Nearly all the many commentaries I've read on The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges focus on the nature of time as a main theme or THE main theme.
Why do I not encounter more reflections on the nature of space? After all, a labyrinth serves as a pervasive, key image in the tale - and a labyrinth is, above all else, constructed in space. Thus, the story's narrator recollects a common procedure for discovering the central point in certain labyrinths is to "always turn to the left."
Imagine standing atop a hill and looking down at an extraordinarily complex garden labyrinth. Your task is to enter the labyrinth on the near side and exit on the far side. You were never that good at puzzles and you can easily imagine yourself wandering in the labyrinth for hours, maybe days before chancing upon the proper exit.
However, if you were given accurate, easy to follow directions such as "always turn to the left," an impossible quagmire immediately becomes an enjoyable short walk. The idea of time doesn't even occur to you, you can walk slowly or quickly or maybe even break into a trot, since it doesn't matter - you always know which way to turn.
Perhaps this emphasis on time derives from the narrator reading the beguiling words of the ancient Ts'ui Pên: "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths." And then reflecting: "Almost instantly, I understood: 'the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase 'the various futures (not to all)' suggesting to me the forking of time, not in space."
The narrator muses further on Ts'ui Pên's novel, how, unlike the usual work of fiction where a man chooses one path and therefore eliminates all others, in Ts'ui Pên's novel, the protagonist chooses all paths simultaneously. He therefore creates "diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork."
Sounds so cool, even trumping a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' tale where various options are left to the reader on which way the plot can turn. With Ts'ui Pên's novel, the plot turns every way all at once leading to multiple plots, in turn, turning every way at once. Methinks it must have been a thick novel, maybe even in some ways similar to the Book of Sand, a book with an infinite number of pages from another Borges tale.
I suspect we can all pinpoint certain decisions we made along our path propelling us in a particular direction (and thereby eliminating other directions). If only we made a different choice, how different our life would have been.
Ah, if only we could see, really see, into the future. Our inability to see into the future drove science fiction author Philip K. Dick bonkers. He was forever creating character possessing the power and ability to read the future like an open book. What an advantage they had!
Much in this Borges tale hinges on conflict and war, seeing a man as an enemy or a friend, victories and total victory - in other words, seeing the world in terms of me (or us) and the other. In this way, aren't we all held in the grip of the play of maya, the veil of illusion? Seen thusly, wouldn't our liberation, our transcendence, our moksha be framed in terms of space rather than time? We could then reach a level of realization, in effect, a release, a moksha, where we express with all our heart and mind, with our very being: 'Thou art that' or in Sanskrit: 'Tat tvam asi'?
Or would this simply amount to another turn within the Garden of Forking Paths?
Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986
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