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help but think through the laws expressed by the Library. But this is the Library of Babel. Its rules are not those of neopositivistic science; they are paradoxical rules. The logic (the same) of the Mind and that of the World are both an illogic. An iron illogic. Only under these conditions can Pierre Menard rewrite "the same" Don Quixote. But alas, only under these conditions the same Don Quixote will be a different Don Quixote.
What of the rigorously illogical does Borges's universe have and what is it that permits Don Isidro to reconstruct with rigorous illogic the processes of an external universe equally illogical? Borges's universe functions according to the laws of the mise-en-scène or of fiction.
Reread all six stories of Don Isidro. In every instance we do not have stories which unfold on their own, as happens (we believe) in life. Don Isidro always discovers that what his clients experienced was a sequence of events projected by another mind. He discovers that they were already moving in the frame of a story and according to the rules of story-telling, that they were unconscious characters of a play already written by someone else. Don Isidro discovers the "truth" because of both his fertile mind and the fact that the subjects of his investigation proceed according to the rules of fiction.
This seems to me an excellent key for reading other stories by Borges. One is never confronted by chance, or by Fate; one is always inside a plot (cosmic or situational) developed by some other Mind according to a fantastic logic that is the logic of the Library.
This is what I meant when I talked about a mechanism of conjecture in a sick Spinozist universe. Naturally, "sick" in respect to Spinoza, not to Borges. In respect to Borges, that universe in which the detective and the killer always meet each other at the last moment, because both of them reasoned according to the same illogical fantasy, is the healthiest and most truthful universe of all.
If we are convinced of this, Don Isidro Parodi's way of reasoning will no longer appear paradoxical to us. Don Isidro is a perfect inhabitant of Borges's world (to come). And it is normal that one locked in a cell can resolve all the cases. The disorder and the disconnection of the ideas is the same as the disorder and disconnection of the world, or even of things.
It is irrelevant whether one thinks about it in the world, examining the facts, or locked in a prison, examining the unconscious falsifications of stupid observers. On the contrary, a prison is better than the world: the mind can function without too much external "noise." The mind, tranquil, becomes one with things.

 
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