Week 5 - Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

At first, I was intrigued by this week's reading simply from its title. I thought I knew what a labyrinth was, but I looked it up to see what google described it as - a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way; a maze. Funny enough, this description of a labyrinth seemed highly fitting to my experience with these stories and Jorge Luis Borges’ writing in general. Each story felt “irregular” to me and certainly difficult to find my way while reading them. So in that sense, the intriguing title did live up to my expectation, but maybe not in the way I would've hoped for. 

I found there to be a lot of themes related to the idea of games and play and how sometimes we enjoy making things difficult for ourselves or changing normally occurring things to make them irregular in order to have fun. As mentioned in the lecture, his interest is in also changing the rules. I’m wondering if some people feel this way about complicated texts too and if these stories are potentially designed for people like that (which I can tell you I do not want to be a part of as it is most definitely not me haha). In that case, I think the ‘rule’ of this novel was that there are no rules, or that the stories were to be kept irregular. I think this is emphasized through passages such as this one where he says, “I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Everyone imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing” (36).

Throughout the story of the Lottery in Babylon, the theme of chance was also present. Chance being someone tightly related to the game and play too. “This doctrinal item observed that the lottery is an interpolation of chance in the order of the world and that to accept errors is not to contradict chance: it is to corroborate it”(43). This line stood out to me because I think it's saying that unfortunate things in life are inevitable, yet sometimes good things randomly happen too (by chance) and there's something special about accepting both. My question is what meaning or message do you take from that line? I’m curious, especially if it is completely different from mine. 

Comments

  1. Daniel OrizagaFebruary 6, 2023 at 8:27 PM

    This idea of "passages" in Borges's literature is relevant: as Dr. Beasley-Murray says in the lecture, this can be seen, for example, in the blurred border between genres. But there is also a very important spatial conception in Borges, something that your comment reminded me of. His spaces, despite the fact that many of them are described in great detail, are nevertheless ambiguous, hence "irregularity". Does space eliminate or allow chance in these stories?

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  2. Sam WallaceFebruary 6, 2023 at 8:42 PM

    Hi, I think you raise an interesting question about how much WE ourselves create a barrier to comprehension, instead of the writer. I also like how you note the symbolism in The Lottery in Babylon. I interpret the passage as the narrator welcoming chaos into his life, and his acceptance that leaving things up to chance is not always an error as a human!

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