Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius/Archive 2

A request
I'd like to feature this article on the main page, but the lead section needs to be rewritten. It utterly fails to convey what the novel is about (remember - a general description is not a spoiler), or why it is important. &rarr;Raul654 22:19, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * It's not a novel, it's a short story. Any explanation is a bit of a spoiler, since the twists begin barely a page into this rather short story, but I've taken a shot at it. Tell me what you think. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:00, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

Uqbar a real place?
The following was recently anonymously added to the article. Because it is anonymous, with a dubious citation, and because this topic is so subject to hoaxes, I do not feel it can stay there without better citation. If it's true, it's fascinating, and with clear citation something about this would be very welcome. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:54, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)


 * In the story, Borges mentions a few real geographical places near Uqbar, before going on about the unreal ones. In the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, published a few years ago, s.v. Al-Uqbari (spelt "al-ukbari" in their system), is a reference to the home of the Muslim religious scholar al-Uqbari, namely, according to the encyclopedia, Uqbara ('q.v.'), located in northern Mesopotamia somewhere. However, despite the "q.v." reference to it, this place is not actually listed in the encyclopedia! (Moreover, it is a little odd that the name of the place should have a final -a. This definitely calls for further research into Arabic literary encyclopedias.) There is, however, a reference to another completely historical place, called, exactly, Uqbar, in the mountains of North Africa. It does not seem to have anything to do with Uqbara, though the name Tlön sounds vaguely like a Berber word. Borges undoubtedly had access to the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam (1913-1936) which probably should be checked. (The above information is cited from memory. It is recent memory--a few days ago--but it should be checked for precision.)

I tried to do it, but it got deleted by you or someone else. Sorry. I'll write an academic article on it or something.--Chris B

I think this may be correct; a place called `Uqbara on the Tigris is mentioned in this PDF paper. - Mustafaa 04:20, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * So does anyone have page 249 handy? (The Leiden edition, of course- who knows how the others may vary). Mark1 05:20, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Chris emailed me the following much more thorough set of remarks.


 * Although it has been believed that Uqbar is purely an imaginary invention of Borges, it is a real place--actually, two real places. He has deliberately merged two distinct historical places and their real histories and geography into a single mythical one. In the story, Borges mentions three real geographical places (Khorasan, Armenia, Erzerum) in what are now eastern Turkey (Erzerum and Armenia) and northern Iran (Khorasan). In the story, the rivers of Uqbar rise in the mountains (he doesn't say so, but they seem to be in 'the north'); these real mountainous regions are where not one but two Zâb Rivers rise, the Great Zâb and the Lesser Zâb; they run a couple of hundred miles south into the Tigris. On the left bank of the Tigris between Samarra and Baghdad was the city of &#145;Ukbarâ, from which came the great BLIND Islamic grammarian, philologist, and religious scholar Al-&#145;Ukbarî (ca. 1143-1219), who is the author of some 60 works, many of them recently reprinted. Although the Encyclopaedia of Islam editors neglected to include an article on &#145;Ukbarâ (which they list with a &#145;q.v.&#146;), a quick examination of some standard Arabic geographical references found that most of them include it. The earliest, and by far the most fascinating for anyone (it must have been especially so for Borges) is the famous early geography of Ibn Khordâdhbeh, which the translator gives the name, several times, spelled &#145;Okbarâ, and locates it between Samarra and Baghdad on the Tigris. Source: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. VI &#145;Mahk-Mid&#146; (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), pp. 790b-791a on Al-&#145;Ukbarî; Ibn Khordâdhbeh, edited and translated into French by M.M. de Goeje (Leiden: E.J. Brill 1889, in their series Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum) on the place &#145;Ukbarâ.
 * ''2. &#145;Uqbâr. The Fatimid ruler Ismâ&#145;îl al-Mansûr (d. 953), who pursued his Kharijite (or Ibâdhi) enemy into &#147;the massif of &#145;Uk.bâr [dot under the k, = q in normal (non-Brill) Arabic transcription systems] the Djabal Ma&#145;âdid&#148; (popularly spelled &#145;Maadid&#146;), which is in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, in the area where the following local dynasty had its citadel, the present ruin of Qal&#145;a Bani Hammad, a famous archaeological site that was excavated by the French early in the 20th century. The account of Ismâ&#145;îl al-Mansûr mentions his continued operations in the area of &#145;Uqbâr until he &#147;pacified the Zâb,&#148; the &#147;fastnesses&#148; (mountains) of which are mentioned several times in the account. Main source: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. X &#145;T-U&#146; (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000), page 435a. Borges may have found the references in any number of places, one of the most likely being accounts of the excavations, of the Kharijites, and of the Ibadhis (said to be their descendants, but who claim they are falsely accused), who live in what is today called the M&#146;zab, in the Pentapolis (five cities), the minarets of which look like obelisks with flattened tops. (The M&#146;zab is evidently a valley with wadis [dry river courses] and oases running south from the mountains, but the geographical details should be checked by somebody. If so, it would be yet another example of the mirroring Borges refers to in the story &#151;two real places, with the same geographical layout and the same [well, close] names, a continent apart &#151;and shows again Borges&#146;'s brilliant ability to transform incredibly arcane genuine historical and geographical details into a new fictional reality.) Tlön sounds like a Berber word, and might even be one (somebody should check it). The famous historical city of Tlemcen is in Algeria, and there are probably no other languages anywhere in the Middle East (and few in the world) that allow the unusual consonant cluster tl- at the beginning of a word (though Maghrebian Arabic might too), and there are also several well-known places in the area that begin with the equally rare cluster ml-. The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam (1913-1936) does not seem to have any references to any of these places, people, etc., so Borges got his arcane information from arcane &#151;but mostly real &#151;sources. One of his other references to a place in the area is Tsai Khaldun. Whatever the Tsai is from is unclear to me, but the Khaldun is undoubtedly a tribute to the great, very famous historian Ibn Khaldûn, who lived in Andalusia for awhile; his history focuses on North Africa and was probably a major source for Borges.''

Chris: have you seen Brill 1889 yourself? If not, what exactly have you seen? The reason I'm asking is that this would be such a possible topic for a hoax: the key is going to be to pin down a reference that can't be a post-Borges forgery.

