Conversations, Volume 1 Jorge Luis Borges

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.Table of ContentsCopyrightPROLOGUEJorge Luis BorgesPROLOGUEOsvaldo Ferrari1Argentinian Identity2The Eternal Traveller3Order and Time4Borges and the Public5How a Borges Text Is Conceived and Written6A Geographic and Intimate South7Conrad, Melville and the Sea8On Politics9Macedonio Fernández and Borges10Borges with Plato and Aristotle11Art Should Free Itself from Time12Tigers, Labyrinths, Mirrors and Weapons13Kafka Could Be Part of Human Memory14Modernismo and Rubén Darío15Doubts about a Personal Divinity16Concerning Love17On Friendship with Alfonso Reyes18The East, I Ching and Buddhism19About Dreams20Concerning Ricardo Güiraldes21On Humour22Concerning Henry James23On Conjecture24Westerns or Cinema Epics25Lugones, That Austere, Heartbroken Man26Classics at the Age of 8527Dante, an Infinite Reading28Realist and Fantasy Literature29Silvina Ocampo, Bioy Casares and Juan R.Wilcock30On History31The Affinity with Domingo Faustino Sarmiento32The Detective Story33On Friendship with Pedro Henríquez Ureña34Memories of Libraries, Cockpits and Strange Poems35An Evocation of Kipling36Borges and Memory37The Florida and Boedo Groups and the Sur Magazine38About Dialogues39On Gauchesque Poetry40Sonnets, Revelations, Travels and Countries41Ethics and Culture42Two Trips to Japan43Evaristo Carriego, Milonga and Tango44Scandinavian Mythology and Anglo-Saxon Epics45Borges and Alonso QuijanoCopyrightSeagull Books, 2014ISBN 978 0 8574 2 198 2First published as En Dialogo I by Editorial Sudamericana in 1998/1999 © Osvaldo Ferrari, 1986 (for En Dialogo I) by arrangement with Paterson Marsh Ltd.English translation © Jason Wilson, 2014British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.PROLOGUEJorge Luis BorgesThe best event recorded in universal history happened in Ancient Greece some 500 years before the Christian era, namely, the discovery of dialogue.Faith, certainty, dogmas, anathemas, prayers, prohibitions, orders, taboos, tyrannies, wars and glory overwhelmed the world while some Greeks acquired the peculiar habit of conversation—how, we’ll never know.They doubted, persuaded, dissented, changed their minds, postponed.Perhaps their mythology helped them, which was, as with Shinto, an accumulation of vague fables and variable cosmogonies.These scattered conjectures were the first root of what we call today, perhaps pretentiously, metaphysics.Western culture is inconceivable without these few conversing Greeks.Remote in space and time, this volume is a muffled echo of those ancient conversations.As with all my books, perhaps with all books, this one wrote itself.Ferrari and I tried to let our words flow through us, perhaps despite ourselves.We never talked with any end in view.Those who have read the manuscript assure us that the experience was pleasing.I hope our readers will not refute that generous opinion.In the prologue to one of his ‘dreams’ Francisco de Quevedo wrote: ‘May God free you, reader, from long prologues and weak adjectives.’12 October 1985.PROLOGUEOsvaldo FerrariIn this edition I will try to reflect on what stimulated our dialogues and gave them direction.Our first public dialogue was held in March 1984.On listening to it on Radio Municipal, the radio station memorably run by our common friend Ricardo Costantino, a door seemed to open onto immensity, for me and for our listeners.Borges’ spoken words contained the same extraordinary tone of his writing as well as the surprising and constantly marvellous nature of his originality.In an attempt to explain this I came up with the notion, then, of a new dimension.A dialogue with Borges was an incursion into literature itself, a connection with the spirit of literariness that had so permeated him that it became the key to his fascinating intelligence—that literary intelligence that discovers a world and describes a new reality.Borges’ exquisite and unique reading of reality was completely spontaneous.We would observe its diversity through his eyes as, at the age of 84, he conveyed his universe.The dialogues, prompted by any topic, recorded that universe with Borges instantly combining memory, lucidity and verbal concision.It was enough to name a favourite writer or work and he would expand on it immediately, proposing a novel understanding, a new interpretation of the man and the book.It was enough to cite a philosophy that he was attuned to or a religion he was interested in and he would elaborate upon an entirely unique and extremely personal vision.It was enough to remind him of journeys that he had undertaken or countries that he had known and he would offer us a detailed account of its literature and his impressions of its culture.In this way, Borges, who had once pointed out to me that a dialogue was an indirect way of writing, continued to write through these conversations.When they were transcribed for publication, it was self-evident that Borges, through our talks, was prolonging his life as a writer.Thus, the magic of listening to him corresponded with the magic of reading him.In this way we come to recognize, and perhaps understand, the man, the writer and the literary spirit.Those who had known his written work could now get to know their author and his thoughts during that act of creation.For Borges, reality was literature.And who better than he to convey his literary record of reality.It should also be noted that because he only recognized fantastic literature, and not realist writing, so too reality only revealed its coherence through his literary perspective.In other words, Borges explains literature and literature explains Borges.From his literary universe, he launched into trying to answer the questions I put to him.If he touched on philosophy, mysticism or politics, it was always through literature, because that’s where his genius lay and that’s what he had been born to do.That was his destiny.Unlike those writers who, in Borges’ opinion, shone through their dialogues even more than through their writing, such as Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Cansinos Assens or Macedonio Fernández, Borges himself spoke as beautifully as he wrote and constantly revealed his astounding literary dimension through his conversations.In his own words, ‘What we say is being recorded, so in that sense it’s oral and written at the same time.While we speak, we are writing.’ And he added, ‘I do not know if I will ever write an essay again in my life, surely not, or I would do so in an indirect manner, like the two of us are doing now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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