Numbers
in Jorge Luis
Borges’ “Death and the Compass”
Neither
the first time it has been attempted, nor the last time it will fail,
this
defense is distinguished by two facts. One is my almost complete
ignorance of
the Hebrew language; the other, my desire to defend not the doctrine
but rather
the hermeneutical or cryptographic procedures that lead to it. (Borges,
“A Defense of the Kabbalah”, Non-Fictions
83)
Jorge
Luis Borges once
claimed about his detective story “Death and the Compass” that it
is the most kabbalistic narration he had ever written, and several
scholars
have pointed to the direct links to the Kabbalah in that fiction.(1) The
kabbalistic way of reading texts focuses on deciphering of every single
word
contained in a text, as every single aspect of the text potentially
bears an
important meaning. If, as Borges asserted, “Death and the Compass”
is indeed the most kabbalistic story he ever wrote, then it is worth
looking
into the often ignored but nevertheless meaningful details contained in
it,
namely the numbers. In this essay, I argue that numbers and the color
red point
towards an overall unity of “Death and the Compass”.(2)
My
argument follows
three steps. The first is a close reading of the numbers four, three
and two in
Borges’ story, including an analysis of the fluctuation between four
and
three; this fluctuation is one aspect of the unity created in the
story. It
will become clear that three is a part of four in different ways:
first, three
is the precursor of four, which means that four already includes three.
Additionally, the four-sided geometrical forms in “Death and the
Compass'' already consist of and include the three-sided triangle, and
third,
both three and four can be read as Biblical symbols of unity. My second
step
will be an investigation of the color red as an unifying symbol. Red is
a
constitutive part of the names Erik Lönnrot and Red Scharlach. Rot is red in German and Scharlach is
scarlet. In a Biblical
reading, red fluctuates between sin and atonement, being the color that
includes both the love of God and the devil's attributes. I will also
analyze
the gods mentioned in “Death and the Compass'' to explore the
relationship between Erik Lönnrot and Red Scharlach. And finally,
I will
connect the results of these investigations to the hypothesis that
behind and
beneath the numbers and the color red in the story lies the idea of a
fundamental unity of the two protagonists, the detective and the
criminal.
The
numbers three and
four deserve to be considered together because there is a constant
oscillation
between three and four in “Death and the Compass''. The number three
first appears in the date of the first murder, December third. Dr.
Marcelo
Yarmolinsky, who “bear[s] three years of war in the Carpathians and
three
thousand years of pogroms and oppression'' (“Death and the Compass'', Fictions 148)(3), takes part in
the “Third Talmudic Congress'' (Fictions
148). At 11:30 a.m. on the next morning a journalist tries to reach
Yarmolinsky
and discovers that Yarmolinsky has been killed. Erik Lönnrot and
police
commissioner Treviranus start to look into the case. With the names of
Lönnrot and Treviranus the first hidden hints are given, the first
of many
hidden allusions. The name Treviranus can be split into three parts,
all of
them carrying a meaning in Latin, but only two of them are important
for this
essay. Tres is Latin and means three, and vir is the
Latin word
for man. It is also interesting to note that the first part of the name
contains four letters, the second contains three letters, and the third
and
last part contains four letters again. The three parts hence contribute
to the
three and four oscillation. Therefore, Borges indicates right at the
beginning
of the story that there might only be three murders; the reader who
reads the
story for the first time starts to consider that there might only be
three
homicides. The reader of a detective story plays an important creative
part
with regard to the narrative, as Borges claimed in a lecture entitled
“The detective story''. Borges stated that Edgar Allen Poe invented a
new
type of reader, the reader of a detective story, who doubts everything
present
in a literary work and whose basic attitude towards the text is one of
suspicion (Non-Fictions 492). For
this kind of reader Borges leaves hints and hidden allusions that go
beyond
Lönnrot's knowledge, as Jorge Hernández Martín has
noted:
Borges'
insistence a reader is created suggests the role that detective fiction
played
in helping him conceive of a «literature of skepticism»,
informed
by a reader's suspicions of the veracity of relevance of the things
presented
in the text. In the readerly suspicion exercised by detective fiction
one can
sense an intensification of the normal process of reading...
