Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations

by Jorge Luis Borges

  “No,” I said, “I think I can do something better with Carriego,” but as I went on writing the book, after I had written my first chapter, a kind of mythology of Palermo, after I had written that first chapter and I had, well, I had begun reading deeply into Carriego, I felt that my mother was right, that after all he was a second-rate poet and I suppose if you get to the end of the book—I suppose a few people have because it’s quite a short book—you feel that the writer has lost all interest in the subject and he’s doing everything in a very perfunctory kind of way.

  BURGIN: It seems that you began to use your famous image of the labyrinth when you first wrote your handbook on Greek mythology, but I wonder how and when you began to use another of your favourite images, the image of a mirror?

  BORGES: Well, that, that also goes with the earliest fears and wonders of my childhood, being afraid of mirrors, being afraid of mahogany, being afraid of being repeated. There are some allusions to mirrors in Fervor de Buenos Aires, but the feeling came from my childhood. But, of course, when one begins writing, one hardly knows where to find the essential things. Look here, has this girl gone?

  BURGIN: Yes.

  BORGES: Well, that’s right. She’s crazy, this girl.

  BURGIN: Why, what happened?

  BORGES: Well, this morning she came; I was in Hiller’s Library. Then, all the time she was aiming that machine at me. And I found out that she has had thirty-six shots and then she popped in a moment ago and wanted to have seventeen more.

  BURGIN: What is she doing with them? Is this for herself, or for any magazine?

  BORGES: No, she says that perhaps she’ll send them to a magazine. She doesn’t know. Thirty-six shots, no?

  BURGIN: You and di Giovanni were working on the translations?

  BORGES: Yes, we were working, yes, but I felt rather, well, I can’t be expected to speak or to talk when anyone is around like that.

  BURGIN: She was doing them about five inches away from your face?

  BORGES: Yes, it was almost a physical assault. Yes, I felt that, I don’t know, that somebody had been aiming a revolver at me, no? That she had been aiming a pistol at me, and she kept on at it. Then di Giovanni had the strange idea to tell her to go to Buenos Aires and there she might find other people to photograph and then she got very interested in the idea.

  BURGIN: She wants to make a book of photographs of writers, is that it?

  BORGES: Writers, yes.

  BURGIN: Of course, a camera is a kind of a mirror.

  BORGES: Yes.

  BURGIN: A permanent mirror.

  BORGES: Because I’m afraid of mirrors, maybe I’m afraid of cameras.

  BURGIN: You didn’t look at yourself much when you could see?

  BORGES: No, I never did. Because I never liked being photographed. I can’t understand it.

  BURGIN: Yet your appearance is always very scrupulous. You always dress very well and look very well.

  BORGES: Do I?

  BURGIN: Yes, of course. I mean you’re always very well groomed and attired.

  BORGES: Oh, really? Well, that’s because I’m very absent-minded, but I don’t think of myself as a dandy or anything like that. I mean I try to be as undistinguished and as invisible as possible. And then, perhaps, the one way to be undistinguished is to dress with a certain care, no? What I mean to say is that when I was a young man I thought that by being careless people wouldn’t notice me. But on the contrary. They noticed that I never had my hair cut, that I rarely shaved, no?

  BURGIN: You were always this way, even when you were younger?

  BORGES: Always. I never wanted to draw attention to myself.

  1 Noted Argentinian writer, close friend and collaborator of Borges.

  The living labyrinth of literature; some major work; Nazis; detective stories; ethics, violence, and the problem of time …

  BURGIN: Your writing always, from the first, had its source in other books?

