The nothingness of personality
Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963) was a Spanish writer who later in his life immigrated to Buenos Aires and remained there until his death in 1960s. He is best known for the development of the greguería, a peculiar form of aforisms with a humorous twist in the beginning of the 20th century.
In his rather complex 1922 essay on the impossibility of describing personality, or the whole self, de la Serna is a reference Borges rapid fires between Picasso and Schopenhauer to highlight the importance of crystalline and concise expression as a symbol of "the present moment". In Borges's logic the self, or a concsciousness boils down to an experiencer or an observer of the present moment, reminiscing on the past and anticipating the future ones. He goes on to claim that as such, narratives tied to a certain chronology or an order of events are doomed to fail as descriptions of a personal self but are still the best way to understand how the world and the reality work.
In this context the short form, the distilled moment frozen in time that includes the stains of the past and the seed of the future is the purest form of literature.
This reminded me of the 1959 published "shortest short story in the world" by Augusto Monterroso described by Italo Calvino in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium:
"Whe he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."
A masterfullly condensed short story that includes the entireness of a fleeting moment but at the same time conjures up an imagined past and the anticipation of coming events. A complete experience of the present by an autobiographical self.
Borges, however, concentrates on his choice among the arts, literature, mentioning visual arts only in a passign remark to Picasso. So he clearly is aware that painting and other visual methods such as photography are well capable of delivering a snapshot interpretation of the present with similar features as literature. The difference between the methods is of course language and the evaluation of the written word by Borges as a "superior medium" in it that it requires more from the author and the audience. No, the mediums just require different kinds of things of the experiencer. Interpreter of a short story or literature in general needs years of dedication to understand his predecessors broadly and deeply enough to genuinely become a part of the story he is engaging with. Visual interpretation on the other hand requires innate capabilities and might be too technical in order to stimulate appreciation from Borges. Or he might just deliberately be leaving the other arts out of the discussion.
At a more fundamental level Borges also dismisses the concept of memory and remembering as a basis of the self and consciousness (Borges 1999, p. 4):
"He who defines personal identity as the private possession of some depository of memories is mistaken."
Finally he also abandons consciousness itself as a viable option as the foundation of personal identity (Borges 1999, p. 7). Quoting Schopenhauer's apparent critique on the existence of the self, Borges concludes by querying what, then, remains of the self but only an interpreter, a deterministic observer without personal distinction from the world.
Only the question: "If I don't exist, then who is it that has all these memories...?"
Borges published this piece in 1922, in his early twenties, at a time when the perception of consciousness was very far removed from what it is today through the modern neuroscientific and psychological knowledge. It is still remarkable how similar Borges's ideas are for example to those of Antonio Damasio an eminent neuroscientist, who in his 2010 popular summary of the research field (Damasio 2010) attributes the generation of consciousness to three interconnected but hierarchical levels: the primordial protoself, the core self, and finally the autobiographical self. In Damasio's theory the protoself underlying all levels of consciousness is generated as a result of primordial feelings in the neural system and the core self is the level of consciousness on which these primordial feelings are organized in context of the individual. The highest level of consciousness is the auobiographical self that is capable of accessing "biographical knowledge pertaining to the past as well as the anticipated future" (Damasio 2010, p. 23).
This could well be "the self -- a point whose immobility is usefulf for discerning, by contrast, the heavy-laden flight of time." (Borges 1999, p. 9).
References:
Borges, J.L. 1999. The Nothingness of Personality, in Weinberg, E. (Ed.) Selected Non-Fictions. Penguin books, pp. 3-9.
Damasio, A. 2010. Self Comes to Mind - Constructing the Conscious Brain. Vintage Books, London. 367 p.
In his rather complex 1922 essay on the impossibility of describing personality, or the whole self, de la Serna is a reference Borges rapid fires between Picasso and Schopenhauer to highlight the importance of crystalline and concise expression as a symbol of "the present moment". In Borges's logic the self, or a concsciousness boils down to an experiencer or an observer of the present moment, reminiscing on the past and anticipating the future ones. He goes on to claim that as such, narratives tied to a certain chronology or an order of events are doomed to fail as descriptions of a personal self but are still the best way to understand how the world and the reality work.
In this context the short form, the distilled moment frozen in time that includes the stains of the past and the seed of the future is the purest form of literature.
This reminded me of the 1959 published "shortest short story in the world" by Augusto Monterroso described by Italo Calvino in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium:
"Whe he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."
A masterfullly condensed short story that includes the entireness of a fleeting moment but at the same time conjures up an imagined past and the anticipation of coming events. A complete experience of the present by an autobiographical self.
Borges, however, concentrates on his choice among the arts, literature, mentioning visual arts only in a passign remark to Picasso. So he clearly is aware that painting and other visual methods such as photography are well capable of delivering a snapshot interpretation of the present with similar features as literature. The difference between the methods is of course language and the evaluation of the written word by Borges as a "superior medium" in it that it requires more from the author and the audience. No, the mediums just require different kinds of things of the experiencer. Interpreter of a short story or literature in general needs years of dedication to understand his predecessors broadly and deeply enough to genuinely become a part of the story he is engaging with. Visual interpretation on the other hand requires innate capabilities and might be too technical in order to stimulate appreciation from Borges. Or he might just deliberately be leaving the other arts out of the discussion.
At a more fundamental level Borges also dismisses the concept of memory and remembering as a basis of the self and consciousness (Borges 1999, p. 4):
"He who defines personal identity as the private possession of some depository of memories is mistaken."
Finally he also abandons consciousness itself as a viable option as the foundation of personal identity (Borges 1999, p. 7). Quoting Schopenhauer's apparent critique on the existence of the self, Borges concludes by querying what, then, remains of the self but only an interpreter, a deterministic observer without personal distinction from the world.
Only the question: "If I don't exist, then who is it that has all these memories...?"
Borges published this piece in 1922, in his early twenties, at a time when the perception of consciousness was very far removed from what it is today through the modern neuroscientific and psychological knowledge. It is still remarkable how similar Borges's ideas are for example to those of Antonio Damasio an eminent neuroscientist, who in his 2010 popular summary of the research field (Damasio 2010) attributes the generation of consciousness to three interconnected but hierarchical levels: the primordial protoself, the core self, and finally the autobiographical self. In Damasio's theory the protoself underlying all levels of consciousness is generated as a result of primordial feelings in the neural system and the core self is the level of consciousness on which these primordial feelings are organized in context of the individual. The highest level of consciousness is the auobiographical self that is capable of accessing "biographical knowledge pertaining to the past as well as the anticipated future" (Damasio 2010, p. 23).
This could well be "the self -- a point whose immobility is usefulf for discerning, by contrast, the heavy-laden flight of time." (Borges 1999, p. 9).
References:
Borges, J.L. 1999. The Nothingness of Personality, in Weinberg, E. (Ed.) Selected Non-Fictions. Penguin books, pp. 3-9.
Damasio, A. 2010. Self Comes to Mind - Constructing the Conscious Brain. Vintage Books, London. 367 p.
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