(Hernández
50)
At
the end of the story,
Scharlach reveals that Yarmolinsky was killed by mistake because the
drunken
murderer mistook his room for the original target, the Tetrarch of
Galilee. The
Greek tetra of course means four and points to the ancient
tetrarchy, a
system of government where the power is divided among four individuals.
The name
Tetrarch of Galilee is a historical one as it refers to Herod Antipas,
who
ruled
After
having a
discussion about the first murder and discarding Treviranus’
explanation
for the case, Lönnrot starts to do research on Hebrew history and
beliefs.
He finds out that God is supposed to have a secret name, “which ...
contains His ninth attribute, the eternity” (Fictions
149) and that “[t]radition reckons the name of God
at ninety-nine” (Fictions 149).
Both the 9 and the 99 can be divided by three which results in 3x3 and
3x33.
While Lönnrot focuses on this aspect in order to find an exciting
explanation for the first murder, the journalist, who was present at
the first
crime scene, writes a three column article about the case.
The
second murder on
January 3 appears “in the doorway of an old paint factory” (Fictions
149). The sentence “The
second letter of the Name has been written” (Fictions
150), a sequel to the sentence Yarmolinsky wrote on his
typewriter (4), appears on top of red and
yellow rhombuses. A rhombus is
an equilateral quadrilateral, or, to put it differently, it is a
four-sided
polygon in which every side has the same length. The rhombus is a
figure that
occurs time and again in “Death and the Compass”: in the costume of
the harlequins, in the mathematical figure that helps Lönnrot to
solve the
case and makes himself the third victim, and in the windows of Villa
Triste-le-Roy (5).
Lönnrot
receives a
map on which he finds a red triangle indicating that the three murders,
which
were symmetrical in time and space, form an equilateral triangle. But,
Lönnrot is not satisfied with this solution to his case and
instead
figures out that if he adds one point in the south, the triangle
emerges as a
rhombus. In other words, Lönnrot creates a mirror image and adds
it to the
first triangle. As a result, Lönnrot sees two triangles which
share the
line from east to west. Again, the triangle is a part of the rhombus.
Another
important
feature of the rhombus is that it is a two-dimensional figure with four
axes of
symmetry, or, to rephrase it, that, if a perpendicular line is
constructed, any
two points lying on that line at equal distances from the axis of
symmetry are
identical. Another way to describe it is that if you divide the rhombus
vertically, the right side and left side are mirror images of each
other. The
two diagonals of a rhombus are axes of symmetry which divide the
rhombus into
four triangles. The rectangle, the mathematical form used by Borges to
describe
Villa Triste-le-Roy, is also axially symmetric, meaning that the two
sides
divided by the axis are mirror images of each other.
To
summarize, with the
rhombus, Borges uses a mathematical figure that consists of four
equilateral
sides and that already includes four triangles. The rectangle again is
an
axially symmetric form in which each side reflects the other. Hence,
the
rhombus and the rectangle can be read as symbols for Lönnrot's and
Scharlach's unity, or, to put it differently, Lönnrot is mirrored
in Scharlach
and Scharlach is mirrored in Lönnrot. This will be further
discussed at
the end of the essay.
On
February 3, Scharlach
calls police commissioner Treviranus from a hotel and fakes the third
murder.
The name he uses on the phone is Ginzberg, Ginsburg, or Gryphius. These
three
names remind the reader of three famous persons, all of them concerned
with
religion. Rabbi Louis Ginzberg is the first one; Ginzberg was one of
the
outstanding Talmudists of the twentieth century.
Ginzberg
studied the Talmud at several rabbinical schools, as well as
philosophy,
history, and Oriental languages at three universities, and received his
Ph.D.
from the
It
is well known that
Borges purchased the eleventh edition of Encyclopaedia
Britannica and made frequent use of it. With regard to Ginzberg,
Ginsburg, and
Gryphius, Borges referred to real persons, two of them being Jewish
scholars
and the third one being a famous author as articles of the Britannica
prove. First, the article about Christian David Ginsburg
who was a prominent Bible scholar and student of the masoretic
tradition in
Judaism. And second, the article about Andreas Gryphius.
