Immortal by Borges - analysis

Jorge Luis Borges published The Immortal in 1947. A short story that has timeless principles and thought-provoking concepts. In the story, we follow the adventure of a man on a mission to find the legendary city of the Immortals, whose inhabitants never die.

This begins as a worthy mission especially because the idea of immortality is very fascinating and attractive to a mortal human. It turns into a hero’s journey with many obstacles, failures, and realizations along the way.

Below are some short notes/interpretation - you can read the full original short story here.

• Though mortal, we often live as if we were immortal—constantly postponing things until “tomorrow”. Instead, we should act with greater urgency, keeping our mortality deeply in mind.

• Everything is a discovery, not an invention. There is always something, and then something else - this applies to all levels of analyssis. All knowledge is remembrance (see Platonic epistemology)

• “I think the task of finding it was enough for me” — this highlights the importance of the process, the journey. We should solely focus on the journey and disengage from results. This is all there is to life. We find out things, discover new things through exploration without any end result in mind. Suffering is an essential part of the process.

• “I discovered afterward that the width and height of the treads on the staircases were not constant; it was this that explained the extraordinary weariness I felt.) *This palace is the work of the gods, *was my first thought. I explored the uninhabited spaces, and I corrected myself: *The gods that built this place have died. *Then I reflected upon its peculiarities, and told myself: The gods that built this place were mad.”

  • 3 phases of understanding

    1. You marvel (i.e., this place is the work of the gods)

    2. You start realizing the truth and its imperfections (the gods have died)

    3. You delve deeper and see the truth and don’t want to look at it (the gods were mad)

• “The impression of great antiquity was joined by others: the impression of endlessness, the sensation of oppressiveness and horror, the sensation of complex irrationality. I had made my way through a dark maze, but it was the bright City of the Immortals that terrified and repelled me. A maze is a house built purposely to confuse men; its architecture, prodigal in symmetries, is made to serve that purpose. In the palace that I imperfectly explored, the architecture had no purpose.”

  • Immortality gives a sense of suffocation—like being in a desert, where vast emptiness creates an overwhelming feeling of confinement and void

  • What’s inexplicable and has no purpose is very scary to us. We always want to know “why”

  • The maze is a representation of struggles in life. You keep trying until you get out of it, and then you find out there is another maze yet again, and you continue this process indefinitely. To go beyond you need to go through

• “I recalled that it is generally believed among the Ethiopians that monkeys deliberately do not speak, so that they will not be forced to work; I attributed Argos’ silence to distrust or fear.”

  • Like monkeys, humans sometimes pretend ignorance to avoid work and responsibility

• When you’re connected with yourself and the world, you realize there is no routine, no boredom. Everything you do is always new; a new experience by its very nature.

• “But those lapses were extremely rare; all Immortals were capable of perfect quietude. I recall one whom I never saw standing — a bird had made its nest on his breast.”

  • The immortals exhibit a complete absence of desire to alter their circumstances or take action. This is their quintessential quietude—a state of total acceptance of their current condition.

• “It may be summarized in these words: There is a river whose waters give immortality; somewhere there must be another river whose waters take it away.”

  This illustrates the duality inherent in everything (yin and yang): if something gives, something must take; if black exists, white must exist. For anything to have meaning, its opposite must exist—without contrast, nothing would be identifiable. The very existence of opposites gives things their meaning.