Everness

[avram]

I read John C Wright’s The Last Guardian of Everness last week. Liked it a whole lot, even though it didn’t quite live up to the blurb. Some of the best fantasy I’ve read in quite a while.

Wright likes to dig up old names (though not nearly as obscure and witty as the names Gene Wolfe digs up for his characters and items), so I figured googling for “Everness” might turn up something illuminating. Turns out it’s the title of a poem by Borges. Here’s the English version:

One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
Everything is: the shadows in the glass.
Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you
Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
And everything is part of that diverse
Crystalline memory, the universe:
Whoever though its endless mazes wanders
Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
And only from the sunset’s farther side
Shall view at last the Archetypes and Splendors.