"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face."
Dreamtigers, Epilogue, p.93, Borges.
dreamtigers, to me, is the apex of postmodernism. first, i'm in love with the structure: part one is comprised of prose poetry/short stories/flash fiction/whatever you wanna call it, and part two is comprised of verse. borges' style here feels paradoxical, contradictory, absurd and perplexing: he is frustrated but peaceful, restless but tranquil, knowledgeable but emptyheaded. all of his work stares directly at reality and crushes it beneath his fist; deems it the oppressor by likening it to spain. borges aims to escape to the world of metafiction; fiction about fiction, living inside of a dream about a dream. still, this restlessness and dissatisfaction resonates where borges admits the written word is incapable of describing reality. all of fiction and word is perfect: everything has already been written about before. every phenomenon has already been documented. every aspect of human nature has already been written down. and yet, it cannot perfectly capture the real world, because written word emerges specifically from people and people are simple creatures who cannot grasp the complexity of the world. borges lives inside the world of contradiction and paradoxes and absurdity, and it is exactly why this collection works so well: it governs itself in the logic of dreams and their natural state of symbology, of complexity, of references, of intertextuality. it weaves tapestries out of tapestries and flouts its incoherence and imperfections and fear. i love dreamtigers.
one specific device i like seeing borges employ is writing people writing about others; he has a specific collection, museum, where he organizes fictional writings of the past exploring the human condition across time. regret, pride, existential dread, dissatisfaction, rage, and love. nothing more to be said about it, im just generally a huge fan of it.
i also admit, me reading the collection is very, very, embarrassingly self-indulgent. (it does, in fact, draw on the works of dante, which i am so embarrassingly partial to and adore. i sat there fanboying). borges has a very captivating way of describing the human condition as performance and culture as eating itself alive. it deals with creation and destruction as mutation and distortion; things blend into each other, lending to a dreamy feel as the stories and poems mutate symbols (specifically in the moonand distort the truth of reality into fantasy that tastes sweeter and goes down easier. this fantasy is necessary because language cannot describe reality. dreamtigers grapples with original language and the ability of language to describe real events; fearing distortion of the beauty of events he witnesses through the simplicity of language (he likens it to a mirror) he draws in on himself, becomes terrified of reality because he craves to understand it and cannot. the image that exists in his mind will never be part of the real world because the world is more complex than we can comprehend. our language directly impacts our ability to understand and communicate about reality: is there, then, a 'perfect' language that perfectly describes the world? borges argues 'no.' this work might have convinced me.
my first review for a tom stoppard play. despite being fans of some of tom stoppards other works, i was recently gifted a collection of his plays by CS, so i decided to read all of them and then reread them again. arcadia is one of his more... i dont know, understandable? easily comprehensible plays as opposed to other classics of his.
arcadia covers the nature of knowledge and truth, positing that truth is cyclic and knowledge always circles back in on itself. i really significantly enjoyed how the past occurs at the same time as the future in the end; the objects on the table covering the entire history of the play. i think what i enjoyed most of all was the respectful usage of mathematics and actual science to make a point. the usage of chaos theory by thomasina and chloe is incredibly well done, and there is no 'dramatic science' used that would immediately turn off anyone who knows what chaos theory actually is.
i was initially surprised by how much sense arcadia made. i think the first time i read it was after i was introduced into stoppard's works by R&C are dead and was like 'wow, science? ill probably enjoy this!' but despite how much sense it made and my clear preference for absurd, strange, odd, nonsensical works that i have to think on and hallucinate about, this work is still super super enjoyable and fun to read as well as watch.
i think i still enjoy stoppard's more enigmatic plays, but this one was a good refresher to getting back into stoppard's works. arcadia is like a base for understanding the concepts addressed in some of stoppard's other works, i think, or thats at least how i've always thought of it. it checks most of the boxes; wit, determinism, existentialism... in fact, i wish most other postmodern works took themselves a lot less seriously. humor and joy is one of the hardest things to elicit from an audience. stoppard's tragomedies are nothing short of hilarious and heart-wrenching, this included. the fact that we are aware of characters like thomasina's fate (her tragic death in a fire before her 17th birthday) makes her final moments on stage all the more rewarding and beautiful to live in. the act of making the audience aware of the impending doom of the characters they love but still eliciting joy and comfort in the present moment neatly ties up all the dread that comes with that fate; it concludes in the face of the heat death of the universe that the act of loving and enjoying the present moment is all that matters.
one of my forays into sartre's work. i've been interested in his philosophy and ideas since i started reading camus a couple of years ago and i heard about their interactions. funnily enough, camus directed another play on my reading list, so that's next, but for now, i thought no exit was a good place to start.
'no exit' explores the interactions of three people in a drawing room. they have all died, and their punishment is posed as an eternity together. although they originally anticipate torture and hellfire and brimstone, they quickly discover that being in each other's company is worse; close to the ending, one of the characters declares 'hell is other people.'
the strangest connection i made here was estelle to blanche dubois from a streetcar named desire. both leverage sex and carnal desire in order to achieve power and are stuck as postergirls of femininity in their pieces. i really enjoyed this piece and sartre's writing! he's witty and captivating and probably one of the better examples of 'show don't tell isnt always the best advice.' when he needs to make a point, he makes it. there's a lot of guns waiting to be fired, and when they go off, it feels like a huge moment in a tchaikovsky piece.
i feel like there was more than just 'hell is other people.' how i read it was that each character differed in how they sought power: garcin seeks power in physical dominance, estelle seeks power in attention and sexual appeal, and inez seeks power in intellectual pursuits. because their pursuits for power shift the balance between them constantly, and they are all equally matched in their abilities to control each other, they will eternally suffer because there is no resolution and true victory. this makes their struggle inherently meaningless if there is no victory.
if hell is a punishment, the bad action here is continuing to strive for a victory when one is not able to be achieved. it's searching for that release and resolution when there is none available, rather than accepting it. to be fair, the characters do try to accept it, but they lapse in this constantly.
i feel like i'd have to read sartre's other works or his essays to understand this piece better, but the things he proposes in here make me really intrigued. i need to read more sartre now...... he's so cool...... wait he's real.........