Untangling the Problem of Time in “The Garden of Forking Paths

Following article has been written by Allan Adasiak, on one of Borges' amazing stories, The Garden of Forking Paths . I am now writing my comments on both the story and Allan's article. I will post it this evening or tomorrow morning.

Untangling the Problem of Time in "The Garden of Forking Paths"

“The Garden of Forking Paths” (Borges) is a literary labyrinth about a literary labyrinth, both created by the master illusionist Jorge Luis Borges. This paper examines one aspect -- “the abysmal problem of time,” (Borges 2420) -- and produces a variety of interpretations. The results are amazing and suggest that Borges’ maze has succeeded in getting many people lost. But then, perhaps they couldn’t help themselves: it is a universe in which we are not really free to choose.

In Borges’ story, Ts’ui Pen, a prosperous and scholarly Chinese official, created the labyrinth called “The Garden of Forking Paths” some two centuries ago. Although searched for, it was never found until located during World War II by Dr. Stephen Albert, a missionary turned Sinologue, who is one of the major sources of ideas about it. Yu Tsun, a spy for the Germans who is Ts’ui Pen’s great grandson, is the other major source. Various commentators on the story provide further thoughts which are offered for perspective.

When Ts’ui Pen died many years ago, he left behind a long, perplexing, and incomplete literary work that he said would encompass more characters than any other in Chinese literature. Also surviving him was a legend of a maze that would be infinite. As Dr. Albert tells the story, Ts’ui Pen, a provincial governor, scholarly, learned, a famous poet and calligrapher “abandoned all this in order to compose a book and a maze.” (Borges 2418) Albert has studied the book for years, even translating it from Chinese into English. He has also been fascinated with “…the curious legend that Ts’ui Pen had planned to create a labyrinth which would be strictly infinite.” (Borges 2418)

Dr. Albert is the most knowledgeable person on Ts’ui Pen and his maze, which no one has been able to find. Second to him is Ts’ui Pen’s great grandson, Yu Tsun, who has developed a keen interest in the book and the maze. Yu Tsun says the book “is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts. I examined it once: in the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive.” (Borges 2418) When the two men meet they discuss the book and the labyrinth, and Dr. Albert tells Yu Tsun, “I know that of all problems, none disturbed him so greatly nor worked upon him so much as the abysmal problem of time.” (Borges 2420)
One conventional definition of time is “The system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.” (Emphasis added.) (Random House) Thus, the usual view of time is that it requires sequential relations; or that it must have events of indefinite and continuous duration that succeed each other. Borges’ view is far grander than this. For him the past, present, and future co-exist, and there are many, perhaps an infinite number, of each of them.

What causes Albert to realize that Ts’ui Pen’s book was in itself the labyrinth he planned to construct is this fragment of a letter from the old gentleman: “I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.” (Italics in Borges’ original) (Borges 2418). As Albert explains, “The phrase ‘the various futures (not to all)’ suggested to me the forking in time, not in space.” (Borges 2419) Albert’s discovery is that “. . .to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing.” (Borges 2418) The book is “A labyrinth of symbols,” he corrected. “An invisible labyrinth of time.” (Borges 2418) He elaborates as follows: In all fictional works each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pen he chooses--- simultaneously--- all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here then is the explanation of the novel’s contradictions. (Borges 2419) And finally, “In the work of Ts’ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.” (Borges 2419)
This is indeed a staggering vision of time and space – one that overwhelms and bewilders the imagination. However, this is not all Borges includes in his sweep. Yu Tsun, who is descended from the creator of the labyrinth, has the tradition of Chinese culture and scholarship in him, and it contributes to his own perceptions of time.

Early in the story, Yu Tsun reflects, “everything that happens to a man happens precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me.” (Borges 2415) In other words, all mankind’s actions combine to bear present fruit in Yu Tsun’s life as he lives it – or in anyone’s life. Later in the story, he explains a particular action by saying, “I did it . . . for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me.” (Borges 2415) This reinforces his earlier statement.

Less abstractly, Yu Tsun remarks early in the story that he felt “an invisible, intangible swarming” that “in some manner prefigured” events. (Borges 2419) Later in the story this idea is amplified when he says, “Once again I felt the swarming sensation of which I have spoken. It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely saturated with invisible persons. Those persons were Albert and I, secret, busy and multiform in other dimensions of time.” (Borges 2420)

Taken collectively, these statements show Yu Tsun’s view that he exists in what some mystics have called “the eternal now” and that everyone actually exists in it, whether they are aware of it or not. His remarks pertain to time as perceived from any particular point, rather than time as moving along a path. This “moving” time is what we ordinarily perceive, including time that passes while we are reading.

