NEB - TLON

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertiu by the Argentinan writer Jorge Luis Borges relates part of his life and can be really confusing because of the many philosophy concepts involved such as Berkeley’s subjectivism. The binary between reality and fantasy is probably the most important.

For starters, in Tlon everything is a dream that slowly switch to reality. With the idea that every man is actually two men; who would be the real one and who would be the one created by the dream? Later on Borges founds an encyclopedia that demonstrate Tlon existence making it seem more real or less ‘’imaginary’’. To then again make Tlon be a simply illusion created by the Orbis Tertius as a way to prove that they can play God and create their own world. Furthermore, adding to this idea of dream vs. reality comes the philosophical controversy of existence. The majority of the people mentioned are real, but the events in which they are involved are fictitious. Adding to this idea there are missing pages that refer to Uqbar essense in the second duplicate of the book questioning the existence of Uqbar. This lead us to the idea that maybe the curiosity of these two men have transform their reality in order for them to perceive a new imaginary world.

The timing used in this history is an important characteristic of Magical Realism because the present vague and the future does not exist, quoting Borges: ‘’……the present is undefined and indefinite, the future has no reality except as present hope, and the past has no reality except as present recollection’’ (Borges, 74).

Borges analyzes the concept of language and how it can influence the way we perceive the world. Adding, to this idea the concept of the ‘’Mirrors’’ is introduced, what this term means is that a mirror shows a fake notion from one individual to another that is passed through time from generation to generation.

To sum up, I believe that this story is intertwine in three worlds, the real world, Tlon, and the world of the stories of Borges. This entanglement leads to the question: which of these worlds is the real one? Giving us the change to draw our own conclusion as another important characteristic of Magic Realism.