Analysis on the Space-Time Vision of “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “The Aleph”—From the Function of the Metaphor of Labyrinth and Mirror

Abstract

In daily life, people tend to recognize and think about intangible and difficult-to-define concepts with reference to known, tangible, and concrete concepts, creating a way to understand different concepts in relation to each other. In Borges’ s short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” a labyrinthine manuscript of a novel constantly avoids the concept of time, while at the same time illustrating the infinite possibilities of time. The time and labyrinth in the story can be considered a pair of “structural metaphors.” The manuscript written by Hsi P’êng is a symbol of the labyrinth of time, which is like an ever-entwined network, a collection of contingencies, nonlinearities, and multidimensionality. Another story, “The Aleph” tells the tale of the protagonist who is drowned in depression due to the death of his lover, Bejatric when by chance, he discovers a secret hidden in his lover’s cousin’s basement, an Aleph, two or three centimeters in diameter, which concentrates all the images and scenes of the universe. The Aleph is the source of his poetic talent, his hope of finding his deceased lover, and a special “space” constructed by Borges through the metaphor of a “mirror”. The objective of this dissertation is to briefly analyze how Borges constructs a “labyrinth”to objectify his vision of time in the story, and how he uses “mirrors” to express his vision of space.