Images:

     

My notes/thoughts:

9/30/04

I just found a great analysis that sums up the story beautifully. Seriously, this is one of the best "translations" I've ever found:

"In this first person narrative, Borges, while enjoying a night with his friends, hears of an obscure nation called Uqbar. Fascinated and curious by this strange new nation, Borges attempts to research it further, but without success. Apparently, the only indication of Uqbar’s existence occurs in a single edition Encyclopedia Britannica.

Some years later, Borges happens by chance onto a book entitled A First Encyclopedia of Tlon. Vol. XI. (Tlon being a planet from Uqbarian mythology, and Orbis Tertius being one of its regions.) Further intrigued, Borges and his friends study this volume in its entirety, learning all about the completely foreign (more info) world of Tlon. They postulate that perhaps some secret society of all sorts of intellectuals in fact created Tlon, each man contributing a minuscule amount of information.

As more time passes by, Borges begins to find more and more evidence about the existence of Tlon, by hearing of it in a passing reference, or finding a trinket apparently made in Tlon.

Meanwhile, while Borges tried to reconcile the existence of Tlon internally, the rest of the world begins to discover about the "imaginary" planet as well. The study of Tlon becomes very popular in Academia, and eventually children are able to learn the language of Orbis Tertius in school! As a conclusion to the story, the practices and customs of the fabricated Tlonians become so popular on Earth that one is no longer able to discern the differences between these new ideas and the original Earthling beliefs—in essence, Earth becomes Tlon.

Many of the details about Tlon are quite fascinating and intellectually stimulating. For example, some languages there consist of no verbs, but instead long strings of adjectives and nouns. In another language there, there are no nouns other than those constructed by joining two or more adjectives (and as a result, most poetry consists just one extremely long word.) The most important discipline on Tlon is philosophy, since they believe that every reality is an absolute truth. No book is complete without providing both a thesis and antithesis since both are equally true. Every aspect of life from math to biology to communicating is completely different on Tlon that on Earth. To go into further detail on the examples however, would defeat the purpose of summarizing the work, since it is a short story to begin with. If you’re interested, pick up a copy!"

BIG THANK YOU!: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/SUMTlon.htm

9/30/04

Ok, so I finally read the story beginning-to-end while I was hanging around the Commuter Eating Place (let's call it that) on Tuesday. I've come up with this idea of it:

The narrator of the story finds out about this weird/rip-off edition of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia. In this rip-off there is a section (not included in the real edition that was ripped-off) about this country called Uqbar. The guy has never heard of Uqbar, nor have any of his friends heard of it and none of them no anyone who has been there or heard of it either.

Uqbar apparently has whole volumes of literature/encyclopedias about this ficticious place called Tlon. These works about Tlon are so intricate and detailed that there is no way one person could have written it. Tlon is basically an entire planet created by a super genius and a bunch of really really smart people: metaphysicians, mathematicians, artists, poets, and engineers just to name a few. The work of each individual helped create this book(s), which is basically an encyclopedia of Tlon, an imaginary planet with crazy rules/laws of reality.

(Ok, consulting my notes for this next section on Tlon.)

More analysis coming soon. I think I'm making some breakthroughs finally, though!

9/27/04

Some notes I took today.

- Literature of Uqbar was fantastic in nature. Its epics and legends never referred to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Tlon and Mlejnas.

- Nobody had ever been to Uqbar. No mention of it in the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia.

- A First Encyclopaedia of Tlon Vol. XI. ORBIS TERTIUS (blue oval stamp on first page) complete history of an unknown planet, with its arhitecture and its playing cards, its mythological terrors and the sound of its dialects, emperors, oceans, minerals, birds, algebra, fire, theological and metaphysical arguments, all clearly stated, coherent, w/o any apparent dogmatic intention or parodic undertone.

    - Who invented Tlon?

    - "Brave new world" the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, mathematicians, moralists, painters, and geomatricians under the supervision of an unknown genius.

    - Each of the individuals contribution was infinitesimal: An infinitely small quantity; that which is less than any assignable quantity