Borges' El Sur : Conclusions

There are 4 epochs, distinguished by their time-scales: I: years/line of text II: days/line of text III: hours/line of text IV: minutes or seconds/line of text

Within each epoch, Borges distorts the linearity of the flow of time by at least an order of magnitude.

Chart explanation

X-axis is the line number in the text Measure and plot chronological time vs line

number on slides 4-7. You can see the distortions within each epoch.

Derivative of the above is the lapse, or the rate of flow of time.

Take the log of the lapse, plot it vs the line number in the chart on the next slide. You can see the distinct epochs.

Log(lapse) vs. line#

Stage I: Antecedents

Stage II: Buenos Aires

Stages III and IV: Train voyage and rural cantina

I use the visible change in the time-scales to justify two epochs instead

of one, and the text itself to decide where to

draw the line between epochs III and IV

Stage IV: The rural cantina