The Circular Ruins

“This magical objective had come to fill his entire soul; if someone had asked him his own name or inquired into any feature of his life till then, he would not have been able to answer.”

On first reading, this line seems like an exaggeration of the protagonist’s obsession with dreaming up a man. However, once the reader realizes that the whole story is circuitous, it gains new meaning. The dreamer is himself being dreamed, meaning that his mentor has erased his memories and that he has been created to carry out this single task.

“The faces of those farthest away hung at many centuries’ distance and at a cosmic height, yet they were absolutely clear.”

Here, Borges captures the essence of a dream, emphasizing how impossible and contradictory things are possible within the realm of imagination. In reality, distant faces become indistinguishable blurs and past centuries cease to be visible. However, for the dreamer, each stands out in perfect detail.

“He understood that the task of molding the incoherent and dizzying stuff that dreams are made of is the most difficult work a man can undertake, even if he fathom all the enigmas of the higher and lower spheres—much more difficult than weaving a rope of sand or minting coins of the faceless wind.”

This is the dreamer’s first epiphany: that he cannot create a man by crafting his soul before his body, as the soul is insubstantial. Borges uses artistic metaphors to show the impracticality of this method; something non-fibrous cannot be woven, and something without a physical form cannot be sculpted.

“Then, that evening, he purified himself in the waters of the river, bowed down to the planetary gods, uttered those syllables of a powerful name that it is lawful to pronounce, and laid himself down to sleep.”

Like other parts of the story, this sentence does not make sense until the reader understands the circuitousness of the tale. Despite having no memory of who he is, the dreamer can perform detailed religious rituals. Later, the reader realizes that the person who is dreaming the protagonist instructed him how to do so and then erased the rest of his memories—just as he did for his son.

“He dreamed the heart warm, active, secret—about the size of a closed fist, a garnet-colored thing inside the dimness of a human body that was still faceless and sexless; he dreamed it, with painstaking love, for fourteen brilliant nights.”

The sorcerer chooses to create the heart of his son first because this is the organ most associated with one’s spirit. The heart symbolizes the moral and emotional substance of a person.

“In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the demiurges knead up a red Adam who cannot manage to stand; as rude and inept and elementary as that Adam of dust was the Adam of dream wrought from the sorcerer’s nights.”

The Gnostics were a Christian religious sect who emphasized personal spiritual knowledge over institutionalized teachings and placed great value on the concepts of enlightenment and esoteric insight. They believed in a demiurge, which was the being responsible for the creation of the material universe. Borges here uses the term in plural form, insinuating the existence of multiple gods, which is fitting for the sorcerer, who calls upon “planetary gods” several times within the text.

“In the dream it was alive, and trembling—yet it was not the dread-inspiring hybrid form of horse and tiger it had been. It was, instead, those two vehement creatures plus bull, and rose, and tempest, too, and all that, simultaneously.”

The ambiguity of the statue’s form exemplifies how Borges employs magical realism (portraying mystical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Nothing can possess multiple forms at once, and yet the statue does, without explanation.

“The manifold god revealed to the man that its earthly name was Fire, and that in that circular temple (and others like it) men had made sacrifices and worshiped it, and that it would magically bring to life the phantasm the man had dreamed—so fully bring him to life that every creature, save Fire itself and the man who dreamed him, would take him for a man of flesh and blood.”

This is a crucial point in the story because it reveals the nature of the god. Symbolically, fire can represent both illumination and purification and, at the same time, destruction and pain. The extract also suggests that Fire is a trickster. The “catch” to his promise is that as long as the dreamer sends his son away to raise a cult of worshippers, only the god and the dreamer will know he is not real.

“In the dreaming man’s dream, the dreamed man awoke.”

Borges employs circular imagery throughout the text. Here, he creates a Russian nesting doll of dreams.

“From time to time, he was disturbed by a sense that all this had happened before —”

Borges uses foreshadowing to hint at the narrative’s final plot twist. The sorcerer dismisses his sense of dejá vu, unaware that this brief sense of unease is justified.

“The sorcerer suddenly remembered the god’s words. He remembered that of all the creatures on the earth, Fire was the only one who knew that his son was a phantasm.”

Here is where the god’s “catch” comes into play. Fire (the god) knows that the sorcerer’s son is not real, and as such, fire (the element) cannot burn what does not exist.

“To be not a man, but the projection of another man’s dream—what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo!”

Borges was fascinated by philosophy and different theories about dreams. Here, there is situational irony in the protagonist’s concern about his son’s reaction if he realizes he is not real. At the end of the story, the dreamer experiences the “incomparable humiliation” and “vertigo” he imagines in this moment.

“[T]hen, at last, the panicked flight of the animals—for that which had occurred hundreds of years ago was being repeated now. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire were destroyed by fire.”

This is another example of the circularity present in the story. Borges suggests that the cycle of destruction and rebirth will be perpetuated again and again.