Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations

by Jorge Luis Borges

  BORGES: Ah, yes, that one is about the futility of art, no? Or rather not of art but of art as conveying reality or life. Because, of course, the poem is supposed to be endless, because the moment I write about the tiger, the tiger isn’t the tiger, he becomes a set of words in the poem. “El otro tigre, el que no está en el verso.” I was walking up and down the library, and then I wrote that poem in a day or so. I think it’s quite a good poem, no? It’s a parable also, and yet the parable is not too obvious, the reader doesn’t have to be worried by it, or understand it. And then I think I have three tigers, but the reader should be made to feel that the poem is endless.

  BURGIN: You’ll always be trying to capture the tiger.

  BORGES: Yes, because the tiger will always be …

  BURGIN: … outside of art.

  BORGES: Outside of art, yes. So it’s a kind of hopeless poem, no? The same idea that you get in “A Yellow Rose.” In fact, I never thought of it, but when I wrote “The Other Tiger,” I was rewriting “A Yellow Rose.”

  BURGIN: You often speak of stories as echoing other stories you’ve written before. Was that the case also with “Deutsches Requiem”?

  BORGES: Ah, yes. The idea there was that I had met some Nazis, or rather Argentine Nazis. And then I thought that something might be said for them. That if they really held that code of cruelty, of bravery, then they might be, well, of course, lunatics, but there was something epic about them, no? Now, I said, I’ll try and imagine a Nazi, not Nazis as they actually are, but I’ll try and imagine a man who really thinks that violence and fighting are better than making up things, and peacefulness. I’ll do that. And then, I’ll make him feel like a Nazi, or the platonic idea of a Nazi. I wrote that after the Second World War because I thought that, after all, nobody had a word to say for the tragedy of Germany. I mean such an important nation. A nation that had produced Schopenhauer and Brahms and so many poets and so many philosophers, and yet it fell victim to a very clumsy idea. I thought, well, I will try and imagine a real Nazi, not a Nazi who is fond of self-pity, as they are, but a Nazi who feels that a violent world is a better world than a peaceful world, and who doesn’t care for victory, who is mainly concerned for the fact of fighting. Then that Nazi wouldn’t mind Germany’s being defeated because, after all, if they were defeated, then the others were better fighters. The important thing is that violence should be. And then I imagined that Nazi, and I wrote the story. Because there were so many people in Buenos Aires who were on the side of Hitler.

  BURGIN: How horrible.

  BORGES: It’s awful. They were very mean people. But after all, Germany fought splendidly at the beginning of the war. I mean, if you admire Napoleon or if you admire Cromwell, or if you admire any violent manifestation, why not admire Hitler, who did what the others did?

  BURGIN: On a much larger scale.

  BORGES: On a much larger scale and in a much shorter time. Because he achieved in a few years what Napoleon failed to do in a longer period. And then I realized that those people who were on the side of Germany, that they never thought of the German victories or the German glory. What they really liked was the idea of the blitzkrieg, of London being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to the German fighters, they took no stock in them. Then I thought, well, now Germany has lost, now America has saved us from this nightmare, but since nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I’ll see what can be done from a literary point of view in favour of the Nazis. And then I created that ideal Nazi. Of course, no Nazi was ever like that, because they were full of self-pity; when they were on trial no one thought of saying, “Yes, I’m guilty, I ought to be shot; why not, this is as it should be and I would shoot you if I could.” Nobody said that. They were all apologizing and crying because there is something very weak and sentimental about the Germans, something I thoroughly disliked about them. I felt it before, but when I went to Germany I was feeling it all the time. I suppose I told you a conversation I had with a German professor, no?

  BURGIN: No, you didn’t.

  BORGES: Well, I was being shown all over Berlin, one of the ugliest cities in the world, no? Very showy.

  BURGIN: I’ve never been to Germany.

  BORGES: Well, you shouldn’t, especially if you love Germany, because once you get there you’ll begin to hate it. Then I was being shown around Berlin. Of course, there were any number of vacant lots, large patches of empty ground where houses had stood and they had been bombed very thoroughly by the American airmen, and then, you have some German, no?

