Bohes "Aben Hakan-El-Bohari Who Died in His Labyrinth", "Two Kings and Two Labyrinths", after reading the postscript

On May 10, 2014, the flame reading club selected the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges's "Abenhakan-El-Bohari who died in his own labyrinth" and "Two Kings and Two Labyrinths", As the title suggests are two short stories about mazes. Labyrinth is a frequent theme in many of Bohes's works, among which "The Garden of Crossing Paths" and "The Library of Babel" are very exciting, and I will share my thoughts after reading them in the future.

(For illustration, the following contains a lot of spoilers.)

"Aben Hakan-El-Bohari Who Died in His Labyrinth"
"Abenjacán el Bojarí, Muerto en su Laberinto"

This can be said to be a mythical story, revolving around the bizarre incident of a king who was killed in a labyrinth he built. It begins with the poet Dun Lavin telling his friend Unwin about the incident in his childhood hometown of Pentrith, England.

The version known to the inhabitants of Dunraven and Port Pentrith

One day an African king came to Pentrith Harbor with a black slave and a lion, and planned to build a labyrinth high on the coast to live in it. However, this bizarre behavior caused a lot of discussion among the residents. A local rectory even told a fable of a foreign king who built a labyrinth and was condemned by God when he was teaching, so that the king could not recruit craftsmen to build the labyrinth. Later, the king talked to the rectory privately, but the rectory did not tell any more fables, and the king finally hired craftsmen to build the labyrinth. After the labyrinth was built, the king could not stay in the house until one night when screams came from the labyrinth. The next day, the rector went to find out by himself and found that the king, slaves, and lions were all dead, and their faces were smashed, leaving only an empty box. .

As the rectory recalled, the previous meeting consisted of a confession from the king:

"The king was originally the monarch of a country who once suppressed many tribes in Africa, but then the country broke out in a mutiny, and only fled with treasures and cowardly ministers, slaves and lions. One night, he woke up from a nightmare, worried that the cowardly ministers would ask for a share Treasure, so he killed the sleeping minister and smashed his face. But then he dreamed that the minister wanted to kill him: "I will erase you, just as you erase my face now." So the king decided to hide in the labyrinth, So that the minister's wronged soul can't find himself."

However, the rationalist mathematician Unwin listened to Dun Lavin's romanticized account, but he felt that the matter was full of contradictions:

• People who are fleeing will not deliberately hide in a maze, let alone a maze that can be seen from a distance from the sea and is eye-catching? The world itself is a labyrinth, and there is no need to build another.
• As a king who had suppressed many tribes, he would wake up from nightmares and be afraid of cowardly ministers and their ghosts, which was not in line with his character.

Unwin further deduced the truth of the incident from these unreasonable facts.

Unwin's version of the inference

It was not the king who woke up from the nightmare, but the cowardly minister. The minister wanted to kill the king and swallow the treasure, but because of cowardice he did not kill the murderer, so he left the sleeping king and defected with the treasure, slaves and lions, and even pretended to be the king and came to the port of Pentris. The fake king knew that the real king would definitely come after him, so he built a maze for the king to enter the urn. In order to completely steal the identity of the king, he even made up the lie of "the minister's grievance and death". On the night of the murder, the fake king killed the real king who was chasing after him, then killed the slave and the lion, and smashed the faces of the three to make them unrecognizable, and then disappeared. more convinced.

Although Unwin's reasoning is reasonable, readers of the reasoning story should find that the most suspicious person in this murder case is not the (fake) king who built the labyrinth. All kinds of bizarre incidents: the origin of the king, the existence of treasures, the reasons for building the labyrinth, etc., all come from the mouth of only one person - the rectory. And the rectory was the first to discover the murder. Even the rectory used the parable he told during the mission to obstruct the king from building the labyrinth. Therefore, the author boldly infers that the rectory is the real culprit.

The truth as imagined by the author (reader)

The rectory learned from somewhere that the (fake) king who fled with precious treasures became greedy, so he first used the guide to spread fables (rumors), on the one hand, it hindered the construction of the labyrinth and forced the (fake) king to come Negotiating for extortion, on the other hand, planting the idea that the (fake) king will be condemned to the local people. Then, he waited for the opportunity to commit murder and smuggle goods, and then he made up his face and made up lies to eliminate his suspicions.

Bohes once explained his unique views on writing in an interview[1] (thanks to my friend Ziling William for the translation):

I don't write, I rewrite. My memory produces my (written) sentences. I've read a lot and heard a lot. I'll admit it: I'm repeating myself. I am sure: I am plagiarizing plagiarism. We are all heirs to the millions of scribes who wrote everything that mattered long before us. We are all imitators, and all the stories we create have been told. There is no original idea in the world.

And the reader's (author's) whimsy about the truth of this story is in line with Bohes' point of view:

To write is to read, and to write is to rewrite (re-create).

Note:

1. Invisible Work: Borges and Translation, p.135, Efrain Kristal, Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.
   The original text is as follows:

I do not write, I rewrite. My memory produces my sentences. I have read so much and I have heard so much. I admit it: I repeat myself. I confirm it: I plagiarize. We are all heirs of millions of scribes who have already written down all that is essential a long time before us. We are all copyists, and all the stories we invent have already been told. There are no longer any original ideas.

Originally published at You Si‧Wai Cai on August 31, 2014.