The Mind Fuck World of Borges

Reading the fictional work of Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Borges was an incredibly confusing yet fascinating experience. At first, I struggled to understand if the narration was supposed to be real with parts of fiction inside of it, or if everything was fabricated from the start. The way the author wrote his accounts, with self awareness and no apparent context, made the initial portion of the story quite authentic. However, what makes the story so believable is the countless amounts of personal and academic analysis from the author. The way that these fictional worlds are described is completely absurd, yet I could not help but feel like I was reading an actual academic book due to the elaborate concepts that are analyzed. For example, the author displays what appears to be a fictional language from Tlön, citing the phrase “hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo”, which obviously means “upward behind the onstreaming it mooned.” These explanations were helpful in comprehending the author’s chain of thought, as well as displaying that there was careful planning behind specific elements of the fictional world.

Regarding the consequences of creating fictional worlds, it became apparent to me that one such consequence would be the loss of reality. As you begin to engage with your imagination to create such worlds, it becomes difficult to come back to earth and separate the two. For instance, I remember when a few years ago I went through a period where I was starting to believe that I had the ability to “quick save” in real life. I would randomly catch myself being confused for a second or two as to why I could not go back in time to fix small mistakes in my daily life, as well as unconsciously controlling my dreams and nightmares as if I were in a video game. I was so immersed in separate realities that it began to affect my own, something that prompted me to question my mind. Even worse is when works of fiction pervasively tap into our world, for instance, the works of American author L. Ron Hubbard, who ended up founding the Church of Scientology after writing many spiritual books that looked like they came from an anime. In my understanding, this is precisely what the last portion of the text alludes to, which is the possibility that fiction can end up replacing the reality that we consider to be real.