26 pages • 52 minutes read
Jorge Luis BorgesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Borges was primarily a poet by calling. He was also a consummate student of literature, philosophy, and religion and spent a lifetime pursuing questions about the nature of existence and reality. One particular school of thought he was drawn to was idealism, or the belief that the human mind has the ability to influence or recreate reality. This theme runs throughout “The Circular Ruins,” as the protagonist seeks to create a man by dreaming: “The goal that led him on was not impossible, though it was clearly supernatural: He wanted to dream a man. He wanted to dream him completely, in painstaking detail, and impose him upon reality” (215-16).
For Borges, the sorcerer’s task parallels that of the creative process. A writer often requires the same things: isolation, peace in which to concentrate, and time. A writer’s creation also starts as something small and amorphous until the details can be fleshed out: “He dreamed the heart warm, active, secret—about the size of a closed fist, a garnet-colored thing inside the dimness of a human body that was still faceless and sexless” (220). “The Circular Ruins” serves as a type of allegory, then, for the creative process. Borges describes the painful efforts it takes to build something in exquisite detail and then release it to the world, to be judged and essentially take on a life of its own. The idea circles back to idealism and Borges’s contemplation of whether his thoughts impacted reality. As a writer, he was constantly dreaming up a man in painstaking detail and then “imposing” him upon the world, asking people to believe in his creations.
As an idealist, Borges felt that dreams could accidentally “contaminate” reality, as it can be difficult to establish a difference between the two. An individual can dream something and force it to become reality, or they can direct reality into their dreams. The sorcerer’s fear that dreams are leaking into his waking life is shown when he realizes that he is also a dreamed man and reacts “with humiliation, with terror” (226). “The Circular Ruins” and its allegory for the creative process are Borges’s way of expressing the similarity between dreams and waking life, truth and fiction, and how it can be nearly impossible to separate these seemingly opposing states.
Underlying the narrative of “The Circular Ruins” is the recurring concept of death and rebirth. The circular motif that pervades the story serves as a metaphor for the endless cycle of creation and destruction, birth and death, that defines the human experience. Viewed from the perspective of this theme, the protagonist’s determination to create a “son” illustrates his fear of death. His act of creation becomes an allegory for the human desire to transcend mortality and leave a lasting legacy. The sorcerer seeks to defy death by birthing a creature that will outlive him, thus prolonging his mortal existence.
When the sorcerer’s efforts to be “reborn” through his son are successful, he finally feels prepared to face his mortality. Thus, when the ruins catch fire, he welcomes death, viewing it as “a crown upon his age” that will “absolve him from his labors” (225-26). The metaphor of being crowned presents death as a natural honor earned through a well-lived life. However, when the flames do not harm him, the protagonist realizes that he is trapped in a cycle of life and rebirth. The sorcerer succeeds in his original goal to transcend mortality, but the price of this achievement is the epiphany that he is not real. When the protagonist realizes that the fire cannot kill him, his “relief” quickly shifts to “humiliation […] [and] terror” (226).
Borges’s depiction of the sorcerer’s condition is influenced by the concept of “infinite regression,” a term for when something is replicated on and on into eternity. In the story, the protagonist dreams a man into being but then realizes that he is being dreamed by another being. This concept could be expanded forever, with each person discovering they are merely a mental construct. The protagonist’s circular journey in the narrative echoes the cyclical nature of this existence. By beginning and ending his story in the ruins, Borges emphasizes that the sorcerer is caught in an endless loop. His situation underlines the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Borges challenges the notion of rebirth and immortality as comforting concepts through the protagonist’s existential crisis at the story’s end.
“The Circular Ruins” draws attention to the fine line between religion and philosophy. Spirituality is a common theme in Borges’s works, with philosophical musings underpinned by various religious tenets. The story includes aspects of many different religions in his mention of purification rites, planetary gods, temples, and allusions to the Gnostic cosmogonies, among others.
The first reference to religion occurs at the beginning of the story, when Borges describes the man’s homeland as “one of those infinite villages that lie up-river […] where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and where leprosy is uncommon” (214). “Zend” is a dated (and incorrect) term for the Avestan language, which was used in eastern Iran between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. It is a dead language used primarily by priests in the practice of Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion based on the prophet Zoroaster and his teachings. One might think that Borges’s reference to this religion would form the foundation for the dreamer’s faith, but Zoroastrianism is mono-theistic, with a belief in one supreme being. The dreamer, on the other hand, clearly believes in multiple deities: “Then, that evening, he purified himself in the waters of the river, bowed down to the planetary gods, uttered those symbols of a powerful name that it is lawful to pronounce, and laid himself down to sleep” (219-20).
“Planetary gods” could reference the planets of the solar system, as the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans identified each planet with a ruling deity. On the other hand, referring to a god whose name is unlawful to pronounce seems to draw from the Jewish practice (which avoids saying the name of God, Yahweh). Another Jewish allusion can be seen in the similarity between the dreamer’s unconscious creation and a figure from Jewish folklore, the Golem. On the other hand, Borges also refers to the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, an early Christian sect, and their tale of creating a red Adam from clay.
Furthermore, Borges draws on Buddhist beliefs throughout the story, particularly the concept of life as a self-perpetuating circle. In Buddhism, the circle is a sacred geometric form, used to represent rebirth and regeneration. Buddhists believe that the actions of a sentient being lead to a new existence after death, and this new existence’s fate is determined by the quality of its previous life. This concept is illustrated when the dreamer first tries to create his son, “seeking a soul worthy of taking its place in the universe” (217).
In “The Circular Ruins,” Borges creates an amalgamation of many of the world’s most ancient religions. In doing so, the author keeps his story rooted in a place that both fully exists and could never have existed in reality. By blending a variety of religious beliefs, Borges’s tale conjures a universal and all-encompassing view of spirituality.
By Jorge Luis Borges