Free Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges Page A

March and October 1899).
b) A monograph on the possibility of constructing a poetic vocabulary of concepts which would not be synonyms or periphrases of those which make up our everyday language, "but rather ideal objects created according to convention and essentially designed to satisfy poetic needs" (Nîmes, 1901).
c) A monograph on "certain connections or affinities" between the thought of Descartes, Leibniz and John Wilkins (Nîmes, 1903).
d) A monograph on Leibniz's Characteristica universalis (Nîmes, 1904).
e) A technical article on the possibility of improving the game of chess, eliminating one of the rook's pawns. Menard proposes, recommends, discusses and finally rejects this innovation.
f) A monograph on Raymond Lully's Ars magna generalis (Nîmes, 1906).
g) A translation, with prologue and notes, of Ruy López de Segura's Libro de la inventión liberal y arte del juego del axedrez (Paris, 1907).
h) The work sheets of a monograph on George Boole's symbolic logic.
i) An examination of the essential metric laws of French prose, illustrated with examples taken from Saint-Simon (Revue des langues romanes, Montpellier, October 1909).
j) A reply to Luc Durtain (who had denied the existence of such laws), illustrated with examples from Luc Durtain (Revue des langues romanes, Montpellier, December 1909).
k) A manuscript translation of the Aguja de navegar cultos of Quevedo, entitled La boussole des précieux.
1) A preface to the Catalogue of an exposition of lithographs by Carolus Hourcade (Nîmes, 1914).
m) The work Les problèmes d'un problème (Paris, 1917), which discusses, in chronological order, the different solutions given to the illustrous problem of Achilles and the tortoise. Two editions of this book have appeared so far; the second bears as an epigraph Leibniz's recommendation "Ne craignez point, monsieur, la tortue" and revises the chapters dedicated to Russell and Descartes.
n) A determined analysis of the "syntactical customs" of Toulet (N.R.F., March 1921). Menard ― I recall ― declared that censure and praise are sentimental operations which have nothing to do with literary criticism.
o) A transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry's Le cimitière marin (N. R. F., January 1928).
p) An invective against Paul Valéry, in the Papers for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (This invective, we might say parenthetically, is the exact opposite of his true opinion of Valéry. The latter understood it as such and their old friendship was not endangered.)
q) A "definition" of the Countess de Bagnoregio, in the "victorious volume" ― the locution is Gabriele d'Annunzio's, another of its collaborators ― published annually by this lady to rectify the inevitable falsifications of journalists and to present "to the world and to Italy" an authentic image of her person, so often exposed (by very reason of her beauty and her activities) to erroneous or hasty interpretations.
r) A cycle of admirable sonnets for the Baroness de Bacourt (1934).
s) A manuscript list of verses which owe their efficacy to their punctuation. 8

    This, then, is the visible work of Menard, in chronological order (with no omission other than a few vague sonnets of circumstance written for the hospitable, or avid, album of Madame Henri Bachelier). I turn now to his other work: the subterranean, the interminably heroic, the peerless. And ― such are the capacities of man! ― the unfinished. This work, perhaps the most significant of our time, consists of the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote and a fragment of chapter twenty-two. I know such an affirmation seems an absurdity; to justify this "absurdity" is the primordial object of this note. 9
    Two texts of unequal value inspired this undertaking. One is that philological fragment by Novalis ― the one numbered 2005 in the Dresden edition ― which outlines the theme of a total identification with a given author. The other is one of those parasitic