, Instagram, Blue Sky, even though I don't use it very much. Good Reads and Letterboxd. That's where you can find me.
(40:37):
That said, if you like the episode, please like and subscribe. And if you want to get by size pros analysis, short semantic discussions and other bookish musings, then subscribe to my newsletter at LiviaJElio.com.
By doing so, you will also get a free ebook for my novella, The Genesis of Change. I will leave the link in the episode subscription. Thank you for listening and happy reading.
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