LA MURALLA Y LOS LIBROS El siguiente es un texto que Borges, habitual colaborador de LA NACION, public en este diario el 22 de octubre de 1950

Le, das pasados, que el hombre que orden la edificacin de la casi infinita muralla china fue aquel primer emperador, Shih Huang Ti, que asimismo dispuso que se quemaran todos los libros anteriores a l. Que las dos vastas operaciones -las quinientas a seiscientas leguas de piedra opuestas a los brbaros, la rigurosa abolicin de la historia, es decir del pasado- procedieran de una persona y fueran de algn modo sus atributos, inexplicablemente me satisfizo y, a la vez, me inquiet. Indagar las razones de esa emocin es el fin de esta nota. Histricamente, no hay misterio en las dos medidas. Contemporneo de las guerras de Anbal, Shih Huang Ti, rey de Tsin, redujo a su poder los Seis Reinos y borr el sistema feudal: erigi la muralla, porque las murallas eran defensas; quem los libros, porque la oposicin los invocaba para alabar a los antiguos emperadores. Quemar libros y erigir fortificaciones es tarea comn de los prncipes; lo nico singular en Shih Huang Ti fue la escala en que obr. As lo dejan entender algunos sinlogos, pero yo siento que los hechos que he referido son algo ms que una exageracin o una hiprbole de disposiciones triviales. Cercar un huerto o un jardn es comn; no, cercar un imperio. Tampoco es balad pretender que la ms tradicional de las razas renuncie a la memoria de su pasado, mtico o verdadero. Tres mil aos de cronologa tenan los chinos (y en esos aos, el Emperador Amarillo y Chuang Tzu y Confucio y Lao Tzu), cuando Shih Huang Ti orden que la historia comenzara con l. Shih Huang Ti haba desterrado a su madre por libertina; en su dura justicia, los ortodoxos no vieron otra cosa que una impiedad; Shih Huang Ti, tal vez, quiso borrar los libros cannigos porque stos lo acusaban; Shih Huang Ti, tal vez, quiso abolir todo el pasado para abolir un solo recuerdo; la infamia de su madre. (No de otra suerte un rey, en Judea, hizo matar a todos los nios para matar a uno.) Esta conjetura es atendible, pero nada nos dice de la muralla, de la segunda cara del mito. Shih Huang Ti, segn los historiadores, prohibi que se mencionara la muerte y busc el elixir de la inmortalidad y se recluy en un palacio figurativo, que constaba de tantas habitaciones como hay das en el ao; estos datos sugieren que la muralla en el espacio y el incendio en el tiempo fueron barreras mgicas destinadas a detener la muerte. *** Todas las cosas quieren persistir en su ser, ha escrito Baruch Spinoza; quiz el Emperador y sus magos creyeron que la inmortalidad es intrnseca y que la corrupcin no puede entrar en un orbe cerrado. Quiz el Emperador quiso recrear el principio del tiempo y se llam Primero, para ser realmente primero, y se llam Huang Ti, para ser de algn modo Huang Ti, el legendario emperador que invent la escritura y la brjula. Este, segn el Libro de los ritos, dio su nombre verdadero a las cosas; parejamente Shih Huang Ti se jact, en inscripciones que perduran, de que todas las cosas, bajo su imperio, tuvieran el nombre que les conviene.

