"The Aleph" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude": Two Microcosmic Worlds Author(s): George R.

McMurray Reviewed work(s): Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 25, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Jan. - Jun., 1985), pp. 55-64 Published by: Latin American Literary Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119386 . Accessed: 27/01/2013 20:01
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?THE ALEPH? AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE: TWO MICROCOSMIC WORLDS
GEORGE R. MCMURRAY

Prior to 1940, most Latin American novelists relied on traditional realism to depict life in their native lands and convey messages of social pro test against adverse conditions much of their of the world. part afflicting 1940 and 1970, however, Between this regionalist fiction underwent a series of changes that transformed it into one of today's most dynamic, avant in contemporary garde art forms. The ?father? of this literary ?revolution? is the Argentine, whose Latin American letters Jorge Luis Borges, themes and stylistic innovations metaphysical inspired the younger genera to explore the realities of their evolving tion of writers societies with far concern for universal and esthetic values than their predecessors. greater it is often not only liberated Latin American said that Borges Thus, literature from documentation but also restored imagination as a major fic tional ingredient. Although he is a respected poet and essayist, it is his in short stories?the most genious important written during the 1940s?that have made him one of the most influential and admired writers of our time. Perhaps the finest talent of the generation inspired by Borges' ficciones is the recent Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez. In 1967 this Years of Solitude, relatively unknown Colombian published One Hundred a novel that provoked a literary earthquake The throughout Latin America. critics recognized the book as a masterpiece and the public endorsed this new editions, which, at one point, ap opinion, systematically exhausting rate of one a week. Overnight Garc?a M?rquez peared at the astonishing became almost as famous as a soccer superstar or an idolized singer of success on an international boleros. The novel's scale has been made ap numerous the parent by prizes it has won, the critical acclaim it has elicited the western world, and its many translations, which numbered throughout after its initial appearance. twenty only a few months One Hundred Years of Solitude abounds in literary figures Although and motifs reminiscent of Borges' oeuvre, the purpose of the present study is to compare one of the Argentine's most significant stories, ?The Aleph,? with Garc?a M?rquez's novel. One of Borges's obsessions isman's attempts to reduce chaotic reality to more manageable This obsession is proportions. reflected in ?The Aleph,? which comes to grips with the esthetic problem of a simultaneous vision of the world via the linear, successive synthesizing medium of language. At the beginning of this tale, the first-person narrator, who refers to himself as Borges and who is also a writer, alludes to the death of his beloved Beatriz Viterbo. Since that tragic day, Borges has paid an an 55

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56 nual visit

Latin American

Literary Review

to her cousin, Carlos Argentino to commemorate her Daneri, one of visits whom Carlos birthday. During Borges's Argentino, Borges secretly detests, confides in him that he is writing a long poem entitled ?The Earth,? which will, when finished, describe every corner of the globe. Several weeks later Carlos calls Borges and tells him in an agitated voice that the owners of his house want to tear it down in order to enlarge their bar next door. This, he explains, would be a disaster because in the to him for the com cellar of his house there is an Aleph that is indispensable is pletion of his poem. He then informs the perplexed Borges that an Aleph a point in space containing all points, a place where all places in the world come together and can be seen from every angle simultaneously. (The Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and to the cabalist mystics signifies divine, all-encompassing unity.) Intrigued, Borges goes to Carlos's
home at once.

