Broadening literary horizons

This week’s readings consisted of two of Borges’ classic short stories: “El Aleph” (1949) and “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” (1941) along with Espen Aarseth’s first and fourth chapters of his text titled Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature and chapter twenty-three in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature titled “Relocating the Literary: In Networks, Knowledge Bases, Global Systems, Material and Mental Environments by Joseph Tabbi. In both of Borges’ short stories, the concept of the book as a labyrinth is a recurring and central idea which directly ties into this week’s discussion of cybertexts and their maze-like, infinite nature. In “El Aleph” the narrator is able to see the entirety of the universe, from the crawling of ants to the movements of the planets, all at once through the Aleph, a small point in a basement. Consequently, the Aleph is presented as a microcosm of the universe which allows all spaces and moments to exist and be observed as occurring simultaneously. In this way, the Aleph permits the notions of chronological time and defined spaces to dissolve given that everything is able to exist at the same time. In “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” an anonymous narrator presents the testimony of a german spy in London named Dr. Yu Tsun who is led to the garden of his ancestor, Ts'ui Pên, who not only created the labyrinthine garden but also penned a novel. In the story, the novel and garden sustain an analogous nature: whenever a point is reached in which characters have more than one option in the continuation of the plot/path, both options occur, consequently engendering multiple narrations/paths perpetually and existing simultaneously. Thus, both of these stories broaden the temporal, spatial and plot horizons of literature. 

Similarly, the creation of electronic literature has been broadening the horizons of what has been commonly understood as literature through various media such as cybertexts. In his book, Aarseth defines a cybertext as a mechanically organized text that focuses on the participation of the reader/user and whose medium holds a vital position in the literary exchange between literary object and reader. An example cybertext titled “The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity” clearly demonstrates this through its infinite temporality. Specifically, this cybertext collects either tweets or fragments from Project Gutenberg that include the phrase “I saw” and lists them as a continuous text. As the reader scrolls down the page, eventually she realizes that she can scroll indefinitely because new text is continuously generated. In this way, this never-ending text resists any sense of teleology and posits a new temporality that other media such as a codex may not be able to offer. This cybertext can also be representative of the Internet itself and its perceived limitless vastness. Akin to the Aleph, it could be stated that the Internet is a microcosm of the universe since it reunites all kinds of information into one platform. Therefore, the Internet’s simultaneous existence of archived information and seemingly infinite space to gather all of that information provides a unique platform for literature, writing, reading, and the concepts of time and space to be re-imagined in innovative ways.