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The Garden of Forking PathsJorge Luis Borges, 1941 For Victor Ocampo On page 22 of Liddell Hart's
History of World War I
you will read that an
attack
against
the
Serre-Montauban
line
by
thirteen
British
divisions
(supported by 1,400 artillery pieces), planned for the 24th of July, 1916, hadto be postponed until the morning of the 29th. The torrential rains, CaptainLiddell Hart comments, caused this delay, an insignificant one, to be sure.
The following statement, dictated, reread and signed by Dr. Yu Tsun, former
professor
of
English
at
the
Hochschule
at
Tsingtao,
throws
an
unsuspected light over the whole affair. The first two pages of the documentare missing.
"... and I hung up the receiver. Immediately afterwards, I recognized the voice that had answered in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden.Madden's presence in Viktor Runeberg's apartment meant the end of ouranxieties and--but this seemed,
or should have seemed
, very secondary to me--
also the end of our lives. It meant that Runeberg had been arrested ormurdered.
1 Before the sun set on that day, I would encounter the same fate.
Madden was implacable. Or rather, he was obliged to be so. An Irishman atthe service of England, a man accused of laxity and perhaps of treason, howcould he fail to seize and be thankful for such a miraculous opportunity: thediscovery, capture, maybe even the death of two agents of the GermanReich? I went up to my room; absurdly I locked the door and threw myselfon my back on the narrow iron cot. Through the window I saw the familiarroofs and the cloud-shaded six o'clock sun. It seemed incredible to me that 1 An hypothesis both hateful and odd. The Prussian spy Hans Rabener, alias ViktorRuneberg, attacked with drawn automatic the bearer of the warrant for his arrest,Captain Richard Madden. The latter, in self-defense, inflicted the wound whichbrought about Runeberg's death. (Editor's note.)
day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorabledeath. In spite of my dead father, in spite of having been a child in asymmetrical garden of Hai Feng, was I--now--going to die? Then I reflectedthat everything happens to a man precisely, precisely
now
. Centuries of
centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air,on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening ishappening to me... The almost intolerable recollection of Madden'shorselike face banished these wanderings. In the midst of my hatred andterror (it means nothing to me now to speak of terror, now that I havemocked Richard Madden, now that my throat yearns for the noose) itoccurred to me that tumultuous and doubles happy warrior did not suspectthat I possessed the Secret. The name of the exact location of the new Britishartillery park on the River Ancre. A bird streaked across the gray sky andblindly I translated it into an airplane and that airplane into many (against theFrench sky) annihilating the artillery station with vertical bombs. If only mymouth, before a bullet shattered it, could cry out that secret name so it couldbe heard in Germany... My human voice was very weak. How might I makeit carry to the ear of the Chief? To the ear of that sick and hateful man whoknew nothing of Runeberg and me save that we were in Staffordshire andwho was waiting in vain for our report in his arid office in Berlin, endlesslyexamining newspapers... I said out loud:
I must see.
I sat up noiselessly, in a
useless perfection of silence, as if Madden were already lying in wait for me.Something--perhaps the mere vain ostentation of proving my resources werenil--made me look through my pockets. I found what I knew I would find.The American watch, the nickel chain and the square coin, the key ring withthe incriminating useless keys to Runeberg's apartment, the notebook, a letterwhich I resolved to destroy immediately (and which I did not destroy), acrown,
two
shillings
and
a
few
pence,
the
red
and
blue
pencil,
the
handkerchief, the revolver with one bullet. Absurdly, I took it in my hand andweighed it in order to inspire courage within myself. Vaguely I thought that apistol report can be heard at a great distance. In ten minutes my plan wasperfected. The telephone book listed the name of the only person capable oftransmitting the message; he lived in a suburb of Fenton, less than a halfhour's train ride away.
