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Borges, Heraclitus, and the River of Time

Shlomy Mualem

ABSTRACT1

This paper examines Borges’ view of time—the most important metaphysical

problem in his opinion. Regarding it as indecipherable and indefinable like all the

major metaphysical questions, it is governed in his works by Heraclitus’ metaphor of

the flowing river or enigmatic dictum that “we cannot enter the same river twice.”

Heraclitus’ fundamental philosophical principles of constant flux and the identity of

opposites illuminate the way in which Borges perceives time as both the perpetual

tide on which human existence is carried and the ontological inconceivable

“mysterious material” of all reality. In order to fully illuminate the aesthetical,

existential and philosophical aspects of Borges' reaction to Heraclitus' view of time,

special attention is given here to three Borgesian stories: "Funes the Memorious"

(1942), "The Immortal" (1947), and "the Aleph" (1945).

1 This paper was published in: Shlomy Mualem, Mazes and Amazements: Borges and Western

Philosophy, Oxford: Peter Lang, series: Hispanic studies: Culture and Ideas 76, 2017, chapter 5.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/62327

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Time is an essential problem. I mean that we cannot do without time. Our

consciousness continually passes from one state to another and that is

time: succession. I believe Henry Bergson said that time was the principal

problem of metaphysics. If that problem had been resolved, all others

would have been resolved. Happily, I don’t think there is any danger that

it will be resolved. Time will always leave us confused and uncertain. Like

Saint Augustine, we shall always be able to ask: “What is time? If you don’t

ask me I know; if you ask me I don’t know.” (OC, 4:199)

The undecipherable essence is one of the most striking tensions within Borges’

thought. Rather than pervading it with a dogmatic scepticism, however, it

prompts a ceaseless philosophical inquiry in the spirit of Socrates—or in Borges’

own words, the preservation of the intellectual instinct.2 We may thus perhaps

say that indefinity marks time as an essential metaphysical problem. This stance

casts a shadow over all Borges’ theoretical attempts to cope with the issue of

time. One of his most elaborate systematic philosophical arguments in this

regard is found in his essay “A New Refutation of Time” (1946). Herein, adducing

Berkeley’s idealism and Hume’s empiricism, he uncompromisingly denies the

existence of the concept of time.

In the same breath, however, he also undermines the logical strictness of his

own argument, pronouncing it to be merely “the feeble artifice of an Argentine

lost in the maze of metaphysics” (1964a, 217) and promptly pointing out that the

title embodies what logicians refer to as a contradictio in adjecto—namely,

asserting that a refutation of time is new subjects it to time itself.3 The essay

2 For the Socratic principle of indefinity in Borges’ oeuvre, see: Shlomy Mualem, Borges and Plato: A

Game with Shifting Mirrors, Frankfurt and Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana, 2012, pp. 51–84. 3 This contradiction, he explains, reflects the fact that human language is “so saturated and animated by

time that it is quite possible there is not one statement in these pages which in some way does not

demand or invoke the idea of time” (ibid).

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concludes, furthermore, with a baroque blend of Socratic irony and gentle

Pessoan melancholia:

Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical

universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations … Time is the

substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the

river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which

consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I,

unfortunately, am Borges. (ibid, 233, 234)

The story “Feeling in Death,” which forms part of the second section of the essay,

also subverts the alleged refutation from another direction, this time via a quasi-

biographical event. Here, Borges describes a personal experience that was

a trifle too evanescent and ecstatic to be called an adventure, too irrational

and sentimental to be called a thought. … The easy thought ‘I am in the

eighteen-nineties’ ceased to be a few approximate words and was deepened

into a reality. I felt dead, I felt as an abstract spectator of the world; an

indefinite fear imbued with science, which is the best clarity of metaphysics. I

did not think that I had returned upstream on the supposed waters of Time;

rather I suspected that I was the possessor of a reticent or absent sense of the

inconceivable word eternity. (ibid, 226).

Here, too, however, he is quick to caution that despite its lucidity, this “evidence”

is merely an emotional anecdote, time being “easily refutable in sense

experience” but “not so in the intellectual, from whose essence the concept of

succession seems inseparable” (ibid, 227).

Time being as impossible to decipher as to deny, we are left in Saint

Augustine’s vicious cycle of uncertainty. Borges nonetheless refuses to give up.

Like Socrates stinging the citizens of Athens into action like a gadfly a horse

(Apology 30e), he repeatedly bothers the enigma of time. Following the aporia of

philosophical inquiry, he restlessly addresses it via a metaphor that captured his

imagination—namely, time as a river.4

4 Numerous studies have examined Borges’ conception of time, a detailed survey being provided by:

Chen Kleinman, Time and the Fantastic in the works of Borges and David Shahar, Ph.D. dissertation,

Bar Ilan University, 2013, chapter 1. In light of Borges’ own theoretical approach, the present paper

addresses this subject from a unique perspective, focusing on Heraclitus’ pre-Socratic philosophy.

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What philosophical significance does this metaphor bear in Borges’ writing?

Borges frequently addresses the theoretical function of the metaphor as a

literary representation. In his youth and under the influence of the ULTRA

literary movement, he believed it to be the beating heart of literary creativity, the

poet’s role being to coin new and novel metaphors like Adam in the Garden of

Eden. Subsequently abandoning this Romantic notion as naïve and

acknowledging that “the quantity of fables or metaphor of which man’s

imagination is capable is limited” (1964a, 7–8), he then adopted the Platonic

view that all metaphors derive from five archetypal images: eyes/stars,

woman/flower, death/sleep, life/dream, and time/river.5 From this perspective,

the river/time metaphor constitutes an archetypal meta-metaphor that governs

all human images.

Maintaining that it was first coined by Heraclitus in Fragment B91: “No man

ever steps in the same river twice,” Borges discusses the way in which this

metaphor has imprinted itself on human imagination:

We feel as though we are carried by time, in other words, we’re inclined to

believe that we pass from the future to the past or from the past to the future.

But no specific moment exists at which we can say to time: “Stop! You’re so

beautiful!,” as Goethe tried to do [at the end of Faust]. The present moment

cannot be stopped. We are completely incapable of imagining the pure

present; it would be fruitless to try. The present moment is also partly in the

past and partly in the future. This seems to be one of time’s necessary

features. In our daily experience, time is always the same as Heraclitus’ river,

so that we are continually bound to this ancient image. It’s as though nothing

goes on and nothing has changed for us for centuries, since Heraclitus first

uttered his dictum. We are always Heraclitus looking at himself in the

reflection of the river and thinking that the river is not the same river because

the water is different, and also thinking that he is not the same Heraclitus

because he has already become someone else since he first entered the river.

