2. Escher's lithograph Compass Rose (Order and Chaos II), 1955.
3. Relativity, 1953
Though they were created later in time than the story, these images stage an act of looking at art and help me imagine Villa Triste-le-Roy in Borges' Death and the Compass.
I see escher as striving for some impossibility. in borges' metafiction, there is also a fascination with the impossible. kafka and his precursors: borges plays with ideas which are impossible to verify other than through the context of his own didactically contrived literary schemata. he argues that kafka (as an author and through his characters) also dealt in impossibility.
but we still care about meaning. is this the impossible task? we were asked where does the limit of making meaning lie? in the author's or reader's identity? the historical context in which the piece was written?
meaning is infinite except where there is an agreement. yet even these rules are subject to rebellious thought, deconstruction, even abolition. it seems impossible that any order should emerge out of chaos; that anything is understood by more than one.
the beauty, the incredible artfulness of borges' work lies in his ability to produce two opposing outcomes. this is where the title of my blog comes from. "ALSO," implying that this is true and this is also true. lonnrot is the detective of death/compass but also! he is implicated in the crime. also criminal, also solver of crimes, also "adventurer, gambler," also "reasoning machine."
if the definite shape of the compass morphed into the line talked about at the end of the story, then identity becomes an infinite continuum. (ways of knowing) lose their measure of relevance or effectiveness because everything is also true and also false.
I see escher as striving for some impossibility. in borges' metafiction, there is also a fascination with the impossible. kafka and his precursors: borges plays with ideas which are impossible to verify other than through the context of his own didactically contrived literary schemata. he argues that kafka (as an author and through his characters) also dealt in impossibility.
but we still care about meaning. is this the impossible task? we were asked where does the limit of making meaning lie? in the author's or reader's identity? the historical context in which the piece was written?
meaning is infinite except where there is an agreement. yet even these rules are subject to rebellious thought, deconstruction, even abolition. it seems impossible that any order should emerge out of chaos; that anything is understood by more than one.
the beauty, the incredible artfulness of borges' work lies in his ability to produce two opposing outcomes. this is where the title of my blog comes from. "ALSO," implying that this is true and this is also true. lonnrot is the detective of death/compass but also! he is implicated in the crime. also criminal, also solver of crimes, also "adventurer, gambler," also "reasoning machine."
if the definite shape of the compass morphed into the line talked about at the end of the story, then identity becomes an infinite continuum. (ways of knowing) lose their measure of relevance or effectiveness because everything is also true and also false.
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