I am a cowardly man. I say it now, now that I have carried to its end a plan whose perilous nature no one can deny. I know its execution wasterrible. I didn't do it for Germany, no. I care nothing for a barbarouscountry which imposed upon me the abjection of being a spy. Besides, Iknow of a man from England --a modest man--who for me is no less greatthan Goethe. I talked with him for scarcely an hour, but during that hour hewas Goethe... I did it because I sensed that the Chief somehow fearedpeople of my race--for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me. Iwanted to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. Besides, Ihad to flee from Captain Madden. His hands and his voice could call at mydoor at any moment. I dressed silently, bade farewell to myself in the mirror,went downstairs, scrutinized the peaceful street and went out. The stationwas not far from my home, but I judged it wise to take a cab. I argued that inthis way I ran less risk of being recognized; the fact is that in the desertedstreet I felt myself visible and vulnerable, infinitely so. I remember that I toldthe cab driver to stop a short distance before the main entrance. I got outwith voluntary, almost painful slowness; I was going to the village ofAshgrove but I bought a ticket for a more distant station. The train leftwithin a very few minutes, at eight-fifty. I hurried; the next one would leaveat nine-thirty. There was hardly a soul on the platform. I went through thecoaches; I remember a few farmers, a woman dressed in mourning, a youngboy who was reading with fervor the
Annals
of Tacitus, a wounded and
happy soldier. The coaches jerked forward at last. A man whom I recognizedran in vain to the end of the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden.Shattered, trembling, I shrank into the far corner of the seat, away from thedreaded window.
From this broken state I passed into an almost abject felicity. I told myself that the duel had already begun and that I had won the first encounterby frustrating, even if for forty minutes, even if by a stroke of fate, the attackof my adversary. I argued that this slightest of victories foreshadowed a totalvictory. I argued (no less fallaciously) that my cowardly felicity proved that Iwas a man capable of carrying out the adventure successfully. From thisweakness I took strength that did not abandon me. I foresee that man willresign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no
one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel:
The author of an
atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to imposeupon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.
Thus I proceeded as my eyes of a
man already dead registered the elapsing of that day, which was perhaps thelast, and the diffusion of the night. The train ran gently along, amid ash trees.It stopped, almost in the middle of the fields. No one announced the nameof the station. "Ashgrove?" I asked a few lads on the platform. "Ashgrove,"they replied. I got off.
A lamp enlightened the platform but the faces of the boys were in shadow. One questioned me, "Are you going to Dr. Stephen Albert's house?"Without waiting for my answer, another said, "The house is a long way fromhere, but you won't get lost if you take this road to the left and at everycrossroads turn again to your left." I tossed them a coin (my last), descendeda few stone steps and started down the solitary road. It went downhill, slowly.It was of elemental earth; overhead the branches were tangled; the low, fullmoon seemed to accompany me.
For an instant, I thought that
Richard Madden in some way had
penetrated
my
desperate
plan.
Very
quickly,
I
understood
that
was
impossible. The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that suchwas the common procedure for discovering the central point of certainlabyrinths. I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I thegreat grandson of that Ts'ui Pên who was governor of Yunnan and whorenounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even morepopulous than the
Hung Lu Meng
and to construct a labyrinth in which all
men would become lost. Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneoustasks, but the hand of a stranger murdered him--and his novel was incoherentand no one found the labyrinth. Beneath English trees I meditated on thatlost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain;I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite,no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of riversand provinces and kingdoms... I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of onesinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the futureand in some way involve the stars. Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgotmy destiny of one pursued. I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of
Pên died; no one in the vast territories that were his came upon the labyrinth;the confusion of the novel suggested to me that
it
was the maze. Two
circumstances gave me the correct solution of the problem. One: the curiouslegend that Ts'ui Pên had planned to create a labyrinth which would bestrictly infinite. The other: a fragment of a letter I discovered."
Albert rose. He turned his back on me for a moment; he opened a drawer of the black and gold desk. He faced me and in his hands he held asheet of paper that had once been crimson, but was now pink and tenuousand cross-sectioned. The fame of Ts'ui Pên as a calligrapher had been justlywon. I read, uncomprehendingly and with fervor, these words written with aminute brush by a man of my blood:
I leave to the various futures (not to all) my
garden of forking paths.
Wordlessly, I returned the sheet. Albert continued:
"Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclicvolume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, abook which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely. I remembered toothat night which is at the middle of the
Thousand and One Nights
when
Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relateword for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing therisk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus onto infinity. I imagined as well a Platonic. hereditary work. transmitted fromfather to son, in which each new individual adds a chapter or corrects withpious care the pages of his elders. These conjectures diverted me; but noneseemed to correspond, not even remotely, to the contradictory chapters ofTs'ui Pên. In the midst of this perplexity, I received from Oxford themanuscript you have examined. I lingered, naturally, on the sentence:
I leave to
the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.