5 For Borges’ understanding of metaphor in relation to the Platonic archetypes, see Mualem 2102, 85–

124.

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What I wish to say is that we are simultaneously both permanent and

temporary. In an essential way, we are something mysterious. (OC, 4:205)

Here, Borges expands Heraclitus’ metaphor, contending that it not only pervades

our imagination but also imposes itself on human thought. The ancient parable of

Heraclitus’ river is inescapable and ever-present, archetypal in nature, because it

so clearly represents the fundamental questions relating to time. Firstly, that of

the pure present: we are incapable of thinking about the present moment in and

of itself because in order to do so we would have to “freeze time.” Human

thought cannot achieve such a task because the present moment in and of itself,

as Borges elucidates in the continuation, is an abstraction. The question of the

pure present thus constitutes the inconceivable heart of the problem of time, or

as Kant would say time as “the thing in itself (das Ding an sich).”

Not being able to move outside time to freeze the pure present, we must relate

to time as succession—something that flows. The river provides us with a perfect

image of this notion.6 In Heraclitus’ metaphor, we also enter the river time and

gain, Borges further remarking that we are reflected in its waters. Over and

again, the point of entry connects the flow of time with the enigma of human

existence. Hereby, the flow is doubled, we ourselves become a flowing river,

perpetually changing and altering as we are borne on its current, since, as Borges

frequently states, we are “formed of the mysterious material” of which time is

created.

This illustrates the metaphysical problem of time in Borges’ thought in its full

translucence. The question of time is the only metaphysical issue so intimately

and essentially associated with human existence: we are (like) the river,

constantly changing yet remaining the same. The paradox of the flow of the

river/time is also the “sacred horror” (OC, 4:199) of the anomaly of human

identity, time and human personality both being governed by the strange logic of

personal identity, at the same time different and the same. The metaphysical

question of time is thus bound up with the existential identity of the existing-in-

6 In line with this, Borges remarks in his essay on time and John Donne: “I do not intend to pretend that

I know what time is (if it is indeed anything), but I do believe that the flow of time and time itself are

one and the same rather than two enigmas” (No pretendo saber qué cosa es el tiempo (ni siquiera si es

una “cosa”) pero adivino que el curso del tiempo y el tiempo son un solo misterio y no dos).

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time human subject. The intertwining of the metaphysical and existential finds

expression in the perfect picture in which, in Borges’ development of Heraclitus’

metaphor of the river, a person looks at his or her reflection that looks back at

him or herself back in the flowing water of the river. Borges skillfully blends the

metaphysical and existential issues in the second part of his poem “Heraclitus,”

published in In Praise of Darkness in 1969. The correspondence with the

concluding paragraph of “A New Refutation of Time” cited above is striking:

What weave is this

of will be, is, and was?

What river

lies under the Ganges?

What river has no source?

What river

drags along mythologies and swords?

Sleeping is useless.

Through the dream, through the desert,

through the cellar,

the river carries me, and I am the river.

I was made of delicate substance, mysterious time.

Perhaps the source is within me.

Perhaps the days emerge,

fatal and illusory,

from my shadow.7

For Borges, the philosophical problem of time thus consists of two aspects, one

overt, one covert. The former relates to the question of the flow of time and

human existence that creates the paradoxical logic of same/different identity.

The latter pertains to the inconceivable problem of the “mysterious material” of

which time is composed—the unthinkable pure present. Following in Borges’

7 Http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2002/56-borges.html.

(¿Qué trama es ésta del será, del es y del fue? ¿Qué río es éste por el cual corre el Ganges? ¿Qué río es

éste cuya fuente es inconcebible? ¿Qué río es éste que arrastra mitologías y espadas? Es inútil que

duerma. Corre en el sueño, en el desierto, en un sótano. El río me arrebata y soy ese río. De una materia

deleznable fui hecho, de misterioso tiempo. Acaso el manantial está en mí. Acaso de mi sombra surgen,

fatales e ilusorios, los días.)

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footsteps, we shall now seek to elucidate the philosophical traits of the

river/time conundrum as exemplified in Heraclitus’ thought, focusing in

particular on his enigmatic assertion that ““No man ever steps in the same river

twice.”

Borges’ attachment to Heraclitus’ Fragments is unsurprising given the literary

rhetoric of which both are so fond. The later Borges attributes great importance

to allusion (alusión), a device that directs the reader to read between and

beyond the lines, the hidden overshadowing the overt in literary linguistic

representation. Already in antiquity, Heraclitus’ abstruse writing and

impenetrable thought had gained him the epithet “Heraclitus the Obscure.”

Diogenes Laertius, for example, cites an epigram about Heraclitus’ lost book,

whose existence is only known from Aristotle and others: “Do not be in too great

a hurry to get to the end of Heraclitus the Ephesian’s book: the path is hard to

travel. Gloom is there and darkness devoid of light. But if an initiate [epoptes] be

your guide, the path shines brighter than sunlight” (Lives of Eminent

Philosophers 1.16). Some of the ancients believed that Heraclitus deliberately

wrote in an obscure fashion in order to demonstrate his aristocratic superiority

over the uneducated masses (whom he dismissed at every possible opportunity),

only the very few thus being capable of understanding him. Not only does he

appear to be referring to himself when he writes of Apollo—“The Lord whose

oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign” (B93)—but both

allusions and concealment are central to his thought. As he asserts, “An

unapparent connection [harmonia] is stronger than an apparent one” (B54)

because “Nature loves to hide” (B123).

Although very few fragments of Heraclitus’ work have been preserved and

despite his abstruse religious-oracular rhetoric and obscure language, his

thought has exerted a great influence on Western philosophy. Aristotle, for

example, claims that in his youth Plato was close to the circle of Heraclitus’

disciples (Metaphysics 1.6, 29a987). At the heart of his philosophy lies the

principle of what I call “dynamic antithetical unity,” which takes the form of

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lightning-flashes of truth and wild, multilayered aphorisms.8 This principle

blends three separate elements: unity—i.e., the fact that ultimately everything is

a monistic entity; antithesis, which divides nature into polarities; and dynamism,

which expresses the eternal conflict of perpetual formation, all things necessarily

coming into being through an ongoing tension (B80). The paradoxical principle

is symbolized in Heraclitus’ writings by fire—a ceaseless, shapeless force that

consumes the combustible material that sustains it.9 Rather than positing a

chaotic or nihilistic reality, however, Heraclitus argues that this dynamic

antithetical unity forms the cornerstone of the hidden harmonia of nature—a

harmony in which “What opposes unites, and the finest attunement stems from

things bearing in opposite directions, and all things come about by strife” (B8).

