The Immortal

WARNING: here be spoilers …

“The Immortal” by Jorge Luis Borges


What would it be like to live forever? To never taste death? Or, for that matter, disease, corruption, and possibly never to feel pain? Would that be heavenly, or a hell?

While our natural, immediate choice would be, perhaps, to consider it hopefully, in varying degrees of disbelief (and I say this from the perspective of one who spent too much time recently in a serious condition in a hospital), I think you know the answer deep down to that last question.

But nobody can quite make a metaphysical point like Borges.

A withered antiques dealer, himself an antique, sells a princess an old copy of Pope’s Iliad, whereupon she stumbles on an ancient manuscript. Old, ancient, antiques … right from the get-go we have some idea where this story is heading. But it is in the manuscript, ostensibly by the hand of a Roman tribune, where the story’s ideas concerning immortality are found.

Marcus Flaminius Rufus has the misfortune to encounter a dying man at the sands of the Nile. The man comes from the East, and is searching for the river of immortality, a river that winds through the ravines that cloak the City of Immortals. Dying before Marcus can satiate his curiosity, the Roman puts more easterners to the blade until the story becomes clear. Outfitted with a partial legion, he sets off with the proconsul’s blessing in search of this fabled city.

The heat of the desert, baking men’s bodies and men’s brains, the thirst that leads to desertion and mutiny – Marcus’ ill-launched expedition is not immune to this. The tribune flees, barely ahead of the assassin, loses his loyalists in a sandstorm, and awakens in a shallow grave carved in the side of a mountain, one grave among many, and finds himself surrounded by mute ascetics at the foot of … the City of Immortals.

And driven by that mad thirst, Marcus drinks of the river of immortality.

The days flow countlessly into the weeks, the weeks, months and years. A mute falls headfirst into a well and seven decades lapse before his companions throw down a rope. Marcus finally manages to engage one in conversation after – miracle of miracles! – a rainstorm, and he discovers his new friend is none other than Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

As his sanity becomes more and more questionable as the years escape, Marcus begins to understand immortality. It is summed up in a few horrifying sentences in the story: “They all knew that in an infinite period of time, all things happen to all men . . . Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible things is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once . . . I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon, and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.”

Woe if LE ever became immortal! Every book in every library would be read, once, twice, a dozen times; eventually a memory as fragile as mine would memorize all books, and once all memorized, all would converge into a blur of grammar. Every occupation would be had, tried, and ultimately succeeded at. Even the fine art of cocktail party chit-chat. Wives, friends of both sexes, children and their children, all would age and die, never knowing they were watched by my ancient eyes. The promise of reward, the promise of salvation meaningless. Woe indeed! Salt would lose its saltiness, and the light on the hill would fade – why indeed light it at all? Why care for the body, this unchanging, unvarying thing we wear? Why care for anything at all? For LE realizes that immortality is hell – immortality, that is, without God, Who does not grace this Borgesian tale.

But what happens to Flaminius Rufus, you ask? Eventually – and that word “eventually” does take on an ironic connotation speaking of immortality – eventually he and his cursed companions startle upon this simple datum: If there is a river which grants immortality, might there not be a river which takes it away? They scatter throughout the world in search of this second river, and the final paragraphs of our tribune’s manuscript is littered with details of his search – towns of the Hegira, Arabia, the Norman Conquest of 1066, astrology in Bohemia, discussions of philosophy with Giambattista Vico. But he does find that second river; the pain he receives from a small cut on his arm confirms this. All that remains, then, is for him to put his past to paper and pen.

Then, a shocking realization. Marcus is a solder, no? A Roman soldier, despite the centuries and centuries of wandering. As he finishes his tale, he notices something odd. Something not quite right. Yes, he’s a soldier, yes, he’s participated in the wars of the Middle East and in Europe. But … the details. The eye for details … a poet’s eye … the splendid and fancy words of one who knows – like those of Homer’s.

In an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and infinite changes, the impossible thing is … not to have been Homer. “I have been Homer; shortly, I shall be No One, like Ulysses; shortly, I shall be all men; I shall be dead.”