Is there someone who is a more established editor who has access to Brill 1889? If this is real, then of course the bulk of this belongs in the article, but with all due respect, I am extremely suspicious on this, because I have seen so many Uqbar-related forgeries, including even by respectable academics. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:17, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I checked Brill 1889 (Ibn Khordadhbeh) in the library here, myself. I also have a copy (the complete set of BGA) back home. I have used it before, and I have translated parts of it from Arabic and cited them in my research publications (for example, my 1984 article 'The Plan of the City of Peace', on Central Asian Iranian influences on the design of the 'round city' at Baghdad in the eighth century, published in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, if you want to know; long before I ever read the Borges story, or I would've paid more attention back then). It is a very famous, very important work, and the edition (a serious critical edition, with apparatus criticus) is rock-solid (as was its great editor and translator, De Goeje), and was and is very widely cited in Islamic studies. There is no possibility of a hoax or forgery in this case, or in the case of Slane's translation of Ibn Khaldun. If there is anyone more famous than DeGoeje among early Arabists, it is probably Slane, whose dictionary of Koranic Arabic is still the 'Bible' for Islamicists. Borges may be a great writer, but no, he did not influence these works or their editors or translators, or their publishers (Brill, which celebrated its 300th aniversary a couple of decades ago? I don't think so...), who would get positively snotty if you ever suggested such a thing. (I knew the former Islamic studies editor at Brill, who recently retired after several decades of work and of service to the field of Islamic studies.) I should also mention that no one would be likely to notice, or to put the above two things together; certainly there is no link between them in the E.I. I found them only because of the many excellent indices that Brill has put out for the E.I. (also available on CD ROM for a tidy sum and more easily searchable; I only wish I could afford it). Sorry I posted a vague note first and got your suspicions up. What I would really like to see is Slane's translation of Ibn Khaldun; I wonder what other good stuff is in there that Borges might have borrowed. And a good Berber dictionary would be great too. The E.I. article cites Khatib al-Baghdadi's history of Baghdad too (a fascinating work), and they have it in the libarary at my university here, but it's a different edition and has No Index (I checked); no way I'm going to waste time trying to find anything in an Arabic text by scanning it! (Btw, I looked at the story again and noticed that Borges does not explicitly say the mountains are in the North, though it is pretty clear that they should be based on the rest of his description of Uqbar, so I fixed my text above.) Anyway, I think this little bit of mirrored beauty is just another reflection of Borges's genius. -- Chris B (I don't know how to put my user name [Cibeckwith] here; I thought the system did it by itself, but it doesn't look like it.)


 * Folks, judging by the above, I will presume that our initially anonymous contributor is Christopher Beckwith of Indiana University, that he knows a lot more about this than I do, that he is almost certainly right, and that, while I suppose this qualifies as original research and he should definitely publish this appropriately in an academic journal, the citations are all presumably fine and we'd be really silly not to put it in the article. Sorry for doubting you, Chris; I'm sure you understand why with the initial vague citations and an anonymous contributor on a much-hoaxed topic I was not ready to believe this. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:30, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * I have created a separate article on Uqbar, and put most of this material there; I've then added a new section &mdash; Real and fictional places&mdash; to the present (already rather long) article, summarized and referenced Uqbar there, and also added some other content including the above remark about the name Tlön. I've edited everything for Wikipedia style (although someone else will need to sort out any issues of Wikipedia-standard transliteration of Arabic).


 * Here's what I didn't get in there; some of this is strictly talk-page stuff, suggestive of possible future work but not encyclopedic in themselves; some of this may belong in some other article and, who knows, some of it may belong here but I just didn't see how to integrate it smoothly:


 * The M&#146;zab is evidently a valley with wadis [dry river courses] and oases running south from the mountains, but the geographical details should be checked by somebody. If so, it would be yet another example of the mirroring Borges refers to in the story &#151;two real places, with the same geographical layout and the same [well, close] names, a continent apart &#151;and shows again Borges&#146;'s brilliant ability to transform incredibly arcane genuine historical and geographical details into a new fictional reality.
 * Somebody should check whether Tlön actually is a Berber word
 * There are probably no other languages anywhere in the Middle East (and few in the world) that allow the unusual consonant cluster tl- at the beginning of a word (though Maghrebian Arabic might too).
 * Whatever the Tsai (in Tsai Khaldun) is from is unclear...
 * Also, User:Cibeckwith followed my posting of his email with some interesting remarks (above), but again, I think these are strictly talk page stuff.

Please, everyone (Chris especially), check my work, make sure that this has been handled appropriately, I hope this has been done to everyone's satisfaction. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:41, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Check this out: the aforementioned town of Ukbara was indeed a birthplace of heresiarchs, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906! ( supplies more details.) I think this has to be the source. - Mustafaa 00:07, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Is it unreasonable to note that one of these two heresiarchs, Mishawayh al-Ukbari, followed the principle that "all coins are counterfeit, so one might as well use the one at hand"? - Mustafaa 01:52, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tsai Khaldun
In the body of the article, you say that Tsai Khaldun is an obvious homage to ibn Khaldun, the historian, and maybe it is.

However, "tsai" is a Chinese (Cantonese?) word meaning "leafy green vegetables" and "khaldun" is Mongolian for "mountain". Could it mean "cabbage mountain"?

The Gernsback Continuum
I see no relevance in the recent addition of a mention of The Gernsback Continuum to the article. Unless someone can make a case for why it belongs here, I intend to delete it. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:29, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Precisely who is sticking out his tongue?
Recent addition to the article: "Andrew Hurley, one of Borges's translators, notes that a Spanish speaker would pronounce the last two words of this sentence in roughly the same way as an English reader would 'a ha ha ha mleurgh' — the sound of the author laughing and sticking his tongue out at the reader." While this sounds plausible enough, there is no citation, and it is MKVF's first contribution to the Wikipedia. Does someone have a citation? If not, I am going to delete this from the article as unverifiable. I'd be more than glad to have it there with a citation. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:45, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Close but not quite a cigar is this: . Quote: "Unassuming, mute, the words on the page do not, despite some mad author's fevered dream after a night of wine and oysters, mix and mingle when the book is closed, do not rearrange themselves into unreadable and untranslatable lines such as O time thy pyramids or axaxaxas mlö (which can only be pronounced as the author's cruel, mocking laughter) that the translator must translate in the morning. &mdash;Andrew Hurley, The Zahir and I"(Emphasis mine.) Note that this particular quote only has an off-hand mention, is in a specially-prepared story and does not mention any sort of taste organ (three reasons why it's not very suitable for the article), but this does make it reasonable that Hurley made a more extensive quote elsewhere &mdash; presumably not online. JRM 14:22, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)
 * Given that Hurley is a significant translator of Borges, I think this is citable, and will rewrite accordingly. If anyone has a better citation, they can improve it. I suspect, though, that the brand-new contributor paraphrased without saying so. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:32, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

New lead section?
Two reasons: A) The spoiler warning doesn't look nice (and I think lead sections shouldn't feature spoilers to begin with) & B) There is some needless repetition in the current version.

