and he used it exclusively to roast himself through Nth layers of meta
My dude loved to break the fourth wall just so he could build a fifth wall, break that one too, climb on your shoulder and point and laugh at the tiny Borges currently trying to rebuild the fourth wall with the shittiest possible mortar available
I mean it would have been unsporting to roast anyone else, what could they have done to defend themselves? Besides, Borges is the only target worthy of being roasted by Borges.
You are absolutely right. Plus, anyone else trying to roast Borges would have done a worse job, if he wanted a good roast he had to do it himself
I'm always happy to see more borgesposting on this site. I still think about "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, where fiction invade reality. But I think my favourite fourth wall break is "Averroes search" even if not everyone would agree that it is a fourth wall break. In the afterward, Borges says that he experienced the same struggle Averroes in his story did. Both tried to understand a culture that was foreign to them, and failed. I think that afterward is part of the story itself, and it wouldn't be the first time Borges inserted himself in his story. I'm not saying Borges was lying (although he is the master of 4D Chess), maybe what he wrote did happen or maybe it didn't, but even if it is a lie, this fiction remind us that we too as reader are doomed to misconstruct the culture of Averroes or Borges. We can read about another historical period however we want, but we will never know what it was like, how each individual interpreted their own culture. In the story, Averroes sees children playing but doesn't understand that this is what Aristotle was describing. Did Borges too saw part of his world that he failed to realise where also part of Averroes world? And is it the same for us?
At a dinner, Averroes talks about the universality of common metaphors. As foreign to us as the North-West of Africa in the 12th Century, there still is something universal that we can relate with too, and those metaphors point us in that direction. I think it is more complicated than that in reality, metaphors change, but I do agree that we can relate to people who have lived long before us through what is left of their work.
Oh I 100% consider it a fourth wall break and the afterword part of the story.
I don't think "lie" vs "truth" is a helpful frame here. Because when Borges puts himself in a story he's creating a character Borges and sometimes that character is the narrator (this isn't unique to him, "fictionalized voice of the author as the narrator" is a fairly common device).
In this case he's creating a character narrating the afterword who created a character coming up with and then writing Averroes and then when he stops imagining him, he disappears.
(And so does Borges, it is implied)
At a dinner, Averroes talks about the universality of common metaphors. As foreign to us as the North-West of Africa in the 12th Century, there still is something universal that we can relate with too, and those metaphors point us in that direction. I think it is more complicated than that in reality, metaphors change, but I do agree that we can relate to people who have lived long before us through what is left of their work.
I agree. And he also points to metaphors "growing" with time, because now they not only encompass the original meanings, but they incorporate the meanings (and connotations) of having been written by a specific author, in a specific time, and what those things suggest to us, centuries later.
Metaphors only die (or lose meaning completely) once we stop (re)imagining them.
