The Circular Ruins

“The Circular Ruins” is an exploration of the trials and tribulations of the act of creation. It is also an allegory that draws on a wide array of belief structures to question the nature of dreams and reality.

Within “The Circular Ruins” is an extended metaphor comparing the creative process—in Borges’s case, writing—to giving birth. When the dreamer embarks on his task, he starts by trying to develop his son’s soul. He spends countless hours ruminating on various topics and fretting about selecting one pupil out of a myriad. However, just as he feels like progress is being made, he loses it all and realizes his methods are flawed:

He understood that the task of molding the incoherent and dizzying stuff that dreams are made of is the most difficult work a man can undertake, even if he fathom all the enigmas of the higher and lower spheres—much more difficult than weaving a rope of sand or minting coins of the faceless wind (219).

Anyone who has attempted an artistic endeavor can identify with this experience. Whether they are molding clay or developing a plotline, artists often need to stop and reframe their process to get the best results. When the dreamer begins again, he starts small, with the heart, much as an embryo begins. He then spends two years lovingly developing every organ, bone, and sinew, down to the individual hairs. When his son is ready to be “born” into reality, the dreamer can sense his impatience, much like a fetus stretching against its tight uterine confines. As in parenthood, much of the dreamer’s sense of pride and accomplishment is tied to his son’s existence. Likewise, when a writer “gives birth” to a piece of work they have labored to create, they present it to the world, fearful of judgment or rejection. Borges often contemplated where his creative ideas originated from and experimented with different answers to this timeless question. In “The Circular Ruins,” the author invites readers to consider the same question and explore the boundaries between dreams and reality.

The story is set on a remote tropical island of indeterminate location. The protagonist is introduced as a “gray man,” the dreamer, who has arrived on the island with the sole task of performing a supernatural feat: dreaming a man into existence. This mission is stated by the third-person limited omniscient narrator as something that “[is] not impossible […] [and] had come to fill his entire soul; if someone had asked him his own name, or inquired into any feature of his life until then, he would not have been able to answer” (216). The introduction of a mysterious protagonist with mystical knowledge and no memory of his past sets the stage for Borges to employ one of his favored literary devices: magical realism. Magical realism is characterized by the inclusion of magical or mystical elements into an otherwise realistic fictional world. This is the perfect form for Borges to give solidity to his philosophical musings on dreams.

Dreams presented a conundrum for Borges. He mentioned in several interviews that he was sometimes unsure of the line between the waking world and the one created when we are asleep. He also stated that his stories came to him in dreams, but he could not say whether he was controlling the dreams or if they sprang from deeper, unconscious depths. These uncertainties gave rise to the paradox in “The Circular Ruins.” The story questions whether a man who is only a dream can create a similar man who is also a dream, establishing a potentially infinite chain of "dreamers” and “dreamed.”

Borges’s musings on dreams and what they reveal were inspired by the seemingly conflicting studies of religion and science. On the one hand, he was influenced by Carl Jung and his psychoanalytical theories regarding a possible human “collective unconscious.” For example, the dreamer is able to tap into primordial knowledge about rituals and rites and gods without having any knowledge of his own past, which seems to be a nod to Jung’s theory. On the other hand, Borges was drawn to the Buddhist religion and the use of circular mandalas to reflect on life and the mystery of creation. The ultimate goal, according to Buddhism, is to achieve enlightenment by waking up from the sleep of ignorance, thus breaking the cycle of rebirth. If this is so, then our protagonist manages that feat at the end of the story when he has the epiphany that he is also a dreamed man. However, it is unclear if the dreamer actually awakens or is doomed to live eternally with this knowledge. Borges chooses to leave readers pondering these questions. In addition to these influences, Borges also references ancient Christian religions (the Gnostic cosmology), Jewish folkloric beliefs, and Greek mythological figures (“the planetary gods”). By blending different belief structures that are firmly rooted in real religious and scientific studies, Borges cements the story in reality despite the mystical events that occur.