Ficciones: 9. Funes, The Memorious Summary & Analysis

Borges writes a tribute to his deceased friend, Ireneo Funes to be gathered in a memorial book with the writing of other friends of Funes. “I remember him,” the narrator writes, quickly commenting that he barely has the right to use the word “remember,” as Funes was the one man to “deserve the right” to use that word. Borges also says that, because he is Argentinian, he will be unable to use the Uruguayan form of a dithyramb, which would be fitting as a eulogy for the Uruguayan Funes. Though Funes never insulted the narrator for being a “Buenos Airean” “slicker,” the narrator knows that Funes felt this way. 

The narrator relates the story of his first time meeting Funes—returning from a horseback ride in Fray Bentos, Uruguay  in 1884, the narrator and his cousin passed the teenaged Funes. The narrator’s cousin asked Funes the time, and Funes answered correctly without looking at a watch. The narrator’s cousin tells him about Funes’s eccentricities, which include being misanthropic and being able to tell time without looking at a watch. Some say that Funes’s father was an Englishman.

The next time the Borges family visits Fray Bentos in 1887, the narrator asks after Funes. He learns that Funes had a horseback riding accident and is now “crippled,” staying in bed all day and staring ahead. Since the narrator has been teaching himself Latin, he has brought some Latin books to the town. Funes hears of these books and writes a letter to the narrator, asking to borrow them. The narrator decides to lend Funes his most difficult books. When the narrator is suddenly called back to Argentina due to his father’s illness, he remembers that Funes still has his books and goes to Funes’s house to get the books back before he leaves.

Borges arrives at Funes’s house and hears him speaking Latin perfectly. He goes into Funes’s room, which is dark. Borges spends the rest of the night talking with Funes, who has developed a “prodigious memory” since his accident and recounts to Borges other historical cases of “prodigious memory.” Funes sees his inability to move as a fair price for the mental gifts he now has. Funes recites texts in Spanish and Latin. He is able to recall “the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882.” Before the accident, Funes says, he was “blind, deaf, mute, somnambulistic, memoryless.”

Borges and Funes discuss language and Funes’s idea for a new number and language system. This new system is hyper-specific. For example, in this system, not only does each type of dog have its own name (and not belong to a larger category of “dog”), but each breed as seen from a different angle has its own name. Funes’s mind is extremely detailed, and he finds it essentially impossible to generalize or think in abstract, non-specific terms. As morning arrives, the narrator reflects that, though Funes is 19 years old, he seems ancient. Funes dies two years later, at age 21, of a pulmonary congestion.