"Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the
Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the
Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of
Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written."
-From “Partial Magic in the
Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges
Comments