So fundar una dinasta inmortal; orden que sus herederos se llamaran Segundo Emperador, Tercer Emperador, Cuarto Emperador, y as hasta lo infinito... He hablado de un propsito mgico; tambin cabra suponer que erigir la muralla y quemar los libros no fueron actos simultneos. Esto (segn el orden que eligiramos) nos dara la imagen de un rey que empez por destruir y luego se resign a conservar, o la de un rey desengaado que destruy lo que antes defenda. Ambas conjeturas son dramticas, pero carecen, que yo sepa, de base histrica. Herbert Allen Giles cuenta que quienes ocultaron libros fueron marcados con un hierro candente y condenados a construir, hasta el da de su muerte, la desaforada muralla. Esta noticia favorece o tolera otra interpretacin. Acaso la muralla fue una metfora, acaso Shih Huang Ti conden a quienes adoraban el pasado a una obra tan vasta como el pasado, tan torpe y tan intil. *** Acaso la muralla fue un desafo y Shih Huang Ti pens: "Los hombres aman el pasado y contra ese amor nada puedo, ni pueden mis verdugos, pero alguna vez habr un hombre que sienta como yo, y se destruir mi muralla, como yo he destruido los libros, y se borrar mi memoria y ser mi sombra y mi espejo y no lo sabr". Acaso Shih Huang Ti amurall el imperio porque saba que ste era deleznable y destruy los libros por entender que eran libros sagrados, o sea libros que ensean lo que ensea el universo entero o la conciencia de cada hombre. Acaso el incendio de las bibliotecas y la edificacin de la muralla son operaciones que de un modo secreto se anulan. La muralla tenaz que en este momento, y en todos, proyecta sobre tierras que no ver su sistema de sombras es la sombra de un Csar que orden que la ms reverente de las naciones quemara su pasado; es verosmil que la idea nos toque de por s, fuera de las conjeturas que permite. (Su virtud puede estar en la oposicin de construir y destruir, en enorme escala.) Generalizando el caso anterior, podramos inferir que todas las formas tienen su virtud en s mismas y no en un "contenido" conjetural. Eso concordara con la tesis de Benedetto Croce; ya Pater, en 1877, afirm que todas las artes aspiran a la condicin de la msica, que no es otra cosa que forma. La msica, los estados de la felicidad, la mitologa, las caras trabajadas por el tiempo, ciertos crepsculos y ciertos lugares, quieren decirnos algo, o algo dijeron que no hubiramos debido perder, o estn por decir algo; esta inminencia de una revelacin, que no se produce, es, quiz, el hecho esttico. . Por Jorge Luis Borges

THE WALL AND THE BOOKS I read, in past days, that the man who ordered the construction of the nearly infinite Wall of China was that First Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who likewise ordered the burning of all the books before him. That the two gigantic operationsthe five or six hundred leagues of stone to oppose the barbarians, the rigorous abolition of history, that is of the pastissued from one person and were in a certain sense his attributes, inexplicably satisfied me and, at the same time, disturbed me. The object of this note is to investigate the reasons for that emotion. Historically there is no mystery in the two measures. A contemporary of the wars of Hannibal, Shih Huang Ti, King of Chin, conquered the Six Kingdoms and eliminated the feudal system; he built the wall because walls were defenses; he burned the books because the opposition invoked them in order to extol former emperors. Burning books and building fortifications is common task to emperors; the only thing singular about Shih Huang Ti was the scale on which he operated. So some Sinologists would have us understand, but I feel that the facts to which I referred are something more than an exaggeration or a hyperbole of trivial inclinations. To enclose an orchard or a garden is common; not to enclose an empire. That the most traditional of races renounced the memory of its past, mythical or true, is no small matter. The Chinese had three thousand years of chronology (in those years, the Yellow Emperor and Chuang Tzu and Confucius and Lao Tzu) when Shih Huang Ti ordered that history began with him. Shih Huang Ti had banished his mother as a libertine; the orthodox saw only impiety in his severe justice; Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, wanted to erase canonic books because they accused him; Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, wanted to abolish the entire past in order to abolish one memory: the infamy of his mother. (Not unlike another king, in Judea, had all the children killed in order to kill one.) This conjecture is worth considering, but it tells us nothing about the wall, about the second facet of the myth. Shih Huang Ti, according to historians, forbade all mention of the word death and searched for the elixir of immortality and secluded himself in a figurative palace, which had as many rooms as the year has days; the data suggest that the wall in space and the fire in time were magic barriers intended to halt the advance of death. Everything persists in his being, wrote Baruch Spinoza; perhaps the Emperor and his sages believed that immortality was intrinsic and that corruption could not penetrate a closed sphere. Perhaps the Emperor hoped to recreate the beginning of time and called himself The First, in order to be truly the first, and he named himself Huang Ti in order to be in some way Huang Ti, the legendary emperor who invented writing and the compass. The latter, according to the Book of Rites, gave things their true names; equally Shih Huang Ti boasted, in enduring inscriptions, that all things in his empire had the name they merited. He dreamed of founding an immortal dynasty; he ordered that his heirs should be named Second Emperor, Third Emperor, Fourth Emperor, and so on to infinity I spoke of a magic design; it would also be possible to suppose that constructing a wall and burning the books were not simultaneous acts. This (according to the order we choose) would give us the image of a king who began by destroying and afterwards resigned himself to conserving, or that of a disabused king who destroyed what he defended

