[Though] incredibly recondite in learning, and familiar with many ancient and mainly forgotten authors and speculations, [Borges] treats scholarship, like art and life, as a game. Entirely fictitious sources mingle with real ones, in texts and footnotes, some of the latter ascribed to 'editors' who are in fact the author himself. Continuing preoccupation with the dubious reality of art, of the cosmos, of himself, is one ingredient of the lucid and economical scepticism pervading his work. In one place, metaphysics is described as a branch of fantasy—yet Borges's quest is serious, his tone more tragic and stoic than flamboyant, and the various images which vividly emerge, from maze after maze, have a vividness which belong to serious, and permanent, art. (p. 6)

Borges's critical intellect, which insists on treating scepticism partly as play, is the balancing creative force, delighting in order. We are bound to conclude I think, that for him, 'order' exists chiefly in art, and is itself one mode of limiting fear and boredom, to make existence endurable. Even so, critiques of political and religious ideologies lurk in his tales also, with sharp precision, as a kind of social sub-stratum to this least social of arts. (p. 8)

[Borges assumes that his readers are] not only as unreal as fictions (possibly), but as varied as 'reality'. This perspective signals a dramatic break with those humanist writers who took for granted a common cultural, and even moral, response from their fellows. George Eliot is a writer who clearly expected a readership that would share, yet be further educable in, her own liberal and compassionate values; critics such as F. R. Leavis continued to believe in a 'common tradition' of 'true judgement' as the supreme prize to be sought, by artists and critics. Borges, in contrast, writes of traitors and outcasts, murderers and assassins, as well as of good and sensitive men; and how is he to know who, among such a human variety, might be reading his work? Just as there can be no explaining why the heirs of a great European culture killed Jews, for Hitler, so there can be no explaining what 'real' values—whether acknowledged, or merely discovered in crisis—any particular reader may have. The influence of literature itself is an open question: we hope that it may tend towards good, for many good reasons—but men retain their freewill when reading, as at all other times.

If Borges does have a belief, it is in the 'ordering' of art—but this effort to help alleviate boredom, weariness, emptiness, is conditional, and is itself part of the maze. Only occasionally, as in his brief comment on 'Avelino Arredondo', does he express a moral preference ('I do not approve of political assassination')—yet, in showing us the behaviour of a nineteenth-century assassin, he uncannily suggests what the killers of John and Robert Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, and all other such modern loners, might be like. Once more, there is no explicit moralising, or psychological analysis, inside the tale: just an ineffaceable image, left for the mind to contemplate. If we find it hard to believe—or, with recent history in mind, still harder to disbelieve—Borges will offer no clue.

'The lottery In Babylon' seems a logical next port of call, since … it allows space for the reader to add twists of his own. With this, we come to Borges's major strategy, as I am defining it—which is simply the offer, in tale after tale, of images that stay in the mind. (pp. 11-12)

Unobtrusively, one central paradox establishes itself. On the one hand, some argue that the 'lottery is an interpolation of chance in the order of the world and that to accept errors is not to contradict chance; it is to corroborate it'. On the other hand, the lottery can be regarded as the interpolation of a purely human system on a universe with no order of its own or clue to order: and, by extension, as a symbolic translation of the nature of reality to human 'choice'….

The narrative … characteristically explores the resulting anomalies—the inaccessibility of the Company; the complexity of matching hopes with fears, the possibly infinite aspect attending each 'draw', along with the search for methods to correct chance, and the possible new terrors in such an idea. It moves finally to heretical speculations—such as the non-existence of the Company—and ends with a classic discussion of the 'divine modesty' of the Company's elusive, unchallengeable power…. (p. 13)

