The Garden of Forking Paths
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| "The Garden of Forking Paths" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
| Original title | "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan" |
| Translator | Anthony Boucher |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, short story |
| Published in | El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) Ficciones (1944) |
| Publisher | Editorial Sur |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1941 |
| Published in English | 1948 |
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It was the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941), which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones ("Fictions") (1944). It was also the first of Borges's works to be translated into English when it appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in August 1948.
According to Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, "The concept Borges described in 'The Garden of Forking Paths'—in several layers of the story, but most directly in the combination book and maze of Ts'ui Pên—is that of a novel that can be read in multiple ways, a hypertext novel. Borges described this in 1941, prior to the invention (or at least the public disclosure) of the electromagnetic digital computer. Not only did he arguably invent the hypertext novel—Borges went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such a novel."[1] Borges's vision of "forking paths" has been cited as inspiration by numerous new media scholars, in particular within the field of hypertext fiction.[2][3]
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[edit] Plot summary
The story takes the form of a signed statement by a Chinese professor of English named Dr. Yu Tsun who is living in the United Kingdom during World War I. Tsun is a spy for the Germans, as he discloses in the first paragraph of his statement. As the story begins, Tsun realizes that the British officer pursuing him, Captain Richard Madden, is in the apartment of fellow spy Viktor Runeberg and has presumably either captured or killed him. Tsun surmises that his own arrest is next. He has discovered the location of a new British artillery park and wishes to convey that knowledge to his German masters before he is captured, and hits upon a desperate plan in order to achieve this.
In passing, Tsun states that his spying was not for the sake of Germany, which he considers "a barbarous country." Rather, he says, he did it because he wanted to prove to his German commander that an Asian man was intelligent enough to obtain for them the information they needed; as an Irishman in the employ of the English, Tsun suggests, Capt. Madden's dedication might be similarly motivated.
Taking his few possessions, Tsun boards a train to the village of Ashgrove, narrowly avoiding the pursuing Capt. Madden at the train station, and goes to the house of Dr. Stephen Albert. As he walks up the road to Albert's house, Tsun reflects on his great ancestor, Ts'ui Pên, a learned and famous man who renounced his job as governor of Yunnan in order to undertake two tasks: to write a vast and intricate novel, and to construct an equally vast and intricate labyrinth, one "in which all men would lose their way." Ts'ui Pên was murdered before completing his novel, however, and what he did write was a "contradictory jumble of irresolute drafts" that made no sense to subsequent reviewers; nor was the labyrinth ever found. Tsun describes his own experience of reading the unfinished novel. He arrives at the house of Dr. Albert, who himself has evidently been pondering the same topic. Albert explains excitedly that at one stroke he has solved both mysteries—the chaotic and jumbled nature of Ts'ui Pên's unfinished book, and the mystery of his lost labyrinth. Albert's solution is that they are one and the same: the book is the labyrinth.
Basing his work on the strange legend that Ts'ui Pên had intended to construct an infinite labyrinth, as well as a cryptic letter from Ts'ui Pên himself stating, "I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths", Albert realized that the "garden of forking paths" was the novel, and that the forking took place in time, not in space. As compared to most fictions, where the character chooses one alternative at each decision point and thereby eliminates all the others, Ts'ui Pên's novel attempted to describe a world where all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, each one itself leading to further proliferations of possibilities. Albert further explains that these constantly diverging paths do sometimes converge again, though as the result of a different chain of causes; for example, he says, in one possible time-line Dr. Tsun has come to his house as an enemy, in another as a friend.
Though trembling with gratitude at Albert's revelation and in awe of his ancestor's literary genius, Tsun glances up the path to see Capt. Madden approaching the house. He asks Albert to see Ts'ui Pên's letter again; Albert turns to retrieve it, and Tsun shoots him in the back, killing him instantly.
Although Tsun is arrested and sentenced to death, he claims to have "most abhorrently triumphed", as he has successfully communicated to the Germans the name of the city they were to attack, and indeed that city is bombed as Tsun goes on trial. The name of that city was Albert, and Tsun realized that the only way to convey that information was to kill a person of that name, so that the news of the murder would appear in British newspapers associated with his name.
[edit] Modern reflexes of Borges's story in hypertext projects
Beyond its facade as a spy narrative, "The Garden of Forking Paths" may be the foundation upon which many of today's digital media and hypertext projects are based, including perhaps Wikipedia. Borges conceives of "a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression", asking the reader to "become aware of all the possible choices we might make."[4] Although the story appeared before the advent of modern computers, Borges seems to have invented the hypertext narrative structure. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort write: "Our use of computers is ... based on the visions of those who like Borges—pronouncing [The Garden of Forking Paths] from the growing dark of his blindness—saw those courses that future artists, scientists and hackers might take."[5]
Some modern reflexes of the Borgesian hypertext format include:
- The Choose Your Own Adventure genre, which allows the reader to make decisions that affect the outcome of the story.
- Hopscotch, a 1963 "hypertext novel (in codex form)"[5] by Argentine author Julio Cortázar.
- Soft Cinema by Lev Manovich, a form of non-linear media that demonstrates flexibility within narrative forms, whereby movies are created through algorithm software that determines the ordering of film fragments, and for which there is no final, intended product.
Other stories by Borges that express the idea of infinite texts include The Library of Babel and The Book of Sand.[5]
[edit] See also
- Gilles Deleuze's use of this story to illustrate the Leibnizian concept of several impossible worlds simultaneously existing and the problem of future contingents.
- Ayssar Arida's linking of "The Garden of Forking Paths" and Quantum Theory's sum over histories concept for an event-driven urbanism project.
[edit] External links
- "The Garden of Forking Paths" Full text
- Stuart Moulthrop, "Concerning 'forking paths'"
- Silvio Gaggi, "Hyperrealities and Hypertexts"
- Lev Manovich, "New Media from Borges to HTML"
[edit] References
- ^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
- ^ Bolter, Jay David; Joyce, Michael (1987). "Hypertext and Creative Writing". Hypertext '87 Papers. ACM. pp. 41–50. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=317431.
- ^ Moulthrop, Stuart (1991). "Reading From the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of 'Forking Paths'". in Delany, Paul; Landow, George P.. Hypermedia and Literary Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press.
- ^ Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium" The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
- ^ a b c Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