A possible alternative:


 * "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a short story by the 20th century Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published (in Spanish) in the Argentine journal Sur, May 1940. The "postscript" dated 1947 is intended to be anachronistic, set seven years in the future. The first English-language translation of the story was published in 1961.


 * In the story, an encyclopedia article about a mysterious country called Uqbar is the first indication of Orbis Tertius, a massive conspiracy of intellectuals to imagine (and thereby create) a world: Tlön. Relatively long for Borges (approximately 5600 words), the story is a work of speculative fiction with certain characteristics of magical realism. One of the major themes of "Tlön, Uqbar..." is that ideas ultimately manifest themselves in the physical world and the story is generally viewed as a parabolic discussion of Berkeleian idealism &mdash; and to some degree as a protest against totalitarianism.


 * "Tlön, Uqbar..." has the structure of a detective fiction set in a world going mad. Although the story is quite short, it makes allusions to many leading intellectual figures both in Argentina and in the world at large, and takes up a number of themes more typical of a novel of ideas. Most of the ideas engaged are in the areas of language, epistemology, and literary criticism.

If no-one objects, I'll change the lead section in a few days. Kea 18:50, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I've rejuggled the spoiler material. What you are suggesting here sounds fine to me, go for it. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:02, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

False document?
Why is false document listed in the "see also" section? The work is certainly not an example of a false document: a postscript set seven years in the future at the time of its publication would have prevented anyone for mistaking it for real. It seems no more a false document than any other fictional story with a first person narrator. If someone can justify why this should be linked to, let's try to get it into the article, because the relevance is not self-explanatory. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:27, August 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd guess (I didn't add it) that it was a reference to the encyclopedia. Mark1 05:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The fact that Borges narrates the story as a "fictive version of himself" is what led me to refer to the "false document" article. I didn't necessarily mean that the story is an example of a false document, so much as it uses the technique to a certain extent. The more fantastical elements of the story might certainly lead a reader to disbelief, but throughout it, Borges is only repeating what he has supposedly read in the encyclopedia and elsewhere. He purports none of what he's read to be true, apart from the incident of the strangely heavy cone, which he claims to have witnessed firsthand. I can imagine, if the story were presented under the right circumstances, that an unwary reader would find themselves tricked into thinking that erroneous copies of Volume XLVI of the Anglo American Encyclopedia really did exist somewhere. I could be way off base here, and I'm open to having my edit reverted, but I feel that it's still valid to reference "false documents"--it's certainly not completely irrelevant, and definitely directly related to "Nihilartikels." Mumblingmynah 12:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Certainly not when it was published, with a postscript dated 7 years in the future. And, you know, the funniest part of this is that many critics have presumed, incorrectly, that the Anglo American Encyclopedia is, itself a fiction! Anyway, I'm see if I can work both of these terms into the article itself, rather than dangling of the end in a "see also" section. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:13, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Misunderstanding Berkeley
Berkeley did not "deny the reality of the world." He merely asserted that an object, as it appears, loses its appearance when it is no longer appearing to an observer. 152.163.100.11 17:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)Bruce Partington
 * Would "deny the persistent reality of the world" be better? Factitious 04:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * It is not a question of how long reality lasts, whether for a short or long time. The problem refers to the line in the article in which the people of Tlön are said to "hold an extreme form of Berkeleian idealism, denying the reality of the world." Berkeley did not deny the reality of the world. He claimed that what we call "reality" is simply the experience of distinct, orderly ideas or mental pictures in the mind. The ideas of real things derive from the basic data of sensations, such as sight, feeling, etc.. This is in contrast to ideas of imaginary things, such as dreams or hallucinations, in which the images are not as distinct and orderly. According to Berkeley, we can directly know only our sensations and mental ideas. We cannot know, without the mediation of our mind, anything external to our mind. Borges seemed to assume that Berkeley said that there is no external reality. Berkeley only claimed that we can't directly know any external reality. We can only immediately know sensations and mental ideational images. This is only a matter of what we can know. His book is titled The Principles of Human Knowledge.
 * 205.188.116.12 13:48, 15 September 2005 (UTC)Bruce Partington
 * Remember, this is not an article about Berkeley, it is an article about a story by Borges. Most important is to describe how Borges interpreted Berkeley, not whether Borges understood him correctly. Subordinate to that, we could discuss (in moderation) whether Borges may have misinterpreted Berkeley, but it shouldn't take over the article, and it should have citation besides just citing Berkeley: it's pretty presumptuous to say "I've read this myself, and I know I understand it correctly and Borges got it wrong."
 * Here is the relevant passage from "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in the Irby translation, probably not the best, but I have it handy.


 * Hume noted for all time that Berkeley's arguments did not admit the slightest refutation nor did they cause the slightest conviction. This dictum is entirely correct in its application to the earth, but entirely false in Tlön. The nations of this planet are congenitally idealist. Their language and the derivations of their language - religion, letters, metaphysics - all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is successive and temporal, not spatial. There are no nouns in Tlön's conjectural Ursprache, from which the "present" languages and the dialects are derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value. For example: there is no word corresponding to the word "moon,", but there is a verb which in English would be "to moon" or "to moonate." "The moon rose above the river" is hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo, or literally: "upward behind the onstreaming it mooned."