  BORGES: Yes, that’s true. Well, because I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love. I think that reading Berkeley or Shaw or Emerson, those are quite as real experiences to me as seeing London, for example. Of course, I saw London through Dickens and through Chesterton and through Stevenson, no? Many people are apt to think of real life on the one side, that means toothache, headache, travelling and so on, and then you have on the other side, you have imaginary life and fancy and that means the arts. But I don’t think that that distinction holds water. I think that everything is a part of life. For example, today I was telling my wife, I have travelled, well, I won’t say all over the world, but all over the west, no? And yet I find that I have written poems about out-of-the-way slums of Buenos Aires, I have written poems on rather drab street corners. And I have never written poems on a great subject, I mean on a famous subject. For example, I greatly enjoy New York, but I don’t think I would write about New York. Maybe I’ll write about some street corner, because after all so many people have done that other kind of thing.

  BURGIN: You wrote a poem about Emerson, though, and Jonathan Edwards and Spinoza.

  BORGES: That’s true, yes. But in my country writing about Emerson and Jonathan Edwards is writing perhaps about rather secret characters.

  BURGIN: Became they’re occult, almost.

  BORGES: Yes, more or less. I wrote a poem about Sarmiento because I had to and because I love him, but really I prefer minor characters or if not if I write about Spinoza and Emerson or about Shakespeare and Cervantes, they are major characters, but I write about them in a way that makes them like characters out of books, rather than famous men.

  BURGIN: The last time I was here we were talking about your latest book in English, A Personal Anthology. Those pieces you decided not to include in it you relegated to a kind of mortality, for yourself anyway. Do you feel you’re your own best critic?

  BORGES: No, but I believe that some of my pieces have been over-rated. Or, perhaps, I may think that I can let them go their way because people are already fond of them, no? So, I don’t have to help them along.

  BURGIN: For example, “The Theologians.” You didn’t want to include that?

  BORGES: Did I include that?

  BURGIN: No, you didn’t.

  BORGES: Yes, but there the reason was different. The reason was that although I liked the story, I thought that not too many people would like it.

  BURGIN: A concession to popular taste.

  BORGES: No, but I thought that since these stories are going to be read by people who may not read the other books, I’ll try—and besides, people are always saying that I’m priggish and hard and that is something that is very mazy about me—I’ll do my best not to discourage them, no? Instead, I’ll help them along. But if I offer them a story like “The Theologians,” then they’ll feel rather baffled, taken aback, and that may scare them away.

  BURGIN: Was that how you felt about “Pierre Menard”—was that why you also excluded it from A Personal Anthology?

  BORGES: You know, that was the first story I wrote. But it’s not wholly a story … it’s a kind of essay, and then I think that in that story you get a feeling of tiredness and skepticism, no? Because you think of Menard as coming at the end of a very long literary period, and he comes to the moment when he finds that he doesn’t want to encumber the world with any more books. And that, although his fate is to be a literary man, he’s not out for fame. He’s writing for himself and he decides to do something very, very unobtrusive, he’ll rewrite a book that is already there, and very much there, Don Quixote. And then, of course, that story has the idea, what I said in my first lecture here, that every time a book is read or reread, then something happens to the book.

  BURGIN: It becomes modified.

  BORGES: Yes, modified, and every time you read it, it’s really a new experience.

  BURGIN: Since you see the world’s literature as constantly changing, as continuously being modified by time, does this make you feel a sense of futi
lity about creating so-called original works of literature?

  BORGES: But not only futility. I see it as something living and growing. I think of the world’s literature as a kind of forest, I mean it’s tangled and it entangles us but it’s growing. Well, to come back to my inevitable image of a labyrinth, well it’s a living labyrinth, no? A living maze. Perhaps the word labyrinth is more mysterious than the word maze.

  BURGIN: Maze is almost too mechanical a word.

  BORGES: Yes, and you feel the “amazement” in the word. With labyrinth you think of Crete and you think of the Greeks. While in maze you may think of Hampton Court, well, not very much of a labyrinth, a kind of toy labyrinth.

  BURGIN: What about “Emma Zunz,” a story of a living labyrinth?