The influence of Kafka will not be missed, yet the effect is entirely different, or so it seems to me. In place of Kafka's anguished exertions of logic, in a world which defies it, we have something like a triumph of logic, offering whatever level of interpretation a reader might choose. For some, this will be a tale which starts as a fantasy—an account of social evolution defying precedent or possibility—and, by a dream-like transition, turns into a symbol of the world as it is. The 'lottery' could indeed be the chance which attends the birth of each one of us: or, in individual terms, it could be emblematic of 'the changes and chances of this troublous life'…. Other readers might see, rather, political satire, not unrelated to the violent changes of government willed, or endured, by Borges's native Argentinians (or by the rest of the world). The basic equation between choice and chance in the 'lottery' will hover suggestively over any mature religious, moral or political frame one could produce. If it is argued that some, but not all, human beings undergo amazing transitions in the course of a lifetime, Borges would leave his readers totally free to ponder on that. Undeniably, the mystery of death, as an unpredictable curtailment of everything that a human becomes, is universal, and acts as a dimension which infuses mystery in every enactment of life.

The effect differs, again, from Kafka, in its detachment: the narrator himself appears to be speaking half out of a dream. In Kafka, the sharp edge of guilt, anxiety and quest, the unhealed need for clarity, is ubiquitous. Borges offers simple clarity of style and image, complete (it seems) in itself. (p. 14)

'Three versions of Judas' is deceptively simple—a sequence of supposed interpretations of Judas evolved by an imaginary early twentieth-century theologian, Nils Runeberg, whose works are ascribed to 1904, 1909 and 1912. We are told that 'Nils Runeberg, a member of the National Evangelical Union, was deeply religious', but that his views, as they developed, are regarded as either frivolous, or as blasphemous, in intellectual circles today. It is acknowledged that, had he lived in earlier centuries, he might well have been put to death, and later consigned by Dante to a 'fiery grave' in the Inferno. In the twentieth century, his fate is to be ignored. (p. 19)

This tale revealed to me—for the first time, as Borges so often manages to do, in his offbeat insights—the total unsatisfactoriness of any Good Friday devotions I have ever heard. The mystery of sinlessness has never been satisfactorily expounded; nor the sacrifice of Judas—nor, indeed, the actual agony of the Cross. The latter, indeed, if described medically, might send a congregation out of the church vomiting; all too often, the congregation is left instead singing words it cannot possibly believe (or can it?…). (pp. 21-2)

I should add that I assume that Borges no more 'believed' in the speculations of Nils Runeberg than he believes in orthodox theology; nor, I imagine, does he expect to convince any readers. At one level, the aesthetic elegance and daring of the paradox, combined with its compression, might most have pleased him; yet his purpose is wholly serious. The tale, in its nutshell, plays havoc with Christianity's 'infinite space'—yet the bad dreams remain. Borges's profound concern for the metaphysical, for religious questing, cannot be doubted—nor will any religion of the future bypass him, if it is to survive. (p. 22)

[Before] coming to what (to me) seems the central insight [of 'The Sect of Thirty'], I would point to Borges's extraordinary power of setting minds moving in different ways. If it is argued that he is playing a deliberate (even blasphemous?) game of selective fundamentalism, in what sense does he differ, in this, from many orthodox evangelicals? It is simply that the 'Sect of Thirty' choose, for their 'literal' texts, a somewhat different selection from those thundered from normal Christian pulpits—and with effects that again can scarcely be laughed off as mere play…. [In] taking literally the Sermon of the Mount, the Sect presents a different challenge, notably for those who would call themselves 'Sermon on the Mount' Christians in a modern 'liberal' and maybe cosy mood. This famous Sermon does indeed include sobering texts on mercy, love, gentleness—all pleasing concepts to the kindly; equally, it includes the more extreme texts favoured by the Sect of Thirty. (pp. 23-4)

The degree of literalness intended in scripture is no idle speculation: nor is it frivolous to see which parts of the Bible Christian 'orthodoxy' treats as 'literal', and which it does not. Borges forces us to look, maybe, at the spirit of rejection and occasional persecution directed towards certain sexual sinners by numerous well-heeled and respectable churchgoers in the tradition of 'literal fundamentalism'; and to ponder what we can deduce about them, alike from the texts they choose, and the texts they choose to ignore.

