object:The Mirror of Enigmas
class:Essay
class:chapter
author class:Jorge Luis Borges
The Mirror of Enigmas
T
he idea that the Sacred Scriptures have (aside from their literal value) a
symbolic value is ancient and not irrational: it is found in Philo of
Alexandria, in the Cabalists, in Swedenborg. Since the events related in the
Scriptures are true (God is Truth, Truth cannot lie, etc.), we should admit
that men, in acting out those events, blindly represent a secret drama
determined and premeditated by God. Going from this to the thought that the
history of the universe—and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of
our lives—has an incalculable, symbolical value, is a reasonable step. Many
have taken that step; no one so astonishingly as Léon Bloy. (In the
psychological fragments by Novalis and in that volume of Machen's
autobiography called The London Adventure there is a similar hypothesis:
that the outer world—forms, temperatures, the moon—is a language we
humans have forgotten or which we can scarcely distinguish. . . It is also
declared by De Quincey: 36 "Even the articulate or brutal sounds of the globe
must be all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have their
corresponding keys—have their own grammar and syntax; and thus the least
things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.")
A verse from St. Paul (I Corinthians, 13:12) inspired Léon Bloy.
Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tune autem facie ad faciem. Nunc
cognosco ex parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. Torres
Amat has miserably translated: "At present we do not see God except as in a
mirror and beneath dark images; but later we shall see him face to face. I
only know him now imperfectly; but later I shall know him in a clear vision,
in the same way that I know myself." 49 words do the work of 22; it is
impossible to be more languid and verbose. Cipriano de Valera is more
faithful: "Now we see in a mirror, in darkness; but later we shall see face to
face. Now I know in part; but later I shall know as I am known." Torres
Amat opines that the verse refers to our vision of the divinity; Cipriano de
Valera (and Léon Bloy), to our general vision of things.
So far as I know, Bloy never gave his conjecture a definitive form.
Throughout his fragmentary work (in which there abound, as everyone
knows, lamentations and insults) there are different versions and facets.
Here are a few that I have rescued from the clamorous pages of Le mendiant
36 - Writings, 1896, Vol. I, page 129.
199ingrat, Le Vieux de la Montagne and L'invendable. I do not believe I have
exhausted them: I hope that some specialist in Léon Bloy (I am not one) may
complete and rectify them.
The first is from June 1894. I translate it as follows: "The statement
by St. Paul: Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate would be a skylight
through which one might submerge himself in the true Abyss, which is the
soul of man. The terrifying immensity of the firmament's abysses is an
illusion, an external reflection of our own abysses, perceived 'in a mirror.'
We should invert our eyes and practice a sublime astronomy in the
infinitude of our hearts, for which God was willing to die. . . If we see the
Milky Way, it is because it actually exists in our souls."
The second is from November of the same year. "I recall one of my
oldest ideas. The Czar is the leader and spiritual father of a hundred fifty
million men. An atrocious responsibility which is only apparent. Perhaps he
is not responsible to God, but rather to a few human beings. If the poor of
his empire are oppressed during his reign, if immense catastrophies result
from that reign, who knows if the servant charged with shining his boots is
not the real and sole person guilty? In the mysterious dispositions of the
Profundity, who is really Czar, who is king, who can boast of being a mere
servant?"
The third is from a letter written in December. "Everything is a
symbol, even the most piercing pain. We are dreamers who shout in our
sleep. We do not know whether the things afflicting us are the secret
beginning of our ulterior happiness or not. We now see, St. Paul maintains,
per speculum in aenigmate, literally: 'in an enigma by means of a mirror' and
we shall not see in any other way until the coming of the One who is all in
flames and who must teach us all things."
The fourth is from May 1904. "Per speculum in aenigmate, says St.
Paul. We see everything backwards. When we believe we give, we receive,
etc. Then (a beloved, anguished soul tells me) we are in Heaven and God
suffers on earth."
The fifth is from May 1908. "A terrifying idea of Jeanne's, about the
text Per speculum. The pleasures of this world would be the torments of
Hell, seen backwards, in a mirror."
The sixth is from 1912. It is each of the pages of L'Âme de Napoléon,
a book whose purpose is to decipher the symbol Napoleon, considered as the
precursor of another hero—man and symbol as well—who is hidden in the
200future. It is sufficient for me to cite two passages. One: "Every man is on
earth to symbolize something he is ignorant of and to realize a particle or a
mountain of the invisible materials that will serve to build the City of God."
The other: "There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with
certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do,
what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name
is, his enduring Name in the register of Light. . . History is an immense
liturgical text where the iotas and the dots are worth no less than the entire
verses or chapters, but the importance of one and the other is indeterminable
and profoundly hidden."
The foregoing paragraphs will perhaps seem to the reader mere
gratuities by Bloy. So far as I know, he never took care to reason them out. I
venture to judge them verisimilar and perhaps inevitable within the Christian
doctrine. Bloy (I repeat) did no more than apply to the whole of Creation the
method which the Jewish Cabalists applied to the Scriptures. They thought
that a work dictated by the Holy Spirit was an absolute text: in other words,
a text in which the collaboration of chance was calculable as zero. This
portentous premise of a book impenetrable to contingency, of a book which
is a mechanism of infinite purposes, moved them to permute the scriptural
words, add up the numerical value of the letters, consider their form,
observe the small letters and capitals, seek acrostics and anagrams and
perform other exegetical rigors which it is not difficult to ridicule. Their
excuse is that nothing can be contingent in the work of an infinite mind. 37
Léon Bloy postulates this hieroglyphical character—this character of a
divine writing, of an angelic cryptography—at all moments and in all beings
on earth. The superstitious person believes he can decipher this organic
writing: thirteen guests form the symbol of death; a yellow opal, that of
misfortune.
It is doubtful that the world has a meaning; it is even more doubtful
that it has a double or triple meaning, the unbeliever will observe. I
understand that this is so; but I understand that the hieroglyphical world
postulated by Bloy is the one which best befits the dignity of the theologian's 1intellectual God.
No man knows who he is, affirmed Léon Bloy. No one could illustrate
that intimate ignorance better than he. He believed himself a rigorous
Catholic and he was a continuer of the Cabalists, a secret brother of
Swedenborg and Blake: heresiarchs.
37 - What is a divine mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does not define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.
Translated by J.E.I.
book class:Labyrinths
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