In "The Wall and the Books" Borges defines the aesthetic phenomenon as the "imminence of a revelation which does not occur". Explain how this defnition relates to his story "Averröes' Search" in two l
T h e W a ll a n d th e B o o k s H e, w hose long w all the w and’ring T artar bounds. . . — D unciad, II, 76 I read, som e days past, that the m an w ho ordered the erection of the alm ost in finite w all of C hina w as that first E m peror, S hih H uang T i, w ho also decreed that all books prior to him be burned. T hat these tw o vast operations― the five to six hundred leagues of stone opposing the barbarians, th e rigorous abolition of history, that is, of the past― should originate in one person and be in som e w ay his attributes inexplicably satisfied and, at the sam e tim e, d isturbed m e. T o investigate the reasons for that em otion is the purpose of this note. H istorically speaking, there is no m ystery in the tw o m easures. A contem porary of the w ars of H annibal, S hih H uang T i, king of T sin, brought th e S ix K ingdom s under his rule and abolished the feudal system ; he erected th e w all, because w alls w ere defenses; he burned the books, because his opposition invoked them to praise the em perors of olden tim es. B urning books and erecting fortifications is a com m on task of princes; the only thing singular in S hih H uang T i w as the scale on w hich he operated. S uch is suggested by certain S inologists, but I feel that the facts I have related are som ething m ore than an exaggeration or hyperbole of trivial dispositions. W alling in an orchard or a garden is ordinary, but not w alling in an em pire. N or is it banal to pretend that the m ost traditional of races renounce the m em ory of its past, m ythical or real. T he C hinese had three thou sand years of chronology (and during those years, the Y ellow E m peror and C huang T su and C onfucius and L ao T zu) w hen S hih H uang T i ordered that history begin w ith him .S hih H uang T i had banished his m other for being a libertine; in his stern ju stice the o rthodox saw nothing but an im piety; S hih H uang T i, perhaps, w anted to obliterate the canonical books because they accused him ; S hih H uang T i, perhaps, tried to abolish the entire past in order to abolish one single m em ory: his m other’s infam y. (N ot in an unlike m anner did a king of Judea have all m ale children killed in order to kill one.) T his conjecture is w orthy of attention, but tells us nothing about the w all, the second part of the m y th . S hih H uang T i, according to the historians, forbade that death be m entioned and sought the elixir of im m ortality and secluded him self in a figurative palace containing as m any room s as there are days in the year; these facts suggest that the w all in space an d the fire in tim e w ere m agic barriers designed to halt death. A ll things long to persist in their being, B aruch S pinoza has w ritten; perhaps the E m peror and his sorcerers believed that im m ortality is intrinsic and that decay cannot enter a closed orb. P erhaps the E m peror tried to recreate the beginning of tim e and called him self T he F irst, so as to be really first, and called him self H uang T i, so as to be in som e w ay H uang T i, the legendary em peror w ho inv ented w riting and the com pass. T he latter, according to the B ook of R ites, gave things their true nam e; in a parallel fashion, S hih H uang T i boasted, in inscriptions w hich endure, that all things in his reign w ould have the nam e w hich w as proper to them . H e dream t of founding an im m ortal dynasty; he ordered that his heirs be called S econd E m peror, T hird E m peror, F ourth E m peror, and so on to infinity. . . I have spoken of a m agical purpose; it w ould also be fitting to suppose that erecting the w all and burning the books w ere not sim ultaneous acts. T his (depending on the order w e select) w ould give us the im age of a king w ho began by destroying and then resigned him self to preserving, or that of a disillusioned king w ho destroyed w hat he had previously defended. B oth conjectures are dram atic, but they lack, as far as I know , any basis in history. H erbert A llen G iles tells that those w ho hid books w ere branded w ith a red-hot iron and sentenced to labor until the day of their death on the construction of the outrageous w all. T his inform ation favors or tolerates another interpretation. P erhaps the w all w as a m etaphor, perhaps S hih H uang T i sentenced those w ho w orshiped the past to a task as im m ense, as g ross and as useless as the past itself. P erhaps the w all w as a challenge and S hih H uang T i thought: “M en love the past and neither I nor m y executioners can do anything against that love, but som eday there w ill be a m an w ho feels as I do and he w ill efface m y m em ory and be m y shadow and m y m irror and not know it.” P erhaps S hih H uang T i w alled in his em pire because he knew that it w as perishable and destroyed the books because he understood th at they w ere sacred books, in other w ords, books that teach w hat the entire un iverse or the m ind of every m an teaches. P erhaps the burning of the libraries and the erection of the w all are operations w hich in som e secret w ay cancel each other. T he tenacious w all w hich at this m om ent, and at all m om ents, casts its system of shadow s over lands I shall never see, is the shadow of a C aesar w ho ordered the m ost reverent of nations to burn its past; it is plausible that this idea m oves us in itself, aside from the conjectu res it allow s. (Its virtue m ay lie in the opposition of constructing and destroying on an enorm ous scale.) G eneralizing from the preceding case, w e could infer that all form s have their virtue in them selves and not in any conjectural “content.” T his w ould concord w ith the thesis of B enedetto C roce; already P ater in 1877 had affirm ed that all arts aspire to the state of m usic, w hich is pure form . M usic, states of happiness, m ythology, faces belabored by tim e, certain tw ilights and certain places try to tell us som ething, or have said som ething w e should not have m issed, or are about to say som ething; this im m inence of a revelation w hich does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenom enon. — Translated by Jam es E . Irby
