Borges: But then, to my surprise — and I suppose you can explain this to me, since you are philosophers and I am not — what Schopenhauer says is that all those things have no existence except in the brain. And that the universe — I remember these words, I don’t think I’m inventing them now — “ist ein Gehirnphänomen,” that the world is a cerebral phenomenon. Now, when I read that I was baffled. Because, of course, if you think of the universe, I suppose the brain is as much a part of the external world as the stars or the moon. Because the brain after all is a system of — I don’t know — of visual, of tactile, perceptions. But he keeps on insisting on the brain.
MP-R: Yes.
Borges: But I don’t think, for example, that Bishop Berkeley insists on the brain, or Hume, who would have insisted on the mind, consciousness….
DD: People sometimes say that they see Berkeley in stories like “Orbis Tertius.”
Borges: Yes, I suppose they do. Well, of course. But in that story I was led by literary means also.
DD: How do you distinguish the literary from the philosophical means in that story? Could you explain that?
Borges: Oh, well, yes, I’ll explain very easily…. Encyclopedias have been, I’d say, my life’s chief reading. I have always been interested in encyclopedias. Well, I used to go to the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires — and since I was so shy, I felt I could not cope with asking for a book, or a librarian, so I looked on the shelves for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Of course, afterwards, I had that book at home, by my hand. And then I would pick up any chance volume and I would read it. And then one night I was richly rewarded, because I read all about the Druses, Dryden, and the Druids — a treasure trove, no? — all in the same volume, of course, “Dr–.”
Then I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. Where, for example, you would have, let’s say, a language and then a literature that went with the language, and then a history with it, and so on. Then I thought, well, I’d write a story of the fancy encyclopedia. Then of course that would need many different people to write it, to get together and to discuss many things — the mathematicians, philosophers, men of letters, architects, engineers, then also novelists or historians. Then, as I needed a quite different world from ours — it wasn’t enough to invent fancy names — I said, why not a world based on, let’s say, Berkeleyan ideas?
DD: A world in which Berkeley is common sense instead of Descartes?
Borges: Yes, that’s it. Then I wrote that story, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” that day, which has attracted many readers. And of course, the whole thing was based on the theory of idealism, the idea of there being no things but only happenings, of there being no nouns but only verbs, of there being no things but only perceptions.…
Lawrence I. Berkove: “Tlön” is a good example of one of your stories where, however the story ends, the reader is encouraged to continue applying your ideas.
Borges: Well, I hope so. But I wonder if they are my ideas. Because
really I am not a thinker. I have used the philosophers’ ideas for
my own private literary purposes, but I don’t think that I’m
a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley,
by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps.
MP-R: You say you’re not a thinker…
Borges: No, what I mean to say is that I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters. In the same way, for example that — well, of course, I shouldn’t perhaps choose this as an example — in the same way that Dante used theology for the purpose of poetry, or Milton used theology for the purposes of his poetry, why shouldn’t I use philosophy, especially idealistic philosophy — philosophy to which I was attracted — for the purposes of writing a tale, of writing a story? I suppose that is allowable, no?
DD: You share one thing certainly with philosophers, and that is a fascination with perplexity, with paradox.
Borges: Oh yes, of course — well I suppose philosophy springs from our perplexity. If you’ve read what I may be allowed to call “my works” — if you’ve read my sketches, whatever they are — you’d find that there is a very obvious symbol of perplexity to be found all the time, and that is the maze. I find that a very obvious symbol of perplexity. A maze and amazement go together, no? A symbol of amazement would be the maze.