In a short story published in 1950, “The Wall and the Books,” Jorge Luis Borges tells of Emperor Shih Huang Ti, who ordered China’s Great Wall built and all the books in his kingdom burned. It’s Borges, so every reason he gives for these two seemingly contradictory desires — to create and to destroy — is followed by another explanation that cancels out the first.

Borges finally settles on the idea that both the building and the burning were driven by the emperor’s desire to “halt death.” Shih Huang Ti, at least according to Borges, lived in terror of mortality, prohibiting the word “death” from being uttered in his presence and searching desperately for an elixir of youth.

Maybe, Borges guessed, Shih Huang Ti ordered the wall built to preserve his realm for eternity, and he ordered the book burned to suppress the idea that nothing lasts for eternity. For if the history contained in books teaches anything, it is that our time on earth is fleeting. Apparently, at least according to Borges, the emperor sentenced anyone who tried to save a book to a lifetime of forced labor on his wall.