There is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe

Borges- The Aleph

This section was incredible. I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm guessing that The Aleph was put out as a collection of short stories far before it was compiled into this bigger collection. It seems as though these short stories must certainly have been written within a few years of each other or at least in the same decade or period for Borges. The obvious or underlying theme of each one has something to do with infinity, circular time, duality(of all sorts), mazes, mirrors, perception, the universe, the land, dreams, religion, the meaning of God. Some stories have even more specific ties- tigers are important symbols in both The Zahir and The Writing of the God. While in The Zahir, the tiger is said to have been the zahir and one point and caused men to "forget the universe." In The Writing of God, the mystery of the universe, of God, is written in the tiger's spots. The tiger can both torment a man's soul and lead him to God. He ends The Zahir, "perhaps behind the coin (the zahir) is God."

I also noticed that the number 14 was mentioned in at least two of the stories, and when it was, was synonymous with infinity. I tried to research this but came up empty-handed. It seems that this is another one of Borges constructions.

Other themes or points

• the transformation of man... the idea that there is one exact moment in a man's life that tells him who he is.

• everything is everything else and one in the same, and nothing at all:

"There are an infinite number of things upon the earth; any one of them can be compared to any other." (240)

"The house is as big as the world- or rather, it is the world."(221)

"I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world- which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not."(191)

• Aristotle vs. Plato

• memory and forgetting

• Qu'ran's two faces(duality)

• tigers are also part of Deutsches Requiem and Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth

• labyrinths

• blurred lines between life and death and dreams and the relationship of each to the other

• identity

• what God can and cannot do

• destiny, reincarnation, existence