>Here, at the end of history, mankind has been disillusioned of ideology and symmetry, and unable to look forward, looks back. How could men not fall under the sway of the 30th, to the coalescence of its minutely detailed reality (in 1,440 equitable parts)? It would be futile to reply that today, as every day, is as detailed and real as the 30th—for where is the Institute of Today, and who its Maecenas⸮ It is no-one and no-where and no-when; and men cannot live in a utopia.
>The 30th may be a maze, but it was one lived by men, and destined to be solved by men. Its dialectical rigor enthralls the mind, though it is the dusty rigor of the chronologist. Already September 1939 (or “Zeroth of 0 AE”) looms larger in the imagination, other months and years decaying before it, as the textbooks are rewritten; Poland is remembered, while France is forgotten as merely an inevitable sequel. A Palo Alto recluse has changed the earth—and the great work goes on.
>If Trente’s exponential bibliometric projections are correct, by “152 AE”, no publication on the 20th century will fail to mention the 30th. We shall be remembered solely by scholars (of the 30th) for this autumnese review. The mere langue & parole of 52 AE will perish from the earth. The world of the Twentieth will be the Thirtieth.
>It makes little difference to us, as we go on revising, in our quiet countryside retirement, an encyclopedia of Casares we shall never publish.
Compare to:
>The contact and the habit of Tlön have disintegrated this world. Enchanted by its rigor, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigor of chess masters, not of angels. Already the schools have been invaded by the (conjectural) "primitive language" of Tlön; already the teaching of its harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has wiped out the one which governed in my childhood; already a fictitious past occupies in our memories the place of another, a past of which we know nothing with certainty-not even that it is false. Numismatology, pharmacology and archaeology have been reformed. I understand that biology and mathematics also await their avatars ... A scattered dynasty of solitary men has changed the face of the world. Their task continues. If our forecasts are not in error, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Encyclopedia of Tlön.
>Then English and French and mere Spanish will disappear from the globe. The world will be Tlön. I pay no attention to all this and go on revising, in the still days at the Adrogue hotel, an uncertain Quevedian translation (which I do not intend to publish) of Browne's Urn Burial.
And of course, that fraudulent encyclopedia of Casares is what started the whole foul business ...
Take this for example (first the sentence in English from the story) :
> M. Trente has furnished a signal service to the scholarly world with his éclairage of one of our unsung research bodies, worthy of Block or Ginsberg.
Ok, M. Trente is a character. "signal service" sounds like some kind of business for sending messages. "éclairage", I don't know. "Block or Ginsberg", no idea. The meaning of the sentence? No idea.
Tlön, Uqbar is only 16 pages long; you can read it in one sitting and thereby get 90% of what Gwern is doing here.
https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...
As for the part you excerpted: don't worry about understanding every little reference. Just let it all wash over you and enjoy the ride, then maybe look things up afterwards. To an extent, you're supposed to feel a little intimidated, that you're a bystander not fully in on the joke. It's like a magic trick.
(And "signal" here is used in the adjectival sense "[s]tanding above others in rank, importance, or achievement" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/signal#Adjective )
Even text books of the era had this style, but perhaps less so than in the humanities, where there is and was a lot of discussion in books about other books.
casey2•7h ago