"Nadie lo vio desembarcar en la unánime noche."
"No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night."
- The Circular Ruins, Jorge Luis Borges
Readers of Borges are unanimous in their curiosity about that choice
of adjective. Its author later disowned the word, calling it an
example of his early, irresponsible writing and allowing it to be
translated as 'encompassing' in some English editions. Yet there is
something undeniably enchanting about that word. He had intended it
to take its meaning from the Latin roots, so he was referring to a
one-souled night. But even if he had recanted his mistake, Borges is
much like a father who has no idea how his son will turn out (an
apposite analogy given the plot of that story), having stumbled onto
a very real phenomenon with 'the unanimous night' - one which is
endangered by captivity within our modern metropolis.
