Sunday, December 21, 2008

Borges: Those... that from a long way off look like flies

Because I am always organizing and reorganizing and certain that once the files are filed and the desk is clean, productivity will follow, when what I really need is a classification strategy, like Jose Luis Borges':

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

full text of Borges' piece

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