Chapter 58 Reading Notes "Aleph"--Reading Borges' Novels

The tone of the story in "Aleph" is very sad.The protagonist "I" lost her beautiful lover Beatrice, and the indelible pain of her death remained in my heart, which made me unable to dismiss it.I kept running to her house, in fact, just to refresh the pain again and again, but everything is a diaphragm, I lost Beatrice forever, and it is impossible for me to fix the pain in my heart, because it will be lost by time wasted.It was under these circumstances that I became acquainted with Daneri, Beatrice's cousin. The author's description of Darnery is full of humor and irony, but it is not difficult to see what he really wants to express.Darnery is a fanatic who is full of contradictions in his heart. He has one of the biggest delusions, which is to raise the function of literature to an infinite height, and to surpass the language itself in his wild poetry and reach the limit.But on the surface, he is superficial and artificial, a bit narcissistic, his works seem to be pieced together, and his words are contradictory.From the very beginning, Daneri and I were at odds, our respective trains of thought diverged.Darnery talks about eternity, but I think he is playing with words; he flies in the imaginary space of his poems, but I think his poems are empty and pale; he is ambitious to represent the whole earth, but I find him mentally ill.Darnery's behavior is also inconsistent.For example, he just criticized the preface habit of his work, and then immediately hoped that a famous scholar would write a preface for his upcoming long poem, and forced me to be a lobbyist for him, and at the same time, he was worried that my creation would not be good enough. He got a good understanding, so he repeatedly emphasized to me that his works should have perfect form and strict scientific content, "because in the garden of beautiful metaphors and images, the smallest details are strictly in line with reality." "Borges Anthology & #8226; Fiction Volume", 331 pages, Hainan International Press and Publishing Center, 1996.After he had troubled me with his behavior, which so disgusted me, he himself forgot about it and never mentioned it again.This inconsistency in Darnery is characteristic of the artist's approach to his own work.An artist who lives in the world, no matter how much he is troubled by contradictions, he has his own business to do after all.The business of Darnery was revealed to me shortly afterwards, and this incident was a real gift from Darnery to me, due to my constant pain, and perhaps also because of my devotion to Beatrice.This strange cousin provided an unexpected outlet for my hopeless spirit.

Daneri's business was the Aleph, the shiny little ball in the dark basement.What is Aleph? It is the birthplace of all fantasies, and it is the miracle that encompasses the universe.Infinite time can be extended from it, and people themselves become infinite when they are immersed in the scene.Aleph, incomprehensible Aleph, it is everything and everyone, it is exquisite and cruel, it opened a new world before me, I saw the ugliness in beauty, the death in life.I, this narrow-minded person who came out of a narrow world, I wept, both for man's sorrow and for man's happiness.Yes, I met Beatrice, but I couldn't bear that kind of encounter -- because the truth of beauty is death.Once out of the Aleph, and the world looms over you like a mountain ("It spares no one!"), I beg Daneri to leave the mundane and take refuge in the tranquility of the countryside; Possibly, I saw the mark of death on everyone's face - the face I'd seen in Aleph.Luckily I have forgotten weapons.

Thanks to Aleph, Daneri finally completed his long poem and achieved success.The tranquility of the country has nothing to do with this success, because the Aleph does not belong to the tranquility, it can only be that annoying existence in the dark place in the basement of the noisy city.It was in the process of fighting against the outside world with Aleph that Daneri wrote those eternal poems that I did not understand. Aleph made me overcome the old sorrow and find a spiritual outlet, but Aleph's epistemology led me into a deeper sorrow, and the so-called spiritual outlet turned out to be purgatory.I finally understood Aleph.The ubiquity of Aleph is just like the ubiquity of the universe. If you put your ear on the stone pillar, you can hear the busy sound of the universe, and Aleph is the mirror of the universe.Everyone, whoever looks, can see Aleph.It's a pity that human life and memory are short-lived. If you want to keep seeing Aleph, you can only refresh your memory and create trauma.Even so, I am still distorting and forgetting Beatrice's appearance, because the ultimate beauty cannot be achieved, it only exists in fleeting fragments.Even an artist like Darnery is only haunted by Aleph during a certain period of his life.But longing and pain are what Aleph demands from others, and that's what Aleph stays in the basement for.