Thanks for Watching! Looking for More Borges? Check out the Borges Playlist: kzread.info/dash/bejne/hoyjps-Sm5fKY7g.html Support Us: www.patreon.com/thecodexcantina

Fantastic analysis. I got the unreliable narrator who was so full of himself that he really was describing himself when describing is Carlos Argentino. "So foolish did his ideas seem to me, so pompous and so drawn out his exposition, that I linked them at once to literature and asked him why he didn’t write them down." Brilliant.

One of the themes of this story is the absurdness of trying to understand (let alone describe) a thing in its entirety. That's why Borges makes fun of Daneri's poem-because Daneri thinks he can write the best poem in history by describing every last piece of Earth. Borges instead gives up even before trying to describe the universe seen in the Aleph, and resorts to a heterogeneous enumeration, a device that recurs in his writing, to give us a truly poetic idea of what the experience was like.

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing

Beatrice was also the one who took him, Dante, to Paradise and continually intercedes on his behalf. Perhaps this is true love, rather than unrequited love.. On another thought. The mystics of the middle ages were pretty good at describing in ineffable (I know it's an oxymoron, but....)

Oh man, sold. I will 100% be reading this either this month or next. I loveeee Borges as you know, but have not done this one.

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Borges is 🤯

You guys did well! Borges the bibliophile was a great intertextualist, and there's lots here (Daneri ->Dante Alighieri). He was a Poe fan. Here Daneri is Montresor, Borges is Fortunato, the pseudo-cognac is the wine Montresor plied Fortunato with, and the alluring Aleph is the Cask of Amontillado. Borges panics when he realizes the trap he walked into. Then the Aleph shows him his own insignificance, the true relationship between Beatriz and Daneri, and terrifies him with the idea Daneri has been looking in on him and knows him, including his petty jealousies and phoniness, just like Montresor knew Fortunato. No wonder when he gets out of the basement Borges glosses over his experience.

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Ah that's great! I had Amontillado vibes but wasn't able to connect that drink or feelings from the basement to it. Thanks for sharing!

@dugldoo

Жыл бұрын

@@TheCodeXCantina Your comments about masks and question about "will he change?" are great. He likely won't change, since at the end he questions the validity of the Aleph and what he saw. This Montresor didn't have to wall up his Fortunato, since forcing him to live with the humiliations he has experienced is an even sweeter vengeance.

I just reread the story, cause the first time I didn't quite get it. True! There's lots to unpack in such a tiny story. You guys will enjoy Bestiary by Julio Cortazar it gives the same vibes as this one.

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the recommendation!

I thank you both for the discussion, fascinating to listen to both of you as usual! Well, I believe that postmodernity has prevailed in this story as the writer who is also a fictional character is also as a critic in his own story. This is so self-reflective and challenging to everyone's level of intelligence. The scientific, philosophical and literary reference which are jumbled up with the way he and the poet perceived life and the aura encompasses and sums up the essence of the postmodern..

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Well said! Thanks for watching

@shakespearaamina9117

Жыл бұрын

@@TheCodeXCantina Thank YOU!

Lispector may call the Aleph "the it of the it"...awesome exploration y'all!

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Ha, I can see that!

i know i'm late, but when daneris says "pseudo cognac" its reffering to the bottle borges brought earlier in the story, its like an insult

❤

_First!_ Im going to get into Borges ... _next_ year!

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

I hope you love it!

Anyone else when Una said “If the universe is infinite, there are other planets” immediately have The Dark Tower pop into mind? 😂

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

There are other worlds than these, Gunglinger

agreed it is harder to explain interpersonal relationship than the infinity of space and time. but why?!

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

A question for the ages!

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..." Did you know that the Aleph (first letter) in Hebrew also has a numeric value, a sound value and a meaning value? Its numeric value is 1 (because God is one 😊). (3 in 1) Its sound value is silence. (because God's name was too holy to be fully verbalized) The meaning value is teacher/ wonder. (connotation of revealing/understanding secrets) (because we move from needing to be taught to needing revelation and understanding) (God teaches and then we wonder at the revelations) But wait! even the writing of the Aleph in Hebrew has meaning. "a dot above, dot below, a diagonal between" Yud, Yid and Vav. Yud is of God (above), Yid is the people of earth (below), and Vav is the uniting (connection). I could go on. There is more. What my purpose in bringing it up was to show that within the Aleph/Alef itself is so much to unpack. So much to contemplate and blow our minds - then we place it in the context of this story and question if Borges knew all of this and is representing different values of the Aleph within his story and it blows our minds even more.🤯 😁

@TheCodeXCantina

Жыл бұрын

Oh I for sure did not understand even half of that out of the gate from reading it. There was some analysis online about that and I saw there were even references to Kabbalist things but we are certainly not the individuals to articulate those things! I see that a lot in Clarice’s work too but am sadly unable to translate the meaning of that a lot of time. Thanks so much for sharing and explaining some of this!

@racheloaktree7987

20 күн бұрын

There is a wonderful book called The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Human Mind by Amir Aczel that explores this in religious and mathematical detail, if you are interested! It’s a fantastic read!!