From Dr. Albert’s point of view, “He (Ts’ui Pen) believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times… embraces all possibilities of time.” (Borges 2420) Or, as he explains elsewhere, “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.” (Borges 2420) Albert also refers to “… the curious legend that Ts’ui Pen had planned to create a labyrinth which would be strictly infinite.” (Borges 2418)

Within the context of the story, “infinite” can be taken to mean, “unbounded or unlimited; boundless; endless,” (Random House) and we would seem to be free to make a multitude of different choices. But that is not true. Yu Tsun tells us of “an invisible, intangible swarming. . . ” that had been “. . .in some manner prefigured.” (Borges 2419) To “prefigure” is to indicate the future existence of something. Premonitions such as this imply that the future is already determined so that it can be foretold – meaning that there is no choice, no free will. Albert confirms this view and makes it more inclusive, saying, “In all fictional works each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pen he chooses--- simultaneously--- all of them.” (Borges 2419) If a man chooses all alternatives at once, then there is nothing left to choose, and there is no free will. Curiously, this inclusive choice of all futures by Dr. Albert brings him to Yu Tsun’s feeling of the convergence of past and future in the now… the eternal now.

The original Spanish of the title to “The Garden of Forking Paths” may provide an indication of the way Borges views the story. He uses the word “se bifurcan,” from “bifurcarse”, which means, “to fork, branch off, divide into two branches.” (“bifurcarse.” Univ. of Chicago Spanish-English dictionary) This could be taken to suggest the opportunity for people to exercise choice as they travel along the forking paths. However, “se bifurcan” is reflexive and consequently means “they fork themselves.” This suggests that the paths are independent of the chooser, and that they already exist – leaving the multiple futures in the story pre-determined.
Dr. Albert, however, says, “He (Ts’ui Pen) believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times… embraces all possibilities of time.” (Borges 2420) Additionally, Dr. Albert himself tells Yu Tsun, “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.” (Borges 2420) So Borges the writer is subsumed in Ts’ui Pen’s creation, and Ts’ui’s “growing, dizzying net” is of events and time that are pre-determined.

In summary, when a person is moving through time, he sees the forks and branches and believes he is independently making choices that actually are already made for him. When a person remains still, he feels the simultaneity of multiple parallel events or worlds. The number of apparent choices in a given world is infinite, and the number of worlds is also infinite. A person simultaneously chooses all of them at any given instant – an act that precludes the existence of free will and choice. Ts’ui Pen’s book/garden is infinite in time, and since any person is always changing, he keeps reading the book/maze differently forever.
With all of this established, Borges turns everything on its head in the last paragraph of his story. Up until now, Yu Tsun, a German spy, had been fleeing certain capture by the English. His regular communication with German headquarters had been cut off, and he decided that the only way to communicate the name of the city that the Germans were to bomb was to kill someone with that name and get the story of the killing into the newspapers, which his boss reads carefully. The city was Albert. The story would say that Yu Tsun was arrested for the murder of Dr. Albert. Now, however, Yu Tsun says in his statement to his captors that the Germans bombed the city of Albert “yesterday.” And, he says he read that news “in the same papers that offered to England the mystery of the learned Sinologist Stephan Albert who was murdered by a stranger, one Yu Tsun.” (Borges 2421) So, the article on the murder of Stephan Albert containing the information the Germans needed was published in the same issue of the paper as the story of the bombing they conducted. In other words, the newspaper article told the Germans that the city of Albert was their bombing target after they had already bombed it! Either Borges made a mistake, or he has chosen at the very end of this story to destroy the elaborate structure he created.

Concerning this type of writing, Naomi Lindstrom comments in a note in her book Jorge Luis Borges – A Study of the Short Fiction that Carter Wheelock “sees Borges stories as multiple examples of the attempt to create stories of mythic portions while at the same time questioning that very attempt” (qtd. in Lindstrom 153). Borges certainly turns on himself or his work in this instance and causes “The Garden of Forking Paths” to collapse at the last moment of the story.

Surprisingly, there is little examination or commentary in the literature concerning the idea of time in “The Garden of Forking Paths”, even though Borges makes its primacy as an element in the story extremely clear. As Albert tells Yu Tsun, “The Garden of Forking Paths’ is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time” (Borges 240). Nothing could be clearer, yet the literature yields only fragmentary observations.
Marian Via Rivera declares bluntly, “If Borges’ fictions draw on labyrinths and are concerned with the disorder facing our sense of reality, they also deal with the contingency of immediate reality.” (Rivera 207) However, she does not consider the actual lack of contingency in “The Garden of Forking Paths.”

John Sturrock gives his interpretive view that “Borges keeps his finger steadily on the old paradox of determinism which is that, once they are done, deeds can be seen to have been determined, even though we know, before they are done, that we are not free to do them.” (Sturrock 152) This confirms the fatalism of Borges, and adds to it a knowledge that we act as slaves to the future.

