Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by James E.Irby
[1] No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the Bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent.The truth is that the obscure man kissed the mud, came up the bank without pushing aside (probably without feeling) the brambles which dilacerated his flesh, and dragged himself, nauseous and bloodstained, to the circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which once was the colour of fire and now was that of ashes.This circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men.
[2] The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though it was supernatural.He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality.This magical project had exhausted the entire content of his soul; if someone had asked him his own name or any trait of his previous life, he would not have been able to answer.The uninhabited and broken temple suited him, for it was a minimum of visible world; the nearness of the peasants also suited him, for they would see that his frugal necessities were supplied.The rice and fruit of their tribute were sufficient sustenance for his body, consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.
[3] At first, his dreams were chaotic; somewhat later, they were of a dialectical nature.The stranger dreamt that he was in the centre of a circular amphitheatre which in some way was the burned temple: clouds of silent students filled the gradins; the faces of the last ones hung many centuries away and at a cosmic height, but were entirely clear and precise.The man was lecturing to them on anatomy, cosmography, magic; the countenances listened with eagerness and strove to respond with understanding, as if they divined the importance of the examination which would redeem one of them from his state of vain appearance and interpolate him into the world of reality.The man, both in dreams and awake, considered his phantoms’ replies, was not deceived by impostors, divined a growing intelligence in certain perplexities.He sought a soul which would merit participation in the universe.