Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c346IR // #c346Synthesis

Villari's previous life, but he didn't notice the errors, because the notion that there might be parallels between art and life never occurred to him.

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

[Use when]

Use when a character cannot see the rhyme between story and fate.

[Why it matters]

Blindness to the rhyme between story and fate is itself the tragic mechanism.

More from Collected Fictions

#c343These (and other) parallels between the story of Julius Caesar and the story of an Irish conspirator induce Ryan to imagine some secret…Use when two distant stories rhyme hard enough to imply a pattern, not coincidence. #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.