When he arrives, Carlos tells him to go into the cellar, lie down, and look up at the nineteenth step. Then he closes the door and Borges, suspect that his host is ing utterly mad, does indeed see the Aleph. Moreover, just as Carlos has said, the tiny sphere with a diameter of little more than an inch contains ?the unimaginable universe.?7 Borges describes the brilliant object in some detail but he is distressed by two revelations within the Aleph: some obscene letters written by Beatriz to Carlos and ?the rotted dust and bones? house and corpse. At the end of the story Argentino's (p. 28) of Beatriz's the Aleph are destroyed; Borges not only forgets the Aleph, but also realizes that time is erasing his memory of Beatriz's lovely face. is a magical The Aleph vision of the world that neither the fictional is able to depict Borges (the Borges within the story) nor Carlos Argentino an Carlos's is of absurd poem linguistically. piece pedantry, while the fic to describe tional Borges's the tiny sphere ends in frustration, attempt which he explains as follows: ?I arrive, now, at the ineffabel core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of sym bols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I the infinite Aleph, which my floundering translate into words mind can . . was .What beheld but what I my eyes simultaneous, scarcely encompass? shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive? (p. of the Aleph poem, is, like Carlos Argentino's 26). The ensuing description of random scraps of visible reality far inferior to utterly futile, consisting the fictional Borges the marvelous object. But, unlike Carlos Argentino, realizes the limitations of language as an artistic medium and never intends to publish his description of the Aleph. if one examines cer This complex story is perhaps better understood tain parallels between the Aleph and Beatriz. Like the Aleph, the live in some detail through a series of sharp visual images; Beatriz is described soon after Borges sees the deceased Beatriz's bones is destroyed the Aleph within its confines; the features of Beatriz's face are and, like the Aleph, in the final lines of the story. fading from Borges's memory

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?The Aleph?

and One Hundred

Years of Solitude

57

the narrator forgets Beatriz with the (the fictional Borges) Although of her acquires he has drawn of the special time, portrait passing the story) and the outside author the for both real Borges (the significance reader. The real Borges, realizing like his fictional double that he can never in sequential vision of the Aleph (the world) capture the simultaneous her per creates a multifaceted portrait of Beatriz?including language, a metaphor of the Aleph. But it is a metaphor that the sonality traits?as once must the finished grasp intuitively by combining story, reader, having vision of the whole. Thus the total impres all its parts into a simultaneous a metaphor of the entire sion of Beatriz conveyed by the story becomes in Carlos Argentino's cellar. This metaphoric world conveyed by the Aleph to Carlos Argentino's is superior endless, (the story of Beatriz) Aleph as a was in because the his which cellar, poem, by Aleph inspired pedantic the limitations of language and con work of art, it (the story) overcomes vision that transcends the barriers of logic. simultaneous veys a permanent, of literature, For this reason the story of the Aleph emerges as a metaphor to to subvert is whose purpose, reality and Borges, according objective own world. self-contained its represent imaginary, can also be read as a parody of The Divine Com Finally, ?The Aleph? Carlos's second surname, Daneri, combines the first and last three let edy. the pompous, ters of Dante name, ironically connecting Aleghieri's leads with the Italian literary giant. Since Carlos mediocre Argentino his dining room, he can also be identified Borges to the Aleph underneath recalls Dante's with Vergil, Dante's guide through Hell. Beatriz Viterbo not only because of her name, but also because during idealized beloved, her lifetime she treated Borges with disdain, just as Beatriz treated Dante as a of the Aleph, which in her role Paradise. And metaphor disdainfully represents the esthetic ideal Borges strives to depict, evokes Dante's allegory of the soul's journey toward the mystical Absolute. These parallels enrich short story which, when read in this light, the literary texture of Borges's becomes a vast work of art inminiature, just as the Aleph represents the en tire world in miniature. one can argue that many literary works strive to create a total Although in my opinion few have succeeded as well as One Hun fictional universe, dred Years of Solitude. This tale relates a complex history, from Eden to of a world inmicrocosm, where miracles such as people riding Apocalypse, on flying carpets and a dead man returning to life tend to erase the line be tween the subjective and objective realms. The overall impression of totality is further strengthened by the inclusion of stark tragedy and hilarious, mad cap humor as well as by ingeniously conceived stylistic, technical, and struc tural devices discussed below. to the im Garc?a M?rquez's original treatment of time also contributes of his novel. The lineal of Macondo's totality conveyed by history pression and destruction is im economic boom, decline, founding, development, of cyclical recurrences and archetypal bued with a mytho-poetic atmosphere

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58

Latin American

Literary Review

establish a more unified interior patterns that modify temporal progression, a background and provide of greater and stylistic thematic structure, richness. The nonrational elements of myth also serve to expand the narrow to the plot. of everyday reality and lend universal dimensions significance One Hundred Years of Solitude consists of twenty chapters that can be 1 and 2 (part 1) narrate the beginning of divided into three parts. Chapters the Buendia clan: their ancestors' sin of incest, which produces a child with a pig's tail (probably representing the stain of original sin); the founding of to the wonders of the Edenic Macondo; Jos? Arcadio Buendia's awakening and the arrival inMacon science with the aid of the old gypsy Melqu?ades; for modern do of merchants and artisans, civiliza laying the foundation
tion.