Beginning
in 1867 with the publication of Jacob ben Chajim's Introduction to the
Rabbinic
Bible, Hebrew and English, with notices, and the Massoreth Ha-Massoreth
of
Elias Levita, in Hebrew, with translation and commentary, Dr Ginsburg
took rank
as an eminent Hebrew Scholar. (“Ginsburg”)
Andreas
Gryphius (1616 - 1664), German lyric poet and dramatist...A short time
previously he had been admitted under the title of “The Immortal”
into the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft,
a literary society, founded in 1617 ...No German dramatic writer before
him had
risen so high a level, nor had he worthy successors until about the
middle of
the 18th century. (“Gryphius”)
Besides
the three names
of Ginzberg/ Ginsburg/ Gryphius, Treviranus and Lönnrot find the
third
message indicating that the sequence of murders is completed: “The last
Letter of the Name has been written” (Fictions
151). It is also worth mentioning the three and four oscillation with
regard to
the harlequins. Three kidnappers allegedly abduct Ginzberg/ Ginsburg/
Gryphius.
One of them stays in the car, and two of them enter the tavern. In
allegedly
abducting Gryphius, three men leave the tavern and unite with the
fourth criminal
in the car; after a week of separation, the four criminals are united
again. As
mentioned before, the four is also contained in the rhombuses on the
harlequin's costumes. Moreover, the rhombuses on the harlequin's
costumes are
connected with a sequence of three colors: yellow, red and green (Fictions 151). Again, the reader is
confronted with a fluctuation of three and four.
On
the site of the third
crime, Lönnrot finds an underlined sentence in Philologus,
a journal on ancient literature: “The Jewish day begins
at sundown and lasts until sundown of the following day” (Fictions
151). Scharlach set a false
trail in order for Lönnrot to deduce that there is going to be a
fourth
murder. According to the Christian calendar, the murders occur on the
third of
every month; according to the Hebrew calendar, however, the murders
appear on
the fourth of every month as they were committed after sundown.
Lönnrot
draws the conclusion that the murderer will not stop after his third
homicide
but would commit a fourth murder in order to sacrifice the fourth and
last
person that stands for the last letter in the tetragrammaton. The
tetragrammaton, deriving from the Greek tetra
(four) and grammatos (letter) refers
to the proper name of God in the Hebrew Bible Tanach. In this bible,
the name
of God is usually abbreviated to the four letters JHWH (6).
Jews
traditionally believe that the name of God is too sacred to be uttered
and they
therefore avoid saying this name aloud. Lönnrot got this notion
from the
first site of the crime where he found Yarmolinsky's works on the
tetragrammaton, the Baal Shem and the paper left in the typewriter
displaying
the sentence “The first letter of the Name has been written” (Fictions 149).
I
will first look into
the meaning of Baal Shem and how it is connected to the number four
before I
turn to the sentence left in the typewriter. Baal Shem in Hebrew
translates as
“Master of the Name” and it refers to a person who knows how to use
Gods’ name (Scholem 290). In Jewish tradition, this name was pronounced
only by the High Priest on Yom Kippur. The paper found by Lönnrot
in
Yarmolinsky's typewriter obviously plays an important role in the whole
story
because it is the first thing that triggers Lönnrot's interest in
the
case. As mentioned previously, the piece of paper states that the first
letter
of the name has been written. Lönnrot connects this information to
the
tetragrammaton and he assumes that the murderer sacrifices one Jew for
each
letter in God's name. This assumption is first and foremost established
by
Yarmolinsky's work on the Hasidim. Scharlach explains the importance of
the
Hasidim as follows: “I read A
History of the Hasidim; I learned that the reverent fear of
speaking the
name of God had been the origin of the doctrine that that Name is
omnipotent
and occult. I learned that some Hasidim, in the quest for that secret
Name, had
gone so far as to commit human sacrifice.” (Fictions
155)
Lönnrot's
theory
that the murders have a religious background is also strengthened by
Yarmolinsky's other works, including texts on the Baal Shem, and on
Robert
Fludd, whose works are concerned with the relationship between
macrocosm and
microcosm and who stands in the tradition of hermetic-kabalistic
Renaissance,
and the Pentateuch. All of these works can be connected to the
tetragrammaton
and therefore sanctify Lönnrot's approach. In addition to the
texts
mentioned, the narrator alludes to one of Borges' own texts, “A
Vindication of the Kabbalah”. With this text another aspect comes into
play.