In returning to the Judas theme he is by no means obsessive, since this time, the treatment receives a different twist. The Sect—however eccentric—accepts universal salvation, and allows both its liberal sexuality, and its austere self-immolation, to cohere with belief in that. Since God's universal love is a notion writ large in scripture, they see no reason to believe that any human creature is destined to eternal pain. In contrast, the reaction of the 'orthodox' fourth-century narrator to the 'abominations' of the Sect is striking—though as usual, Borges avoids all comment, or irony, of his own. We are left, as always with an image, and an enigma—a method closely akin to (and even modelled upon?) the parables of Jesus himself. (p. 24)

'The Book of Sand' [in the short story of the same title] is the book of life, in one reading; 'of making many books there is no end'. (Likewise, of making many theories, many dogmatisms.) But, if something of the weariness of scepticism haunts this tale, even more, it illustrates the futility of dogmatism. The link I personally make between the two Judas narratives, and this, is precisely here: if men's minds are labyrinths, and the cosmos itself is the ultimate labyrinth, how can the dogmatic spirit survive, for a thinking man?

I have stressed Borges's scepticism, which is indeed extensive, yet certain positive [aspects] emerge from it, again and again. His rejection of Marxism, anti-Semitism, Nazism, all political ideologies, is everywhere apparent; his rejection of religious dogma is no less clear.

'Three versions of Judas', 'The Sect of Thirty' and 'The Book of Sand' seem a final comment on dogma, whether catholic, or protestant, or attached to any religion at all. Borges turns to the Bible, with every appearance of reverence, and produces as yet unheard-of heresies from the most obvious texts. The fact that his heresies plunge deeper, and may be more loving, than many of the more familiar labyrinths of orthodoxy, is a further refinement, upon which we may reflect as we choose. What better proof that the Bible is different for everyman?—and different for everyman, individually, at each stage of his life?

Equally, the 'book of sand' is every book we read (or teach) in a lifetime. The words may not change, but is any book, if we are honest, ever twice the same? How much more, then, must 'life' elude us, as we try to make sense of ourselves, over a lifetime? Can any page show the same image twice, in memory? Can any book have a definitive beginning or end?

It is a striking paradox that, largely by steering clear of psychology, moralising, or even explicit commentary, Borges suggests the superiority of images to intellect in all of these spheres. Perhaps our very awareness of his intellectual distinction makes his own playing with intellect doubly effective. The intellectual distinction is the art, the imagery; which in turn plays devious games with ideas and ideologies—games that may strike us, even so, as more serious than most other men's 'truths'.

Borges's views may seem, in some moods, negative—but he has survived life, blindness, and now old age, with humour and style. His scepticism harms no one, persecutes no one, rejects no one: if anything, it confers dignity on the outcast and strange. It stirs fears, which are universal—and which might even unite men, if they would allow this, in a common plight. If we are all suffering, all searching, all tinged with illusion, why should we seek to imprison others in our own bad dreams? Borges's scepticism is its own two-edged sword against prejudice; it pierces every tyranny, or 'rational' ideology, that would plague the world.

Not all of us can find consolation in creation—yet the archetypes may have healing power in themselves, as Jung discerned. The denial of ego which runs through Borges's tales, in many variants, is balanced by this: 'All things long to persist in their being' ('The wall and the books'). Borges also said—more than once—'the man who reads Shakespeare is Shakespeare': an intuition which balances the 'denial' of Shakespeare himself. His insistence that each reader adds more to the work he reads than his author did, could make us more, not less, 'real' than the author himself. Meanwhile, fictions or dreams, we respond to his visions, whose very vividness counters any ultimate lack of concern.

Borges is not, after all, nihilistic: it is with the mystics, explorers of religion, that he truly belongs. How else should he make us feel that death's greatest sting is not the loss of our ego, however we fear this, but the loss of precious memories our egos may hold? (pp. 25-6)

A. E. Dyson, "'You, Fictional Reader …': Jorge Luis Borges," in Critical Quarterly (© by Manchester University Press 1979), Vol. 21, No. 4, Winter, 1979, pp. 5-27.