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> I love Borges the author because he appears to have understood, at an intuitive literary level, deep truths about reality that physicists and mathematicians h

> I love Borges the author because he appears to have understood, at an intuitive literary level, deep truths about reality that physicists and mathematicians hadn't even discovered in his time. I doubt we need to go all the way to physicists and mathematicians. > ...Menard invented a whole new way to read, one where you deliberately imagine the text as written at a different time and by a different author, leading to radically different interpretations of the original text. A simpler explanation is that Borges had some experience (don't we all?) with partisans, reviewers, and even scholars, who seem wilfully to imagine their chosen text as written at a different time and by a different author than it had been. [Given the nice discussion in TFA of changing connotations of symbols: are there genres beyond Country&Western where the chorus stays syntactically the same but semantically changes after intervening verses? My current goto example is Husky's "I only Roll 'Em", where the title is indeed the first line of the chorus, but the listener's interpretation of "roll" and "them" changes over ~150 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK9nx7e9IGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK9nx7e9IGM ]

andybak 2y ago
> A simpler explanation is that Borges had some experience (don't we all?) with partisans, reviewers, and even scholars, who seem wilfully to imagine their chosen text as written at a different time and by a different author than it had been. I don't think this does the Menard story justice (although I'm not sure I buy the interpretation you're critiquing either) You're on the right lines but you paint it as some kind of irritated put down of bad interpretations. I think Borges trying to probe (in a witty and playful way) the thing that we all do when when we attempt to read something from another time or place. He's not particularly passing judgement as I don't think he is claiming there's an easy way round the problems. EDIT - I've just done the thing I hate other people doing - replying to a comment without reading TFA properly. I'll remedy this but I want my reply to stand because I disagree with your characterisation and it's currently the top comment.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > He's not particularly passing judgement OK, fair enough — I think I was opposing TFA too strongly, and prefer your interpretation overall! (although I'd like to believe I try to meet authors halfway, and try to meet their manifold at a tangent [or a least a secant which makes a reasonable approximation]).

andybak 2y ago

> A simpler explanation is that Borges had some experience (don't we all?) with partisans, reviewers, and even scholars, who seem wilfully to imagine their chosen text as written at a different time and by a different author than it had been. I don't think this does the Menard story justice (although I'm not sure I buy the interpretation you're critiquing either) You're on the right lines but you paint it as some kind of irritated put down of bad interpretations. I think Borges trying to probe (in a witty and playful way) the thing that we all do when when we attempt to read something from another time or place. He's not particularly passing judgement as I don't think he is claiming there's an easy way round the problems. EDIT - I've just done the thing I hate other people doing - replying to a comment without reading TFA properly. I'll remedy this but I want my reply to stand because I disagree with your characterisation and it's currently the top comment.

082349872349872 2y ago
> He's not particularly passing judgement OK, fair enough — I think I was opposing TFA too strongly, and prefer your interpretation overall! (although I'd like to believe I try to meet authors halfway, and try to meet their manifold at a tangent [or a least a secant which makes a reasonable approximation]).