“A Vindication of the Kabbalah”, which generally addresses the
Kabbalah, is concerned with “my desire to defend not the doctrine but
rather the hermeneutical or cryptographic procedures that lead to it” (Non-Fictions 83). This text does also
refer to numbers in general as it lists the preoccupation with numbers
as one
of the cryptographic procedures. This is exactly what Lönnrot
tries to do.
The detective tries to find the system behind the murders, he tries to
uncover
the hidden procedures that lead to the homicides, and he uses a
hermeneutical
approach in order to perform this task. Numbers play one of the most
important
roles in his investigation, as he grounds his theory on the Hebrew date
of the
murders, the tetragrammaton, and the rhombus. It is due to the
tetragrammaton
that Lönnrot expects a fourth murder and, unwillingly, hands
himself over
to his murderers.
As
my analysis so far
has shown, Lönnrot's reading of the numerical hints is
single-edged. I
already mentioned that Borges provides the reader with additional
information.
By now, the reader knows that there is a fluctuation between three and
four
when it comes to the time of the murders. In addition, the rhombus
includes, in
fact consists of triangles. It is also worth mentioning that of course
Lönnrot is right when he states that the tetragrammaton consists
of four
characters. However, the tetragrammaton only consists of three
different
characters, J, H, and W. This means, that even in the word
tetragrammaton there
is an oscillation between the numbers three and four.
The
last crime, and the
third murder, takes place on March 3, the third month of the year.
Lönnrot
faces Scharlach who tells the detective that three years ago,
Lönnrot
arrested his brother. After a shooting, Scharlach was shot and had to
stay at
the Villa for nine days and nine nights (again the 3x3).
Let
us now turn to the
number two and the color red in “Death and the Compass”. The first
idea I should like to mention is the concept of imperfection that comes
with
the number two. Two refers to the separation of the wholeness
represented by
the one. Each of the parts is dependent on the other part, meaning that
they
are imperfect without their counterpart. Lönnrot and Scharlach can
be read
as two parts which in the end become one, an argument that I will
pursue
shortly. It is worth mentioning, that in “Death and the Compass,”
the oscillation between three and four is established by the two
hypotheses
that run throughout the story. One hypothesis, mainly established by
the reader
of the story due to the narrator's hints, suggests that there are only
going to
be three murders. Lönnrot's hypothesis, on the other hand, focuses
on four
crimes. At the end of the story, the two suppositions are linked
together as
only Lönnrot's belief in his assumption enables Scharlach to kill
him and
commit the third homicide. This act also proves the hypothesis about
the three
to be right. Lönnrot, however, turns out to be right too, as he
has read
Scharlach's text woven by the hints in the right way. Lönnrot has
solved the
riddle only because he hands himself over to the criminal.
Besides
this, the two is
first and foremost connected to the relationship between Scharlach and
Lönnrot. Lönnrot and Scharlach form the classic
detective-story duo
of detective and criminal. Both characters have the color red as a part
of
their name. Red Scharlach consists of the English word red and also the
German
word for red, Scharlach, as we saw. However, Scharlach also refers to
scarlet
fever, a disease that reminds the reader of the criminal's fever after
being
shot in a fight with the police. Lönnrot's first name Erik, on the
other
hand, might well refer to Erik the Red. The detective's last name
includes two
parts. The last part, rot, is German for red. Lönn,
the
first part of the name, derives from Swedish. It can be translated as
maple, a
tree that is famous for its gaudy red foliage, or secret, hidden and
arcane (7).
In this case, Lönnrot's name could be translated as the hidden or
secret
red.