  BORGES: It’s very strange, because in a story like “The Immortal” I did my best to be magnificent, while the story “Emma Zunz” is a very drab story, a very grey story, and even the name Emma was chosen because I thought it particularly ugly, but not strikingly ugly, no? And the name Zunz is a very poor name, no? I remember I had a great friend named Emma and she said to me, “But why did you give that awful girl my name?” And then, of course, I couldn’t say the truth, but the truth was that when I wrote down the name Emma with the two m’s and Zunz with the two z’s I was trying to get an ugly and at the same time a colourless name, and I had quite forgotten that one of my best friends was called Emma. The name seems so meaningless, so insignificant, doesn’t it sound that way to you?

  BURGIN: But one still feels compassion for her, I mean, she is a kind of tool of destiny.

  BORGES: Yes, she’s a tool of destiny, but I think there’s something very mean about revenge, even a just revenge, no? Something futile about it. I dislike revenge. I think that the only possible revenge is forgetfulness, oblivion. That’s the only revenue. But, of course, oblivion makes for forgiving, no?

  BURGIN: Well, I know you don’t like revenge, and I don’t think you lose your temper much either, do you?

  BORGES: I’ve been angry perhaps, well, I’m almost seventy, I feel I’ve been angry four or five times in my life, not more than that.

  BURGIN: That’s remarkable. You were angry at Perón, certainly.

  BORGES: Yes. That was different.

  BURGIN: Of course.

  BORGES: One day when I was speaking about Coleridge I remember four students walked into my class and told me that a decision had been taken by an assembly for a strike and they asked me to stop my lecturing. And then I was taken aback and suddenly I found that without knowing it I had walked from this side of the room to the other, that I was facing those four young men, telling them that a man may make a decision for himself but not for other people, and that were they crazy enough to think that I would stand that kind of nonsense. And then they stared at me because they were astounded at my taking it in that way. Of course, I realized that I was an elderly man, half blind, and they were four hefty, four husky young men, but I was so angry that I said to them, “Well, as there are many ladies here, if you have anything more to say to me, let’s go out on the street and have it out.”

  BURGIN: You said that?

  BORGES: Yes, and then, well, they walked away and then I said, “Well, after this interlude, I think we may go on.” And I was rather ashamed of having shouted, and of having felt so angry. That was one of the few times in my life that thing has happened to me.

  BURGIN: How long ago was this?

  BORGES: This must have been some five years ago. And then the same sort of thing happened twice again, and I reacted much in the same way, but afterwards I felt very, very much ashamed of it.

  BURGIN: This was a strike against the university?

  BORGES: Yes.

  BURGIN: What were they striking for?

  BORGES: They were striking because there was a strike among the labourers in the port and they thought the students had to join them. But I always think of strikes as a kind of blackmail, no? I wonder what you think about it?

  BURGIN: Students are often striking in this country.

  BORGES: In my country also. That they should do it is right, but that they should prevent other people from going to classes, I don’t understand. That they should try to bully me? And then I said, well if they knock me down, that doesn’t matter, because, after all, the issue of a fight is of no importance whatever. What is important is that a man should not let himself be bullied, don’t you think so? After all, what happens to him is not important because nobody thinks that I’m a prizefighter or that I’m any good at fighting. What is important is that I should not let myself be bullied before my students, because if I do, they won’t respect me, and I won’t respect myself.

  BURGIN: Sometimes values, then, are even more important than one’s well-being?

  BORGES: Oh yes, of course. After all, one’s well-being is physical. As I don’t think physical things are very real—of course they are real, if you fall off a cliff. That’s quite real, no? But in that case I felt that whatever happened to me was quite trifling, utterly trifling. Of course, they were trying to bluff me, because I don’t think they had any intention of being violent. But that was one of the few times in my life I’ve been really angry. And then I was very much ashamed of the fact. I felt that, after all, as a professor, as a man of letters, I shouldn’t have been angry, I should have tried to reason with them, instead of that “well, come on and have it out,” because after all I was behaving in much the same way as they were.