earlier. Both conjectures are dramatic but lack, as far as I know, in historical basis. Herbert Allen Giles (2) relates that those who concealed books were branded by a red-hot iron and condemned to build the outrageous wall until the day of their death. This information favors or tolerates another interpretation. Perhaps the wall was a metaphor, maybe Shih Huang Ti condemned those who worshipped the past to a work just as vast as the past, as stupid and useless. Perhaps the wall was a challenge and Shih Huang Ti thought: Men love the past and I can do nothing against this love, nor can my executioners, but some time there will be a man who feels as I do, and he will destroy my wall, as I destroyed the books, and will erase my memory and will be my shadow and my mirror and will not be aware of it. Perhaps Shih Huang Ti walled in the empire because he knew it was fragile and he destroyed the books because he understood they were sacred books, or rather books that taught that which the entire universe teaches or the consciousness of every man. Maybe the burning of the libraries and the construction of the wall are operations that in a secret way cancel each other. The tenacious wall that in this moment, and in all moments, projects its system of shadows across lands I will not see, is the shadow of a Caesar who ordered that the most reverent of nations burn its past; it is likely that the idea itself touches us by, over and above, the conjectures it allows. (Its virtue can be in the opposition to building and destroying, on an enormous scale.) Generalizing the earlier matter, we could infer that all practices have their virtue in themselves and not in some conjectural content. This would be in agreement with the thesis of Benedetto Croce (3); as already Pater (4), in 1877, contended that all the arts aspire to the condition of music, which is nothing but form. Music, state of happiness, mythology, faces shaped by time, certain twilights and certain places, try to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have lost, or want to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation, which does not happen, is, perhaps, the esthetic act.

1. Dunciad by Alexander Pope in which the poet referred to his many enemies as dunces. This satirical poem of 920 lines, in three books, describes the king of dunces and a nightmare world of universal darkness in Popes gigantic lampoon of writers, books and booksellers, attacking those who write for pay. At one point there is a sacrifice bonfire of the books. This sort of literary reference and source is used by Anglophile Borges throughout his work. 2. Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935), renowned British diplomat and Sinologist. 3. Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), Italian literary historian, critic, philosopher, wrote: Art is not the addition of form to content, but expression, which does not mean communication but is a spiritual fact, and ethics is conceived as the expression of the universal will, of the spirit. 4. Walter Pater (1839-94), English writer, essayist, aesthete and art historian, famous precisely because his life is so shrouded in mystery, whom Henry James called the mask without the face and the kind of literary source Borges plants in his strange tales. Here Borges quotes Pater that all art constantly aspires toward the

condition of music. I found on line this anecdote which is revealing of the nature of Pater, and thus of one side of Borges: In 1894, the last year of his life, Pater was invited to meet Mallarm, who was then lecturing at Oxford. Mallarm taught English in a lyce; Paters French was excellent; but the two connoisseurs of intimation apparently thought it too vulgar actually to speak. According to one account, they regarded each other in silence, and were satisfied.