"Real" Fiction and Fictional "Reality" : On the Dialectics of Reality and Fiction and the Adherence to Subjectivity in Borges' Tlön
Abstract
This paper takes the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges as its subject of study, exploring its unique creative characteristics—the dialectical relationship between "real" fiction and fictional "reality". The article first adopts a narrative perspective to deconstruct the simulacrum narrative trap constructed through the tone of an academic essay, textual cross-references, and a metafictional afterword, thereby elucidating the "real" in fiction. It then moves to the intellectual level to explain how the world of Tlön relies on idealistic language, an anti-causal view of space-time, and "hrönir" to reconstruct the concept of reality, thereby illustrating the "real" in fiction; The final section points out the civilizational symbols and ideological crisis implied by the dissolution of the boundary between reality and fiction. At the novel's conclusion, faced with the dimensional reduction and invasion of reality by the fictional narrative, Borges upholds his subjectivity through the detached stance of "calmly revised translation of the manuscript" , affirming the value of individual resistance through independent thought and creativity.
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