Borges's Descartes
In the poem, Borges embodies Descartes, for this reason he adopts the first person and speaks as if he were him
PalmaJorge Luis Borges dedicates a poem to Descartes titled 'Descartes' which is integrated into the poetry collection La xifra (1981), and in which he adopts the poetic voice of the philosopher himself and poetically meditates on dreams, the symbolic representation of Cartesian doubt, methodical doubt, and the metaphysical and epistemological consequences, as it affects both existence itself and the nature of reality, as well as the rational capacity to know the world. The poem also includes more vital verses, in which he disorderly reviews some events of his life.
The complete poem reads as follows, according to my own translation: “I am the only man who inhabits the earth, and perhaps there is neither earth nor man. / Perhaps a god deceives me. / Perhaps a god has condemned me to time, this long illusion. / I dream of the moon and I dream of my eyes that perceive the moon. / I have dreamed of the afternoon and the morning of the first day. / I have dreamed of Carthage and the legions that devastated it. / I have dreamed of Lucan. / I have dreamed of Mount Golgotha and the crosses of Rome. / I have dreamed of geometry. / I have dreamed of the point, the line, the plane, and the volume. / I have dreamed of yellow, blue, and red. / I have dreamed of my sickly childhood. / I have dreamed of maps and kingdoms and that duel at dawn. / I have dreamed of inconceivable pain. / I have dreamed of my sword. / I have dreamed of Elizabeth of Bohemia. / I have dreamed of doubt and certainty. / I have dreamed of yesterday. / Perhaps there was no yesterday, perhaps I was not born. / Perhaps I dream that I have dreamed. / I feel a little cold, a little fear. / Over the Danube there is night. / I will continue dreaming of Descartes and the faith of his parents.”
Metaphysics
In the poem, Borges embodies Descartes, which is why he adopts the first person and speaks as if he were him. To begin with, he starts with verses of a metaphysical theme, doubting his own existence and that of the world, due to a deceiving god (the Cartesian evil genius). Perhaps this god also plays with him and has punished him over time, making him mortal. To reach the first truth, he will need to eliminate the hypothesis of the deceiving god. He also introduces the problem of solipsism, accepting his own existence as true, but doubting that of other men and that of the world itself. He then enumerates the doubts he has regarding what he has perceived through his senses, such as the moon and colors; doubts about personal experiences linked to sensations of pain, fear, and cold; he mentions doubts about historical events, such as the Roman conquest of Carthage and the crucifixion of Christ; he talks about doubts related to geometry and the point, the line, the plane, and the volume.
After applying the method, at the end of the process, Descartes discovers that the thinking self does not exist in isolation, that it is a thinking substance that is part of an extramental reality structured into two more substances that are characterized, like the self, by having independent existence, and they are: the infinite substance, God; and the extensive substance, the world; and that this extensive substance is defined by primary qualities, which are objective properties of bodies; while secondary qualities do not belong to bodies, but are the result of the action of the senses and have to do with how we perceive them. Borges echoes this distinction by referring in the poem to the primary qualities of matter, which can be represented geometrically, that is, through points, lines, planes, and volumes; and secondary qualities linked to colors (yellow, blue, and red).
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Borges finishes the metaphysical part of the poem as he began it, once again questioning time and existence through the dream about "yesterday" and with "perhaps I was not born", to which another possibility is also added: that "perhaps I dream that I have dreamed".
In the final verse, Borges warns us that he will continue to dream of Descartes and of "the faith of his parents", because he is aware that life is a dream, just as other authors such as Calderón de la Barca warned in "The dream and the truth
The poem recovers the metaphysical tone when doubt turns towards doubt itself, with the difficulty of distinguishing dream from truth. “I have dreamed of doubt and certainty” –it says–, but without specifying what certainty is involved. Doubt is reasonable because Descartes, with his method, arrives at various certainties, the first of which is the existence of the thinking subject, but he also affirms other certainties, such as the existence of God, the world, and the confirmation of the criterion of truth. It is most likely that Borges is referring to the first truth, that of the cogito.
Borges concludes the metaphysical part of the poem as he began it, once again doubting time and existence through the dream about “yesterday” and with the “perhaps I have not been born”, to which another possibility is also added: that “perhaps I dream that I have dreamed”.
In the final verse, Borges warns us that he will continue dreaming of Descartes and of “the faith of his fathers”, because he is aware that life is a dream, just as other authors like Calderón de la Barca in Life is a Dream, and Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a dream without end, warned. It also seems that Borges ends up doubting the Catholic faith of Descartes's parents, since religion could be another dream, a fiction.