 * As you can easily see, Borges is attributing to Berkeley an idealism without the qualification you want to argue belongs in the picture. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * My comments were about the Tlön article. In the section "Summary of the Story," seventh paragraph, it states that idealists "deny the reality of the world." Also, in the "Philosophical Themes" section, third paragraph, it is claimed that the Tlönian view "denies the existence of any underlying reality." Now, Borges associates idealism with Berkeley. The idealists of Tlön can't understand the anecdote of the nine copper coins. That is, they don't comprehend how the lost coins continued to exist as real objects until they were found. However, Berkeley's idealism pertained only to knowledge of objects or things as being ideas or images in someone's mind. When the coins were lost, they were no longer perceived by anyone. This has nothing to do with the coins as something other than mental representations. What the coins were and their state or condition other than as ideas in someone's mind would be nothing to a Berkeleian idealist. It is this sense that I contend that both Borges and the Wikipedian article's author have misunderstood Berkeley.


 * 152.163.100.11 15:19, 16 September 2005 (UTC)Bruce Partington


 * It is clear that in the story itself (which I hope you have read; in any event, see the passage I quoted above) Borges ties the Tlönian view to Berkeley. The passage in the article says that they "hold an extreme form of Berkeleian idealism, denying the reality of the world" (emphasis mine, not in article). If you feel this could be better worded, feel free to suggest something. The article is not saying that Berkeley denied the reality of the world (although it does say&mdash;accurately, I believe&mdash;that Immanuel Kant interpreted Berkeley that way, so apparently educated people may disagree on that matter). In any event, the article must make clear that Borges explicitly discusses Berkeleian idealism (not, say, Platonic idealism), and that it is the ground he gives for the Tlönians philosophy, which is, after all, his own fictional construct. If you think this calls for more than just the word "extreme", or perhaps an allusion to "Berkeleian idealism as understood by Kant" or some such, I'm open to possibilities, as long as they don't falsify the matter. Again, the article is about Borges's story, not about your or my philosophical views or even our understandings of Berkeley. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Schopenhauer
Borges mentions Schopenhauer many times in his fables, especially in A New Refutation of Time. However, in Tlön, etc., his reference to that philosopher seems to have been irresponsibly fabricated. He wrote that Schopenhauer "...formulates a very similar doctrine in the first volume of Parerga and Paralipomena." This doctrine of "pantheistic idealism" is that there is only one subject and that this one subject is every being in the universe. I have searched this volume and can find no such doctrine. On the contrary, Schopenhauer asserted that each individual observing animal is a unique subject, having its own point of view of the objects that it experiences. 152.163.100.11 12:22, 16 September 2005 (UTC)Toby Shandy
 * I've integrated your remark into the article. I've never read the Parerga, so this one got by me. Yet another little twist between fact and fiction in the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:02, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Supposed cabalist
Cut from article "Boris Baruq Nolt – non-fictional, caballist referenced by his anagrammatic name in the title of the story." This was cited only with a blind URL: http://remi.schulz.club.fr/perec/secret2.htm. Someone had commented in an HTML comment, "I can find no references to this alleged person that are not linked directly to this story. Is there some independent confirmation that such a person ever existed or is this just a prank? This linked article merely refers to an "imaginary" Bulletin that alludes to Borges's story." Exactly. This is almost certain a (dry) joke. I would need to see a much better citation before I'd agree that this belongs in this (featured) article. - Jmabel | Talk 03:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Pinkville 13:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Alastair Reid, Alastair Reed, Alistair Reed?
A minor quibble: how exactly is this man's name spelt? In my book of Borges poems he is listed as a translator with the first spelling; the Wikipedia article gives it likewise. However, on this page both of the other spellings are used. As there is obviously a contradiction on the page (or the remarkable coincidence of three such similarly-named men who are all Borges scholars), I wish to fix it. I simply ask first whether there is some other Reed of whom I am ignorant. Adso de Fimnu 02:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty certain it should be "Alastair Reid". That's what my copy of Borges: A Reader says. - Jmabel | Talk 01:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Library of Congress Names Authorities agrees, s.v. "Reid, Alastair, 1926-". Pinkville 02:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Tlön language and Old Norse
Just an idle observation:
 * In another language of Tlön, "the basic unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective," which, in combinations of two or more, are noun-forming: "moon" becomes "airy-clear over dark-round" or "orange-faint-of-sky."
 * That [use of adjectives as the major part of speech] resembles some Old Norse kennings, don't you think? I doubt that has a place in the article, but it's an interesting thought. -- Beobach972 02:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Borges read Old English, and I believe Old Norse... Interesting. Pinkville 03:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Translation link
The one in the article seems dead - here's one which works but I don't know if it's the same translation. Haukur 11:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

New Sounds of Uqbar "sounds like chopin played badly"
I found this sound in another region of Tlön (Urkh, Jectbus u Klang). I think it can be interesting to hear how music sounds, when when it's subjectivity is detracted (c.f. language). Mr. Bogres (Urkh, 1957) took a well known, subject-based, piece of music ("Raindrop"-Prelude Chopin op. 28 no. 15 Db-Major) and demonstrated this process.

Bernhard Schleiser, Hamburg - Germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.144.61.175 (talk) 05:42, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Today I reinserted the link to the "subject-retracted" version of the Chopin-Prelude. Waiting for discussion: Bernhard Schleiser —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.144.65.151 (talk) 10:56, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * See External links for our policy on external links. I still see no relevance for this item. Except for the title of the musical piece, which is a reference to Borges, I see no connection with the story this article is about. Other editors, please speak up if you have an opinion on including this link. EdJohnston (talk) 16:52, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I can see adding the link, with context, to the article section titled Inspiration for real world projects, though it's of borderline notability at best. I don't see it as appropriate to External links. Pinkville (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response. Do you have any suggestions as to how we should check out its notability? Ask for third-party sources commenting on the music? EdJohnston (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I have deleted it per WP:EL. (If we'd let any kid make an MP3 on his computer, name it after something famous, and post it on the related Wikipedia article – we'd be inundated.) The first step criterion for notability is that the author of a derivative/inspired work should be notable enough to have his own Wikipedia article first (and survive an AFD). And that's just the first step: if Bart Simpson tagged "Tlön" on his school, that would surely warrant an explanation at the Simpson's episode article (encyclopedic annotation of a reference), but not a converse mention of the Simpsons episode in the Tlön article (trivia). &mdash; Komusou talk @ 20:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Pinkville (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm really astonished about your reaction! What is the link to this piece of music? Let us call it an poetic experiment about the relation between fiction and reality (c.f. Borges). It is a similar thing with the relation between "hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö", "Upward behind the onstreaming it mooned" and "             " (insert the rising moon - as external link? would this link be excepted?). I think it wouldn't be so bad for Borges, Tlön, Wikipedia and also Bart Simpson himself (!?) if Bart Simpson would "tag(ged) "Tlön" on his school". The way how the relation between fiction and reality is handled is the way how men are acting with themself and their world. I'm sure that this is one of the lessons of the reading of Borges. So: What is to be done? - Bernhard Schleiser  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.144.87.134 (talk) 07:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Numbers
"Borges also mentions in passing the duodecimal system (as well as others), but never elaborates on the fact that this is inherently a refutation of the changeability of things due to nomenclature - a number may be renamed under a different counting schema, but the underlying value will always remain the same."