The episode of the insomnia plague in chapter three (a transition be tween the first and second parts) is one of the most perplexing episodes of the novel. Shortly after Rebeca's mysterious arrival people begin to show symptoms of the strange illness that not only prevents sleep but, even worse, causes the loss of memory. In order not to forget the names of objects, Buendia conceives the idea of labeling them, and Jos? Arcadio Aureliano to preserve previously acquired knowledge, builds an Buendia, endeavoring in the form of a spinning dictionary. When he ingenious memory machine has completed fourteen thousand entries, Melqu?ades, the approximately cure for the illness. This with a miraculous old gypsy, returns to Macondo of memory and efforts to retain human episode involving the destruction word via the written the traumatic conveys metaphorically knowledge a of a primitive, prehistoric into transformation society society conscious of its historic past. Thus, a prehistoric society is characterized by circular time, or in which in myth is repeated and events are shrouded everything reenacted periodically through ritual. Once a society enters irreversible, to lineal time, however, its past becomes which is difficult history, in writing. remember and so must be preserved the portion of the novel most Chapters 4 through 15 (Part 2) constitute to Colombia's anchored historic obviously reality, that is, the episodes and early twen treating the civil wars, which occurred in the late nineteenth tieth centuries, and the banana boom, which took place immediately after World War I. These chapters also depict the radical changes that occur in as a result of scientific progress, Macondo economic and the prosperity, ideals. In chapter 16, which marks a corruption of political and humanistic the second and third parts, a rain lasting four years, transition between eleven months, and two days almost destroys the town, uprooting every citizens of Macondo. banana plant and driving away all the original of the gringo of the Biblical flood, this storm rids Macondo Reminiscent a temporary and also brings about spiritual purification imperialists of decadent materialism, the revival of innocence, through the eradication of love and mutual understanding. and a regeneration Years of Solitude The last four chapters (Part 3) of One Hundred

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?The Aleph?

and One Hundred

Years of Solitude

59

of Macondo and ultimate disappearance depict the deterioration despite ef forts to rekindle the virtues and vitality of the past. The tragic ending would seem to result from the ravages of war, economic depression, and the irra of the Buendia clan. tional behavior characteristic ex circular time complements The above-mentioned linear history, and rendering the illusion of an panding the novel's temporal dimensions revitalized present. The most obvious case in point is the repeti extended, tion of names and traits within the Buendia's family, the Jos? Arcadios as lucid and as and and the Aurelianos emerging impulsive enterprising, withdrawn. As Ursula, the wife of Jos? Arcadio Buendia, observes the same in each generation of her descendants, she behavioral patterns reappearing to state that time is not passing but turning in a circle. is frequently moved The plot's cyclical rhythm is further reinforced by the numerous incidents on incest, episodes and that sustain dramatic momentum bordering the denouement foreshadow by keeping alive the myth of original sin. Toward the end of the novel Pilar Ternera describes the history of the ?a machine with the novel's Buendia clan?and temporal mechanism?as a that would wheel have unavoidable gone on spinning turning repetitions, into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle? (p. 364). The turning wheel of the time machine would seem to sym bolize cyclical recurrence, and the axle lineal history, the crushing weight of which will undermine the rhythm of mythical renewal and gradually bring the fictional world to a state of entropy. The time machine is represented metaphorically by the structuring of in the first events in a series of broad, circular units, as, for example, sentence of chapter 1: ?Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col onel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice? (p. 11). Here the allusion to a future occur rence (Colonel Aureliano Buendia facing the firing squad) is followed by an abrupt shift to a past event (the discovery of ice), which in turn becomes the climactic incident at the end of the chapter. As demonstrated below, the cir into a cular units that inform the novel are, in its final lines, compressed of reminiscent single all-encompassing image Borges's Aleph. skillful fusion of reality and fantasy is another Garc?a M?rquez's means by which his novel renders the impression of a total fictional universe in which anything is possible and everything is real. An anecdote he tells about one of his aunts provides a clue to his narrative technique. It seems was an aunt this that whenever for any always consulted explanation strange occurrence was needed, and what impressed Garcia M?rquez most was her ability to convince people of the truth of her replies. He recalls that one day a child approached her with an oddly shaped egg and asked her why it was so peculiar. The aunt examined it carefully and answered, ?Look, you want to known why this egg has this bulge? Well, because it is a basilisk egg. Light a fire in the patio.? So they built a fire and burned the egg as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. ?This naturalness,? Garcia

