Borges 1a - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

It'll probably make more sense if you do. We certainly "spoil" it, even though this story doesn't have any kind of twist ending or anything. We put a link up in the notes if you want to. - C

Is it 'better' to read the Borges work before listening to this?

Dana F

Hmmm... Borges was a huge fan of Chesterton. My wall of photos, pushpins, and yarn is almost complete. ~ James

We should bring back those clubs. I would buy a hornpipe for the occasion.

Internaut

Oooh, a philosopher and a psychologist! That's enough to get me to try. Thanks! - C

I don't know Very Bad Wizards. Off to google. I really like Chiang, too. I've only read the one collection that we mentioned here (I think it was here) and a few odd stories in mags/online, I'm sure. But, yeah, Borges and Wolfe are definitely labyrinthine writers, even if their labyrinths have substantially different styles. - Craig

After we recorded and were talking about this, I remembered a whole bunch of tumbled rocks I'd had as a kid. The biggest one was obsidian, and I remember it being reflective, so it totally makes sense that similar things had been figured out before. My imagination/memory just wasn't up to the task when we were recording, I don't think. :) - Craig

Great stuff! I approve of future Borges explorations. Very Bad Wizards also went into Borges and Chiang which feel like Wolfe friendly country.

Internaut

It begins!

Internaut

When I read to short story to prepare, I didn’t think anything of the mention of the stone mirrors, but when you mentioned and dismissed it, I had to pause the podcast and check on Wikipedia if they were a thing (so please keep being dismissive of things; if you had just skipped over it, I wouldn’t have learned anything about the history of mirrors). “The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of obsidian mirrors found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) have been dated to around 6000 BC. Mirrors of polished copper were crafted in Mesopotamia from 4000 BC, and in ancient Egypt from around 3000 BC. Polished stone mirrors from Central and South America date from around 2000 BC onwards.” These locations do seem close to the location of Uqbar, however one of the references in the Wikipedia article [Enoch, Jay (October 2006). "History of Mirrors Dating Back 8000 Years".] mentions that the stone mirrors in Anatolia (=Asia Minor) were discovered in the 1960’s, so Borges couldn’t have known about them, and either way, copper mirrors had been around for a long time in the 13th century, so I don’t know what to make of this.

Thomas

John Dee's a fascination of mine. Yeah, I think that whole thing was a kind of big gaslighting and/or Renaissance version of "catfishing." But it's all a pretty awesome situation. (Or it might have actually been Dee's "angels" messing with them...) - Craig

That's amazing. And the connection to John Dee and Walpole is even cooler! I had no idea. It makes sense, tho. I mean I've even got a small piece of polished obsidian, so dunno why I was so dismissive of the idea when we recorded. Huh... - Craig

Incidentally, there was an interesting dynamic between Dee and his mystic Kelly where each man was apparently driving the other to deeper and deeper depths of madness based on a kind of positive feedback loop derived from interpreting Kelly's visions (although it is also possible that Kelly was scamming Dee throughout).

Ori Kowarsky

"In the British Museum – away from the Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles with their legions of selfie-taking tourists – is a shiny, jet-black obsidian mirror (Figure 1). Not much bigger than any standard hand mirror, the artifact is circular with a hole-bored handle at the top. A beautiful, dark, reflective black, it was forged from volcanic Mexican obsidian which the Aztecs associated with their god Tezcatlipoca, lord of divination (among other things). This is a ritual object, and its exact provenance is unknown. The conquering Spanish brought back things like this by the boatload while they plundered Aztec gold to become the world’s first truly global empire (and in the process they imported disease, war, and slavery). The Aztecs had used obsidian stones just like this one for prophetic purposes over the course of generations. Now, spirited away from a destroyed and subjugated civilization they journeyed to a profoundly different culture where they would create new stories, and generate new prophecies. This particular mirror was owned by the eighteenth-century gothic writer, architect, and son of the former Prime Minister, Sir. Horace Walpole. He affixed a label to the mirror which simply stated “The Black Stone into which Dr Dee used to call his spirits …”" [taken from https://www.northernrenaissance.org/notes-on-john-dees-aztec-mirror/]

Ori Kowarsky

RE: Stone mirrors, this might be related:

Ori Kowarsky

I especially love that part "we had not seen him for several years" . . . so they've been living like madmen for several years now.

It was "The Purloined Letter," which starts like this: At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisième, No. 33, Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rogêt. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G——, the Prefect of the Parisian police. We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon G.‘s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.

And like all the ghost stories in the late 19th/early 20th: two guys sitting around in a men's club in London talking about an old friend they know who told them this story... - Craig

Preliminary comment on the Borges story: the opening set up, two guys in a rented house with library, reminds me strongly of the opening to Poe's detective stories where the guys are just living in a weird reverie state until the next case wanders in...

Hey! There it is!

JLG

Try it now

Unfortunately, your Patreon lacks the copy RSS feed that many others have. I think that's something you have to set up through Patreon.

JLG