The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges read by A Poetry Channel 

Except that the Aleph can never be put into text, nor, by extension, memory. The experience of the aleph is also not temporal-- borges sees the entire aleph all at once, despite how he describes his experience as 'one after the other.' Within the aleph, is all of the actual textual recording of quantum mechanics, and it eludes all of them. The Aleph is also inherently connected to memory (or the lack thereof) in that our minds, which are not outside of the text (this is verry Derridian, even if Borges had not intended (nor have been able to predict) it so), and, like the pain Borges feels at witnessing the decaying remains of Beatriz, the infinitude of the universe cannot be apprehended into one word, which is why at the end of the story he explains that the aleph he saw is a false aleph (the real one being one which we 'hear' which has some meaning I cant quite figure out yet admittedly). Point is, the 'Aleph' isn't even the Aleph--- thus, the aleph is everything yet also nothing and nowhere. There is no Aleph, only infinite experience contained within the one world of every mind (note that the world of Borges goes on after Beatriz dies, not the world itself, as it cannot be captured within any text, and is thus inexplicable and indefinable). I say all this to say that Borges would presumably not be amused to see his story contrived into one scientific concept which barely scratches the surface of the infinitely polysemic world. Although youre right in that the nature of quantum mechanics is its unpredictability, although being that quantum mechanics is a field of 'study' (the "mechanics" of quantum activity, where scientists seek to write down order within this unpredictability (and as I type this, I realize now that this may ironically be the same thing which Carlos Argentino and Borges are getting wrong about the Aleph since there is no possible way to record infinity). Perhaps I'm misreading you, what do you think?

Cheers, Mark. Uncle Jorge is a pleasure for me to intone. I have recorded and intend to continue to record several of his works. Good luck on your project. xoxo

Borges was a wizard and of course was fluent in both languages though he worked closely with certain translators as I am sure you know... some of his work, particularly the poetry, is best read in Spanish for its euphony and I have done that here on the channel that on occasion, but I do love this translation so thank you very kindly for your praise.

@@APoetryChannel Like Borges, I am Argentine and my native language is Spanish. I read this book about three times and listened to it in audio about twice. This English version is incredibly well done. For obvious linguistic reasons, I cannot say that it is exactly the same as reading it in the language in which the story was written, but it comes very, very close. It gives me a feeling that is hard to explain. Congratulations.

@@fabriziobranciforte3994 I'm so happy to hear it!

How wonderful!! Cheers, Aaron! Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Made my day!

Your English is perfect. My edition is from Penguin Classics which was translated by Andrew Hurley.

@@APoetryChannel Thank you for your reply (even after 2 years!). Hope you have a great day. :DD

The Di Giovanni translation was not available to me sadly. Borges’ widow is probably to blame for that edition having such limited availability which is a shame because Borges and Di Giovanni worked so closely on the translations. Not that Borges needed one. English was his first language. Hell, if I recall properly, he wrote a translation of Poe when he was 8 or 10 years old that was used as the standard Spanish translation of the work in Argentina at the time. Extraordinary stuff. And thank you so much! I am the reader of all but two of the videos on this channel. Cheers.

Than you for liking my comment. Perhaps you should think about recording "Ficciones." If you already have, please share the link... Thank you!

@@fponassi Which story from Ficciones? Or do you mean the entire collection? I'm happy to do so over time, but it will be at least a year before it would be completed. I have some of the stories from that particular collection recorded (most of which were translated by Kerrigan) like Funes The Memorious.... Anyway, here is the entire Borges playlist (which at present consists only of 11 videos). ru-vid.com/group/PL7Wr1VPtVzqW7CuBn8p9Pp9oHdyvo9RIl

Yes... I reckon it would be a daunting task. If I had to pick one story, it definitely would be "The Garden of Forking Paths." On a different note, I spent my teenage years under the mentoring of Ernesto Sabato who, together with Borges and Bioy Casares, was one of the greatest Latin American writers of the 20th century. He wrote three awesome novels, out of which "The Tunnel" has been always my favorite... Perhaps you should give it a try :)

@@fponassi What have you written ?

My version is from the Penguin Classics book I have here at home which was translated by Andrew Hurley

​@@APoetryChannelThank you! I have a PDF of a collection of his translations and passed on it initially because instead of ”died", the first sentence read "That same sweltering morning that Beatriz Viter bodied", so I foolishly assumed the rest of the translation was shoddy. Now time to find a copy of my own!

Yes, the description has the name of the track: Thursday Afternoon.

I’m a huge Brian Eno fan... He has done a lot of interesting solo work and in collaboration with many prominent musical artists (e.g. Bowie, Fripp, Cale etc.), however I really like what he had done when he was.with Roxy Music for their first two studio albums especially The For Your Pleasure album. The track I really like off of that particular album is the title track “For Your Pleasure”...It is my all time favorite Roxy Music song. Eno really knew how to add the right sound textures to that song to complement the surreal lyrics of Bryan Ferry and his voice (which I like very much). If you are not familiar with the song, I think you might find the lyrics interesting from a poetic standpoint. Bryan Ferry was heavily influenced by the music of Bob Dylan and I believe he is an avid reader of poetry because of his use of metaphor and clever turn-of-phrase in the lyrics of many of his better known songs e.g. Mother of Pearl, Beauty Queen, Song for Europe and lesser ones e.g. Triptych, Sea Breezes..😎

​​@@clgrassi8101 Taking Tiger Mountain & Another Green World are two of my favourites of his vocal albums. The Eno/Moebius/Roedelius album 'After The Heat' is really good too (half instrumental, half vocal.) 🥳

No! You must be joking. I’m not typing 12 goddamned pages of dense prose. Buy the book or find a pdf online.

@@APoetryChannel lmao 🤣😂

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