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60

Latin American

Literary

Review

in Years of Solitude, states, ?gave me the key to One Hundred M?rquez which the most frightful, the most unusual things are told with the same dead-pan expression my aunt had when they burned the basilisk egg on the patio, without my ever finding out what it was.?2 Numerous episodes in the novel illustrate the author's adroit manipula tion of language and narrative focus for the purpose of fusing the real and the fantastic elements of his fictional universe. An amusing example is his treatment of the mysterious death of Jos? Arcadio, the older son of Jos? Arcadio Buendia and Ursula. One day Jos? Arcadio returns from a hunting to the home he shares with his wife, Rebeca. After tying up his expedition dogs in the courtyard and leaving a string of dead rabbits in the kitchen to to change his clothes. Moments be salted, he goes into the bedroom later the sound of a pistol shot signals his death and its strange aftermath. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossing the living on in a straight line room, went out into the street, continued across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over turned a corner to curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, a right angle at the to the left, made the right and another Buendia house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed seen as under without Amaranta's chair she gave an being lesson to Aureliano arithmetic Jos?, and went through the pan try and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. of God!? Ursula shouted, ?Holy mother (pp. 129-30)

is the revelation that the flow of blood comes from the Equally remarkable victim's right ear and that no weapon or wound on his body is ever found. Jos? Arcadio's death is utterly fantastic, but it ismade almost believable by the meticulous down-to-earth sytlistic precision, language, and numerous the occurrence. everyday details surrounding of Jos? Arcadio The opposite is realized by the description effect Buendia's discovery of ice when he takes his two young sons to the circus. to learn He first asks the gypsies about Melqu?ades and is deeply distressed to the fever in Singapore and been buried that his old friend has succumbed in the deepest part of the Java Sea. Jos? Arcadio Buendia's children insist to King that he take them to a nearby tent that supposedly has belonged in order to see the so-called novelty of the sage of Memphis. Solomon After three tickets, they enter the tent in which a giant gypsy with a purchasing copper ring on his nose and a heavy iron chain on his ankle opens a pirate a huge block of ice. This phenomenon is described as hav chest containing in sunset in of is fragmented infinite needles which the the internal light ing

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?The Aleph?

