# Borges and PEACE

*The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Jul 2001*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2735>

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### Adam Stephanides
*20 Jul 2001, 20:38*

-----Original Message-----

> From: Dan <meliza at OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:54:44 -0700 (PDT)
> I don't know what the consensus is on the 
> ending of the novel, but I
> took Weer's remark about waking, in the context 
> of the Chinese garden
> dream, to mean either that he is at last waking 
> to a higher, more
> realized existence (as in the Borges tale - I 
> forget the title - of
> the man who dies and only after a series of 
> nightmares realizes that
> he has in fact been in heaven all along)

This doesn't ring a bell with me, and I've read 
Borges' collected stories (though it could have 
just slipped my mind).  The closest thing to it I can 
think of is a story Borges took from Swedenborg 
(it appeared in The Universal History of Infamy 
and in the Borges co-edited Book of Fantasy, iirc), 
which I'd mentioned on this list before.  But in that 
story the dead man is in hell, not heaven.

--Adam

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