The
color red is not
only a part of Lönnrot and Scharlach's name and therefore unifies
the two
characters, it is also a highly symbolic color in both Christianity and
the
Kabbalah. In Christianity, red is both the color for sin and Satan as
well as
the color indicating God's endless love. The red of sin can only be
balanced
with the red of atonement (Lurker Wörterbuch).
Red is also the color of incarnation, a motif that determines the last
lines of
Borges' story: “The next time I kill you,' Scharlach replied,' I
promise
you the labyrinth that consists of a single straight line that is
invisible and
endless.' He stepped back a few steps. Then, very carefully, he
fired.'' (Fictions 156) Gershom Scholem has
pointed out that red and white are the two colors forming the
fountainhead in
Kabbalah (Ursprung und Anfänge
296). The color white is only used once in “Death and the Compass”,
when the first murder and therefore the origin of the manhunt is
described.
This obviously connects to “Death and the Compass” on several
levels. The two main characters are bound to each other in multiple
ways. First
and foremost, the story is ruled by two reasoning-machines, or to put
it
differently, two male characters who try to outplay each other by using
their
reasoning abilities. Moreover, Scharlach is tied to Lönnrot
because the
criminal seeks revenge for the death of his brother and his own injury
caused
by a policeman. This connection can only be cut by the death of one of
the two
parties. And Lönnrot is unwillingly and unwittingly bound to
Scharlach, as
Scharlach is the mastermind behind the crimes Lönnrot tries to
solve. Both
of them only work with their mental abilities in order to outplay each
other.
At the end of the story, Lönnrot and Scharlach switch places and
the
hunter becomes the prey. Due to Scharlach's ability to read
Lönnrot's mind
and to become one with his enemy, both characters melt into each other,
they
seem to be only one individual. As Maurice J. Bennet has said: “Borges
once again makes explicit what Poe only suggests or leaves to critical
interpretation: the poetic and mathematical interests shared by Dupin
and D.,
their similar initials, and Dupin's theory that to understand anyone
one must
essentially become that person-all point to their shared identity”
(272).
The
connection between
Lönnrot and Scharlach is also mirrored in the gods and goddesses
that
appear in “Death and the Compass”. The first goddess Lönnrot
sees when he enters Villa Triste-le-Roy is Diana, a goddess that was,
like
Artemis, considered a huntress. Lönnrot is hunting the murder who
committed three homicides; and his counterpart, Scharlach, is hunting
the
detective that arrested his brother. Both characters are hence
reflected by
Diana. The second god Lönnrot notices in the Villa is the Greek
god Hermes
(Roman Mercury), who “... was said to have invented such wonders as the
lyre, the alphabet, numbers, and astronomy. With his traveler's hat,
winged
sandals, and caduceus, Hermes was clearly marked as his father's herald
and
messenger” (Leeming). As Lönnrot is just about to be killed, the
function of Hermes as the god who accompanies souls from this world to
the
hereafter (Lurker Lexikon; Hunger) is obviously important. However, not
only
Lönnrot, but Scharlach also is reflected in Hermes as the god is
said to
be a god with excellent skills in interpretation, reasoning power, and
that he
used this skills to trick people. Both Lönnrot and Scharlach are
tricky
reasoning machines: Lönnrot who ``thought of himself as a
reasoning
machine, an Auguste Dupin'' (Fictions
147) tries to put himself in the position of the murderer in order to
read his
mind and foresee the criminal's next moves. As it turns out, Scharlach
is the
better trickster as he is able to foresee Lönnrot's way of
thinking and
successfully sets up a trap for the detective. The classic detective
story is
inverted here, as the detective usually is the one who penetrates the
criminal's mind and who usually catches the murderer in the end. It is
worth
mentioning that Hermes in Borges' text is a gigantic statue with two
faces (Fictions 153), just like Janus, the god
who inspired Scharlach to seek revenge. ''A Roman god always depicted
with two
faces, Janus was the god of comings and goings, whose face appeared,
like Greek
herms, on most entrances. He was a highly popular deity of Etruscan
origin who
gave his name to our month of January'' (Leeming). In a more general
way, Janus
is a symbol for a new beginning, as he is on the cusp of the old year
and the
new year (Lurker Lexikon). Also, Janus is looking into the past and
into the
future at the same time.
