Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c343IR // #c343Synthesis

These (and other) parallels between the story of Julius Caesar and the story of an Irish conspirator induce Ryan to imagine some secret shape of time, a pattern of repeating lines.

— In our words · Source: Collected Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)

[Use when]

Use when two distant stories rhyme hard enough to imply a pattern, not coincidence.

[Why it matters]

History rhymes structurally, not coincidentally — the pattern is the argument for a shape to time.

More from Collected Fictions

#c344From learning to pity the misfortunes of the heroes of our novels, we wind up feeling too much pity for our own.Use when reading empathy becomes self-pity by transfer. #c345In life, Ashe was afflicted with unreality, as so many Englishmen are; in death, he is not even the ghost he was in life.Use when an English understatement of self needs a colder afterlife version. #c346Villari's previous life, but he didn't notice the errors, because the notion that there might be parallels between art and life never…Use when a character cannot see the rhyme between story and fate.