Would the same value expressed through different numbers not simply make the value a hrön? An entity called into existence through a (possibly misunderstood, hence the shift in counting systems becomes possible) belief in its existence or the shadow of the memory of its existence? As per Borges,

"... la operación de contar modifica las cantidades y las convierte de indefinidas en definidas. El hecho de que varios individuos que cuentan una misma cantidad logran un resultado igual, es para los psicólogos un ejemplo de asociación de ideas o de buen ejercicio de la memoria."

Thus, to a Tlönite, decimal 12 and duodecimal 10 are not really the same; one (ultimately both) only exists because it is expected or willed to exist. Their consequences (as far as "consequences" exist on Tlön) are the same; the same entity they are not. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Speculation on the origin of Tlön is unsourced
The section Tlön%2C Uqbar%2C Orbis Tertius now suggests that Tlön could have come from a Polish word. I'd argue that this speculation, as well as the Berber one, should be removed, since no published source has offered this connection. WP:NOR. EdJohnston (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * "When Borges writes "The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth or even an approximation to it: they are after a kind of amazement. They consider metaphysics a branch of fantastic literature,"[12] he can be seen either as anticipating the extreme relativism that underlies some postmodernism or simply as taking a swipe at those who take metaphysics too seriously."

Would it be worth noting that this is probably actually Borges's own position? I recall in one essay he claims a superior bestiary to his Book of Imaginary Beings would be one composed of theological speculations - the triune Christian god, etc. --Gwern (contribs) 19:05 17 June 2008 (GMT)

Mark Rosenfelder
Per this edit, someone linked to a fictional world created by Mark Rosenfelder. Such a world is properly treated in Rosenfelder's own article, but there is no reliable source provided to show any connection to Borges. (Per WP:SYN, It's not appropriate for us to be the first to draw a connection between these two authors). I suggest that this reference doesn't belong here. EdJohnston (talk) 23:58, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Remove it if you want, but it's nice to know that such a project - an encyclopedia of a fictional world - was attempted by someone. Neko85 (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There are more interesting such attempts which we list, like the Codex. --Gwern (contribs) 19:36 21 September 2008 (GMT)

License
What is the license and copyright of the work? Aren't the links to the full online text violating Wikipedia rules? If not, should someone move it to Wikisource? 91.132.141.80 (talk) 15:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, copyvios, thanks for pointing that out. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Spread of "hrönir" as metaphor for advance of totalitarianism in '40s Europe

 * 'In the epilogue set in 1947, Earth is in the process of becoming Tlön. The fictional Borges is appalled by this turn of events, an element in the story that critics Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Alastair Reid[8] argue is to be read as a metaphor for the totalitarianism already sweeping across Europe at the time of the story's writing. Their remark seems only a small extrapolation from a passage toward the end of the story:


 * Ten years ago, any symmetrical system whatsoever which gave the appearance of order — dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism—was enough to fascinate men. Why not fall under the spell of Tlön and submit to the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet? Useless to reply that reality, too is ordered."'

"Only a small extrapolation"---this is poorly phrased. Does it mean that it's not a stretch from the Borges quote to the conclusion that he's talking about the spread of totalitarianism? Or that it is a stretch---a major point drawn from small evidence? I'd argue the former, that it's a major point of the story, quite in keeping with Borges' political views and with contemporary philosophical takes on totalitarianism's Big Lie: such ideologies, to stay alive, must constantly reinforce their adherents' beliefs in imaginary enemies, internal and external, that justify the subjugation or even denial of the individual. For example, Borges here anticipates Nineteen Eighty-Four's "doublethink." Gribbles (talk) 17:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

tlon, uqbar and orbis tertius ARE real places!!
Under 3.2 "Ubar" is missing. Given its "lost city" element and its pillars, it clearly belongs. Here's the Wikipedia reference to it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubar 97.125.47.242 (talk) 20:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

To hell with wiki guidelines; this way of presenting the idea of that story is completely contradictory to its intent. Is there a better place to do what the Tlonist did with the edition of the Anglo-American Cyclopedia then wiki????? One generation should be enough!! Also, it should be made a principle to put false references in all Borges - related articles. —This unsigned comment was added by 83.131.130.232 (talk • contribs) 17 March 2006.

I wrote this. Look, I had no intention to sound as anthagonistic as this, I see now, certanly sounded; im a great fan of literature by Borges, and have frequently been inspired by this story. But when seeing an article, admittadly generally great and informative, about Tlon, in an encyclopedia, and ironically not seeing a single information in it fabricated, simply irritated me quite a lot. Well, if an article about recursion links to recursion, then at least some false references should exist in an article about Tlon. :D --Aryah 21:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * By this logic, our article about Hitler should kill people. - Jmabel | Talk 04:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * By your logic, our article about Godwin's Law should have annotations by Mike Godwin himself.Brodo 10:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * an article, about Hitler, which kills people is not nearly as appropriate as a story starting with a falsified entry in encyclopedia, where belief in the existance of something makes it real, by an author famous for falsifying references, having at least some similarly false elements. --Aryah 01:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Romantically, i completely agree with you. Practically, i have to point out the slippery slope argument, that the conspiracy theorists will want the rules bent too, as will the religious people, as will the....
 * Sorry ;(
 * (and Jmabel was saying the hypothetical article would literally Kill people!) -Quiddity 03:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

"Bioy Casares had dined with me that night and talked to us at length about a great scheme for writing a novel in the first person, using a narrator who omitted or corrupted what happened and who ran into various contradictions, so that only a handful of readers, a very small handful, would be able to decipher the horrible or banal reality behind the novel."