Polarity and tension are therefore the external aspect of reality, harmony its

internal aspect. An inclusive and synoptic perspective allows the metaphysical

nature of reality as a whole to be intuitively understood by the genuine

philosopher.

The principle of bipolar antithesis is not unique to Heraclitus, of course. Greek

philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Aristotle is characterised by a dichotomous

perception of the world and the division of reality into binary opposites, the

Ionian and Milesian philosophers being prominent proponents of this view.

Heraclitus distinguishes himself from this tradition by his radicality, however.

For instance, while Empedocles argues that nature consists of a periodic cosmic

antithesis between unity and multiplicity—a sort of endless, cyclical shift

between tension and rest in which, as Plato indicates, “Sometimes … the all is one

and friendly, under the influence of Aphrodite, and sometimes many and at

variance with itself by reason of some sort of strife” (Sophist 242e–243a)—

Heraclitus refuses to sever the easy division created by the cyclical structure,

propounding that antithesis, change, and harmony are all one, the perpetual

state of opposition being self-justificatory due to the relentless, stormy

8 According to Heraclitus, language is not an arbitrary system of agreed-upon signs but rather expresses

the cosmic order in its very structure. His rhetoric is thus founded upon the principles of unity,

antithesis, and dynamic conflict. He may therefore be referring to himself when he says: “The

thunderbolt that steers all things” (B67). Thunder is not only the material expression of cosmic fire but

also the symbol of Zeus. Cf. Heidegger’s Augenblick concept. 9 This tension also takes other, surprising forms in Heraclitus, such as “God is day and night, winter

and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger” (B67) or “The way up and the way down is one and

the same” (B60).

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immanence that lies within the “rest by changing” (B84a). In other words,

Heraclitan antithesis is a perpetual, simultaneous metaphysical principle that

structures the world as always-in-formation. Anticipating Stoic philosophy, he

thus asserts: “This world's order [kosmos], which is the same for all, no one of

gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will be: an ever-living Fire, with

measures of it kindling, and measures going out” (B30).

Heraclitus’ distinctiveness can also be adduced via a comparison with

Aristotle’s concept of antithesis. In the first book of the Metaphysics (1.5),

Aristotle draws up a systematic table of opposites, elsewhere distinguishing

conceptually between four types: those that are correlatives (e.g., half and

double), those that are contraries (e.g., good vs. evil); those that are privatives to

positives (e.g., sight and blindness), and those that are affirmatives to negatives

(e.g., wise and not-wise) (Categories 10). All these are grounded on the well-

known metaphysical distinction between ousia and contingency—the permanent

and essential or variable and accidental. The metaphysical constituting the

ontological essence of things, it thus comprises the Platonic idea in its

immanence. As such, it serves as the stable bedrock that carries the attributes of

contingent antitheses. Socrates (the solid substratum) can thus bear the

antithetical qualities (contingencies) of being pale or tanned; an object can

exhibit opposite qualities without losing its essential identity, wherein it remains

identical to itself. The metaphysical essence thus enables both the contingency of

opposites and the ontological stability of the inner substance (this coming to be

known in medieval thought as essencia).

While all the aspects of the principle of “dynamic antithetical unity” appear to

be manifest here, the two philosophers differ widely from one another. The

Aristotelian essence is the external foundation of change and opposites, lying

beyond them in its self-perfection—this exteriority being precisely that which

enables the ontological stability of the object. Heraclitus, however, denies any

possibility of an exteriority lying beyond the exclusive cosmic principle of

“dynamic antithetical unity.” In sharp contrast to Aristotle, the tension within

this principle forms the sole, irreplaceable metaphysical constant, from which

nothing deviates. Rather than the ontological-metaphysical bedrock of the

Aristotelian ousia, Heraclitus champions the singular, pre-ontological, and

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eternal principle of “dynamic antithetical unity” he identifies as the logos.

Hereby, the logos establishes the kosmos (cosmic order), phusis (the natural

order), and nomos (human order): “Graspings: things whole and not whole, what

is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the

discordant. The one [logos] is made up of all things, and all things issue from the

one” (B10).

The core of Heraclitus’ radicality thus lies in the metaphysical universality of

his thought. The logos comprising the sole principle of reality but not being a

rational principle, it can only be presented as a metaphor—in allusive examples

or symbols. As we noted above, the central symbol of this principle is fire.10

Another dominant symbol is that of the flowing river, Simplicius’ expression

panta rhei— “everything flows” (Barnes 1986, 65)—unsurprisingly being

erroneously attributed to Heraclitus.

What is the significance of the Heraclitan symbol or metaphor of the river?

The image of a body of water in a powerful, ceaseless flow clearly represents the

paradox of dynamic antithetical unity. The identical-with-itself river symbolises

the unitary, stable element; the flow depicts the dynamic aspect of perpetual

change and formation; and the blending of the two opposites reflects the

antithetical unity. To our great fortune, Heraclitus’ three formulations of the

river symbol have been preserved:

On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow. (B12)

We both step and do not step in the same rivers. (B49a)

No man ever steps in the same river twice. (B91)

Entering a flowing river embodies several complex philosophical concepts.

Firstly, it represents the distinction between “river” and “water”—the principle

of unitary stability and dynamic formation. Secondly, although the person’s

10 It is tempting to compare the Heraclitan logos with the superposition principle of modern quantum

mechanics. According to this, the photon (the fundamental particle of light) is simultaneously both

wave and particle, in a sort of meta-state that embodies opposition, namely, the compound wave-

particle essence. Only after physical experimentation does the “functional collapse” occur, the photon

turning into either a wave or a particle. However, while quantum superposition is a type of blending of

binary opposites—particle and wave existing together but only in potential, Heraclitus’ logos posits the

dynamic existence of antithetical unity in actual and perpetual practice, at every moment without

ceasing, precisely like the formless, perpetually-changing fire.

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standing in the water constitutes a reference point that highlights the river’s

perpetual motion and changing nature, the person who enters the river does not

form a condition or constitutive factor of the river's essence. Thirdly, the

speaker’s perspective as an observer of the person who steps into the flowing

river captures the river’s antithetical unitary nature—namely, it serves as an

(immediate and inclusive) intuitive view of the embodiment of the Heraclitan

logos in nature.