Sturrock also observes: “No matter how often paths may fork we should bear in mind that they all lead somewhere. Each successive bifurcation is the starting point of a fiction: or, more accurately, of two fictions, only one of which will normally be realized.” (Sturrock 190) While this is true of Borges’ construction in “The Garden of Forking Paths,” it fails to critique the bifurcating structure for being too restricted: for not including branches of three or more possibilities, and for not allowing for dead ends or instant failures.
Edwin Williamson reaches a surprising conclusion about the labyrinth, namely that “The plot is highly teleological, in as much as agent and spy are each pursuing specific goals, but as the action reaches a dizzying climax at Stephen Albert’s house, a villa surrounded by a garden of forking paths, the alert reader will pick up clues that betray the fact that all three ostensibly hostile characters – Yu Tsun, Madden, and Albert – could in principle swap roles in different dimensions of time.” (Williamson 259) (Emphasis added.)

Gene H. Bell-Villada says: “The subject of time (or rather its denial), in addition to pervading T’sui’s book, figures prominently among Yu’s inner thoughts – anticipating and paralleling Albert’s exposition, but also suggesting inherited family attitudes and the transmission of philosophical concerns over generations. . . Yu’s musings inadvertently present piecemeal and thematically reinforce the obsession once nourished full time by his great-grandfather: that is, the simultaneity and convergence of all past, present, and future experiences, regardless of passing time.” (Bell-Villada 95-6) Yu has been caught in and by the great, complex net of time that was his great-grandfather’s dream.

In contrast, Umberto Eco applies logic to Borges’ garden and dismisses the whole thing. Eco, according to William L. Ashline, “has argued that logically impossible propositions cannot constitute worlds. In order to construct a world, one must be able to make inferences about it. In a situation in which both p & -p can be asserted, anything at all might be inferred and the construction of a world becomes exceedingly difficult. Any possible world, therefore, cannot violate the laws of noncontradiction and excluded middle.” (Ashline, EBSCO)

Eco goes farther than a mere logical argument, according to Ashline. “The problem for Eco is not that such worlds cannot be conceived, but that they cannot be described in adequate detail.” ("Such a world is in fact quoted, but it is not constructed, or--if you want--extensionally mentioned, but not intensionally analyzed", Eco is quoted as saying.”) Ashline explains, “Thus, Borges's "Garden of Forking Paths" would serve as an example of Eco's notion of impossibility: we can mention a garden of forking paths but we cannot realize or analyze such a text given the forms of textual presentation available to us.” (Ashline. EBSCO)

Concerning the end of the story, Michael Holquist exclaims, “This is the essence of Borges: a combination of conventionally well-made plot and a twist that calls into question the assumptions about time and knowing that attend all plots.” (Holquist. Literature Resource Center) Actually, time itself is twisted at the end of the story, and Borges leaves us with a situation like one in which a child is born before its mother is – that is, a situation where the Germans bomb their target before they have the information to do so.

Mark Frish grants Borges a partial victory over the infinite and complex labyrinth he has created. "Borges seems to suggest that one can create a sense of order within an impenetrable, chaotic labyrinth, and that with the help of certain man-made signposts, travel from one part of the labyrinth may certainly be possible. However, deciphering the overall, ultimate structure and order of that labyrinth proves impossible." (Frish) This is moderate, balanced, and tepid: Borges cannot know and work with what he created, except in a limited way.

But no sense of restraint and balance holds back the unknown author of the following, who declares that “The spatialization of time in “The Garden of Forking Paths” can be seen in the way in which space overcomes time. Events take on a linear displacement, and patterns are formed through the travels in space rather than through the events unfolding on the time line. It also creates a kind of meaningless infinity, as well as displacement from time through alienation.” (Romance Quarterly) This is certainly not tepid. It boils over with inconsistent clichés, plunging us ever forward through a world in which “Events take on a linear displacement”. . . “as well as displacement from time through alienation.” The careful reader of such words must get either intellectual fibrillations, or stimulation of the vagus nerve.

In conclusion, we see by examining the idea of time in “The Garden of Forking Paths” that part of the problem in understanding the story is that Borges would have us consider time from two different perspectives simultaneously: that of a point in time and that of motion along a line of time. The result is as disorienting as a Picasso portrait with the face shown both in profile and in full front. Borges’ unusual ideas of time create further difficulty in understanding, involving such things as simultaneous multiple causality, parallel universes, and a lack of actual choice and free will. As to whether his ideas are valid, the answer to that question depends on the questioner. Like religion or the belief in God, if a person is predisposed to believe in Borges’ labyrinth, he will accept certain texts and arguments without much difficulty. If a person is predisposed to doubt, he will side with the skeptics. Logic will not sway the believer, and intuitive feeling will not move the skeptic. This author concludes that time in Borges’ labyrinth is fatalistic and impossible. Of course, somewhere in “the Garden of Forking Paths” there is a place where everyone can be right.

###Works Cited

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