"Funes the Memorious" (original
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
title ''Funes el memorioso'') is a
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
by
Argentine
Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...
writer
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
(1899–1986). First published in ''
La Nación
''La Nación'' () is an Argentine daily newspaper. As the country's leading conservative newspaper, ''La Nación''s main competitor is the more liberal '' Clarín''. It is regarded as a newspaper of record for Argentina.
Its motto is: "''La Nac ...
'' of June 1942, it appeared in the 1944 anthology ''
Ficciones
' (in English: "Fictions") is a collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, originally written and published in Spanish between 1941 and 1956. Thirteen stories from ''Ficciones'' were first published by New Direc ...
'', part two (''Artifices''). The first English translation appeared in 1954 in ''Avon Modern Writing No. 2''.
"Funes the Memorious" is the tale of one Ireneo Funes, who, after falling off his horse and receiving a bad head injury, acquired the amazing talent—or curse—of remembering absolutely everything.
Plot summary
The narrator, a version of Borges himself, meets Ireneo Funes, a teenage boy who lives in
Fray Bentos
Fray Bentos () is the capital city of the Río Negro Department, in south-western Uruguay, at the Argentina-Uruguay border, near the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú, Entre Ríos, Gualeguaychú. Its port on the Uruguay River is one of the nation's ...
,
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
, in 1884. Borges's cousin asks the boy for the time, and Funes replies instantly, without the aid of a watch and accurate to the minute.
Borges returns to
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, then in 1887 comes back to Fray Bentos, intending to relax and study some
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
. He learns that Ireneo Funes has meanwhile suffered a horseback riding accident and is now hopelessly crippled. Soon enough, Borges receives a note from Funes, requesting that the visitor lend him some of his Latin books and a dictionary. Borges, disconcerted, sends Funes what he deems the most difficult works "in order fully to undeceive him".
Days later, Borges receives a
telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
from Buenos Aires calling for his return due to his father's ill health. As he packs, he remembers the books and goes to Funes's house. Funes's mother escorts him to a patio where the youth usually spends his dark hours. As he enters, Borges is greeted by Funes's voice speaking perfect Latin, reciting "the first paragraph of the twenty-fourth chapter of the seventh book of the ''
Historia Naturalis''" (by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...
).
Funes enumerates to Borges the cases of prodigious memory cited in the ''Historia Naturalis'', and adds that he marvels that those are considered marvellous. He reveals that, since his fall from the horse, he perceives everything in full detail and remembers it all. He remembers, for example, the shape of clouds at all given moments, as well as the associated perceptions (muscular, thermal, etc.) of each moment. Funes has an immediate intuition of the mane of a horse or the form of a constantly changing flame that is comparable to our (normal people's) intuition of a simple geometric shape such as a triangle or square.
In order to pass the time, Funes has engaged in projects such as reconstructing a full day's worth of past memories (an effort which, he finds, takes him another full day), and constructing a "system of enumeration" that gives each number a different, arbitrary name. Borges correctly points out to him that this is precisely the opposite of a system of enumeration, but Funes is incapable of such understanding. A poor, ignorant young boy in the outskirts of a small town, he is hopelessly limited in his possibilities, but (says Borges) his absurd projects reveal "a certain stammering greatness". Funes, we are told, is incapable of Platonic ideas, of generalities, of abstraction; his world is one of intolerably uncountable details. He finds it very difficult to sleep, since he recalls "every crevice and every moulding of the various houses which
urroundhim".
Borges spends the whole night talking to Funes in the dark. When dawn reveals Funes's face, only 19 years old, Borges sees him "as monumental as bronze, more ancient than Egypt, anterior to the prophecies and the pyramids".
Borges later finds out that Funes died from "congestion of the lungs".
Major themes
Borges explores a variety of topics in the text, such as the need of generalization and abstraction to thought and science.
Savants
Funes may be compared to an
autistic savant
Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...
, in that he has acquired an extraordinary ability,
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
, without the obvious need for study or practice. The story raises the unresolved question of how much unfulfilled potential the human
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...
truly contains.
The very existence of
eidetic (photographic) memory is controversial, although
hyperthymesia
Hyperthymesia, also known as hyperthymestic syndrome or highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), is a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. It is extraordi ...
, now known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), the ability to recall one's past day-by-day, has been confirmed to exist by some neuroscientists (Parker et al. 2006). Even in these cases, however, the memory is not eidetic as, while exceptional, it only contains personally relevant autobiographical information
Wasted miracles
The early death of Funes echoes the idea of unfulfilled potential, the wasted
miracle
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divin ...
of a plainsman with phenomenal abilities who lives and dies in obscurity. The unheeded marvel is a common theme in Borges's writing.
Counting systems
Funes claims to have invented a
system of enumeration which gives every numeral (up to at least 24,000) its own arbitrary name. The narrator argues that a
positional number system
Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or decimal system). More generally, a positional system is a numeral system in which the ...
is a better tool for abstraction.