In
addition, the number two plays an important role in the shape of Villa
Triste-le-Roy. This is the place where Scharlach and Lönnrot
finally meet
and where the detective dies. The Villa is described as follows:
Seen at
closer quarters,
the house belonging to the Villa Triste-le-Roy abounded in pointless
symmetries
and obsessive repetitions; a glacial Diana in a gloomy niche was echoed
by a
second Diana in a second niche; one balcony was reflected in another;
double
stairways opened into a double balustrade. (Fictions
152)
In
short, the two is the unifying architectural shape that defines Villa
Triste-le-Roy in which the statues of Hermes and Janus have two faces,
and the
two also is a Biblical and kabbalistic symbol for unity.
The
oscillating numbers three and four are not only connected through the
mentioned
oscillation in Borges' story, and as the basis for Lönnrot and
Scharlach's
creation of the text, but also because the three is always already a
part of
the number four. Moreover, three and four are both Biblical symbols of
unity.
The three is an all-encompassing number as it symbolizes the
tripartition of
heaven, earth and the netherworld. In Judaism, three stands for the
three parts
of the Jewish temple, which itself is a symbol for the world; also, the
three
progenitors Sem, Ham, and Jafet represent the roots of mankind.
According to
the New Testament, the Holy Trinity refers to God and, in addition,
every human
is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.
The four on the other hand signifies a cosmic unity, as it stands for
four
quarters, four main winds or cardinal points, four seasons, and in
ancient
tradition, four elements. The river in
The
numbers mediate between the criminal, who uses the numbers in order to
create a
trap, and the detective, who interprets the numbers and makes a
coherent story
out of them. Only together, complementing each other, can they create
the text.
As Bennett puts it: “... the two men become one in precisely the same
way
that author and reader conflate in any text, which they mutually
construct” (274). In other words, the creator Scharlach creates a text
that leads the reader Lönnrot, who reads the texts with a
kabbalistic
system and in a kabbalistic way, to his fatal interpretation. Alazraki
states
with regard to Lönnrot's interest in the Kabbalah:
Borges could as well
have said “Kabbalist”, since Lönnrot attemps to solve the
mysteries of the seemingly ritualistic murders in the same manner that
a
Kabbalist deciphers the occult mysteries of the Scripture. The
arithmetic value
of the dates of the murders and their geometric location on the map
become
important and revealing. (16)
Bennett
adds:
Scharlach and
Lönnrot mutually compose the mini-text of the crime and its
solution
embedded in the encompassing narrative. The series of events that
comprise this
text is designed for Lönnrot alone; he is the encoded reader. As
these
events are meaningless without his particular intellectual passions and
eccentricities, his reading of meaning into them duplicates Scharlach's
act of
creation. (Bennett 273)
This
scheme is doubled by Borges, who creates a text for the reader of the
detective
fiction, a reader who “was invented by Edgar Allen Poe” (Non-Fictions
492). According to Borges,
the “aesthetic event requires the conjunction of reader and text; only
then does it exist. It is absurd to suppose that a book is much more
than a
book. It begins to exist when a reader opens it” (Non-Fictions
491 - 492). Besides the text that is spun by Scharlach
and analyzed by Lönnrot, Borges offers another text, spun by
himself and
read by the reader of the detective story who can use hints and hidden
allusions that go beyond Lönnrot's knowledge.
