The Scale of History in Jorge Volpi’s En busca de Klingsor

This article examines the tension between chance and determinism in Jorge Volpi’s novel En busca de Klingsor and how this relationship is treated both in the narrative as well as in debates regarding physics, history, and politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning from the understanding that the novel is a meditation on epistemological and ontological uncertainty, it is shown that the structure and content of the narrative underscore how the role of the scale of investigation influences how events are perceived as either chance or links in a causal chain. The result is that the novel sheds light on how reading and writing history on a more human scale bring a deeper understanding to a world seemingly defined by uncertainty and disorder.