As we noted above, Borges tends to expand the meaning of the symbol of the

Heraclitan river. For him, the flowing river is reflected in the flow-of-existence of

the person who stands in it or looks at him or herself in its waters. Sharing the

same “mysterious material,” both are simultaneously the same and different.

Likewise, while in Heraclitus’ thought the river symbolises the metaphysical

logos, in Borges’ it represents above all the enigma of time. Significantly, Borges

associates time with the logos of Heraclitan philosophy despite the Greek

philosopher’s abolishment of the parameter of time. If we look at the flowing

river from a temporal perspective, its waters are clear at one point, cloudy at

another cloudy. the Heraclitan tension of antithetical unity loses its weight when

spread across two separate time periods, all its force arising from a lack of any

temporal dimension—namely, a perception of the river as an entity that is at one

and the same time both the same and different.

In other words, Borges’ alternative view reformulates Heraclitus’ philosophy.

For the latter, no one can enter a river twice because, from an inclusive,

atemporal viewpoint of two occasions, the river is different and exactly the same.

In striking contrast to Borges, therefore, the Heraclitan logos is atemporal,

concurrent, or meta-temporal. While for Borges human beings form part of the

principle of the flow, Heraclitus regards human existence simply as the means by

which the river’s movement may be observed. Similarly, while for Borges the

river symbolises time (we are tempted to say: the Borgesian river is the meta-

temporal symbol of time), Heraclitus’ logos is predicated on atemporality.11

11 A close analysis of Heraclitus’ Fragments reveals that he only addresses the concept of time on a

single occasion: “Time is a child at play, moving pieces in a board game; the kingly power is a child’s”

(B52). This sentence has been the object of widely-varying interpretations, the debate revolving

primarily around whether “time” relates to human life or the cosmic order, the “child’s play” is random

or governed by rules, and the meaning of “kingly power.”

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Borges thus dissociates the metaphor of the river from its original philosophical

context, focusing on the (preeminently-modern) existential aspects of human

existence as becoming-within-time.

The distinctive nature of Heraclitus’ obscure thought can be further elucidated

by comparing it with his peers. Here, the most relevant figure are his outstanding

disciples Cratylus and Parmenides, the latter being regarded as his key sparring

partner. Cratylus’ work is sparsely attested, only a very few direct citations

having been preserved. Aristotle maintains that Plato was close to Cratylus in his

youth (Metaphysics 1.978a). Elsewhere, he more significantly notes:

This view [that nothing can be said of that which is changing in every respect

and guise] blossomed into the most extreme of the aforementioned beliefs,

that of the professed Heracliteans and Cratylus, who in the end thought that

one should not say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized

Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for

he thought it was not possible to do so even once. (Metaphysics 5.1010a10–

15)12

Cratylus’ silence appears to convey his belief that an essential disparity exists

between the inconstant principle of the logos and language as a stable sign

system, physical gestures rather than determinative words thus constituting the

only way to represent the flow of existence. Here, the negation of language is a

radicalization of the Heraclitan principle of dynamism. Cratylus also takes

Heraclitus’ dictum ad absurdum in denying that a river cannot even be entered

once, the person standing in it already being aware that the river flowing on all

sides is not the same river. Contra the Heraclitan paradox of identity, in which

the river is the same and not the same at one at the same time according to the

principle of the logos, Cratylus argues that the flow signifies that the river has no

self-identity at all. In other words, the tension deriving from the dynamic

antithetical unity that lies so firmly as the basis of Heraclitus’ own radical

thought collapses with a huge bang in that of his ultra-radical disciple. Herein,

12 In the greatest of ironies, Plato calls the dialogue discussing language (or the “veracity of names”)

after Cratylus. True to his philosophy, Cratylus remains silent herein, his views being indirectly

represented by his opponents Hermogenes and Socrates.

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the concepts of identity, language, thought, and logical distinction disappear

completely.

Active in Elea ca. the sixth century B.C.E. and conventionally identified as the

forefather of Western logic, some scholars even contend that philosophy begins

with Parmenides (rather than Plato or Aristotle). While the question of whether

he preceded or came after Heraclitus, as well as whether he refers directly to the

latter without mentioning him by name, is the subject of much scholarly debate,

he clearly adopted a completely opposite philosophical view to that of Heraclitus.

The only philosophical ode he wrote—a hexametric didactic poem—opens with

a description of a mystical revelation of divine truth imbued with an ontological

logic governed by the “way of the truth”—differentiation of the truth from the

illusion in which ignorant human beings are mired. Right at the onset,

Parmenides thus presents the only two “roads of inquiry there are to conceive:

The [first] one, that it is and that is not possible for it not to be … The other

[second road] that it is not and it ought not be” (On Nature 2.4–5).13 He thus

adduces a double polarity—ontological (in the form of a sharp division between

existence and non-existence or being and nothingness), and logical (truth vs.

falsehood).

Despite the fuzzy distinction between logic and mysticism in the first section

of the poem, Parmenides clearly lays out the three fundamental laws of logic that

have constituted the unshakable bedrock of the Western logocentric tradition :

non-contradiction (contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same

sense at the same time), identity (A = A: each thing is the same with itself and

different from another), and the excluded middle (for any proposition, either

that proposition is true or its negation is true). These principles lead via strict

reasoning and consistent certainty to the necessary identification of the four

traits of absolute existence. It is a) eternal, not being created or vanishing

(existence vs. becoming); b) whole, without any parts; c) static, motionless and

or incapable of movement; and d) perfect, lacking nothing.

13 Http://www.presocratics.org/wp-

content/uploads/2012/12/Parmenides,%20Plato,%20and%20Mortal%20Philosophy_Writing%20Sampl

e%202_Translation.pdf.

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The negative language here is, of course, no accidental. Language being

regarded as an illusory instrument that creates the figment of the multiplicity of

the “world of appearances or phenomena” and incapable of expressing the

necessary absolute perfection of existence, we may only speak by way of the

negative. Anticipating the via negativa of Western philosophy and theology,

Parmenides summarizes his argument in metaphorical language: “[what-is] is

perfect, everywhere like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere, from its center

equally balanced everywhere” (8.42–44).14

The disparity between Parmenides and Heraclitus—to whom Borges refers in

“Keat’ s nightingale” as archetypical, eternal rivals—is striking, the strict laws of

logic contrasting sharply with the obscure paradoxes of the logos. The law of

non-contradiction is the precise antithesis of the ideal of the unity of opposites,

the staticism of existence and negation of all motion clashing head on with the

principle of the perpetual movement of the Heraclitan river. While not directly

levelled at Heraclitus, Parmenides’ criticism of mortals also clearly reflects his

divergent attitude: “Breasts guides their wandering thought, and they are

carried, deaf and blind equally, bewildered, undiscerning tribes, for whom to be

and not to be are thought the same and not the same, and the path of all is back-

turning” (On Nature 6.6–9).

