Borges's impulse to put the abstract infinity in the philosophical sense into tangible things (The Book of the Sand, Paralyzed Youth, Alef and Coin) is not a simple theme appeal. On the formal level of the novel, Borges also hopes to accommodate infinitely complex meanings as much as possible through concise and restrained writing. In the previous analysis, George Herbert, David Hume, various ancient versions of the Bible, Presbyterian Church, Indians, Norwegians, etc. It appears in the form of inscriptions and dialogues between characters, which expands the ideological and cultural map behind the story very frugally. Therefore, Borges' novels have become an important resource to inspire French post-structuralist critics to explain intertextuality theory. The most commonly used technique in Borges' novels is to make up a nonexistent book written by a fictional author, and the role of the narrator "I" is only to comment on the book or add footnotes, so is the whole conceptual framework of The Book of the Sand. Borges once exposed this technique in the preface of the Collection of Novels: "To write a voluminous book is to cram something that can be made clear in a few minutes into 500 pages, which is a thankless delirium. It is better to make an abbreviation for some existing books and comment. " Calvino, a great Italian novelist, believes that Borges "created a literature that was raised to the second power, which is like a literature that drew its own square root". He keenly pointed out that the essence of this technique is a "method close to infinity", which is the form embodiment of Borges' strong appeal to infinity.
There is a saying that the seller of sand books said to himself. It seems simple, but it also deserves careful scrutiny. If space is infinite, we are at any point in space. If time is infinite, we are at any point in time. "Many teachers think that even in the era of Borges' life, the infinity of time and space has become a common sense, so the salesman monologue here is just because he thought of the infinity of the world from the infinity of books. The arbitrariness of "we" in it makes the encounter between "I" and the salesman very accidental, and there is no chance to meet each other again. In the novel, the narrator also admits this point. There is certainly some truth in this, but the problem is far from simple. Because this sentence appears immediately after the description of countless page numbers of books, it naturally reminds people that the infinite space-time here is the inner infinite space-time composed of books of sand, and it precedes the existence of "we" when facing the infinite space-time composed of books, which naturally transforms the relationship between time-space and "we" into the relationship between books of sand and readers. Although the book's infinity has become a fact, when the book is closed and there is no reader to read it, this infinity can't be realized. It just exists as a potential possibility. Once the reader opens the book and turns it page by page, this infinite potential is completely released. Borges wrote in an article about the book:
People pick up a book and open it, which has aesthetic significance in itself. What's the point of letting words lie in books and symbols lie stiff? Meaningless. What's the use of books if we don't open them? It's just a roll of paper or a roll of skin, but if we read it, something new will appear. I thought there would be something new every time I watched it. Heraclitus once said that no one can walk into the same river twice, because the river is constantly changing, and our changes are no less than this river. Every time we read a book, the book changes and the meaning of the words changes. Besides, every book is full of lost time.
However, in The Book of the Sand, the meaning of symbols can't be recognized, and the act of reading becomes abstract, so the aesthetic significance of Borges is more philosophical in the novel The Book of the Sand. It is precisely because books are like running water, such as the passage of time, that readers such as "we" can only become an arbitrary point that cannot be determined and is not maintained by objective standards on the premise that the object cannot be determined. This kind of uncertainty and randomness is reflected in emotional attitude, which is a feeling of fear. What the novel shows readers is that with the development of the plot and the deepening of reading (this reading is actually a superficial browsing without literacy), the narrator not only realizes that the book of sand is a terrible monster, but also imagines himself as a monster, and the two are just complementary.
In this novel, the uncertainty of "we" was unknown until "I" opened the book. When the salesman reminded me to pay attention to the characteristics of the book when browsing, when I tried to find some controllable laws of the book by taking notes after buying it and finally failed, the infinity of the book, together with the reader's own anxiety, was presented to the narrator himself. In this way, the infinite variety of books can only be fully realized in the dynamic reading of readers. In this sense, Borges, as the author of the novel, appears in the novel as a reader, and he has double or even multiple identities (the salesman is not a reader who feels the same as the narrator), which is not only a narrative strategy of the novel, but also a logical necessity for the specific meaning of the novel to be generated. In other words, the infinity of The Book of Sand can only be realized through the mutual cooperation between Borges in the author's sense and Borges in the reader's sense. Borges talks about the author's meaning from the reader's point of view, which constitutes the main content of Borges' prose Borges and I, and also becomes a unique tension for art to deal with the novel content of The Book of the Sand. At present, some teaching plans or teaching records of Chinese teaching ignore the generative relationship and indivisibility between the author and the reader in the novel, and only emphasize that the novel aims to explain people's fear and escape in the face of infinite alien things, divide the subject and object into two opposites, or understand the novel mechanically and superficially. It should be mentioned that revealing the meaning of a book from the reader's meaning and emphasizing the infinite value of a book by readers are not necessarily directly influenced by the reader's response theory. Perhaps as far as Borges is concerned, this view has a special ideological and logical origin. Because his lifelong philosopher is Becquerel, an English empiricist. Becker's basic view of "being is being perceived" influenced Borges to some extent, guiding him to pay special attention to the feelings of readers outside the book, thus expounding the infinite value of a book from this angle.
