Borges at Eighty: Conversations

by Jorge Luis Borges

  Now at this last point I find

  the recondite code and cipher to my days,

  the fate of Francisco de Laprida,

  the missing letter, the perfect

  form known to God from the start.

  In the mirror of this night I find

  the unexpected mien of my eternity.

  The circle’s closing. Thus may it be.

  My feet are treading the shadows of pikes

  pointed at me. The taunts of death,

  the riders, the horses and their manes

  are circling around me, hovering, the first

  blow of the hard iron to rip at my chest,

  the intimate knife at my throat…

  [Trans. Anthony Kerrigan]

  POEMA CONJETURAL

  El doctor Francisco Laprida, asesinado el día 22 de setiembre de 1829 por los montoneros de Aldao, piensa antes de morir:

  Zumban las balas en la tarde última.

  Hay viento y hay cenizas en el viento,

  se dispersan el día y la batalla

  deforme, y la victoria es de los otros.

  Vencen los bárbaros, los gauchos vencen.

  Yo, que estudié las leyes y los cánones,

  yo, Francisco Narciso de Laprida,

  cuya voz declaró la independencia

  de estas crueles provincias, derrotado,

  de sangre y de sudor manchado el rostro,

  sin esperanza ni temor, perdido,

  huyo hacia el Sur por arrabales últimos.

  Como aquel capitán del Purgatorio

  que, huyendo a pie y ensangrentando el llano,

  fue cegado y tumbado por la muerte

  donde un oscuro río pierde el nombre,

  así habré de caer. Hoy es el término.

  La noche lateral de los pantanos

  me acecha y me demora. Oigo los cascos

  de mi caliente muerte que me busca

  con jinetes, con belfos y con lanzas.

  Yo que anhelé ser otro, ser un hombre

  de sentencias, de libros, de dictámenes,

  a cielo abierto yaceré entre ciénagas;

  pero me endiosa el pecho inexplicable

  un júbilo secreto. Al fin me encuentro

  con mi destino sudamericano.

  A esta ruinosa tarde me llevaba

  el laberinto múltiple de pasos

  que mis días tejieron desde un día

  de la niñez. Al fin he descubierto

  la recóndita clave de mis años,

  la suerte de Francisco de Laprida,

  la letra que faltaba, la perfecta

  forma que supo Dios desde el principio.

  En el espejo de esta noche alcanzo

  mi insospechado rostro eterno. El círculo

  se va a cerrar. Yo aguardo que así sea.

  Pisan mis pies la sombra de las lanzas

  que me buscan. Las befas de mi muerte,

  los jinetes, las crines, los caballos,

  se ciernen sobre mí…. Ya el primer golpe,

  ya el duro hierro que me raja el pecho,

  el íntimo cuchillo en la garganta.

  The scheme of this poem is by Browning. In Browning we read the romantic monologues and there we can follow the feelings of a man. And then I thought: I will do my best, a Stevenson habit, I will play the sedulous ape to Browning and attempt a poem. But it might be striking if what the hero of the poem is thinking should be made to form his last moments, and then I bethought myself of Francisco Narciso de Laprida, the president of the first revolutionary congress in 1816, a kinsman, who was killed by the gauchos. Then I said to myself: I will try to recover not those things but to imagine what he may have thought when he was defeated by barbarians. He was the man who wanted our country to be a civilized country. He was defeated, pursued by barbarians. He had his throat cut. Then I remembered Dante’s Purgatorio, and the line came to me: Fuggendo a piede e sanguinado il piano.* My Italian is weak but I think that is the right line. I wove that into my poem: [que,] huyendo a pie y ensangrentando el llano “[who] fleeing on foot left blood on the plain.” And I published this poem—it was rejected, I’m sorry to say, by a newspaper whose name I have no cause to mention—but it was published in the periodical Sur. This poem is not only an historical poem but, when I wrote it, I was writing what we all felt, because the dictatorship had come, and we complained of being Paris or being Madrid or Rome. But really we were South Americans and there was the dictator. So the poet says: Al fin me encuentro con mi destino sudamericano “I see at last that I am face to face with my South American destiny.” So I wrote the poem. The poem goes on. The horseman finds the man who is being hunted down by them, and the poem ends with the death of the man. We have the last verse and the last verse is the last moment of his life, when his throat is cut. Thus when I write el íntimo cuchillo en la gárganta “across my throat the intimate knife,” this is the last verse that may be written, since after that he may be annihilated. He may find his way into another world, we do not know, but the poem, I think, has a certain tragic strength to it since it ends when the man dies. The poem ends with the last verse. They go together.

  A BOOK

  Scarcely a thing among things

  But also a weapon. It was forged

  In England, in 1604,

  And they weighted it with a dream. It holds

  Sound and fury and night and scarlet.

  My palm feels its heaviness. Who could say

  It contains hell: the bearded

  Witches who are fates, the daggars

  Which carry out laws of shadow,

  The delicate castle air

  That will see you die, the delicate

  Hand capable of bloodying the seas,

  The sword and shouting of the battle.

  That silent uproar sleeps

  In the circle of one of the books

  On the quiet shelf. It sleeps and waits.

  [Trans. Willis Barnstone]

  UN LIBRO

  Apenas una cosa entre las cosas

  Pero también un arma. Fue forjada

  En Inglaterra, en 1604,

  Y la cargaron con un sueño. Encierra

  Sonido y furia y noche y escarlata.