We have now identified how Heraclitus’ philosophy differs from that of

Parmenides and Cratylus. In logical terms, Heraclitus alone posits an

intermediate principle that bridges the strict Parmenidean law of identity (A =

A) and Cratylus’ negation of identity (~A). In ontological terms, Heraclitus takes

the via media between the absolute sphere of reality, so terrifying in its

perfection, and Cratylus’ absolute, undivided flow—between dogmatism and

nihilism. In rhetorical terms, he stands midway between the refusal to speak and

the stringent negation of language as an arbitrary system of signs that leads

inescapably to illusion.

In light of this philosophical analysis we can fully clarify at this point Borges’

(almost obsessive) attraction to the Heraclitan river symbol or metaphor. While

14 Borges adduces the metaphor of the absolute sphere and its history in human thought in his essay

“The Fearful Sphere of Pascal” (1951), concluding with a characteristically-unforgettable remark:

“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of a few metaphors” (1964a: 171).

15 | P a g e

Heraclitus relates here neither to the flow of time (referring, on the contrary, to

its atemporal and synchronic nature) nor to the enigma of human existence,

focusing rather on the logos as an all-embracing metaphysical principle, Borges

employs his metaphor to depict the perplexity of the “mysterious material” of

time and human existence as “being-within-time” from both a rhetorical and

philosophical perspective. Rhetorically, the picture of the person observing him

or herself in the flowing river sharply illustrates human existence within the

relentless linear progression of time that quietly flows within and without

human life. Philosophically, the river metaphor clearly manifests the tension

embedded in Heraclitus’ paradoxical logic (out of which proceeds the synergistic

blend of the principles of unity, antithesis, and dynamism) that exemplifies the

great metaphysical conundrums of reality.

As we remarked above, the heart of the metaphor of the river lies in the image

of a person standing in it and gazing at his reflection in the flowing water. In

Borges, this becomes the projection of the metaphysical question of time upon

the enigma of the human logic of identity and existence: “We ourselves are the

river, we ourselves ceaselessly flow” (OC, 4:199). This Borgesian orientation,

which stresses the existential, human perspective of the metaphysical question

suggests the possibility of understanding the philosophies of Cratylus,

Parmenides, and Heraclitus as representing three models of human existence in

his writings. In Cratylus’ absolute formative flow of the universe, human

existence is symbolized by the tragic fate of Ireneo Funes in “Funes the

Memorious.” Parmenides’ monstrously-static eternal existence shapes the

implacable fate of the immortals in “The Immortal.” Heraclitus’ river offers the

possibility of a mysterious form of existence within the changing flow of time and

subject to the paradoxical logic of identity of “being the same and not-the-same

as oneself”—an existence exemplified par excellence in “The Other.” Let us

analyze these stories in more detail.

One of the most well-known and discussed of Borges’ works, “Funes the

Memorious” (1942) describes the miserable fate of Ireneo Funes, an Uruguayan

yokel who becomes a sort of “precursor of the supermen, ‘a vernacular and rustic

Zarathustra’” (1964a, 65). He is known in his village for several eccentricities,

including the ability to remember people’s names and, like clockwork, give the

16 | P a g e

precise time when asked. This affinity with time and memory becomes a

monstrous affliction, however, when Funes receives a blow to the head after

being thrown from a horse and loses consciousness. When he awakes, he is

aware that while he is completely paralysed physically he has undergone a

striking mental metamorphosis:

He told me that before that rainy afternoon when the blue-gray horse threw

him, he had been what all humans are: blind, deaf, addlebrained, absent-

minded. … For nineteen years he had lived as one in a dream: he looked

without seeing, listened without hearing, forgetting everything, almost

everything. When he fell, he became unconscious; when he came to, the

present was almost intolerable in its richness and sharpness, as were his most

distant and trivial memories. Somewhat later he learned that he was

paralyzed. The fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (he felt) that his

immobility was a minimum price to pay. Now his perception and his memory

were infallible. (ibid, 68)

Following the accident, Funes’ sensory perception becomes absolute, enabling

him to discern every object in its finest detail. While at one glance ordinary

people see three glasses on a table, he saw “all the leaves and tendrils and fruit

that make up a grape vine.” All these also remained in his mind, clear and sharp.

“Each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations,” a

sense of time, place, perspective, and the particular light shining at the time:

He knew by heart the forms of the southern clouds at dawn on the 30th of

April, 1882, and could compare them in his memory with the mottled streaks

on a book in Spanish binding he had only seen once and with the outlines of

the foam raised by an oar in the Rio Negro the night before the Quebracho

uprising. (ibid, 68–69)

This absorbent, retentive capacity was complemented by an ability to

indiscriminately assimilate all the details of every object in the present and

inscribe them on his vast, boundless memory. He could thus reconstruct whole

days in their entirety—an act that naturally took precisely the same amount of

time as the original day. This left him unable to distinguish between reality, his

sensory perception of it, and the impression of it imprinted on his memory,

17 | P a g e

however. He thus drily remarks that he has had more memories than all

mankind put together, his sleep being like “people’s waking hours,” and his

memory like a “garbage heap” (ibid, 69). His awareness of reality being total,

endless, and remorseless, his memory was marked by the same qualities.

In this state, Funes engages in intellectual games that only such a mind can

play. He invents a non-decimal numbering system in which each number is

represented by a personal name. Thus, for example, 713 is “Máximo Pérez.” He

likewise “projected an analogous language” to that proposed by Locke, which

impossibly granted every individual item its own name. He soon discarded this

idea, however, “because it seemed too general to him, too ambiguous” (ibid). The

same name cannot be given to a thing that appears in various periods, diverse

states, and different perspectives:

Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog

embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him

that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same

name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front). (ibid, 70)

His consciousness is thus nothing other than a chaotic mass of details that grew

exponentially—a meaningless universe or Hegelian “negative infinity.”

Funes’ is a miserable existence, inseparable from the raging storm of endless,

absolute becoming that collects every detail in its experience and memory.

