Furness of the Memory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Funes the memorious It is a story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Appeared in Fictions , a collection of stories and stories of the author published in 1944. According to Borges, this literary piece is “a long metaphor of insomnia.”

The protagonist suffers from hypermnesia, a symptom of the sage syndrome and, if we consider the dream (in its first phase) as a souvenir treatment plant (only the important or the most impressive thing that has happened to us remains), by not sleeping We do not eliminate memories; That is, we do not have the ability to forget many things that we could not live if we remember them daily.

Many critics have seen in this story a reference to the postulates of the English philosopher John Locke and, less directly, to Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. For others, in this narrative there is a “veiled recognition and tribute to her mentor” and friend, Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes Ochoa. ^{[ first ]} ​

Origins and genesseis of the work [ To edit ]

The story first appeared published in the Argentine newspaper La Nación, on page 3 of the Arts and Letters section, with the illustration of Alejandro Sirio, in the June 7, 1942 edition. It was subsequently published in the book [fictions] of 1944. The work had already been advanced by Borges himself in an obituary about James Joyce published in 1941 in the south magazine ^{[ 2 ]} , Where he exposes:

Among the works that I have not written or written (but that somehow justify me, even mysterious and rudimental) there is a story of about eight or ten pages whose profuse draft is titled “Funes the memorious” … of the magical compadrito of my Story can be affirmed that it is a precursor of the superhombres, a suburban and partial Zaratustra; The indisputable thing is that it is a monster. I have remembered it because the consecutive and straight reading of the four hundred thousand words of Ulysses would demand analogous monsters

The story tells the encounter of a Buenos Aires student with Ireneo Funes, a young man from Fray Bentos, Uruguay, with “oddities such as not giving anyone and always knowing the time, like a clock.”

Then, prostrated as a consequence of an accident that was 19, he first lost knowledge and then, when recovering it, he began to remember any object and any phenomenon with a prodigious and detailed memory, anyone who was his age. If before the time could know without seeing the clock, now Funes had refined his amazing capabilities: he remembers everything, and every perception he has is, for him, a unique and unforgettable characteristic:

Not only was it difficult to understand that the generic ‘dog’ symbol covered so many disparate individuals of various sizes and diverse form; He bothered that the three of the three and fourteen (seen in profile) had the same name as the quarter past three (seen in front).

Funes said:

More memories I have than those who have had all men since the world is world.

My memory is like garbage emptying.

Funes had created a very complicated and absurd numbering system in which each number attributed one thing, but then had rejected for its characteristic of being an endless work. The author argues that, after all, Funes lacked the ability of thought:

Thinking is forget differences, is generalize, to abstract. In the crowded world of Funes there were only details, almost immediate.

Irenaeus Funes dies in 1889, of a pulmonary congestion, at 21.

Borges explores a series of main themes, including the importance for the thinking of abstraction and generalization.

Genius [ To edit ]

It can be compared to Funes with a genius which has acquired an extraordinary memory, without an explicit need for study or practice. Give guidelines to question how much potential the human brain truly contains. The existence of exceptional skills to remember autobiographical experiences day by day has been confirmed. ^{[ 3 ]} ​

Disabilities [ To edit ]

The early death of Funes echoes the idea of ​​the wasted miracle of an uncultured man with phenomenal abilities, who lives and dies in the dark. The disregarded wonder is a recurring theme in Borges’ work.

Numbering systems [ To edit ]

Funes declares to have invented a numbering system that arbitrarily assigns up to twenty -four thousand names other than each number. The narrator argues that the positional notation system is a better tool for abstraction.

Artificial language [ To edit ]

The narrator mentions the Locke postulate that rejects an artificial language in which each individual object, each stone, bird and branch have their own name. On the other hand, Funes at some point projects such a language, but it dismisses it because it seems too general and ambiguous: it does not take into account which, according to him, should be done because physical objects constantly change in subtle forms. Funes insists that to mean unequivocally to objects one must specify their moment.

Generalization [ To edit ]

Since Funes can distinguish each physical object at every moment seen, clearly dispenses with the generalization ability to handle their own impressions. The narrator argues that this prevents abstract thinking, since forms of induction and deduction reasoning require this capacity. As he says: “Thinking is forgetting differences, it is generalizing, abstracting. In the crowded world of Funes there were only details, almost immediate.”

Insomnia [ To edit ]

Funes is prostrated in a dark room reviewing events of his past, which can be interpreted as an extended version of insomnia. Scientifically, it is conceived that for the brain the purpose of sleeping is to consolidate in memory a limited part of what we did during the day, pruning superfluous memories. ^{[ 4 ]} That makes history a fantastic modern presentation of this human condition. Since to remember was painful, darkness avoids the incorporation of more information to memory; This is why Funes receives the narrator in the dark. Borges himself says that the story is a metaphor of the same in his prologue to artifice.

See also [ To edit ]

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external links [ To edit ]