Attained perfection

Two remarkable writers, two extraordinary projects, each of which is, what can I say, intellectually asymptotic to infinity...

I pulled these two quotes together because after many years' familiarity with each of them, it suddenly occurred to me while rereading the Borges quote that I recognized an echo of Hesse in the phrase attained ... perfection.

Perfection isn't something easily attained by humans, I think -- but Borges and Hesse may be among the few who manage it...

*

Tom Whitmore points me to a very different parallel with the Borges piece -- this one from Lewis Carroll, another of the brilliant attainers:

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.

From Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, first published in 1893.

More and more curious...