Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths

images of these pagan rites; the world will be a little poorer when this
Saxon has died.
Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which
reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one
thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless
there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In
time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the
battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of a man.
What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will
the world lose The voice of Macedonio Fernández, the image of a red
horse in the vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the
drawer of a mahogany desk
Translated by J. E. I.
A Problem
Let us imagine that in Toledo a paper is discovered containing
a text in Arabic which the paleographers declare to be in the
handwriting of the Cide Hamete Benengeli from whom Cervantes
derived the Quixote. In this text we read that the hero (who, as is
famous, wandered over the roads of Spain, armed with sword and
lance, and challenged anyone for any reason at all) discovers, after one
of his many combats, that he has killed a man. At that point the
fragment ends; the problem is to guess or conjecture how Don Quixote
would react.
As far as I know, there are three possible answers. The first is
of a negative nature: nothing particular happens, because in the
hallucinatory world of Don Quixote death is no less common than
magic and having killed a man should not perturb a person who fights,
or believes he fights, with fabulous monsters and sorcerers. The
second answer is of a pathetic nature.
Don Quixote never managed to forget that he was a projection
of Alonso Quijano, a reader of fabulous tales; seeing death,
understanding that a dream has led him to the sin of Cain, awakens
him from his pampered madness, perhaps forever. The third answer is
perhaps the most plausible. Once the man is dead, Don Quixote cannot
admit that this tremendous act is a product of delirium; the reality of
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