Monday, February 28, 2011

Nullifying identity ...

... Jorge Luis Borges & the plural I. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For Borges, infinity is always serial; it demands replication ad infinitum. One of his favorite figures for infinitude is the mirror image, that vertiginous repetition of the same mute yet glimmering reflection. Hence, too, his related horror of mirrors: "I have been horrified before all mirrors," he wrote in the poem "The Mirrors": "I look on them as infinite, elemental/ fulfillers of a very ancient pact/ to multiply the world."

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