Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986 / Buenos Aires / Argentina)

There is more in heaven and earth, that moral man could ever know the demensions. GOD, though knows.

There is limit for everything grand and beautiful in the life of man! All glories and splendours of the past disappear into thin air as time passes on due to ravages caused by monarchies or natural calamities! Once golden delight most cherished by man disappears as nonentity by inevitable circumstances in life! This is the limit and enigma of life in the world nobody can escape!

Whether it's an enigma or a meditation I leave to others like Kind and Peerbocus who prefer to write their own enigmatic comments in lieu of dealing with 'Limits' by Borges. I consider Borges to be contemplating something we have all considered at one time or another. Who hasn't paused on his way out the door to glance at a loved one and had the flickering image of being forgotten in time? The shadows and dreams that constitute what we call life seem to carry their own foretaste of eternity. All those places in the South (or in Samarkand) we will never visit though we can see in our mind's eye the urns and cactus like pictures in a fading photograph will disappear and dissolve with time. That fountain where you used to meet in midday or in moonglow has gone with the wind. As the Romans destroyed Carthage leaving not a stone upon a stone, or the temple mount in Jerusalem was leveled centuries ago, so will we be forgotten by those we loved and those who loved us.

Yes, I know some comments are meant to be as profound in their impact as the many and varied images in 'Limits, ' but enigmatic remarks, clever as all get out as they may be, simply do not convey the weight of Borges's thought expressed in language that requires time to sink in one's mind and be absorbed. Ten stanzas written in quatrains are far more striking than 'a meditation on life(sic) enigma, ' don't you agree? There's the difference between art and inept writing!

even if one knows, , or thinks he knows,
that he cant know, ,
he cant...and never will
..not even that.