The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The incomprehensibility of an idea is what makes man delve deeper into it. The more challenging the idea the more fascination it holds. For as long as mankind can remember, the idea of death and immortality has intrigued minds, making man wish to conquer death and to become immortal. Philosophy, science and religion maintain views which suggest some interesting thoughts for contemplation. But since ‘death’ still remains unconquerable, man somehow tries to deceive it by leaving behind works of importance which may perhaps render immortality to the name. In the case of Art it seems even more appropriate. As long as the work of art lives, the name of artist remains immortal.

This work by Adolfo Bioy Casares, not only deals with a man’s fascination with the idea of immortality and how he tries to achieve it but also with its confrontation with reality. It further poses questions on the possible implications and this is what makes this work so compelling. I would venture to say that even without Borges’ support the work would have stood apart as a distinct work of art whose beauty lies in the remarkably executed plot.

The protagonist of the story is a fugitive and the story is narrated in first person. The work starts with narrator’s coming to a remote, supposedly disease infected island with no human sign. We are never told the name of the narrator but the name of island is Villings and it has a museum, a chapel and a swimming pool, thought to be constructed by the last inhabitants who abandoned it later because of the disease. After sometime the narrator start noticing people on the island who were not there before and who seemed to have come out of nowhere. Where have they come from? Now this is the deceit which Casares has worked so beautifully with and it is quite well advanced for his times.

Those people are actually not real but images. Images recorded for a week and then being set up on a big projector working in sync with the ocean tides. But the images are three dimensional like in holography so that they appear real from a distance. The work being undertaken by a man named Morel (interestingly it seems to rhyme with the Greek word ‘Moirai’ which is plural and means ‘fates’). We know of this because in a recorded scene, Morel tells about it to all the people whom he recorded for his experiment. The experiment being to make those people immortal by capturing them and letting them live in a projected world forever.

Our narrator, who seems to be fascinated with this experiment because he has fallen in love with the image of a woman named Faustine, records all his experiences in a diary and somehow wishes to be a part of the experiment itself to be able to make his presence felt to the woman. But he also posits uncertainty as to the fruitfulness of such endeavor.

“The case of the inventor who is duped by his own invention emphasizes our need for circumspection. But I may be generalizing about the peculiarities of one man, moralizing about a characteristic that applies only to Morel. I approve of the direction he gave, no doubt unconsciously, to his efforts to perpetuate man: but he has preserved nothing but sensations; and, although his invention was incomplete, he at least foreshadowed the truth: man will one day create human life. His work seems to confirm my old axiom: it is useless to try to keep the whole body alive.”

The preservation of images without them having any consciousness is different from our reality and hence incomplete. Also further he questions the morality of such endeavors and their consequences, shall man be able to device something successfully, perhaps including consciousness, to remain immortal.

When minds of greater refinement than Morel's begin to work on the invention, man will select a lonely, pleasant place, will go there with the persons he loves most, and will endure in an intimate paradise. A single garden, if the scenes to be eternalized are recorded at different moments, will contain innumerable paradises, and each group of inhabitants, unaware of the others, will move about simultaneously, almost in the same places, without colliding. But unfortunately these will be vulnerable paradises because the images will not be able to see men; and, if men do not heed the advice of Malthus, someday they will need the land of even the smallest paradise, and will destroy its defenseless inhabitants or will exile them by disconnecting their machines.


Casares seems to be anticipating the hazard of such scientific inventions which man may undertake to gain immortality in the future. Although we haven’t yet achieved it but the horror of this possibility is not hard to imagine.

The work also seems to be an ode to the world of movies since Casares was quite fascinated by them while growing up.The idea of capturing images of actors and then playing them over and over again to attain same reality was what held his attention. He is also seemingly fascinated by the idea of cyclic repetition as his literary guide Borges.

I am quite taken by the power of his writing style and after the strong recommendation of Mike, do look forward to reading more of him.


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