Garden Of Forking Paths By Jorge Luis Borges: Literary Analysis
During the rise of Modernism, the world began to approach literature and the complexities of life in a new manner. According to The Norton Anthology of World Literature Vol. F, within this era of new discovery, scientists were also finding that the world does not function the way it appears to: “The most famous of the scientific discoveries of the early twentieth century was Albert Einstein's theory of relativity” (Puchner 10). Einstein’s theory of relativity has been a topic of discussion since its birth in 1905 to many Modernist writers such as e. e. Cummings, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Robert Frost (Johnson 217). It is not surprising that these creative writers, along with Jorge Luis Borges, were intrigued by this theory. Humans
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Borges gives his idea of time as, “I don’t claim to know what sort of thing time is (or even if it is a thing), but I suspect that time and the course of time are one mystery and not two” (Wood 50). Just as Borges believes that time and the movement of time is one thing, Ts’ui Pȇn’s book and labyrinth are also one unifying element of time. Through this continuous breaking of paths and time into new stems of the labyrinth, Einstein's special relativity theory is translated by Borges from a literary standpoint. Throughout “The Garden of Forking Paths”, Borges holds Einstein’s scientific influence and states that time is relative because it is perceived differently depending on the positioning of the person or persons it involves, and motion is held as an incessant branching of a labyrinth. The story then goes to say that Ts’ui Pȇn did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. Much like Einstein and Borges, “He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time” (496). In this story, Borges says that time is an unknown, ambiguous, forking of paths that exists within larger paths. According to Borges, relative time is a metaphorical
Borges gives his idea of time as, “I don’t claim to know what sort of thing time is (or even if it is a thing), but I suspect that time and the course of time are one mystery and not two” (Wood 50). Just as Borges believes that time and the movement of time is one thing, Ts’ui Pȇn’s book and labyrinth are also one unifying element of time. Through this continuous breaking of paths and time into new stems of the labyrinth, Einstein's special relativity theory is translated by Borges from a literary standpoint. Throughout “The Garden of Forking Paths”, Borges holds Einstein’s scientific influence and states that time is relative because it is perceived differently depending on the positioning of the person or persons it involves, and motion is held as an incessant branching of a labyrinth. The story then goes to say that Ts’ui Pȇn did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. Much like Einstein and Borges, “He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time” (496). In this story, Borges says that time is an unknown, ambiguous, forking of paths that exists within larger paths. According to Borges, relative time is a metaphorical