Immersed in time and absolute existence, Funes strikingly embodies Cratylus’

philosophy. Just as the Greek philosopher moved his finger in place of speaking,

so for Funes the (decimal and alphabetic) languages of signs collapse into a

chaotic mass of personal names. In both cases, language as an abstract set of

symbols breaks down. Just as Cratylus argues that a person cannot even enter

the river once, his identity vanishing in perpetual becoming, so Funes cannot

separate his feelings, memories, and terrifying reality. All filtering mechanisms

that allow for the creation of a fixed identity in the midst of the ceaseless flow

have disappeared.

In his lecture on time, Borges observes (under the influence of Schopenhauer)

that “The totality of reality is impossible for us as human beings. We thus receive

everything—fortunately for us, only gradually” (OC, 4:200). While we live

18 | P a g e

courtesy of systems that allow us to filter, engage in abstraction, and forget,

Funes drowns in the implacable flow of Cratylus’ absolute becoming—in the

panta rhei in which all identities dissolve. From the perspective of time, this way

of life is one of cruel, ceaseless awareness of the “sound and fury” (in

Shakespeare’s phrase) of the perpetual flow of time.15 It is thus no surprise that

poor Funes sometimes imagined himself “at the bottom of the river, rocked and

annihilated by the current” (1964a, 71). Borges sums up his tragic fate thus:

He could note the progress of death, of dampness. He was the solitary and

lucid spectator of a multiform, instantaneous and almost intolerably precise

world. … no one, in their populous towers or their urgent avenues, has felt the

heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night

converged upon the hapless Ireneo, in his poor South American suburb. (ibid,

70)

The fate of the figures in “The Immortal” (1947) is a mirror-image of Funes’

engulfment by the river. Members of the Troglodyte tribe who searched for and

found a lake whose waters possess the capacity to turn mortals into immortals,

they come to a horrible end. The first evidence of this arises when the

protagonist reaches their palace. This strangely-wrought edifice gave him the

impression of “enormous antiquity … that of the atrocious,” attesting to the

craftsmanship of its immortal builders. Initially imagining the palace to be a

“fabrication of the gods,” upon investigating its deserted room he decides that

they must have died. He finally fixes on the idea that they must have been mad,

their creation being nothing other than “complexly senseless”:

A labyrinth is a structure compounded to confuse men; its architecture, rich in

symmetries, is subordinated to that end. In the palace I imperfectly explored,

the architecture lacked any such finality. It abounded in dead-end corridors,

high unattainable windows, portentous doors which led to a cell or pit,

incredible inverted stairways whose steps and balustrades hung downwards.

(1974a, 105–106)

15 Borges not distinguishing—here or elsewhere—between the total flow of time and the total

becoming of absolute reality, he appears to regard ontology and time as one and the same.

19 | P a g e

In contrast to the labyrinth, which serves Borges as an image of the complexity of

an indecipherable order—a hyper-structure that symbolizes the universe

(Mualem 2012, 72-74)—the palace and City of the Immortals are chaotic,

completely incongruous constructions, and thus monstrous: “‘This City’ (I

thought) ‘is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the

midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way

even jeopardizes the stars’” (ibid, 107).

The protagonist is subsequently stunned to discover the inhabitants’ way of

life, the tribe appearing to him at first glance to be a bestial race “infantile in their

barbarity,” running around naked on the beach, degenerately language-less, and

indifferent to their fate. At length, however, he realizes that the terrifying city is

the centre of their project, symbolizing their comprehension that no vain

enterprise survives. This understanding—and the lethal apathy that

accompanies it—derive, in fact, from their awareness that they are immortal:

They knew that in an infinite period of time, all things happen to all men.

Because of his past or future virtues, every man is worthy of all goodness, but

also of all perversity, because of his infamy in the past or future. Thus, just as

in games of chance the odd and even numbers tend toward equilibrium, so

also wit and stolidity cancel out and correct each other … Seen in this manner,

all our acts are just, but they are also indifferent. (ibid, 110)

In a meta-temporal existence, the world becomes a system of just rewards that

balance one another out—a perfect atrophy that strips all acts of meaning.

Immortal existence lacking all purpose and significance, removing oneself from

the flow of time threatens to devoid the immortal world of all sense:

Everything among the mortals has the value of the irretrievable and the

perilous. Among the Immortals, on the other hand, every act (and every

thought) is the echo of others that preceded it in the past, with no visible

beginning, or the faithful presage of others that in the future will repeat it to a

vertiginous degree. There is nothing that is not as if lost in a maze of

indefatigable mirrors. Nothing can happen only once, nothing is preciously

precarious. (ibid, 111)

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The Immortals’ senseless fate thus symbolises human existence in light of

Parmenidean philosophy. In an absolute ontology lying outside time—

motionless, perfect, and utterly static—human existence comprises a

meaningless object in an eternal museum, reducing all human acts to futility. Just

as in Greece, Parmenidean ontology instituted Zeno's nihilist paradoxes and the

radical skepticism of the Sophists, so in Borges the meta-temporal universe

induces apathy and decay amongst the Immortals. Temporality thus takes centre

stage, human existence outside the flow of time dissolving meaning and

paralyzing all activity.

These two modes of existence are destructive of human life. Cratylus’

perpetually-becoming universe incapable of filtering time determines the

suffocating fate of Ireneo Funes, while Parmenides’ meta-temporal ontology

condemns the Immortals to lethal apathy. Just as human existence cannot

survive outside time or in the midst of becoming, so too it is unsustainable

outside the river or at its bottom. The only remaining possibility is a Heraclitan

via media—existence within the linear flow of time and, consequently, the

paradox of being simultaneously the same and different.16

“The Other” (1969) is perhaps one of the best illustrations of human life

within the Heraclitan river of time. The plot is set in Cambridge, MA, in February

1969—which the “real” Borges visited when invited to deliver the Norton

Lectures at Harvard. One evening, the protagonist, called “Borges” sits on a bench

overlooking the Charles River, chunks of ice floating past him on its grey waters:

“Inevitably, the river made me think of time … Heraclitus’ ancient image.”17 At

the other end of the bench sits a young man:

I turned to the man and spoke.

“Are you Uruguayan or Argentine?”

“Argentine, but I’ve been living in Geneva since ‘14,” came the reply.

There was a long silence. Then I asked a second question.

“At number seventeen Malagnou, across the street from the Russian Orthodox

Church?”

