Word: tl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ambitious passage from his 1947 essay A New Refutation of Time contains a self-effacing shuffle. Borges disarms that ancient foe, ineffability, by questioning his own existence. He has done so in dozens of fanciful tales bearing such tantalizing labels as Death and the Compass, Funes, the Memorious and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Despite his arcane references, the aging (78), blind, Argentine author has gained a worldwide readership. His ficciones have also attracted numerous imitators - none of whom have the old man's grace, wit and almost magical skills of compression. A Borges story is like some...
...influenced by the Symbolist poets and Ultraism, a literary offshoot of Dadaism. Later, back in Argentina, he wrote poetry and essays for avant-garde journals, and edited anthologies of Argentine literature, including a book of detective stories. But it was not until the late '30s that Borges wrote Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, one of the first and perhaps best known of his short fictions...
Like the subsequent stories brought out under the title Ficciones, the short story Tlön is a form of metaphysical bemusement. In Tlön, a whole new planet is willed into being by a group of scientists, artists and philosophers. One of the instruments of the creation is an encyclopedia that they compile to cover every aspect of Tlön's existence. The entries and extrapolations are so logical and convincing that Tlönian artifacts start showing up on Earth...
...that both Hanoi and Moscow "are convinced that we are falling apart." Hanoi seems to think that its battered economy and bloodied army will endure longer than U.S. domestic support of the war, which adds up to an unfortunate judgment by the Communists and a gloomy prospect for tl ; U.S. But if Hanoi continues on its present course, the President is determined to increase U.S. military pressure as needed. The Communists, as the President observed recently, "have less to write home to mother about than I do." Just how long it will take them to grasp this homely idea...
...exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless." Seeing Sharply. Borges' stories take place in a world that is half commonplace, half fantastic. Dreams occur within dreams; time loses its significance. What counts is momentary impulse and observation. A story mysteriously titled Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius concerns a mythical planet where people have no conception of material objects. Things have no names; they are described as they appear at the moment. People call the moon, for example, "round airy-light on dark" or "pale-orange-of-the-sky." Life has dissolved into pure...