"The Immortal" (the original Spanish title: " El inmortal ") is a short story by famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in February 1947, and later in the Collection El Aleph in 1949. This story tells of a mistreating character of immortality and then, bored with long life, struggling to lose it and writing an explanation of his experience. The story consists of citations, introductions, five chapters, and a note. "The Immortal" has been described as "the peak of the Borges art" by critic Ronald J. Christ.
Video The Immortal (short story)
Plot summary
Borges begins by quoting Francis Bacon Essays , LVIII. "Salomon says," There is nothing new on earth, so when Plato has imagination, that all knowledge is merely a memory, so Salomon gives his sentence, that all new things are merely forgotten. "
This introduction took place in London in the first part of June 1929. The following five chapters are said to have been found in the last six volumes of the quarto small (1715-20) of Alexander Pope's Iliad, awarded to the Princess of Lucinge by a rare book dealer named Joseph Cartaphilus.
This story is an autobiographical story narrated by a Roman soldier, Marcus Flaminius Rufus, during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. During the sleepless night at Thebes, Egypt, a mysterious man, exhausted and wounded, sought refuge in his camp. Just before he died, he told Rufus about the river whose water gave immortality to anyone who drank from it. The river is next to a place called the City of Gods. Determined to find him, Rufus left for Africa with his troops. The harsh conditions of the journey caused many of his men to leave. Upon hearing that the remaining soldiers were planning his death, Rufus fled and wandered through the desert.
Rufus awakens from a nightmare to find himself tied up in a small alcove on the side of a mountain inhabited by Troglodytes. Below, he saw the polluted stream and jumped down to drink from him; injured, he fell asleep. Over the next few days, he recovers and, seeing the City of God in the distance, can walk there, followed by Troglodyte.
The City of God is a huge maze with blind alleys, upturned staircases, and many chaotic architectural structures. Rufus, horrified and disgusted by the city, described it as "the chaos of heterogeneous words, the body of a tiger or a bull in which teeth, organs and heads are deeply united in mutual relationships and hatred." He eventually escapes from the city and finds Troglodyte who follows him there waiting outside; he named it Argos (after the Odysseus dog), and decided to teach her the language. Soon after, though, Argos reveals that he is Homer, and that Troglodytes is a God, after destroying the City of the Gods original and (on Homer's suggestion) replacing it with a labyrinth that Rufus encounters.
Rufus spent centuries living with Immortals, most of them drowning in thought, until the idea of ​​the existence of a river with the power to "take" immortality caused the group to spread in its quest in the tenth century. Rufus roamed the world, fought at Stamford Bridge, copied the Sindbad Sailor journey, and bought the Pope's edition lliad in 1714. In 1921, the Rufus ship ran aground in Eritrea while traveling to Bombay, drink from the spring, lose its immortality.
In the end, Rufus realizes that he has incorporated Homer's experience and words into his story, but concludes that "I have become Homer; soon, like Ulysses, I will become Nobody; soon, I will be everyone - I will die. "Rufus, in fact, the seller of the Cartaphilus book, which, we learned at the beginning of the story, died in October 1929 when he returned to Smyrna.
The story ends with a brief note on the fictitious book of the Many Color Symbols. Nahum Cordovero, who argues that the story of Rufus/Cartaphilus is apocryphal, on the basis of the interpolation of its texts. by Pliny, Thomas de Quincey, Rene Descartes, and George Bernard Shaw. The postscript ends with an unknown author of postscript that rejects Cordovero's claim.
Maps The Immortal (short story)
Analysis
The Immortal deals with several themes that are present throughout Borges's numerous writings; one of those themes is immortality. Borges's conception of immortality assumes manifestations throughout his writings and even in this clearly illustrated work, it is not clear who exactly is meant to be immortal. On the one hand, it clearly shows that Rufus is looking for an eternal city and therefore the existence he finds there must in fact be immortal. However, it can also be said, without being too subtle insight, that Rufus becomes immortal once he begins his journey. In this sense, Borges's immortality is concerned with the Nietzsche-inspired humanist immortality that revolves around the abundant human development as an individual. This theme is also developed in The Circular Ruins, The Garden of Forking Paths, The Sect of Phoenix, and in the sense of all Borges's writings.
The other theme prizes are unlimited, which can also be found in many of Borges's writings. The constant symbol of the infinite is the labyrinth, which represents the dynamics of personal choice within an infinite permutation of existence. The troglodyte that makes the pattern in the sand and hero (Rufus) who finds himself looking after and attaining immortality should be seen as an identical representation, encompassing all of the individuals who choose in the infinite flux of the universe's permutations. Thus, the infinite is a complete contradiction of the individual and also its validation.
"The Immortal" has been described as a fictitious exploration of Nietzsche's theory of the Eternal Return, where infinite time has erased individual identity. The story is comparable to Homer Odyssey, in the sense that it is a tribute to Homer's universal and mystical proportions. The Immortal features Borges' literary irony, combining the Swiftian satire, the creative evolution of George Bernard Shaw at Back to Methusela, and the dream vision of Thomas De Quincey in a single work. Borges also commented on the literary idealism in which the identities of component writers Homer, Shakespeare and Borges themselves appear to merge into each other. Borges himself describes the story as "Blake writes that if our senses do not work - if we are blind, deaf, etc. - we will see things as they are, unlimited." The Immortal jumps from that strange idea and also from verse by Rupert Brooke, 'And see, no more blinded by our eyes' ".
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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