CACA Readings

JORGE LUIS BORGES, “THE CIRCULAR RUINS”.

“A stranger came ashore from the south by night and fell fainting amid the circular ruins of a ‘temple’ which was destroyed ages ago by flames, which the swampy wilderness later desecrated and who’s god no longer receives the reverence of men.” The stranger rested and slept. We are told that, “his guiding purpose, though it was supernatural, was not impossible. He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him down to the last detail and project him into the world of reality.” He began by dreaming the circular ruins into a university lecture theatre and listened carefully to responses of the crowds of students who answered his questions. “He was in search of a soul worthy of taking a place in the world.”

He dreamt day and night save for an hour or two at dawn. After ten days he had divided the students into passive recipients and active questioners, “who from time to time hazarded reasonable doubts about what he taught.” Finally he chose one of these latter students, and dismissed all the rest. He concentrated totally on this one student. Then, catastrophe. He awoke to insomnia. He tried everything to resume dreaming but to no avail, and “in his almost endless wakefulness, tears of anger stung his old eyes.” Only when he finally gave up trying to dream for a whole month did he finally fall asleep and was able to start all over again.

This time his first dream was of a human heart, and from there, in a period of one year, he built up, dream by dream a full human being, although “the countless strands of hair were perhaps the hardest task of all.” But the young man he had dreamed would not open his eyes. “Night after night, the man dreamed him asleep.” Despondent, he almost destroyed the young man but, restraining himself, turned in his dream for aid from the god whose ruined temple he inhabited. This god revealed that its earthly name was Fire and that, “through its magic the phantom of the man’s dreams would be awakened to life in such a way that – except for Fire itself and the dreamer – every being in the world would accept him as a man of flesh and blood.” Once the young man was alive the god ordered him to be sent north to a second ruined temple to worship the god at this other shrine. “in the dreamer’s dream, the dreamed one awoke.”

Slowly the man inserted him, step by step into reality. “On one occasion he commanded him to set up a flag on a distant peak. The next day, there on the peak, a fiery pennant shone.” Finally, he sent the young man north and erased from his mind all memory of this apprenticeship.

Later, he worried about his “unreal son” when travelers from the north told him of a certain magician in a temple down stream who could walk unharmed on fire. “He feared that his son might wonder at this strange privilege and in some way discover his condition as a mere appearance.”

This anxiety was interrupted by the arrival of a long draught which eventually precipitated a forest fire that threw the animals of the forest into a headlong panic. As had happened long before, the fire god’s shrine was to be destroyed by fire. “For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the river, but then he realized that death was coming to crown his years and to release him from his labors. He walked into the leaping pennants of flame. They did not bite into his flesh, but caressed him and flooded him without heat or burning. “In relief, in humiliation, in terror, he understood that he, too, was an appearance; that someone else was dreaming him.”

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