Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

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Contents 1 Archives 2 Translating the title from Latin 3 tlon, uqbar and orbis tertius ARE real places!! 4 Supposed cabalist 5 Themes, references, figures, etc

[edit] Archives

Old talk (roughly, through 2004) is archived at:

• Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius/Archive 1 (roughly through the end of 2004)
• Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius/Archive 2 (sections where the last comment was in 2005)

[edit] Translating the title from Latin

Pardon the extreme weakness of my grasp of Latin, but doesn't Orbis Tertius mean "third world"? If so, shouldn't that be stated somewhere in the article? Difficult though it may be to believe, some literate people have an even feebler grasp of Latin than I do and won't guess that. Michael Hardy 00:24, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Third world" is a possibility; I think "third circle" is more likely. I'll get both into the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:27, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

I think that orbis (orbs?) implies three dimensions: an orb, a globe. --Error 01:51, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[1] seems to bear me out, but I'm no Latinist. Can someone who is weigh in? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:30, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Orbis tertius should mean "the third (man) of the globe (orbis)" in that "orbis" is genitive from orbs-orbis. Umberto Eco's novel "The name of the rose", where he quotes Borges a lot, shows a trick like this "the first and seventh of four (quatuor)". Vincenzo.romano 16:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

From this last option another possibility arises. The sentence "Orbis Tertius" would then be translated as "the third (letter) of (the word) orbis". That is "b" as in Borges! Vincenzo.romano 16:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I feel like this fast becoming more appropriate to the wikibbalah. - Jmabel | Talk 07:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] tlon, uqbar and orbis tertius ARE real places!!

To hell with wiki guidelines; this way of presenting the idea of that story is completely contradictory to its intent. Is there a better place to do what the Tlonist did with the edition of the Anglo-American Cyclopedia then wiki????? One generation should be enough!! Also, it should be made a principle to put false references in all Borges - related articles.—This unsigned comment was added by 83.131.130.232 (talk • contribs) 17 March 2006.

I wrote this. Look, I had no intention to sound as anthagonistic as this, I see now, certanly sounded; im a great fan of literature by Borges, and have frequently been inspired by this story. But when seeing an article, admittadly generally great and informative, about Tlon, in an encyclopedia, and ironically not seeing a single information in it fabricated, simply irritated me quite a lot. Well, if an article about recursion links to recursion, then at least some false references should exist in an article about Tlon.  :D --Aryah 21:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

By this logic, our article about Hitler should kill people. - Jmabel | Talk 04:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

an article, about Hitler, which kills people is not nearly as appropriate as a story starting with a falsified entry in encyclopedia, where belief in the existance of something makes it real, by an author famous for falsifying references, having at least some similarly false elements. --Aryah 01:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Romantically, i completely agree with you. Practically, i have to point out the slippery slope argument, that the conspiracy theorists will want the rules bent too, as will the religious people, as will the....

Sorry ;(

(and Jmabel was saying the hypothetical article would literally Kill people!) -Quiddity 03:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

"Bioy Casares had dined with me that night and talked to us at length about a great scheme for writing a novel in the first person, using a narrator who omitted or corrupted what happened and who ran into various contradictions, so that only a handful of readers, a very small handful, would be able to decipher the horrible or banal reality behind the novel."

This passage comes from the opening of the book, and plays no role in the development of the storyline. Spoken by a narrator in a mind boggling fiction by a genius, i couldn't help but be suspicious that this was a hint towards something in the structure of the story itself (separate from the whole tlon mystery going on inside the world of the book).

I've only read the story once, and didn't notice any obvious contradictions in the narrative. Has Borges just driven me mad with paranoia? or did i totally miss what i was keeping an eye out for?

I think you're reading this too much as something that might resemble the Illuminati. Note that the passage you've quoted actually reflects the circumstances of the Orbius Tertius conspiracy: a small handful of people having implanted various ersatz "facts", theories and other artefacts in the world that manifest numerous contradictions and increasingly corrupt reality... At the same time, certainly Borges is playfully undermining his own role as objective narrator both within the story and as the author of it. Pinkville 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Pinkville here. - Jmabel | Talk 06:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, at one point early in the book I even suspected his friend as being involved in the whole Tlon conspiracy! I, too, recognized how this related to the theme of false images- the whole tlon conspiracy, the egregious atrocity of mirrors and copulation, hahah. Bummer, it would have been crazy cool if there were contradictions in the story itself though...—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.19.81.32 (talk • contribs) 18:34, 20 June 2006.

Writting articles about writers or their literary works in the style of the works themselves might be welcomed at Uncyclopedia, however, it's not appropiate for this "serious" encyclopedia.--Rataube 18:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Supposed cabalist

Cut from article "Boris Baruq Nolt – non-fictional, caballist referenced by his anagrammatic name in the title of the story." This was cited only with a blind URL: http://remi.schulz.club.fr/perec/secret2.htm. Someone had commented in an HTML comment, "I can find no references to this alleged person that are not linked directly to this story. Is there some independent confirmation that such a person ever existed or is this just a prank? This linked article merely refers to an "imaginary" Bulletin that alludes to Borges's story." Exactly. This is almost certain a (dry) joke. I would need to see a much better citation before I'd agree that this belongs in this (featured) article. - Jmabel | Talk 03:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Pinkville 13:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Themes, references, figures, etc

Literary: I think the article misses some references to other Borges' tales. I recall a sentence where it's said that all books in Tlon contain a single plot but with all it's possible variations. That's the same idea he develops in "El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan", published in the same volume (Ficciones). The idea of an encyclopedia containing a whole world resembles the "La biblioteca de Babel", where the library contains the whole world too. I think I may be missing many other of the thematic connections with this tale and the others. A section about the tale and the rest of his work would be nice. Anyone wants to try? We should mention the figures of the laberynth, the mirrors and the theme of the infinity too.--Rataube 17:13, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

If you have something citable… - Jmabel | Talk 17:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Also I think is pretty misleading: "In the context of the imagined world of Tlön, Borges describes a school of literary criticism that arbitrarily assumes that two works are by the same person and, based on that, deduces things about the imagined author." The most obvious interpretention is that the Tlonists are challenging the very idea that two books can be written by the same person, since there is no identity between a person and the same person later in time. It's just the same way, the nine coins lost and the 9 coins found later on can't be the same coins. A person is not the same person five minutes later, therefore there are never two things than by the same person, and there are never two books written by the same author. It seems to me more like a continuation of the 9 coins example, a philosophical issue, rather than the questioning of any literary criticism school. Of course the other interpretation is not necessarily wrong, but unless someone explains which school Borges is allegadely describing (Romatic critics maybe? mmm), and who produced that interpretation, it's too loose and I'm not sure it should go in the article.--Rataube 17:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the "stretch": "La crítica suele inventar autores: elige dos obras disímiles - el Tao Te King y las 1001 Noches, digamos -, las atribuye a un mismo escritor y luego determina con probidad la psicología de ese interesante homme de lettres...": In the Irby translation that I have handy, "The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres..." - Jmabel | Talk 17:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Carrying on from Jmabel, it's not a question of interpreting Borges, the school of literary criticism is that which he describes in the text. This has nothing to do with the Romantics or anything else in our world (as far as this article goes, anyway). Pinkville 17:57, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough or the text was edited since my last comment. I thought it said there was an implied chritic of some kind to a real-world school of chriticism. But since the sentence starts with "In the context of the imagined world of Tlön", I have no objections. Of course, the theme could be read as a challenge to those chritics that focused too much on authors' biographies (the romantics for example), but that's another story.--Rataube 21:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)