16 Formulated logically, Parmenides’ meta-time only allows for the principle of identity, Cratylus’

nihilism for difference, Heraclitus’ logos blending the same and the other in a simultaneous paradox. 17 mypage.siu.edu/lemminkc/materials/borges_the-other.doc.

21 | P a g e

He nodded.

“In that case,” I resolutely said to him, “your name is Jorge Luis Borges. I too

am Jorge Luis Borges. We are in 1969, in the city of Cambridge.”

“No,” he answered in my own, slightly distant, voice, “I am here in Geneva, on

a bench, a few steps from the Rhône.”

Then, after a moment, he went on:

“It is odd that we look so much alike, but you are much older that I, and you

have gray hair.”

Here we encounter the doppelgänger that appears so frequently in Borges’ work,

which also raises the question of subjective identity. Here, the encounter is the

result of what we may call a “wrinkle in time”—when a certain point in the past

(ca. 1915) interfaces with a specific point in the present of the plot (1969). In

narrative terms, this creates the story’s fantastical aspect—i.e., the meta-

temporal’s penetration of reality. Logically, it produces what Hofstadter (2007)

calls the “strange loop”—a move in which something perceived as linear

becomes circular, a point in the past being identified with one in the present.

Above all, the fantastical crease sharpens the problem of the flow of time. For the

older Borges, the event occurs in the present, his young version slipping into this

from past. For the young Borges, it takes place in the present in Geneva on the

banks of the Rhône, his older counterpart implanting himself from the future.

The flow of time is geminated and duplicated. Becoming bidirectional, it moves

from the present to the past and from the present into the future by means a

fantastical effect whereby both exist at the same time. In other words, the

fantastical wrinkle in time generates a state in which time flows in two opposite

directions simultaneously.18

The bidirectional flow of time exacerbates both the enigma of time and the

mystery of human existence within time wherein subjectivity consists both of

18 According to Borges, “There are two theories of time. One, which appears to me to be accepted by

everyone, perceives time as a river. Time flows from a point of origin, an unknown originating point,

and gets to us. We also have another theory, formulated in the metaphysics of the British philosopher

Bradley. Bradley posits that what happens is precisely the opposite: that time flows in the reverse

direction, from the future to the present. That this moment in which the future becomes the past is the

moment we call the ‘present’” (OC, 4:202).

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identity and otherness. Borges the younger and Borges the older are both the

same and different at one and the same time. As the latter notes:

I realized that we would not find common ground. We were too different, yet

too alike. We could not deceive one another, and that makes conversation

hard. Each of us was almost a caricature of the other. The situation was too

unnatural to last much longer. There was no point in giving advice, no point in

arguing, because the young man’s inevitable fate was to be the man that I am

now.

Despite the wrinkle in time, this is not a multiverse composed of parallel yet

separate universes. Although it preserves the structure of linear past-present-

future time, the flow becomes bidirectional. The “strange loop,” too, occurs in a

singular framework that becomes circular. Subjective identity exhibits similar

characteristics, identity neither collapsing nor doubling, the fantastical

encounter rather highlighting an essential state in which we are the same and

different from ourselves with the passing of time. Here, Borges and Heraclitus

stand shoulder to shoulder, both dimensions—time and subjective identity—

reflecting the logic of identity of the Heraclitan logos and the principle of

dynamic antithetical unity.

From an all-encompassing view, Ireneo Funes, the Immortals, and Borges the

older’s position clearly presents the relationship of human existence to time. At

its height, temporality suffocates Funes, meta-temporality stripping both human

existence and time of their meaning. The third option of “being-within-time”—

the passing of time that perpetually constitutes the paradox of identity and

otherness—enables human beings to exist in a wondrous, fragile, meaningful,

and mysterious way, symbolised by the Heraclitan metaphor in which they gaze

into their image reflected in the waters of the river.

In Borges’ works, the Heraclitan logos that forms the mysterious structure of

time shapes not only human identity but also language, the writing and reading

processes, and the essence of books—everything Borges considers important. As

he himself notes in his Norton Lectures, expressions in classical Greek, such as

Homer’s “the dark-wine sea,” have become the staple of modern language, the

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passing of time giving them new meaning and significance.19 The development of

language within time is exemplified in Borges’ well-known story “Pierre Menard,

Author of the Quixote” (1939). Menard, a twentieth-century French intellectual,

undertakes the task of rewriting—verbatim— Cervantes’ Don Quixote, a

masterpiece written in Spanish in the seventeenth century. Although he gets

through several paragraphs, he quickly realizes that the rewritten text, which

corresponds word-for-word to the original, differs from it in some essential

sense. While textually indistinguishable, the fact that they were not composed at

the same period bestows upon the words a totally different meaning: “The text of

Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost

infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say, but ambiguity is

richness.)” (1974a, 51). When Cervantes wrote in the seventeenth century the

words “the truth, whose mother is history,” for example, they were a rhetorical

paean in praise of history. In Menard’s twentieth century’s text, however, they

indicate that historical truth is not what happens but what we think happened. In

Borges, this perspective, from which language and writing operate according to

the Heraclitan logos, also pervades the (virtually sacred) acts of reading and re-

reading, as well as the book that stands at the center of our modern “cult of

books.”

Addressing this issue in his lecture “On the Book” (1978), Borges

unsurprisingly refers to Heraclitus:

To take a book and open it—this act entails the possibility of the occurrence of

an aesthetic event (el hecho estético). What, after all, are the words we find in

books? What are these dead symbols? In and of themselves, they are

insignificant. For what is a book if it isn’t opened? It’s nothing more than

sheets of paper divided into pages; but when we read these pages, something

inestimable takes place, because the book, so I believe, changes every time.

Heraclitus said (I’ve gone back to this several times) that no one enters a river

twice—because the waters change as it flows but also because of the awful

fact that we flow no less than they do. Every time we read a book, it’s already

19 This view might correspond theoretically to the late Wittgenstein’s concept of the “language game.”

While Wittgenstein focuses on linguistic usage and grammar, however, Borges relates to time as the

sole parameter of linguistic change.

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different, and the relationship between the words is different. In addition to

that, books accumulate the past within them and are filled with it … if we read

an ancient book, it’s as though we’ve read all the time that’s passed from the

day it was written to our own days. So it’s very important that we preserve

the cult of books. (OC, 4:171)

The self, language, writing, reading, and the book coexist in time, all being shaped

by the principle of dynamic antithetical unity Borges attributes to time itself. In

each, time flows, passing from the past to the present and onto the future—or

vice versa. As the quote from Borges with which this chapter opens indicates, we

have to relate to the flow of time because we cannot think about time in its

purity, its “abstraction” eluding definition and conceptualization. The

fundamental question of time in and of itself—what Kant calls "the thing-in-

itself"— or the issue of its ontological essence has thus yet to be asked. Although

Borges addresses it indirectly, in the secondary, conceivable form of its flow, we

are still left wondering about the nature of the “mysterious material” that

comprises time.

