The Aleph

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1945

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Perception and Reality

The two epigraphs at the start of “The Aleph” introduce the confounding nature of perception. Hamlet claims that even if bound in the most extreme confines, he might consider the space to be infinite should he choose to think of it that way. The second quotation expresses the limits of the perception of time, with the present being so elusive that to grasp it would be to behold eternity. Both time and space seem infinite, yet time is only the present moment, and space is only what is immediately in front of one.

After Beatriz’s death, Borges says, “I realized that the vast unceasing universe was already growing away from her, and that this change was but the first in an infinite series” (118). The narrator’s fixation on the infinite highlights the tragedy of death as the scale of time and space overshadows all lives. Borges’s annual visit to Beatriz’s house is his attempt to repress this reality, an act he performs “without hope, but also without humiliation” (118).

When presented with the idea of the Aleph, Borges replies, “I was amazed that I hadn’t realized until that moment that Carlos Viterbo was a madman” (127). His doubt is shattered, however, by his experience with the Aleph. Afterward, he claims, “Out in the street, on the steps of the Constitucion Station, in the subway, all the faces seemed familiar. I feared there was nothing that had the power to surprise or astonish me anymore” (131). Yet having claimed his “sense of infinite veneration, infinite pity” (131), Borges unexpectedly denies its power, choosing instead revenge against his romantic rival. He chooses perception over reality.

Borges likewise remarks on the fallibility of memory, a phenomenon that exemplifies the limits of perception—by distorting and ultimately losing impressions of the past, it opposes the reality of infinity. He ends the story by stating, “I myself am distorting and losing, through the tragic erosion of years, the features of Beatriz” (133). Despite its ability to show all of space at once, the Aleph has no power over time. The past recedes ever further away until it is completely forgotten.

Literature and Representation

Recalling his discovery of the Aleph in his youth, Argentino notes, “The child could not understand that he was given that privilege so that the man might carve out a poem!” (127). In the initial discussion with Borges, he divulges the shallow intent that will mark his character throughout the story. The readings and, notably, the annotations that follow show Argentino’s ambition. The poet regards one passage as being, “A stanza from every point of view […] The first line wins the kudos of the learned, the academician, the Hellenist […] The second moves from Homer to Hesiod” (121). Borges, a writer himself, is quick to pick up on the designs of Argentino as he patiently listens, stating, “I realized that the poet’s work had lain not in the poetry but in the invention of reasons for accounting the poetry admirable” (122). The poet employed vapid allusion and ostentatious imagery as he worked backward from the desired praise of critics and academics.

Borges understands Argentino before hearing a word of his work. As is typical of Borges’s narration, he expresses this in a succinct way that reveals much about his own character. In that same initial discussion, Argentino hints at his secret muse. He lists the various technological advances that have rendered travel useless such as the radio and telephone—but certainly the Aleph had no small part in inspiring this opinion. Borges says, “So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature” (120).

Argentino’s pretentious claims and Borges’s disillusion combine to make for an ironic end when Argentino’s success is revealed. This surprise carries a touch of humor, given the persistently negative characterization of the poet, and it reveals the author’s sentiments about the literary establishment. In the early 1940s, enthusiasm for fascism swept through Argentina, its population yearning for the sense of order promised by dictators Hitler and Mussolini in Europe. Borges’s anti-fascist stance put him at odds with the National Commission for Culture, which derided his work as being too “English.” And while the local literary community defended Borges, the author’s contempt for organizations like the NCC is made clear in “The Aleph.”

Space and Time

Borges’s description of what he sees in the Aleph is the climax of the story, what the narrator calls the “ineffable center of my tale” (129). Preceded by a humble admission that no writer could communicate what he witnessed, Borges states, “What my eyes saw was simultaneous, what I shall write is successive” (129). In the passage that follows, Borges describes as wide an array of wonders as possible by listing the most foreign imaginary objects alongside objects made familiar by the narrative. By the end, the reader has glimpsed the outer expanses of the universe and viewed the circulation of the author’s “dark blood” in such a short passage that the experience supports the illusion of the visions occurring simultaneously.

The author’s exploration of space and time attempts to conceptualize both. Just as the two are implicitly entwined, his story interweaves the breadth of infinity, made manifest by the Aleph, with the sublime expanse of eternity, juxtaposed against, and therefore defined by, the death of Beatriz. While the Aleph reveals all of space, it reveals it only in the present moment. As events fade into the past, they no longer exist in the Aleph but only in the memory of the viewer. The Aleph overcomes special distance but not temporal distance. It does not allow Borges to do what he wants most, which is to recover Beatriz. Its effect is the opposite. By showing her letters to her cousin and then her corpse, the Aleph makes the Beatriz of Borges’s memory less real and less accessible. The story suggests that time is an inexorable force, and rather than empowering Borges, the Aleph only shows more comprehensively that his fear will come true: Time will eventually erase all traces of Beatriz.