Artificial languages
The narrator mentions that
Locke
Locke may refer to:
People
*John Locke, English philosopher
*Locke (given name)
*Locke (surname), information about the surname and list of people
Places in the United States
*Locke, California, a town in Sacramento County
*Locke, Indiana
*Locke, ...
postulated then rejected an
impossible idiom "in which each individual thing, each stone, each bird and each branch would have its own name; Funes once projected an analogous language, but discarded it because it seemed too general to him, too ambiguous" since it did not take ''time'' into account: given that physical objects are constantly changing in subtle ways, Funes insisted that in order to refer to an object unambiguously one must specify a time.
Generalization
Because Funes can distinguish every physical object at every distinct time of viewing, he has no clear need of
generalization
A generalization is a form of abstraction whereby common properties of specific instances are formulated as general concepts or claims. Generalizations posit the existence of a domain or set of elements, as well as one or more common characteri ...
(or detail-suppression) for the management of sense impressions. The narrator claims that this prevents abstract thought, given that
induction
Induction, Inducible or Inductive may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Labor induction (birth/pregnancy)
* Induction chemotherapy, in medicine
* Induced stem cells, stem cells derived from somatic, reproductive, pluripotent or other cell t ...
and
deduction rely on this ability. This is stated in the line "To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes, there were nothing but details."
Insomnia
Funes sits in a dark room and goes over the events in his past. As narrative, this can be seen as an extended version of insomnia. It is a fantastical presentation of a common human complaint. Borges himself states the tale is a metaphor for this in the prologue to ''Artifices''.
Actual persons with similar conditions
Solomon Shereshevsky
Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky (russian: Соломон Вениаминович Шерешевский; 1886 – 1 May 1958), also known simply as 'Ш' ('Sh'), 'S.', or Luria's S was a Soviet journalist and mnemonist active in the 1920s. He w ...
, a stage memory-artist (
mnemonist
The title mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc. Some mnemonists also memorize texts such as long poems, speeches, o ...
) with a condition known as "hypermnesia",
is described by the Russian neuropsychologist
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
in his book, ''The Mind of a Mnemonist'', which some speculate was the inspiration for Borges's story.
[ Luria discusses explicitly some of the trade-offs—hinted at by Borges—that come with supernormal memory power. (Furthe]
Skywriting
on this topic.) British-American neurologist
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
and writer Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the Uni ...
cites Luria's book as the inspiration for his own book ''Awakenings
''Awakenings'' is a 1990 American drama film directed by Penny Marshall. It is written by Steven Zaillian, who based his screenplay on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir ''Awakenings''. It tells the story of neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams ...
'', which is dedicated to Luria. Sacks also mentions Borges's Funes in his book, ''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,'' at the end of Chapter 13 entitled, "Yes, Father-Sister" and in other chapters. The neuroscience aspects of Funes are also discussed in detail by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga in his book ''Borges and Memory: Encounters with the Human Brain.''
Jill Price
Jill Price (née Rosenberg, born December 30, 1965) is an American author from Southern California, who has been diagnosed with hyperthymesia. She was the first person to receive such a diagnosis, and it was her case that inspired research into hyp ...
, and ten others, can remember with great accuracy most days of their lives starting from the average age of eleven. The scientific term for their unique condition is " hyperthymestic syndrome", more recently known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM). Price has stated that she, like Funes, views her memory as a curse."A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering"
Psychology Press, 2006
Cultural references
*
Chris Doyle's film ''
Away with Words
''Away with Words'' (known also by its Chinese title 三條人, roughly translated as ''Three Life-stories'', and its Japanese title 孔雀, translated as ''Peacock'') is a 1999 auteur trilingual (Japanese, English, Cantonese) film by Christophe ...
'' (1999) is largely inspired by the story of Funes (as well as
Luria's account of
Shereshevskii's life and psychology).
*
David Mitchell's novel ''
Cloud Atlas
A cloud atlas is a pictorial key (or an atlas) to the nomenclature of clouds. Early cloud atlases were an important element in the training of meteorologists and in weather forecasting, and the author of a 1923 atlas stated that "increasing use ...
'' (2004) alludes to this story; the character Sonmi-451 is said, as part of her intellectual development, to have read "Ireneo Funes's ''Remembrances''".
*
Umberto Eco's novel ''
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
''The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana'' (original Italian title: ''La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana'') is a novel by the Italian writer Umberto Eco. It was first published in Italian in 2004, and an English language translation by Geoffrey ...
'' (2004) alludes to this story.
Notes
References
Summary and analysis- From the ''Literature, Arts, & Medicine Database'', an annotated bibliography of prose, poetry, film, video and art.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Funes The Memorious
Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges
1942 short stories
Fictional Argentine people
Fray Bentos in fiction