Animals

Joel Garver of LaSalle provided me with the following quotation from Jorge Luis Borges, a quotation that Joel read in a series of lectures on postmodernism this summer: Borges refers to “a ‘certain Chinese encylopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’.”