This passage comes from the opening of the book, and plays no role in the development of the storyline. Spoken by a narrator in a mind boggling fiction by a genius, i couldn't help but be suspicious that this was a hint towards something in the structure of the story itself (separate from the whole tlon mystery going on inside the world of the book).

I've only read the story once, and didn't notice any obvious contradictions in the narrative. Has Borges just driven me mad with paranoia? or did i totally miss what i was keeping an eye out for?


 * I think you're reading this too much as something that might resemble the Illuminati. Note that the passage you've quoted actually reflects the circumstances of the Orbius Tertius conspiracy: a small handful of people having implanted various ersatz "facts", theories and other artefacts in the world that manifest numerous contradictions and increasingly corrupt reality... At the same time, certainly Borges is playfully undermining his own role as objective narrator both within the story and as the author of it. Pinkville 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm with Pinkville here. - Jmabel | Talk 06:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, at one point early in the book I even suspected his friend as being involved in the whole Tlon conspiracy! I, too, recognized how this related to the theme of false images- the whole tlon conspiracy, the egregious atrocity of mirrors and copulation, hahah. Bummer, it would have been crazy cool if there were contradictions in the story itself though... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.81.32 (talk • contribs) 18:34, 20 June 2006


 * I am almost certain that this paragraph is a reference to Bioy Casares' novel, The Invention of Morel. I'll post more in the dicussion page for that novel, but I think there are good reasons to believe that The Invention of Morel fits the description given here, that the conversation reported by Borges at the beginning of Tlön is the trace of real event, and that Borges inserted this reference to the novel of his friend (whom he also called his "secret master") as a tribute. Note that the two stories were both published in 1940. Zardoz37 (talk) 12:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC) zardoz37

Writting articles about writers or their literary works in the style of the works themselves might be welcomed at Uncyclopedia, however, it's not appropiate for this "serious" encyclopedia.--Rataube 18:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Forget about "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog." Now I've read this story, I'll never trust anything I read on PAPER again, either! Damn You Borges! I think I'm evaporating....

Themes, references, figures, etc
Literary: I think the article misses some references to other Borges' tales. I recall a sentence where it's said that all books in Tlon contain a single plot but with all it's possible variations. That's the same idea he develops in "El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan", published in the same volume (Ficciones). The idea of an encyclopedia containing a whole world resembles the "La biblioteca de Babel", where the library contains the whole world too. I think I may be missing many other of the thematic connections with this tale and the others. A section about the tale and the rest of his work would be nice. Anyone wants to try? We should mention the figures of the laberynth, the mirrors and the theme of the infinity too.--Rataube 17:13, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * If you have something citable… - Jmabel | Talk 17:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Also I think is pretty misleading: "In the context of the imagined world of Tlön, Borges describes a school of literary criticism that arbitrarily assumes that two works are by the same person and, based on that, deduces things about the imagined author." The most obvious interpretention is that the Tlonists are challenging the very idea that two books can be written by the same person, since there is no identity between a person and the same person later in time. It's just the same way, the nine coins lost and the 9 coins found later on can't be the same coins. A person is not the same person five minutes later, therefore there are never two things than by the same person, and there are never two books written by the same author. It seems to me more like a continuation of the 9 coins example, a philosophical issue, rather than the questioning of any literary criticism school. Of course the other interpretation is not necessarily wrong, but unless someone explains which school Borges is allegadely describing (Romatic critics maybe? mmm), and who produced that interpretation, it's too loose and I'm not sure it should go in the article.--Rataube 17:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see the "stretch": "La crítica suele inventar autores: elige dos obras disímiles - el Tao Te King y las 1001 Noches, digamos -, las atribuye a un mismo escritor y luego determina con probidad la psicología de ese interesante homme de lettres...": In the Irby translation that I have handy, "The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres..." - Jmabel | Talk 17:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Carrying on from Jmabel, it's not a question of interpreting Borges, the school of literary criticism is that which he describes in the text. This has nothing to do with the Romantics or anything else in our world (as far as this article goes, anyway). Pinkville 17:57, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough or the text was edited since my last comment. I thought it said there was an implied chritic of some kind to a real-world school of chriticism. But since the sentence starts with "In the context of the imagined world of Tlön", I have no objections. Of course, the theme could be read as a challenge to those chritics that focused too much on authors' biographies (the romantics for example), but that's another story.--Rataube 21:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Borges is most surely referring here to psychologism, I should think.

I don't know if this should go here, but "Buenos Aires at this time was more of an intellectual center than it is in the early 21st century" doesn't seem too NPOV to me. Buenos Aires is, in fact, an intellectual and artistic center in Latin America, and widely respected as one throughout the world. It leads in the performing arts, with acts as De la Guarda and world-renowned authors and directors. The University of Buenos Aires is on par with its european counterparts, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The so-called New Argentine Cinema has been the object of critical acclaim in most film festivals. Nevertheless, it's influence is poorly received in english-speaking countries, perhaps because of the linguistic stretch, but hinting at deeper problems in academic and cultural exchange. Eventhough I'm removing the cited sentence, it shows the limitations of NPOV, as it usually is USA-POV. As often, and probably unavoidably, occurs, neutrality is just hidden ethnocentrism.201.250.194.147 06:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Sebastián


 * As a matter of fact, the whole paragraph was so extremely condescending I made significant changes. I'm not sure of them, but at least I think now it's less valorative, even at the cost of making it less "poetic". The prospect that the article could have been written by a porteño frightens me, since it would be much self-pityful and uninformed. I hope it's only condescendence.201.250.194.147 06:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Sebastián