Ontological-metaphysical in nature, this type of question goes beyond the

Heraclitan logos, corresponding more closely to the Parmenidean-Aristotelian

philosophical tradition. What is time in and of itself? In his lecture on time,

Borges propounds that the key to this issue is the secret of the present moment

(el momento presente):

How strange to think that of the three times with the help of which we divide

time itself—the past, the present, and the future—the hardest to crack, the

most elusive, is the present. The present is as truly elusive as the

[geometrical] undefined point. This is because when we try to imagine the

present without the dimension of abstraction (extención)—it does not exist

for us. We have to imagine that the present moment is divided between the

past and the future. In other words, we always feel the movement of time.

When I speak here about the movement of time, I mean something of which

we are all aware. But if I speak about the present moment in itself, I’m relating

to something abstract. The present moment isn’t an intuitive concept

immediately accessible to our minds. We feel as though we are carried by

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time, in other words, we’re inclined to believe that we pass from the future to

the past, or from the past to the future. But no specific moment exists at which

we can say to time: “Stop! You’re so beautiful!” as Goethe tried to do [at the

end of Faust]. The present moment can’t be arrested. We are completely

incapable of imagining the pure present; it would be fruitless to try. (OC,

4:204–295)

The innermost secret of time, the present moment that is identical to the

“mysterious material” of which time is composed, cannot be conceptualized. Is

Borges responding here to Kant’s call to remain solely within the boundaries of

the question “What I can know”? To the extent that he directly addresses the

problem of time, which points to the limitations of the human mind, the answer

to this is yes. In only indirectly alluding to it as a thing-in-itself, however, he is

not. The principal way in which Borges engages this most intricate and supreme

metaphysical issue of time (only once in his whole oeuvre, in fact) is via the

fantastical symbol—which, as Scholem observes, expresses the inexpressible.

This symbols stands at the heart of “The Aleph” (1945).

At first glance, this story has nothing to do with time. The protagonist, who

bears the name Borges, devotes himself to the memory of his dead beloved by

becoming pathologically fixated on her in death. In his faithfulness to her, he

develops an attachment towards her pompous uncle Carlos Argentino Daneri,

using this as a pretext for visiting her house and gazing at her portrait. Daneri

reveals to him the existence of a wondrous object in his basement—the Aleph.

Amongst the kabbalists and in Cantor’s mathematics, this symbolises infinity.20

As he describes it, it is “one of the points in space that contains all other points”:

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere

of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I

realized that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it

bounded. The Aleph’s diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all

space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror’s face, let us

20 For the Aleph as representing the kabbalistic Ein Sof, see: Mualem, Shlomy. “Borges and

Kabbalistic Infinity: Ein Sof and the Holy Book.” Borges and the Bible, edited by Richard Walsh

and Jay Twomey. Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015, 81–98.

26 | P a g e

say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the

universe.21

The Aleph is a fantastical object, the supernatural penetrating reality. Logically, it

is an impossibility, firstly because the whole is included in the part—the whole

universe lying on one point of it—and secondly because the universe retains its

original size. The Aleph is thus represented as a spatial phenomenon and a

logical contradiction of the laws of physics. It must therefore be deciphered in

terms of the theory of space, perhaps constituting the symbol of the infinite

greatness of space condensed into one place.

Borges, however, chooses to open the story with a citation from Hobbes’

Leviathan (4.46) that points to a divergent interpretive direction: “But they will

teach us that Eternity is the Standing Still of the present. Time, a Nunc-stance (as

the school calls it); which neither they, nor any else understand, no more than

they would a Hic-stance for an infinite greatness of space.” Although the Aleph

represents Hic-stance—the infinite greatness of a point in time—it is also

analogous to the Nunc-stance: infinity as the present moment frozen. Here,

Borges draws an intriguing parallel between time and space. For him, the

concept of time is much more significant than that of space because, as

Schopenhauer asserts, while we can think of the universe without adducing any

spatial dimension (a space comprised wholly of music, for example) we cannot

do so without introducing a temporal dimension (OC, 4:198). In this analogy,

time overrides space, allowing us to perceive the Aleph as a fantastical spatial

symbol (Hic-stance) in its overt dimension and a temporal fantastical symbol

(Nunc-stance) in its covert dimension.22 It being impossible to directly imagine

or symbolise the stopping of time—time in and of itself—we can only grasp the

spatial end of the analogy. Hereby, Borges creates for us a fantastical symbol in

which space as a whole is embodied in one point.

This is indeed the vision the Aleph presents: all the phenomena of space and all

the infinite states of matter within it are observed simultaneously and

synoptically in one gaze and from every perspective. In simplistic terms, this is a

view of the universe in its entirety—what Wittgenstein calls in his Tractatus the

21 http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borgesaleph.pdf. 22 Hic = here, nunc = now.

27 | P a g e

perception of the universe as a limited-whole, sub specie aeterni.23 More

profoundly, it reveals something much rarer. In effect, the Aleph reflects all the

phenomena in the universe from every perspective as they exist in the present

moment. Rather than revealing something from the past or future—as Borges

imagines, for example, in Solomon’s wondrous mirror or the mirror of ink—it

constitutes the simultaneous representation of all the phenomena of the

universe that belong to the present moment.24 In other words, it provides us

with an indirect experience of the present moment in itself by showing—

comprehensively and simultaneously—what happens in it: the stopping of time

at this specific moment (Nunc-stance). Or put differently again, observation of

the universe in its entirety at the present moment, condensed into one point in

space, is tantamount to experiencing time that stops moving at the ungraspable

abstract point: the freezing of the present moment.25 Hereby, the Aleph

constitutes an implicit fantastical symbol of time as a thing-in-itself, the

unimaginable present moment that stops moving, the “mysterious material” of

the universe.

23 “The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The

feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling” (6.45). 24 See “The Chamber of Statues” (OC, 1: 337) and “The Mirror of Ink” (OC, 1: 342). 25 As Borges explains in “The History of Eternity,” this is the nominalistic concept of eternity, which

“seeks to gather up all the details of the universe in a single second” (OC, 1: 364).