The Futility of Historical Narrativeand

The Garden of Forking Paths

Nick MilneMLA Convention 2015

Overview• Borges and the labyrinth• Labyrinthine history• The First World War

– ...and history– ...and narrative

• Conclusions which are not conclusions

BORGES AND THE LABYRINTH

“... to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing...”

Borges and the Labyrinth

• The Labyrinth is a recurring image throughout Borges’ stories and thought.

• Borges conceives of the Labyrinth as a convenient (if maddening) symbol of time rather than space – of the infinite forkings and reforkings of choice from the past, through the present, into the future.

• See “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths”, “The Circular Ruins”, “The Library of Babel”, “Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth”, etc.

A Labyrinth of Narrative Impact

If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have enumerated resemble Kafka; if I am not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. The second fact is the more significant. In each of these texts we find Kafka's idiosyncrasy to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka had never written a line, we would not perceive this quality; in other words, it would not exist. The poem "Fears and Scruples" by Browning foretells Kafka's work, but our reading of Kafka perceptibly sharpens and deflects our reading of the poem. Browning did not read it as we do now. In the critics' vocabulary, the word 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotation of polemics or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.“

- “Kafka and His Precursors” (1951)

A Labyrinth of Variable Dimensions

The Labyrinth by its very nature implies construction – corridors, pathways, levels, a plan.; a space constructed with the intention of thwarting comprehension. This in turn implies a constructor. Borges is careful not to leave us with this conclusion, however. In several stories he returns to the image of the two kings and the two labyrinths – the one who builds a painstaking structure of devious design, and the other who simply uses the pathless, tractless, unmappable and inescapable desert. “There is no need to build a labyrinth,” writes Borges, “when the entire universe is one.”

LABYRINTHINE HISTORY“... history is a perplexing, incessant web of causes and effects...”

The Rose-GardenWhat might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden.

• T. S. Eliot – “Burnt Norton” (1935)

Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me...

• Yu Tsun – “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941)

The Problem of Future Contingents

“[Freedom] is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.”

- José Ortega y Gasset

Or do we? Gilles Deleuze has used “The Garden of Forking Paths” to illustrate the problems with this notion.

“...I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths...”

History?

THE FIRST WORLD WAR“...the War had won, and would go on winning.”

The War and the Individual

“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.”

-Yu Tsun, 1916

“There is no need to carry me to another prison. My life is already ebbing away. I suggest that you nail me to a cross and burn me alive. My flaming body will be a torch to light my people on their path to freedom.”

- Gavrilo Princip, 1914

BASIL LIDDELL HART (1895-1970)

From The Real War 1914-1918:

“The bombardment began on June 24th; the attack was intended for June 29th, but was later postponed until July 1st, owing to a momentary break in the weather. This postponement, made at French request, involved not only the spreading out of the ammunition over a longer period, and a consequent loss of intensity, but a greater strain on the part of the assaulting troops...”

CONCLUSIONS (WHICH ARE NOT CONCLUSIONS)

“... I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one...”