 * Last time I checked, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" itself was written by a "porteño". He did not fare that bad... And to the heart of the matter: I'd favor a very dry exposition without any passing of judgment, or none at all. elpincha 14:41, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Most of the article appears to have been written by Jmabel, from Seattle, who didn't fare "that bad" at all. I may have sounded pretty harsh, but it was because I found that specific part so condescending, and because I think it goes to show the limitations of NPOV (which, although limited, is, I agree, better than nothing). Reading Jmabel's user page, I can understand his predicament. He had to start from scratch in the subject of argentine intellectuality, since there is little work in the english language. Nevertheless, I recall having seen Beatriz Sarlo's book about Borges (a seminal work in the field) online somewhere, but I don't remember if it was in english or spanish. This problem is obviously the result of the deep divide beetween english-speaking and non-english-speaking intellectuality (which can also be seen in university rankings, which only account for research in the english language, for example). Thus, I commend Jmabel's work (the article itself is thorougly detailed), but make a point of the NPOV problem, since his comment was factual, based on the information he had available. Being this the first time I build up the courage to edit an entry, I think I will continue to do so in the future, since wikipedia could be a good tool, I think, to conquer this divide. 201.250.199.224 02:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Sebastian
 * There is a book by Beatriz Sarlo available on the web, in English, Borges: a writer on the edge, originally published 1993. Mentioned in this article's reference list. The reference list needs some work.  EdJohnston 01:32, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

If my comment in the section above is correct, I believe the section on literary themes should be altered. The second paragraph of the story in which the conversation with Bioy Casares is reported may indeed prefigure Nabakov's Pale Fire, but I think it is much more directly a reference to The Invention of Morel, which was written at about the same time. Zardoz37 (talk) 13:20, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Berkeley
"hold an extreme form of Berkeleian idealism, denying the reality of the world."

Berkeley never, ever "denied the reality of the world." That is a total misreading of him. GeneCallahan (talk) 23:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Presumably if Berkeley had held that exact view, it would not be 'extreme'... --Gwern (contribs) 01:22 21 November 2010 (GMT)


 * Berkeley would have had to have, say, partially denied the reality of the world for a completely denial of it to be a "version" of his idealism at all, extreme or not. You can't call capitalism an "extreme form of Marxism," or Catholicism an "extreme for of atheism"! GeneCallahan (talk) 02:03, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Philosophical Themes
The author of this article asserts that,

"This story is not the only place where Borges engages with Berkeleian idealism and with the related 20th century philosophy of phenomenology. Phenomenology privileges psychical phenomena over physical phenomena and 'brackets off' objective reality as unknowable."

I would tend to differentiate far more strongly between Berkeley's idealism and phenomenology, and I believe that to describe the latter as a "related" philosophy is misleading, since phenomenology is not derived either in whole or in part from Berkeley's thought but from Husserl, Brentano, and so on in its transcendental form, and from Heidegger in its existential and hermeneutic form. Also I would suggest that characterising phenomenology as privileging psychical phenomena over physical phenomena is also misleading, since phenomenology does not draw the abstract psychological distinctions implied, dealing rather with direct intuitions of phenomena as they appear in the life-world. As such, I think phenomenology has been wrongly attributed here as something very idealistic and abstract, when it is in fact an extremely existential and worldly approach. Phenomenology only brackets objective reality because it is a purely descriptive discipline, not a prescriptive or explanatory discipline; as there is no intention of giving accounts as to 'why' phenomena appear, only 'in what way' or 'as what', it has no need of a criteria of objectivity. Also, it should be noted, that Phenomenology names a varied collection of different phenomenological approaches, and that not all of them, or even the majority, would consider objective reality as unknowable.

In summary: Phenomenology is very much distinct from Berkeley's idealism, has altogether a different basis, and should not appear so proximately related to his name.Lethal humour (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello, yeah I agree. Phenomenology is improperly defined here. Although it may be said to priviledge 'psychic phenomena' etc, maybe, it would be misleading to say it "brackets off" objective reality as unknowable. What bracketing and the relationship between the individual and the world in phenomenology mean, even based on the wiki article for phenomenology, is something different from what this story's article says. Even in Husserlian phenomenology, and especially in Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's, the phenomenological reduction, the 'bracketing,' is a device that is deployed so as to gain the knowledge necessary to properly understand the existing world. There is no doubt we can know reality, as for up to what point it varies according to the philosopher, but few if any say it is unknowable. Phenomenology is after all a descriptive science, under description is real phenomena. The only reason one might say that objective reality is bracketed as unknowable is because of the specific metaphysical meaning of 'objective' that is under critique by phenomenology. In Being and Time for instance, Heidegger quotes Kant in saying that, "It is the scandal of philosophy not to have been able to prove the existence of the real world." But no, Heidegger replies, the scandal of philosophy is that it keeps trying. Phenomenology knows the world is there, all we have to do it says, is observe what happens and begin to reshape our understanding of it. (my first post here in wiki discussions so apologies if the formatting is off)

68.173.125.51 (talk) 06:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Removing sentence
I have removed the following sentence: "'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' has the structure of a detective fiction set in a world going mad." First of all, there is no "crime," so describing what happens in the story as resembling detective fiction wears the idea of the detective genre thin to the point of non-existence. And while the idea of "a world going mad" may be vaguely applicable to the end of the story, it hardly seems useful as a characterization of what the story is about. 850 C (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Spelling
The article uses the word "Mlejnas" for Tlön's partner-world in Uqbaran mythology. The version I have (Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley, cop. Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998) uses "Mle'khnas". Which is the proper spelling? Noaqiyeum 02:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The original Spanish text (at least in the editions I've examined) has "Mlejnas." "Mle'khnas" may represent Hurley's attempt to transliterate the sound of the Spanish jota. 850 C (talk) 19:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

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Merger proposal
Proposing the uqbar be merged into this article. It looks like that article has some history as a hoax and is now limited to simply being about the fictional place in this story. Unless I'm missing something significant, there certainly are not sufficient sources about Uqbar as a topic sufficiently distinct from this story such that it should have an independent article. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 21:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... the article claims "there is at least one real place with the name Uqbar, in Algeria" and cites a source in the bibliography section ("The Encyclopaedia of Islam"). ♠  TomasBat   16:15, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Proceeded with the merge, as the initial case seems sound and the "Hmmm" reflects only an observation consistent with the text on both pages and consistent with a merge. Klbrain (talk) 21:28, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

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Anaxagoras connection?
Is the phrase "Axaxaxas mlö" at all connected to the ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras who is notable for his observations on the moon, eclipses and other cosmic phenomena?--Mr. 123453334 (talk) 06:45, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Archives
Old talk (roughly, through 2004) is archived at:
 * Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius/Archive 1 (roughly through the end of 2004)
 * Talk:Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius/Archive 2 (sections where the last comment was in 2005)

Trucoto (talk) 17:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)==Translating the title from Latin==

