If you haven't read The Garden of Forking Paths, or it has been a while, I highly recommend you read it first! I don't want to spoil it for you and it's not too long, I promise! Check it out on the Internet Archive
Check out Part 1 here.
Check out Part 2 here.
The Fates, Public Domain.
The apparent conflict between volition and fate is a major aspect of “Garden.” Though Tsun is self admittedly a coward, and is practically paralyzed by fear on his way to the train station, he nevertheless feels that he has no choice but to carry out his plan. On the train, having narrowly escaped his pursuer, Tsun reassures himself with the advice that “the author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past” (265). Tsun is resigned to his fate; thus resigned, he is unattached to the outcome. This philosophical attitude seems at first to contrast the notion of time as infinitely forking paths, where a person has limitless choices. As Dr. Albert points out however, in the garden, all possible outcomes occur. Hence, if at some point in time one must ”choose” every possibility, to what extent could volition come into play? Are our notions of free will and fate even relevant? Borges as usual, provides no ready answers to this quandary.
CL Chen, A Mahjoubfar, B Jalali. Wikipedia.
It can be difficult to penetrate and disentangle all of Borges’ diverse metaphysical ponderings. Concepts of history, ethics, mythology or philosophy may be promoted in one sentence, only to be refuted in the next. His stories usually have no character or plot in the traditional sense; they are merely an expedient means to an end, and the end is always an idea. “His works invariably point beyond, to some underlying...substrate that serves as a conjectural cornerstone upon which his narrative is built” (Merrell 147). His stories are constructed upon metaphysical quandary, upon incongruity. He explores multiple conceptions of the world, but settles on none ultimately. Just as “time” is the unnamed answer to Ts’ui Pen’s manuscript, the exploration of paradox is the underlying motivation for Borges’ fiction. As a writer writing about the written word, he explores the inconsistency of language; its inability to truly represent reality, contrasted with the power of the mind’s interpretation of language to create alternate realities. Using labyrinths and recursion, Borges explores the paradox of perspective, raising questions about whether it is the author that generates the story, or the story which creates the writer. The paradox existent between volition and fate plays a recurrent role in his works as well, but I think that it is the paradox of time that is Borges’ true passion, the cornerstone in the foundations of his stories. In the essay “Borges and I,” he wrote , “Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges” (197). Fortunately for the rest of us though, his stories are real as well, and provide entry to countless alternate realities, whenever we may tire of this one.
Works Cited
Borges, Jorge Luis. “Borges and I.” Labyrinths. Trans. Irby, James.
New York; New Directions, 1964. 197.
---. “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Literature. Trans. Ed DiYanni, Robert.
New York: McGraw Hill, 2008. 269-9.
---. “A History of Eternity.” Selected Non-fictions.
New York: Penguin, 1999. 123.
---. “A New Refutation of Time.” A Personal Anthology.
Trans.Kerigan, Anthony. New York: Grove, 1967. 48-57.
---”Prologues to a Personal Library.” Selected Non-fictions.
New York: Penguin, 1999. 511.
Merrill, Lloyd. “Unthinking Thinking: Jorge Luis Borges, Mathematics, and the New Physics.”
West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1991.
Seiber, Shaon Lynn. “Time, Simultaneity, and the Fantastic in the Narrative of Jorge Luis Borges.” Romance Quaterly. 51.3 (Summer 2004): 200-211
Yarrow, Ralph. “Irony grows in my Garden: Generative Processes in Borges’ ‘The Garden of Forking Paths,’.” The Fantastic in World Literature and the Arts. Ed Donald E. Morse Greenwood Press, 1987. 73-86.