Inferno V:129
They let fall the book, when they see that they are the ones in the book. (They will be in another, greater, but what can that matter to them.) Now they are Paolo, Francesca, not two friends who are sharing the savour of a fable. They gaze with incredulous wonder. Their hands do not touch. They’ve discovered the sole treasure; They have found one another. They betray no Malatesta, since betrayal requires a third and they are the only two on earth. They are Paolo and Francesca and the queen and her lover too and all the lovers who’ve been since Adam went with Eve in the Paradise garden. A book, a dream reveals that they are forms in a dream once dreamt in Brittany. Another book will ensure that men, dreams also, dream of them.
Inferno V:129 - meaning Summary
Love Created by Reading
Borges imagines Paolo and Francesca at the moment they realise that reading has turned them into the lovers they are reading about. Their private discovery makes the outside world, including betrayal and other people, disappear. The poem then widens this idea: lovers recur across stories, dreams, and books, while each new act of reading gives their fate another life.
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