I cannot combine certain letters as dhcmrlchtdj, which the divine Library has not already foreseen in combination, and which in one of its secret languages does not encompass some terrible meaning… To speak is to fall into tautologies.
—
Jorge Luis Borges in “The Library of Babel.”
relevant: http://jennyeagleton.tumblr.com/post/943572918/by-this-art-you-may-contemplate-the-variation-of
In literary matters too, the dominant notion is that everything is the work of one single author. Books are rarely signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist; it has been establised that all books are the work of one single writer who is timeless and anonymous. Criticism is prone to invent authors. A critic will chose two dissimilar works… and attribute them to the same writer, and then with all probity explore the psychology of this interesting homme de letres…
The books themselves are also odd… Works of natural philosophy invariably include thesis and antithesis, the strict pro and con of a theory. A book which does not include its opposite, or ‘counter-book,’ is considered incomplete.
—
Borges On the imaginary land of Uqbar in “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” in Ficciones.
related in an unrelated kind of way: http://jennyeagleton.tumblr.com/post/385813159/if-we-do-not-revert-to-ascribing-meaning