  BURGIN: This reminds me a little bit of “The South.”

  BORGES: Yes.

  BURGIN: I think that’s one of your most personal stories.

  BORGES: Yes, it is.

  BURGIN: The idea of bravery means a lot to you, doesn’t it?

  BORGES: I think it does because I’m not brave myself. I think if I were really brave it wouldn’t mean anything to me. For example, I’ve been ducking a dentist for a year or so. I’m not personally brave and as my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather were personally brave men, I mean some of them fell in action …

  BURGIN: You don’t think writing is a kind of bravery?

  BORGES: It could be, yes. But perhaps if I were personally brave I wouldn’t care so much about bravery. Because, of course, what one cares for is what one hasn’t got, no? I mean if a person loves you, you take it for granted, and you may even get tired of her. But if you are jilted, you feel that the bottom is out of the universe, no? But those things are bound to happen. What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

  BURGIN: You say people should be ashamed of anger, but you don’t think people should be ashamed of this, of “what to make of a diminished thing?”

  BORGES: I don’t think one can help it.

  BURGIN: Can you help anger?

  BORGES: Yes, yes, I think that many people encourage anger or think it a very fine thing.

  BURGIN: They think it’s manly to fight.

  BORGES: Yes, and it isn’t, eh?

  BURGIN: No. It isn’t.

  BORGES: I don’t think there’s anything praiseworthy in anger. It’s a kind of weakness. Because really, I think that you should allow very few people to be able to hurt you unless, of course, they bludgeon you or shoot you. For example, I can’t understand anybody being angry because a waiter keeps him waiting too long, or because a porter is uncivil to him, or because somebody behind a counter doesn’t take him into account because, after all, those people are like shapes in a dream, no? While the only people who can really hurt you, except in a physical way, by stabbing you or shooting you, are the people you care for. A friend was saying to me, “But you haven’t forgiven so and so, and yet you have forgiven somebody who has behaved far worse.” I said, “Yes, but so and so was, or I thought he was, a personal friend and so it’s rather difficult to forgive him, while the other is an utter stranger so whatever he does, he can’t hurt me because he’s not that near to me.” I mean if you care for people they can hurt you very much, they can hurt you by
being indifferent to you, or by slighting you.

  BURGIN: You said the highest form of revenge is oblivion.

  BORGES: Oblivion, yes, quite right, but, for example, if I were insulted by a stranger in the street, I don’t think I would give the matter a second thought. I would just pretend I hadn’t heard him and go on, because, after all, I don’t exist for him, so why should he exist for me? Of course, in the case of the students walking into my room, walking into my classroom, they knew me, they knew that I was teaching English literature; it was quite different. But if they had been strangers, if they had been, well, brawlers in the street, or drunkards, I suppose I would have taken anything from them and forgotten all about it.

  BURGIN: You never got into any fights as a child?

  BORGES: Yes, I did. But that was a code. I had to do it. Well, my eyesight was bad, it was very weak and I was generally defeated. But it had to be done. Because there was a code and, in fact, when I was a boy, there was even a code of dueling. But I think dueling is a very stupid custom, no? After all, it’s quite irrelevant. If you quarrel with me and I quarrel with you, what has our swordsmanship or our marksmanship to do with it? Nothing—unless you have the mystical idea that God will punish the wrong. I don’t think anybody has that kind of idea, no? Well, suppose we get back to more … because, I don’t know why, I seem to be rambling on.

  BURGIN: But this is probably better than anything because it really enables me to know you.

  BORGES: Yes, but it will not be very surprising or very interesting.

  BURGIN: I mean, people that write about you all write the same things.

  BORGES: Yes, yes, and they all make things too self-conscious and too intricate at the same time, no? Don’t you think so?

  BURGIN: Well, of course it’s hard to write about a writer you like; it’s hard to write anyway. You wrote a poem roughly about that, didn’t you? “The Other Tiger.”