  BURGIN: No, I’m sorry.

  BORGES: Well, I’ll translate. He said to me, “What have you to say about these ruins?” Then I thought, Germany has started this kind of warfare; the Allies did it because they had to, because the Germans began it. So why should I be pitying this country because of what had happened to it, because they started the bombing, and in a very cowardly way. I think Göring told his people that they would be destroying England and that they had nothing whatever to fear from the English airmen. That wasn’t a noble thing to say, no? In fact, as a politician he should have said, “We are doing our best to destroy England; maybe we’ll get hurt in the process, but it’s a risk we have to run”—even if he thought it wasn’t that way. So when the professor said to me “What have you to say about these ruins?”—well, my German is not too good, but I had to make my answer very curt, so I said, “I’ve seen London.” And then, of course, he dried up, no? He changed the subject because he had wanted me to pity him.

  BURGIN: He wanted a quote from Borges.

  BORGES: Well, I gave him a quotation, no?

  BURGIN: But not the one he wanted.

  BORGES: Not the one he wanted. Then I said to myself, what a pity that I have English blood, because it would have been better if I had been a straight South American. But, after all, I don’t think he knew it.

  BURGIN: He should have read “Story of the Warrior and the Captive” and then he would have found out.

  BORGES: Yes, he would have found out—yes.

  BURGIN: That’s a good story, don’t you think? It’s very concise.

  BORGES: Yes.

  BURGIN: You’re able to work in …

  BORGES: No! I worked in nothing; my grandmother told me the whole thing. Yes, because she was on the frontier and this happened way back in the 1800s.

  BURGIN: But you linked it with something that happened in history.

  BORGES: With something told by Croce, yes.

  BURGIN: And that’s what makes it effective.

  BORGES: Yes. I thought that the two stories, the two characters, might be essentially the same. A barbarian being wooed to Rome, to civilization, and then an English girl turning to witchcraft, to barbarians, to living in the pampas. In fact, it’s the same story as “The Theologians,” now that I come to think of it. In “The Theologians” you have two enemies and one of them sends the other to the stake. And then they find out somehow they’re the same man. But I think “The Warrior and the Captive” is a better story, no?

  BURGIN: I wouldn’t say so, no.

  BORGES: No? Why?

  BURGIN: There’s something almost tragic about “The Theologians.” It’s a very moving story.

  BORGES: Yes, “The Theologians” is more of a tale; the other is merely the quotation, or the telling, of two parables.

  BURGIN: I mean the Theologians are pathetic and yet there’s something noble about them—their earnestness, their self-importance.

  BORGES: Yes, and it’s more of a tale. While in the other I think that the tale is spoiled, by the fact of, well, you think of the writer as thinking himself clever, no? In taking two different instances and bringing them together. But “Story of the Warrior and the Captive” makes for easier reading, while most people have been utterly baffled and bored by “The Theologians.”

  BURGIN: No, I love that story.

  BORGES: Well, I love it also, but I’m speaking of my friends, or more of my friends. They all thought that the whole thing was quit
e pointless.

  BURGIN: But I also love “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and you don’t like that one.

  BORGES: I think it’s quite good as a detective story, yes.

  BURGIN: I think it’s more than a detective story, though.

  BORGES: Well, it should be. Because, after all, I had Chesterton behind me, and Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story. Far more than Ellery Queen or Erle Stanley Gardner. Well, Ellery Queen’s quite a good story.

  BURGIN: You once edited some anthologies of detective stories, didn’t you?

  BORGES: I was a director of a series called the Seventh Circle, and we published some hundred and fifty detective novels. We began with Nicholas Blake; we went on to Michael Linnis, then to Wilkie Collins, then to Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, then to different American and English writers, and it had a huge success, because the idea that a detective story could also be literary was a new idea in the Argentine. Because people thought of them, as they must have thought of Westerns, as merely amusing. I think that those books did a lot of good, because they reminded writers that plots were important. If you read detective novels, and if you take up other novels afterwards, the first thing that strikes you—it’s unjust, of course, but it happens—is to think of the other books as being shapeless. While in a detective novel everything is very nicely worked in. In fact, it’s so nicely worked in that it becomes mechanical, as Stevenson pointed out.

