Borges and the Ontology of Tropes

Dios mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza ¿Qué dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza De polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonías? 1 uch is the closing tercet of the double sonnet “El Ajedrez”, by J. L. Borges..And this question represents, perhaps, the quintes-sence of what can be called “Borges ’ rhetorical ontology”2. Rhetoric is, no doubt, one of the central points in the Borgesian Welt-anschauung. Not only rhetoric as subject, but also rhetoric considered as an intellectual or, moreover, an ontological position, and even, like in this sonnet, as a way to deal with the problem of God. For the occidental tradition, the idea of God is intimately related to the idea of causality. That means that for any chain of facts it is reasonable to postulate an absolute beginning, which can be called “God”. Never-theless, if instead of explaining the universe through the principle of causality we decide to refer to the pure idea of a “form ”-as one can speak of “rhetorical (or mathematical) forms”-, the chain ceases to be factual and becomes structural and iterative, like a grammar, and there is no longer any way to avoid the possibility of denying a “real ” begin-ning. The entities in the world become figures in a diagram, the onto-logical “history ” becomes a rhetorical “texture ” (trama), and God (writ-ten with upper initial) may always “be moved ” by some other “god” 1 God moves the player, who moves the pawn. /And behind God, which god opens the run /of dust and time and dream and agonies? (El Hacedor, OC 2: 191). 2 The present essay is a re-elaboration of some themes dealt about in the Permanen