A Reading of Borgesian Thresholds

"threshold" as defined by Merriam-Webster:

1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door: sill
2 a: gate, door b (1): end, boundary; specifically: the end of a runway (2): the place or point of entering or beginning: outset
3 a: the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced b: a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not


Embedded in Borges’ writing are all three aspects of threshold; each one adding further complexity to the narrative. The following is an attempt to taxonomize them, starting with a reading of The Garden of Forking Paths.


The narrator, in this case Tsun, gives the following counsel to man:

“The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.”

It seems man’s free will, in this case manifest in a projection (destiny?), is the driving force behind an acting out that’s both crystallizing (“irrevocable”) and transitory (past and future). If thresholds are a point of entering, then is its inception the imagining of action afforded to us? And if they are the boundary between two territories then, in this case, are they the spaces of past and future?



The literal threshold, as a physically identifiable locus, exists in the form of a “crossroad”. On his way to find Stephen Albert, Tsun is told how he can find his house:

“The house is a long way from here, but you wont get lost if you take this road to the left and at every crossroads turn again to your left.”

In and of itself, the crossroad is not terribly interesting. However, it builds complexity serially through an accretion that adds focus at every turn, producing a threshold that’s occupiable between departure and arrival.