quote:Originally posted by Impostor de Jade:
That link doesn't work, by the way, MuChos.
Shit, sorry about that. although i just tried it and it worked for me, maybe that's something to do with the fact that I originally posted it. Anyway, here's the url, if anybody wants to cut and paste it: http://www.zooleika.org.uk/langue/borges/tlon.html
There's a full version of the story here (the translation is a bit rough and ready, by their own admission), so everyone can get a handle on what I'm suggesting. Failing that, if you type "tlon zooleika" into google it's the only result it brings up.
Gridley - when I first posted my idea I was thinking of basing stuff fairly tightly around the story, as Borges gives loads of ideas to bounce off. Imagine trying to write a piece of Tlon literature using these parameters:
In the literary fashions the idea of a unique subject is also allpowerful. It is rare that books stay shut. There is no concept of plagiarism: they have established that all works are works of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics are used to inventing authors: they choose two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and A Thousand and One Nights, let's say - attribute them to the same writer and later determine with probity the psychology of that interesting homme de lettres
Books are also different. Fiction contains only one argument, with all the imaginable permutations. Natural philosophy invariably contains the thesis and antithesis, the rigourous pros and cons of a doctrine. A book that does not enclose its counter-book is considered incomplete.
Or, for the artists, making a representation of this object:
a brilliant meso cone, the diameter of a finger. in vain a boy tried to retrieve this cone. a man hardly certain to bring it up. i had it in the palm of my hand for a few minutes: i remember that its weight was intolerable and after retiring the cone, i lost the oppression. i also remember the precise circle that I record myself in the flesh. this evidence of a very tiny object that was also extremely heavy left a disagreeable impression of disgust and fear. a peasant suggested they throw it in the fast-flowing river. amorim acquired it by means of a few pesos. no one knew a thing about the dead man, save "that he came from the frontier". these small and very heavy cones (made of a meso that is not of this world) are an image of divinity, in certain religions in tlön.
But after reading your post the notion of actually creating the fictional world ourselves is becoming very appealing. It'd be more work, but that ain't a problem. Maybe we could get some of the Magick heads to help us with intersecting it into our reality?
Oh, by the way, please call me Lentil  |