Pardon the extreme weakness of my grasp of Latin, but doesn't Orbis Tertius mean "third world"? If so, shouldn't that be stated somewhere in the article? Difficult though it may be to believe, some literate people have an even feebler grasp of Latin than I do and won't guess that. Michael Hardy 00:24, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * "Third world" is a possibility; I think "third circle" is more likely. I'll get both into the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:27, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that orbis (orbs?) implies three dimensions: an orb, a globe. --Error 01:51, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * seems to bear me out, but I'm no Latinist. Can someone who is weigh in? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:30, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Orbis tertius should mean "the third (man) of the globe (orbis)" in that "orbis" is genitive from orbs-orbis. Umberto Eco's novel "The name of the rose", where he quotes Borges a lot, shows a trick like this "the first and seventh of four (quatuor)". Vincenzo.romano 16:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * From this last option another possibility arises. The sentence "Orbis Tertius" would then be translated as "the third (letter) of (the word) orbis". That is "b" as in Borges! Vincenzo.romano 16:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I feel like this fast becoming more appropriate to the wikibbalah. - Jmabel | Talk 07:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, "orbis tertius" cannot translate to "the third circle" or "the third world/planet". At least not from Latin. Vincenzo.romano (talk) 07:22, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

"Orbis" is genitive from orbs-orbis so the translation is "of the circle/world/planet". Then "tertius" is a male nominative adjective from "tertius-tertia-tertium" and the translation could be "the third (man)", not even "the third (thing)" as that would be neutral as in "tertium". So, among the best translations you can put "the third (man) of the planet", but definitely not "the third planet". Vincenzo.romano (talk) 07:22, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Vincenzo romano is utterly, utterly wrong. Any Latin dictionary will tell you that "orbis" is both the nominative and genitive of the noun. There are many other Latin nouns of this type: canis ("dog"; should that be "cans", Vincenzo? Does that look like good Latin to you?), "classis" ("fleet, class"; "classs"? Not unless you're a drunk teenager!). Tertius is a masculine nominative adjective modifying the masculine nominative noun "orbis". "Third world" is a proper translation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.2.213.141 (talk) 02:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The third planet from the Sun is the Earth, so it may be a veiled way to say that "el mundo será Tlön" as he wrote in the last paragraph of the story ("the world will be Tlön"). Also it may be read as a third iteration, reflected as well in the enumeration given as the title of the story: the first was Uqbar, the second is Tlön (referenced from the Uqbar entry in the encyclopedia), and the third will be "Orbis Tertius": "Los cuarenta volúmenes [de la primera enciclopedia de Tlön] serían la base de otra más minuciosa, redactada no ya en inglés sino en alguna de las lenguas de Tlön. Esta revisión de un mundo ilusorio se llama provisoriamente Orbis Tertius" ("The forty volumes [of the first Tlön encyclopedia] would be the base for a more detailed work, written not in English but in one of the Tlön languages. This revision of an illusory world is called temporarily Orbis Tertius"). As Tlön takes the world (the third planet from the Sun) in the end, the third iteration is the Earth converted to Tlön, Orbis Tertius is more than just rewriting the Tlön encyclopedia to a idealistic language: is about rewriting the whole world existence in Tlön terms Trucoto (talk) 17:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Tlön, Uqbar?
I found this entry confusing...are Tlön & Uqbar separate fictional worlds? Or are they the same world? Or is one a part of the other? 69.125.134.86 (talk) 00:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * From the first paragraph of the Summary section, Uqbar is the name of the country and Tlön is the name of the world or region where the country exists. "Orbis Tertius" would seem to be the Latin phrase, "third world," presumably a reference to Earth as the third planet from its sun. With the commas, the book's title becomes a full place name. TechBear  &#124; Talk &#124; Contributions 03:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * This is inaccurate. Uqbar is country referenced in the anomalous copies of the The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia. The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia says Tlön is a mythical world in Uqbarian mythology. In Section 3, the narrator claims that an organization called Orbis Tertius created Tlön by writing the Encyclopedia of Tlön. The origin of Uqbar is never explicitly explained, nor is the contradiction between the Anglo-American Cyclopedia's account of Tlön and the narrator's account in the third section. I wasn't sure where to put this, but I'm editing out the claim that section three explains the origin of Uqbar, for the reasons stated here. Numenetics (talk) 21:07, 15 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Uqbar is supposed to be a country in this world, near Iraq. It does not really exist but only in a fake entry of a pirated encyclopedia. There Borges, in this story, learns that in Uqbar legends always refer to two imaginary places, Tlön being one of them. Later we learn that Uqbar was there only to introduce the main invention, Tlön, to the world. Tlön has its own encyclopedia, and it is intended to be translated in the future into its own idealistic language; such translation (that metaphorically could be the intrusion of Tlön in the reality of Earth) will be called "Orbis Tertius". Trucoto (talk) 17:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Translation and citation

 * I see that

"In another language of Tlön, 'the basic unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective,' which, in combinations of two or more, are noun-forming: 'moon' becomes 'airy-clear over dark-round' or 'orange-faint-of-sky.'" was replaced by "In another language of Tlön, 'the basic unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective,' which, in combinations of two or more, are noun-forming: 'moon' becomes 'round airy-light on dark' or 'pale-orange-of-the-sky.'" Arguably, it's just as good a translation of the Spanish, but I don't believe that it comes from the cited source. There are several published translations of "Tlön…" floating around, and I suspect that someone chose a different translation without changing the citation. - Jmabel | Talk 17:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The phrase "una reimpresión literal, pero también morosa, de la Encyclopaedia Britannica" does not translate to "a literal if inadequate reprint". "Moroso" in Spanish (https://dle.rae.es/morosidad) means that it took too long, because the pirate copy ("Anglo American Cyclopaedia") is from 1917 while the original ("Encyclopeadia Britannica") is from 1902. Trucoto (talk) 17:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

References to and quotations from the text
The references to the text of the story in this article contain page numbers that are meaningless since no specific translation is cited. Whatever translation is being used seems to be a strange one; I don't understand why anyone would render "morosa" (literally, "delayed") as "inadequate". (The translation in Labyrinths has "delinquent"; Collected Fictions has "laggardly".) 2601:C6:4100:F980:E9E2:B094:1EB3:F374 (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2021 (UTC)