and One Hundred

Years of Solitude

61

to colored stars, inducing Jos? Arcadio Buendia to exclaim, ?It's the largest in the world.? And, upon touching the block of ice, as if giving diamond testimony on the holy scriptures, he asserts: ?This is the greatest invention of our time.? (p. 26) In this passage an ordinary object (ice) is imbued with an aura of magic language and wealth of exotic details, emotion-packed by the imaginative, to the intense reaction Buendia's the stage for Jos? Arcadio setting treatment of death and Jos? Jos? Arcadio's ?mystery.? Garc?a M?rquez's of of the fan ice his method illustrate Arcadio Buendia's discovery making the barrier between thus eliminating tastic seem real and the real fantastic, objective and imaginary realities and creating a total fictional universe. The in the first episode, moreover, lends a Ursula role of the practical-minded note of down-to-earth realism to her son's incredible death, just as her role in the second episode changes ice into an object of flighty husband's seems to be saying that reality is relative, its wonder. Garc?a M?rquez on it from is the which vantage point presented. authenticity depending Jos? Arcadio life of Macondo's The restless, energetic patriarch, culture. His in many respects reflects the evolution of Occidental Buendia, houses on the eve of Macon dream about a dazzling city of mirror-walled and ultimate illusion of progress the Utopian do's founding represents to the mysteries of science by Melqu?ades His exposure perfectability. to gain knowledge and recalls Faust's legendary pact with Mephistopheles to to use the existence of God sug wealth. His attempt prove photography ballerina that rivets his atten gests modern skepticism, and the mechanical a rational, perfectly ordered of deistic model the tion, eighteenth-century after which he he succumbs to an attack of madness, universe. Eventually remains tied to a chestnut tree for many years, a fate reminiscent of Pro metheus's. And just before his death he finds himself wandering through a labyrinth of mirrors, not only an ironic allusion to the Utopian dream of his of twentieth-century man's nonrational but also a metaphor youth, to the world's Arcadio Buendia's unravel Jos? struggle Weltanschauung. as fate him his Promethean status, mythical suggested by mysteries gains and, after his death, by the rain of yellow flowers and the return of his ghost as Macondo's to preserve his memory founding patriarch. to the im narrative point of view also contributes Garc?a M?rquez's most of the novel the reader is led to of totality. Throughout pression narrator removed from the action is believe that an impersonal onmiscient a the Toward the end, however, we discover that Melqu?ades, story. telling are the novel is the and his and that narrator, parchments major character, one and the same. Through this ingenious device, the fictional universe ap to from all elements of the real itself pears within, eliminating engender or real author. world outside the novel, including the supposed omniscient, realm of timelessness, room, moreover, emerges as a mythical Melquiades's a sacred center of creation to the hostile forces of nature invulnerable the rest of the house. destroying

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62

Latin American

Literary

Review

Years of Solitude, The final climactic pages of One Hundred perhaps the finest of the entire book, are replete with Borgesian motifs. When sees the body of his the last surviving Buendia, Aureliano Babilonia, newborn son being dragged off by ants, he suddenly recalls the epigraph of ?The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last parchments: Melqu?ades's that his own fate is written in is being eaten by the ants? (p. 381). Realizing in Melqu?ades's barricades himself Babilonia Aureliano the parchments, to room and, without the slightest difficulty, begins decipher the history of the Buendia family, which was written one hundred years ahead of time in the mother that recalls Borges, tongue. In a manner Sanskrit, Melquiades's old gypsy ?had encoded the even lines in the private cipher of the Emperor code? (p. 382). and the odd ones in a Lacedemonian military Augustus that Mel discovers Babilonia is evoked, too, when Aureliano ?The Aleph? qu?ades has not put events in linear succession, but rather has concentrated in a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexist in one magical reads aloud some of stant. Continuing Babilonia his translation, Aureliano favorite words) and chanted encyclicals (another of Borges's Melquiades's of his own conception. the circumstances then, skipping ahead, discovers as a Biblical hurricane filled with voices of the past buffets At this moment, his encounter with his Aunt Babilonia the house, Aureliano deciphers the result of which is in a Borgesian Amaranta Ursula labyrinth of blood, the child with a pig's tail destined to bring the family line to an end. Finally, on the last page of the parchments Babilonia (the novel) Aureliano witnesses the climatic instant he is living as if he were looking into a speak he of Borges 's frequent motifs. And at this moment ing mirror?another discerns that ?the city of mirrors (or mirages)? (p. 383) that Jos? Arcadio Buendia had envisioned would be wiped out by the wind and excised forever
from the memory of man.

use of Sanskrit, the source of many Indo-European Melquiades's for medium is the ideal recording universal human experiences. languages, the destructive forces The hurricane filled with voices of the past embodies is Babilonia of history by the torrent of words Aureliano conveyed into which he gazes upon deciphering translating. And the speaking mirror seem to symbolize be the perfect communication the parchments would tween the erudite Aureliano who represents the ideal reader, and Babilonia, muse and the creator of fic who represents Garc?a M?rquez's Melqu?ades, tion par excellence. like to have been a magician has said that he would Garcia M?rquez in One Hundred rather than a writer.5 His love of magic can be detected from Years of Solitude, whose fictional world is engendered and destroyed as if its real creator were invisible or nonexistent. within by legerdemain, even world this all-encompassing, self-contained remarkable, Equally in the whose disappearance engenders its own reader (Aureliano Babilonia), final lines dramatizes the outside reader's abrupt removal from the realm of once he finishes the novel. imagination

