“Philosophic controversy usurps a good part of the novel. I know that of all problems, none disturbed him so greatly nor worked upon him so much as the abysmal problem of time. Now then, the latter is the only problem that does not figure in the pages of the Garden. He does note even use the word that signifies time.” pg. 7
The fact that a word cannot be used to describe itself, as this makes it meaningless, infinite, and unanswered, was one of the first lessons touched upon by my philosophy teacher this semester. When I read this passage, I realized that the book he was writing was supposed to be some sort of definition of time. After this became apparent, I tried to figure out exactly how this is supposed to relate to the surface plot of the story. It seemed like maybe there was a word that wasn’t being used in this story that was supposed to be the theme of the story, or maybe there was some reflection of time in this. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually take the time to try to figure it out, so I am just rambling about my shallow thoughts on the story. However, in following with my initial thought that there must be some unspoken word in this story that is supposed to be some sort of theme, I thought perhaps it was death or suicide; this mainly came from the fact that before I came to this bit in the story that is presumably supposed to have the most meaning, I noticed there were a lot of indirect images of death–or the narrator’s imminent death, at least. Also, I at first thought he was Japanese (as I was thinking WWII despite the fact that it stipulated this was WWI at the beginning), which made me think this was a sort of kamikaze-like mission. Anyway, this thread of thought doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere meaningful. I just thought perhaps this was supposed to be a reflection of the mindset of suicide, which wasn’t mentioned directly (I don’t think) despite the fact that he was obviously going to somehow end his life.
“‘In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost.’
‘In every one,’ I pronounced, not without a tremble to my voice, ‘I am grateful to you and revere you for your re-creation of the garden of Ts’ui Pen.’
‘Not in all,’ he murmured with a smile. ‘Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them, I am your enemy.’” pg. 7
This seemed significant just because there seem to be a lot of literary devices, or whatever I should call them, being employed here. The heavy foreshadowing in this section made it quite obvious what was to come. Yet, there was also a lot of irony–especially in the “in one of them I am your enemy” bit; this was ironic for the obvious reason that this statement assumes (based on the fact that he earlier said the present time was “favorable”) that the man who is about to kill him is not his enemy. There is also irony in the fact that just before this, the narrator’s statement made it seem he was not at all this man’s enemy. Yet, there is still another layer in the irony as there is juxtaposition in all this, which is later discovered. While this could have just been ironic in the above ways, the fact that the narrator only killed this man for the superficial reason of transmitting a message–not because he had anything against him–creates a bit of juxtaposition. This comes from the fact that two opposite branches of time/situations have joined in that the narrator is Albert’s enemy because he is killing him, yet he is not his personal enemy as he seems to actually mean what he said about being grateful and revering him; he is personally a “friend” (to be extreme) of this man, yet he is an enemy in his impersonal role of murderer. I wasn’t very coherent in explaining and pointing out all of this, but my point (I think) is that there is a sort of ironic juxtaposition in that the definition of time is many branching/forking paths, yet this situation seemed to have contrarily merged two of them. Something like that…
