Borges' and Frosts' Gardens of Forking Paths

Just as so many people, so many bloggers, misinterpret Frost's "Two Roads", so I think Borge's "Garden of Forking Paths" can be difficult to read. Both require the modern reader to consider the actual choices of words and to read closely rather than let the story unfold like a graphic novel. Some writing can be a pretty-picture-generating text, but others require one to really focus on the words and what they mean, may mean, and could mean in some other context. As a linguist, I love this game, and I find Borges at once exhausting to read and exhilarating to read. Frost is often just depressing. He didn't get a Nobel either. :-(

In the "Garden of Forking Paths," the pathos of the narrator is contrasted with the elegance of the scholar. The tone of writing changes, the words that describe their ideas contrast, and their relative perspectives on the world are different. The narrator feels trapped in the timeline he has created for himself, while the scholar dies with the conviction that in another timeline events unfolded differently. One of them is tortured, the other is at peace, but not in the way that the reader might have preferred. I think Borges requires a lot of a reader because we have to just let go of the narrative and let Borges do what he will with it. Then we have to think about that, and not what we might want to. I don't want the brilliant scholar to die, but I have to look at the philosophical manner of his death to appreciate this type of serenity and conviction that this life is only one of many. I don't want that miserable, scheming, little sneak to live and write this lovely memoir for me, but he writes the complex confession that allows the brilliant scholar to live on in the story, so, yay, I guess.

It reminds me of Shakespeare's sonnets where he goes on forever about how his beloved will be immortal and remain beautiful because he wrote these poems. And he/she does! And he/she is also, at the same time long dead, but is revived every time we read the sonnets and conjure that person up in our powerful reader imaginations.