The Book of the Sand was finally hidden in the library, as if the narrator was inspired by hiding leaves in the Woods: the so-called "the best place to hide a leaf is the Woods". However, the disappearance of the Book of the Sand on the library shelves is not exactly the same as the realistic strategy of "hiding big books in the city". We might as well understand the infinite pages of books from the perspective of implicit reality, which will inevitably lead to the collection coverage of a library, or an infinite book will be decomposed into a vast sea of books in a huge library. As his biographer Monegal pointed out, "He imagined a book with endless pages, including all the books, and the whole library was compressed into a huge object. In fact, in his early short story The Library of Babel, he thought of the connection between books and libraries: "There must be a book on a shelf of the whole hexahedron (people think so), which is a complete condensed version or outline of all other books. "So, when the book of sand is hidden in the library, the homogeneity between books becomes a cover-up, and the infinity of the book of sand is also covered up by the essential connection and even the inclusive relationship between books in the library.
Although Borges' novels are full of various metaphysical propositions, mysticism, religious heresy, and bizarre theories in the canon, as Borges himself said when talking about himself in the third person: "He is not a thinker. He is a writer who takes philosophical issues as literary material. It is a misunderstanding to talk about his philosophical atlas and ideological system without the charm of novel form and technique. Harold bloom, an American scholar, summed it up very well: Borges "as a skeptic who cares more about imaginary literature than religion and philosophy, he taught us how to read this meditation mainly from the perspective of aesthetic value". speak
In an interview in his later years, Borges commented on his Book of the Sand: "I think my best collection of short stories is the latest Book of the Sand. In this book, there is not a word that will restrict or hinder readers. These novels are simple in narration, although the stories themselves are not straight. Because there are no straight lines in the universe, because everything is complicated. I dress them up and write simple novels. In fact, I have written those novels over and over again for ninety times, but I want them to look casual. I want them to be as ordinary as possible. "
The original wording of this novel is really simple. In non-Spanish-speaking countries, this novel is often used as reading material for elementary Spanish. The story itself has no complicated clues. Throughout the whole story, the first-person narrative has no stream of consciousness, long-span imagination or jumping monologues that are common in the first-person narrative of 20th century novels. It belongs to simple linear narrative, and the narrative tone is quite in line with the classical norms, which makes readers firmly believe that these narratives come from an "unreliable narrator" who runs counter to the mainstream narrative of novels in the 20th century.
A rope made of sand.
Your rope is made of sand. This is the inscription of the novel, which is quoted from george herbert's poem. George herbert (1593- 1633) is a British metaphysical poet and priest. "Sand" is a loose thing without binding force, and "rope" means binding force. So "rope made of sand. It refers to an abstract and virtual bondage. Generally speaking, when people's expectations, pursuits and desires reach an irresistible position, these expectations, pursuits and desires will become the bondage of people themselves and the source of pain. As an inscription, it implies the fiction and imagination of the Qing Dynasty significance in Sha Shu, as well as the abstraction and unreality of the symbolic meaning of the theme. " The rope made of sand "is an abstract bondage or influence existing in people's emotional world and spiritual world." It came into being with my possession of the book of sand and disappeared with the concealment of the book of sand.
Think carefully about how Borges makes the impossible clear in his narrative. In the poem, "rope made of sand" is used to describe what "you" once believed but later found to be completely false. This metaphor is quite metaphysical: it injects abstract speculation into a daily and perceptible metaphor with specious word formation. Using this poem as an inscription has two very ingenious functions: first, it implies that what the protagonist "I" wants to say is also crossing the boundary between truth and illusion; Secondly, it is suggested that there are some similarities between this upcoming novel and metaphysical poetry, and they are both committed to making abstract things concrete and visible.
Borges's works are very metaphorical, and he left some abstract hints of reading appreciation in the most inconspicuous places of his works. For example, in The Book of the Sand, the inscription is divorced from the plot of the novel, so it is difficult for readers to consciously combine it with the plot of the work. It is by this way that the novel skillfully points out the theme of the work, so that we can feel the meaning and abstraction of its theme behind the wonderful plot development of the novel. Therefore, "rope made of sand" is not a real rope, but an abstract chain, which hints at the theme. This is the unique image of Borges' novel world.