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?The Aleph?

and One Hundred

Years of Solitude

63

Years of As demonstrated above, both ?The Aleph? and One Hundred Solitude strive to depict a total fictional universe. Borges, always skeptical of the powers of language to convey reality, abandons his fruitless efforts to in his fifteen-page describe the magical Aleph story and instead creates a version of the Aleph via his portrait of Beatriz Viterbo, which metaphoric of the story. Borges's tale the reader must grasp intuitively upon completion of literature, but it can also be read as a miniature emerges as a metaphor just as the Aleph represents a miniature parody of Dante's Divine Comedy,
world.

Years of Solitude succeeds Because of its greater length, One Hundred and in synthesizing most levels of human reality, including the historical and the in the tragic and humorous, the logical and fantastic, mythical, Its structural configuration consists of a spiral of dividual and collective. concentric circles representing a family, a town, a nation, a continent and, reinforce its for The novel's mythical indeed, all mankind. underpinnings to mal design, enchancing artistic unity, and granting universal significance
everyday experience.

two greedy entrepreneurs take when is destroyed Aleph Borges's in to next their bar of home order Carlos enlarge Argentino's possession is reduced to a novelistic world door. In its final lines Garc?a M?rquez's of Borges's Aleph and then of images reminiscent simultaneous montage swept away by the titanic forces of history. The child with a pig's tail and dream is of the city of mirrors the destruction suggest that man's Utopian due to the seeds of evil he carries within himself. But ?the city unattainable of mirrors sym could, like the Aleph, represent a Borgesian (or mirages)? world that vanishes once the reader finishes bol of fiction, an hallucinatory the Buendia like Borges's fantastic disk-shaped the story. Thus, object, to oblivion. What remains in the be consigned chronicle must ultimately is an intuitively grasped, total image of Beatriz, on reader's mind, however, on of Western one civiliza the the other, a poetic compendium hand, and,
tion.

Years of Solitude Aureliano the end of One Hundred Toward ever invented for literature to be the best plaything Babilonia discovers I believe that Borges would probably endorse this fun of people. making One I also believe that had Borges never published his ficciones, definition. from what it is and not as Years of Solitude would be different Hundred we know/ good as the masterpiece

NOTES

1. York: page

Jorge E.P.

Luis

Borges,

?The

Aleph,?

in ?The

Aleph? from

and Other ?The Aleph?

Stories, will

1933-1969 be followed

(New by the

Dutton, of

1978), p. 28. Future this edition.

quotations

numbers

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64 Latin American
2. Mario pp. Vargas 23-24. with M. Fern?ndez Braso, Garc?a M?rquez but of I get stated, ?I'm Llosa, Garc?a M?rquez: Historia de un deicidio

Literary Review
Barrai Editores,

(Barcelona:

1971), 3.

In an interview My

a writer when

because

of

timidity. trick

true calling

is that of a prestidigitator, in the solitude infinita Vargas is one of

so confused M.

I try to do a Gabriel

that

I've had

to take refuge Una conversaci?n with to me: the one Mario

literature.? Editorial Garc?a that

Fern?ndez 1969), stated, and

Braso, p. 23. ?With that

Garc?a M?rquez: 4.

(Madrid: Llosa,

Azur,

In a conversation happens

M?rquez I read most

Borges read

something most

Borges

the authors

I have

and perhaps he's in order . . This has

that I like least. teaches

I read Borges to write, that Borges not interest

for his extraordinary that is, who works me teaches

capacity how to tune

for ver the in pure

bal artifice; strument evasion. literature Despite Argentine's Solitude, elements

a man

who

one how

to say things. type of

. . I believe does

with mental

realities;

he's

literature

personally. Llosa,

I believe op. cit.,

that all great pp. 188-89). the of

to be founded

on concrete negative and

reality.? comments realities? may not

(Maria Vargas on Borges's

Garc?a M?rquez's ?verbal even artifice? Garc?a

work,

I believe

it is precisely Years Borgesian

?mental

that are visible have been

in One Hundred of these

though he wrote

M?rquez

conscious

when

his novel.

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