Most unseemly was the edifice that resulted, for it is the prerogative of God, not man, to strike confusion and inspire wonder. It is said by men worthy of belief (though Allah’s knowledge is greater) that in the first days there was a king of the isles of Babylonia who called together his architects and his priests and bade them build him a labyrinth so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way. It has been written that those the first labyrinth was assimilated to Borges’ vision of James Joyce’s litterature, which lost the reader thanks to the complexity of its form, whereas the second labyrinth was Borges’ interpretation of his own work which lost the reader thanks to the vertigo of its essence. This short story, entitled The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths in fact compares two types of labyrinths the first one, complex, full of tricks and devices and the second whose labyrinthine aspect comes from its extreme simplicity and “desertness”. One story by Jorge Luis Borges is interesting to read as it reveals his vision of his own work. For a reason that I ignore, it has been brought to my attention that the following article has disappeared from this blog in the transfer of the boiteaoutils’ archives…I am therefore re-publishing it here, apologizing to the people who already read it or who were looking for it on this blog…
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