  BURGIN: I know you’ve always tried to avoid seeming mechanical in your fiction and also seeming too spectacular. But I was surprised to hear you say that “The Immortal” was overwritten.

  BORGES: Yes, I think I told you that it was too finely written. I feel that you may read the story and miss the point because of the laboured writing.

  BURGIN: Was the story perhaps inspired by Swift’s immortals in Gulliver’s Travels?

  BORGES: No, because his immortals were very different. They were doddering old things, no? No, I never thought of that. No, I began thinking of the injustice or rather how illogical it was for Christians, let’s say, to believe in the immortal soul, and at the same time to believe that what we did during that very brief span of life was important, because even if we lived to be a hundred years old, that’s nothing compared to everlastingness, to eternity. I thought, well, even if we live to a hundred, anything we do is unimportant if we go on living, and then I also worked in that mathematical idea that if time is endless, all things are bound to happen to all men, and in that case, after some thousand years every one of us would be a saint, a murderer, a traitor, an adulterer, a fool, a wise man.

  BURGIN: The word, or concept, of destiny would have no meaning.

  BORGES: No, it would have no meaning. Consequently, in order to make that idea more impressive I thought of Homer forgetting his Greek, forgetting that he had composed the Iliad, admiring a not too faithful translation of it by Pope. And then in the end, as the reader had to be made aware that the teller was Homer, I made him tell a confused story where Homer appears not as himself but as a friend. Because, of course, after all that time he was ignorant. And I gave him the name of the wandering Jew Cartaphilus. I thought that helped the tale.

  BURGIN: We seem to be talking about violence and also about the problem of time, but that’s not unusual, really, since you’ve often linked these problems, for instance, in a story like “The Secret Miracle.”

  BORGES: Yes, I think I wrote that during the Second World War. What chiefly interested me—or rather, I was interested in two things. First, in an unassuming miracle, no? For the miracle is wrought for one man only. And then in the idea—this is, I suppose, a religious idea—of a man justifying himself to God by something known only to God, no? God giving him his chance.

  BURGIN: A very personal pact between the two.

  BORGES: Yes. A personal pact between God and the man, And also, of course, the idea of, well, this is a common idea among the mystics, the idea of something lasting a very short while on earth and a long time in heaven, or in a man’s mind, no? I suppose those ideas were behind the tale. Now maybe there are others. And then, as I had also thought out the idea of drama in two acts, and in the first act you would have something very noble and rather pompous, and then in the second act you would find that the real thing was rather tawdry, I thought, “Well, I’ll never write that play, but I’ll work that idea of the play into a tale of mine.” Of course, I couldn’t say that Hladík had thought out a drama or a work of art and say nothing whatever about it. Because then, of course, that would fall flat, I had to make it convincing. So, I wove. I interwove those two ideas … Now that story has been one of my lucky ones. I’m not especially fond of it, but many people are. And it has even been published in popular magazines in Buenos Aires.

  BURGIN: Maybe they think of it as a more optimistic story of yours, in a way … It ties in with your ideas on time, your “New Refutation of Time.”

  BORGES: Yes, yes, and the idea of different times, no? Of different time schemes. Psychological time.

  BURGIN: Another story that I would think of in relation to “The Secret Miracle” is “The Other Death”—I mean in the sense that in both tales the hero tries to extend the properties of time, in one by increasing the amount of experience given to man within a unit of time and in the other by reversing time or a man’s life in time.

  BORGES: Ah! That’s one of my best stories, I think. But first I thought of it as a kind of trick story. I felt that I had read about a theologian called Damian, or some such name, and that he thought that all things were possible to God except to undo the past, and then Oscar Wilde said that Christianity made that possible because if a man forgave another he was undoing the past. I mean, if you have acted wrongly and that act is forgiven you, then the deed is undone. But I thought I had read a story about a past thing being undone.