In the
readerly
suspicion exercised by detective fiction one can sense an
intensification of
the normal process of reading, which is leer
in Spanish, from Latin legere,
“to bring together”, but also “to select” and “to
choose”. In this etymology one can also see the reader as an active
principle of composition and as a counterpoint to writing. (Hernandez
50)
In
this sense, we have a trilogy of creator (Scharlach), reader
(Lönnrot),
and their creation: the text. This trilogy is mirrored by Borges, the
reader
and their text. Knowing that Borges used his text “A Vindication of the
Kabbalah” as reference in “Death and the Compass,” one has to
consider the possibility that Borges points to the Holy Trinity. Borges
claims:
Imagined all at once,
its concept [the Holy Trinity] of a father, a son, and a ghost, joined
in a
single organism, seems like a case of intellectual teratology, a
monster which
only the horror of a nightmare could spawn...Hell is merely physical
violence,
but the three inextricable persons import an intellectual horror, a
strangled,
specious infinity like facing mirrors. (Non-Fictions
84)
To
read the connection between author, reader and text in “Death and the
Compass” with regard to the Holy Trinity might seem like a stretch at
first glance. However, the connection of “Death and the Compass”
and religion (both Judaism and Christianity) is established by the
discussion
of religion in the text itself;
“I'm a poor
Christian fellow,” he replied. “You can take those things home with
you, if you want them; I can't be wasting my time on Jewish
superstitions.”
“This crime
may,
however, belong to the history of
Jewish superstitions,” Lönnrot muttered.
“As
Christianity
does,'' the writer from the Yiddische Zeitung added, scathingly. He was
nearsighted, quite shy, and an atheist. (Fictions
148 - 149)
I
do not believe that Borges wants to establish the connection between
author,
reader and text as a Holy Trinity, but I think that he used “A
Vindication of the Kabbalah” in order to point to the unifying moment
in
the Holy Trinity. Three elements become one and they are inextricably
entangled
with each other. In addition, the numbers in “Death and the
Compass” all point to a unity. Moreover, Borges' “A Vindication of
the Kabbalah” refers to the Bible as “an absolute text, where the
collaboration of chance is calculated at zero” (Non-Fictions
86). The detective story is the literary genre in
which chance has no place (Sturrock 128), or, as Borges assumed in a
lecture,
the detective story “is safeguarding order in an era of disorder” (Non-Fictions 499). A detective story
hence is a highly structured and coherent text, following a linear
order of
events, and all of them point towards one solution. And this is of
course true
for Borges' “Death and the Compass.” Two hypothesis which in the
end both become true and two persons who are inextricable joined into
one
person, a “specious infinity like facing mirrors” that is going to
be repeated over and over again: “The next time I kill you,' Scharlach
replied, 'I promise you the labyrinth that consists of a single
straight line
that is invisible and endless.’” (Fictions 156)
Lönnrot is both, victor and victim, and he
proposes to Scharlach to transform the quatrilateral form into a single
line.
In other words, he asks Scharlach to reduce four to one while marking
four
points on the line, four points which now resemble unity and infinity
at the
same time. The infinity evolves out of Zenon's paradox that the line
undergoes
infinite segmentations into halves without ever reaching the middle. In
this
labyrinth, Scharlach would not be able to hunt down Lönnrot.
Notes
(1).
For example Jaime Alazraki: Borges and
the Kabbalah. And other essays on his fiction and poetry.
(2).
Antonio Fama also pointed to an overall unity in “Death and the
Compass”. In his analysis "Analisis
de 'La muerte y la brujula' de Jorge Luis Borges", Fama points to
the
Kabbalah, the numbers three and four, and the triangle and the
rombusses.
However, Fama comes to a completely different interpretation than this
essay
will propose. Fama argues that Scharlach and Lönnrot are two
versions of
only one archetype.
(3).
I will refer to ``Death and the Compass'' in the abbreviated form Fictions ## from now on.
(4).
``The first letter of the Name has been written'' (Fictions
149).
(5).
Both the rhombus and the rectangle
are forms of the parallelogram. The rectangle can either be a
quadrilateral
where all four of its angles are right angles (parallelogram), or, like
the
rhombus in ``Death and the Compass'', a square, where all four sides
have equal
length; that is, a square is both a rectangle and a rhombus. However,
Villa
Triste-le-Roy is described as a rectangle (parallelogram): ``A rusty
fence
defined the irregular perimeter of the villa's grounds'' (Fictions
153).
(6).
Also: YHWH, YHVH, or JHVH.
Alazraki,
Jaime. Borges and the Kabbalah. And other essays on his
fiction and poetry.
Bennett,
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