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Rong 1
Hao Rong
Professor Will
English 2
18 October 2017
Ideas of Gnosticism in the writings of George Luis Borges
Gnosticism is a word derived from the Greek word “Gnosis,” which means
divine knowledge. Even though called Gnosticism, it is hardly a religion
because there are no churches of Gnosticism in the world; however, it could
be used as a word to describe a specific type of writings and beliefs
(“Religion for Breakfast”). George Luis Borges is an example of a writer that
profoundly influenced by Gnosticism. In many of his works, he makes
reflections to the Gnosticism. For example, in one of his short stories called
“The Library of Babel,” he suggests that this library contains all kinds of
books including “the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that
gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel” (54). The word
“gnostic” also appears several times in his famous story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius.” George Luis Borges is preoccupied with the Gnostic ideas, and
therefore, he reveals many Gnostic concepts in his short stories.
The Gnostics believe in a “dualist anthropology.” It means that they value
the soul as something transcendent and harmonious, but meanwhile,
consider the human body and the material world as something evil and
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corrupted. Therefore, a human can be considered as a divine soul trapped in
an imperfect body, and the idea of the afterlife, according to Gnostics, is to
liberate the soul from the body so that it could enter the divine spiritual
realm (“Religion for Breakfast”). The idea that the world is chaotic is
presented in the story “The Library of Babel.” Borges describes the universe
as a library consist of infinite numbers of adjacent hexagonal rooms, and in
each of these rooms, there are basic needs for human survival and four
walls of bookshelves. The books in this library cover every possible ordering
of 25 basic characters, so it means that this library contains everything,
including the history of human, predictions of the future, and even