  My first idea was very trivial. I thought of having chessmen inside a box, or pebbles, and of their position being changed by a man thinking about it. Then I thought this is too arid, I don’t think anybody could be convinced by it, and then I thought, well, I’ll take a cue from Conrad and the idea of Lord Jim, Lord Jim who had been a coward and who wanted to be a brave man, but I’ll do it in a magical way.

  In my story, you have an Argentine gaucho, among Uruguayan gauchos, who’s a coward and feels he should redeem himself, and then he goes back to the Argentine, he lives in a lonely way and he becomes a brave man to himself. And in the end he had undone the past. Instead of running away from that earlier battle in one of the civil wars in Uruguay, he undoes the past, and the people who knew him after the battle, after he had been a coward, forget all about his cowardice, and the teller of the story meets a colonel who had fought in that war and remembers him dying as a brave man should. And the colonel also remembers an unreal detail that is worked in on purpose—he remembers that the man got a bullet wound through the chest. Now, of course, if he had been wounded and fallen off his horse, the other wouldn’t have seen where he was wounded.

  BURGIN: This feeling of wanting to undo something or to change something in the past also gets into “The Waiting.”

  BORGES: Well, that happened. No, because the story, well, of course, I can’t remember what the man felt at the end, but the idea of a man who went into hiding and was found out after a long time, this happened. It happened, I think it was a Turk and his enemies were also Turks. But I thought that if I worked in Turks, the reader would feel, after all, that I knew little about them. So I turned him into an Italian, because in Buenos Aires everybody is more or less Italian, or is supposed to know a lot about them. Besides, as there are Italian secret societies, the story was essentially the same. But if I’d given it the real Turkish-Egyptian setting, then the reader would have been rather suspicious of me, no? He would have said, “Here is Borges writing about Turks, and he knows little or nothing about them.” But if I write about Italians, I’m talking about my next-door neighbours. Yes, as everybody in Buenos Aires is more or less Ital
ian; it makes me feel I’m not really Argentine because I have no Italian blood. That makes me a bit of a foreigner.

  BURGIN: But what I meant was this idea of regret, which is essentially a metaphysical regret that we feel against an inevitable destiny, I mean, that feeling is in a lot of your stories. For example, “The South” or “The House of Asterion.” Speaking of “The House of Asterion,” I understand you wrote that in a single day.

  BORGES: Yes. I wrote that in a single day. Because I was editor of a magazine, and there were three blank pages to be filled, there was no time. So I told the illustrator, I want you to work a picture more or less on these lines, and then I wrote the story. I wrote far into the night. And I thought that the whole point lay in the fact of the story being told by, in a sense, the same scheme as “The Form of the Sword,” but instead of a man you had a monster telling the story. And also I felt there might be something true in the idea of a monster wanting to be killed, needing to be killed, no? Knowing itself masterless. I mean, he knew all the time there was something awful about him, so he must have felt thankful to the hero who killed him.

  Now during the Second World War, I wrote many articles on the war, and in one of them I said that Hitler would be defeated because in his heart of hearts he really wanted defeat. He knew that the whole scheme of Nazism and world empire, all that was preposterous, or perhaps he might have felt that the tragic ending was a better ending than the other, because I don’t think that Hitler could have believed in all that stuff about the Germanic race and so on.

  Favourite stories; insomnia; a changing picture; Alice in Wonderland; Ulysses; Robert Browning; Henry James and Kafka; Melville …

  BURGIN: You seem to disapprove of or criticize so much of your writing. Which of your stories, say, are you fond of?

  BORGES: “The South” and that new story I told you about, called “The Intruder.” I think that’s my best story. And then “Funes the Memorious” isn’t too bad. Yes, I think that’s quite a good story. And perhaps “Death and the Mariner’s Compass” is a good story.