Almost instantly, I
understood: 'the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase'the various futures (not to all)' suggested to me the forking in time, not inspace. A broad rereading of the work confirmed the theory. In all fictionalworks, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he choosesone and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pên, he chooses--simultaneously--all of them.
He creates
, in this way, diverse futures, diverse
times
which
themselves
also
proliferate
and
fork.
Here,
then,
is
the
explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; astranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there areseveral possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can killFang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work ofTs'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure forother forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example,you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, inanother, my friend. If you will resign yourself to my incurable pronunciation,we shall read a few pages."
His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight, was unquestionably that of an old man, but with something unalterable about it, even immortal. Heread with slow precision two versions of the same epic chapter. In the first,an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocksand shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easyvictory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festivalis taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of thecelebration and they win the victory. I listened with proper veneration tothese ancient narratives, perhaps less admirable in themselves than the factthat they had been created by my blood and were being restored to me by aman of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on aWestern isle. I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secretcommandment:
Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their
swords, resigned to kill and to die.
From that moment on, I felt about me and within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. Not the swarming of the divergent, paralleland finally coalescent armies, but a more inaccessible, more intimate agitationthat they in some manner prefigured. Stephen Albert continued:
"I don't believe that your illustrious ancestor played idly with these variations. I don't consider it credible that he would sacrifice thirteen years tothe infinite execution of a rhetorical experiment. In your country, the novel isa subsidiary form of literature; in Ts'ui Pên's time it was a despicable form.Ts'ui Pên was a brilliant novelist, but he was also a man of letters whodoubtless did not consider himself a mere novelist. The testimony of hiscontemporaries proclaims--and his life fully confirms--his metaphysical and
mystical interests. Philosophic controversy usurps a good part of the novel. Iknow that of all problems, none disturbed him so greatly nor worked uponhim so much as the abysmal problem of time. Now then, the latter is the onlyproblem that does not figure in the pages of the
Garden
. He does not even
use the word that signifies
time
. How do you explain this voluntary omission?
I proposed several solutions--all unsatisfactory. We discussed them. Finally, Stephen Albert said to me:
"In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?"I thought a moment and replied, "The word
chess
"Precisely," said Albert. "
The Garden of Forking Paths
is an enormous
riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits itsmention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obviousperiphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it. That is thetortuous method preferred, in each of the meanderings of his indefatigablenovel, by the oblique Ts'ui Pên. I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, Ihave corrected the errors that the negligence of the copyists has introduced, Ihave guessed the plan of this chaos, I have re-established--I believe I have re-established--the primordial organization, I have translated the entire work: itis clear to me that not once does he employ the word 'time.' The explanationis obvious:
The Garden of Forking Paths
is an incomplete, but not false, image
of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton andSchopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. Hebelieved in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent,convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached oneanother, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries,embraces
all
possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these
times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, bothof us. In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you havearrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found medead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost."
"In every one," I pronounced, not without a tremble to my voice, "I am grateful to you and revere you for your re-creation of the garden of Ts'uiPên."
"Not in all," he murmured with a smile. "Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy."
Once again I felt the swarming sensation of which I have spoken. It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitelysaturated with invisible persons. Those persons were Albert and I, secret,busy and multiform in other dimensions of time. I raised my eyes and thetenuous nightmare dissolved. In the yellow and black garden there was onlyone man; but this man was as strong as a statue... this man was approachingalong the path and he was Captain Richard Madden.
"The future already exists," I replied, "but I am your friend. Could I see the letter again?"
Albert rose. Standing tall, he opened the drawer of the tall desk; for the moment his back was to me. I had readied the revolver. I fired with extremecaution. Albert fell uncomplainingly, immediately. I swear his death wasinstantaneous--a lightning stroke.
The rest is unreal, insignificant. Madden broke in, arrested me. I have been condemned
to the
gallows.
I
have
won
out
abominably;
I
have
communicated to Berlin the secret name of the city they must attack. Theybombed it yesterday; I read it in the same papers that offered to England themystery of the learned Sinologist Stephen Albert who was murdered by astranger, one Yu Tsun. The Chief had deciphered this mystery. He knew myproblem was to indicate (through the uproar of the war) the city calledAlbert, and that I had found no other means to do so than to kill a man ofthat name. He does not know (no one can know) my innumerable contritionand weariness.
