Our train may occasionally be late, but it is certainly never infinitely long. In this sense, the world as it appears before us, may seem to be a little disappointing when compared to our favourite Sci-fi planet. Perhaps this is because fiction has the power to portray ideals – those concepts and objects that transcend empirical, experiential reality. Infinity and perfection are two significant examples of such ideals; while we may understand the concept of perfection, we are unable to tie it to a thing that we experience in our own reality, because we simply haven’t ever had the perfect slice of pizza or a truly bottomless drink. In this sense, there is a disconnect between ideals and our reality. However, in a fictional realm this disconnect is somewhat breached.
infinity pool (not an infinite pool)
Infinity is, to me, the most fascinating ideal, since it can be applied to space and time. We seem to possess the ability to ponder the notion of an infinite train or boundless swimming pool, and even imagine how we would experience such things. However, in fictional works, we may take this a step further. Infinity can be portrayed as a mechanism that ‘successfully’ operates within the fictional world. For instance, a fictional character may pick up a book with an infinite number of pages and we may read about ways in which it plagues him (this is the content of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called The Book of Sand). Or perhaps we are met by a character who has lived for an infinite amount of time: when they account for their experience, there is no moment to doubt the truth of the tale: it simply is true within the world presented to us by the author. Significantly, we are told how interactions with infinity play out and what happens next. In this sense, infinity descends from a purely conceptual realm to interact with the fictional world. Our lack of agency, as readers dropped into the author’s narrative, enables us to encounter the infinite and observe its effects in ways usually limited by our faculties of doubt and reason.
However, the introduction of such ideals into a fictional narrative does not come without complication. A fascinating dichotomy arises between the ‘ideal’ and the ordinary mechanics of the world: between perfect and ordinary; infinite and finite; linear and nonlinear. Roland Barthes touches upon these tensions in Mythologies. He discusses Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – a novel that, in many ways, challenged the perception of time and space. Verne places the infinite and finite in tension with each other: the confined space of the Nautilus submarine is depicted traversing a seemingly inexhaustible world at great speed. Barthes notes that “the vastness of their circumnavigation further increases the bliss of their closure, the perfection of their inner humanity.” To some extent, the passengers’ confinement is presented as almost fractal; as we zoom into the finite, defined boundary of the Nautilus, it seems as though we may repeat this process perpetually, zooming in on the objects and realms within the confined space. The seclusion of Verne’s submarine with a window facing out at true vastness induces a feeling of paradoxical vastness itself, for an infinitely finite space. For Barthes, Verne exercises a “ceaseless action of secluding oneself.” It is the kind of exercise that aches the brain.
Perhaps above all, the power of Verne’s fiction is his portrayal of characters responding to the forces at play in the fictional world. By presenting the characters’ relations with the infinite vastness and excruciating finiteness, we are given a more tangible account for these concepts. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the passengers’ reactions to confinement are varied. For Ned Land, the confinement is nauseating imprisonment, whereas for Professor Arronax, the vast ocean provides a seemingly infinite source of intrigue. By observing the characters’ responses to the infinite and finite, we may somewhat establish relations with these transcendent concepts ourselves.
Bibliography:
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Project Gutenberg, 1994
Roland Barthes, ‘The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat’, in Mythologies (Vintage 2009)
Jorge Luis Borges, Book of Sand, 1975