The Aleph
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encyclopedia
"The Aleph" is a
short story by the
Argentinean writer and poet
Jorge Luis Borges. It is one
of the stories in the book
The Aleph, first
published in
1949, and revised by the
author in
1974.
Summary
Plot and/or ending details
follow.
In Borges's story, the Aleph is
a point in space that contains
all other points. Anyone who
gazes into it can see everything
in the
universe from every angle
simultaneously, without
distortion, overlapping or
confusion. The story continues
the theme of
infinity found in several of
Borges's other works, such as "The
Book of Sand".
As in many of Borges's short
stories, the
protagonist is a
fictionalized version of the
author. At the beginning of the
story, he is mourning the recent
death of a woman whom he loved,
named Beatriz Viterbo, and
resolves to stop by the house of
her family to pay his respects.
Over time, he comes to know her
first cousin, Carlos Argentino
Daneri, a mediocre poet with a
vastly exaggerated view of his
own talent who has made it his
lifelong quest to write an epic
poem that describes every single
location on the planet in
excruciatingly fine detail.
Later in the story, a business
on the same street attempts to
tear down Daneri's house in the
course of its expansion. Daneri
becomes enraged, explaining to
Borges that he must keep the
house in order to finish his
poem, because the cellar
contains an Aleph which he is
using to write it. Though by now
he believes Daneri to be quite
insane, Borges consents to come
to the house and see the Aleph
for himself.
Left alone in the darkness of
the cellar, Borges begins to
fear that Daneri is conspiring
to kill him, and then he sees
the Aleph for himself.
"Under the step, toward the
right, I saw a small iridescent
sphere of almost unbearable
brightness. At first I thought
it was spinning; then I realized
that the movement was an
illusion produced by the
dizzying spectacles inside it.
The Aleph was probably two or
three centimeters in diameter,
but universal space was
contained within it, with no
diminution in size. Each thing
(the glass surface of a mirror,
let us say) was infinite things,
because I could clearly see it
from every point in the cosmos.
I saw the populous sea, saw dawn
and dusk, saw the multitudes of
the Americas, saw a silvery
spiderweb at the center of a
black pyramid, saw a broken
labyrinth (it was London), saw
endless eyes, all very close,
studying themselves in me as
though in a mirror, saw all the
mirrors on the planet (and none
of them reflecting me), saw in a
rear courtyard on Calle Soler
the same tiles I'd seen twenty
years before in the entryway of
a house on Fray Bentos, saw
clusters of grapes, snow,
tobacco, veins of metal, water
vapor, saw convex equatorial
deserts and their every grain of
sand...."
Though staggered by the
experience of seeing the Aleph,
Borges pretends to have seen
nothing in order to get revenge
on Daneri, whom he hates, by
giving him reason to doubt his
own sanity.
In a postscript to the story,
Borges explains that Daneri's
house was ultimately demolished,
but that Daneri himself won
second place in the Argentine
National Prize for Literature.
He also states his belief that
the Aleph in Daneri's house was
not the only one that exists,
based on a report he has
discovered by a British consul
describing the Amr mosque in
Cairo, within which there is
said to be a stone pillar that
contains the entire universe;
although this Aleph cannot be
seen, it is said that those who
put their ear to the pillar can
hear it.
Notes
-
Aleph or Alef,
א,
is the first letter of the
Hebrew alphabet and the
number 1 in Hebrew also; its
esoteric meaning in Judaic
Kabbalah, as denoted in
the theological treaty
Sefer-ha-Bahir,
relates to the origin of the
universe, the "primordial
one that contains all
numbers".
-
In mathematics,
aleph numbers denote the
cardinality (or size) of
infinite sets. This relates
to the theme of infinity
present in Borges's story.
-
In one version of the story
of the
Golem, from
Jewish mythology,
writing the letter aleph on
the Golem's forehead is what
brings it to life.
-
The Aleph is in many ways
the opposite of
the Zahir, the subject
of another Borges short
story published along with
"The Aleph". Whereas viewing
the Aleph causes the
observer to see all things,
viewing the Zahir causes the
observer eventually to see
only the Zahir.
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