  Mi palma la sopesa. Quién diría

  Que contiene el infierno: las barbadas

  Brujas que son las parcas, los puñales

  Que ejecutan las leyes de la sombra,

  El aire delicado del castillo

  Que te verá morir, la delicada

  Mano capaz de ensangrentar los mares,

  La espada y el clamor de la batalla.

  Ese tumulto silencioso duerme

  En el ámbito de uno de los libros

  Del tranquilo anaquel. Duerme y espera.

  We think of all books, not only holy writ but the others, as being holy. And that is right, since our tools, our tools framed by mankind, are mere extensions of his hand—a sword, a plow. And a telescope or a microscope is an extension of his eyesight. But in the case of books, there is far more than that. A book is an extension of the imagination, of memory. Books are perhaps the only thing we know of the past, of our personal past also. And yet, what is a book? A book, when it lies in the bookshelf—I think Emerson has said so (I like to be indebted to Emerson, one of my heroes)—a book is a thing among things. And after all, why should it be revealed? A book is a thing and there it is. It has no existence of its own. A book is unaware of itself until the reader comes. And then I bethought myself of writing a poem about that very simple fact: that a book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. Since I had to choose a certain book, I thought of Macbeth. Were I to choose a single tragedy of Shakespeare, I think I would choose Macbeth, that tense thing that begins: “When shall we three meet again/ in thunder, lightning or in rain?” And then goes on: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Another character who speaks “of this dead butcher and his fiendish greed.” Of course Macbeth was far more than a �
��dead butcher.” Then I thought, well, here is a volume. We find that in this volume the tragedy of Macbeth is enclosed, all the din, the uproar, the weird sisters. Weird is not an adjective in this case. Weird is a noun since it stands for the Saxon wurd “fate.” The witches are also fate, the weird sisters. And this book is dead, this book is lifeless, and this book in a sense is lurking, is awaiting us. So I wrote the last line. I think it runs: “It sleeps and waits.”

  *Purgatorio, Canto V, I.99.

  5

  A Crowd Is an Illusion

  Columbia University,

  March 1980 A crowd is an illusion…. I am talking to you personally.

  WILLIS BARNSTONE: Borges, in every literature authors use myth. Joyce, Milton, Virgil did so. Your own work has many myths in it. Could you tell us about the use of myth in your own writing?

  JORGE LUIS BORGES: I have never attempted myth. Myth was given me, perhaps, by the readers, but I never attempted it or thought about it.

  BARNSTONE: Why did you choose to write a poem about Endymion?

  BORGES: I wrote a poem of Endymion because I wanted to say that Endymion is a matter of fact and not myth, since every man who has been loved has been loved by a goddess. I have been Endymion. All of us have been Endymion who have been loved by the moon, who have felt unworthy of it, and who have sought to thank it. That was the meaning of the poem. I wasn’t playing around with myth.

  BARNSTONE: You have done a lot of translation in your day. When you translate from other languages, do you feel that you’ve learned something for your own poetry?

  BORGES: Yes, not only when I translate but when I read. I’m learning all the time. I’m a disciple, not a master.

  BARNSTONE: To what extent do you think that books in translation have changed the Spanish language or the English language? That is, does the existence of, say, the King James translation in English affect the use of the English language?

  BORGES: I think the King James translation of the Bible is really the book of England. I think of it as being the essential book, even as Wordsworth is essential, even as Chaucer is essential. I don’t think of Shakespeare as being essential—I think of him as being alien to the English tradition, since the English go in for understatement and Shakespeare goes in for violent metaphors. So when I think of an English writer, I tend to think of Johnson, of Wordsworth, of Coleridge, of course. And why not of Robert Frost? He was an English writer also!

  BARNSTONE: I wanted to ask you about your use in your own poems of free verse and also of traditional forms such as the sonnet.

  BORGES: I think that free verse is the most difficult of all forms of verse, unless you take the precaution of being Walt Whitman! I think that the classic forms are easier because they provide you with a pattern. Now, I’m merely repeating what Stevenson said. Stevenson wrote that when you had a verse, a unit, then you would go on repeating that unit. That unit might be made by alliteration (as in the case of Old English poems and Old Norse poems), or by rhyme, or by a certain number of syllables, or by short or long accents. But once you have a unit, you merely have to repeat the pattern. In the case of prose, the pattern has to be changed all the time. It should be changed in a way pleasing to the reader, pleasing to the ear. And that may be the reason why verse, in all literatures, comes before prose. Verse is easier, especially if there is a form to be followed.

  Now in the case of free verse, free verse is as difficult as prose, I should say. Many people think that when we speak orally we use prose. It’s a misconception. I think that oral language is alien to literature. I think of prose as being very difficult. Prose should always come after classic verse. Of course I made the mistake that all young men do, to think that free verse was easier. So my first book was a failure in many senses: not only in that no copies were sold (I never intended that!), but in the sense that the verses were very awkward. I should advise the young poet to begin by the classic forms and patterns.

  One of the most beautiful of all patterns, I should say, is the sonnet. What a strange thing that a form that seems so haphazard as the sonnet—two stanzas, two quartets, or three stanzas, then two rhyming lines—should be used for such different purposes! If I think of a sonnet by Shakespeare, a sonnet by Milton, a sonnet by Rossetti, a sonnet by Swinburne, a sonnet by William Butler Yeats, I am thinking of things that are entirely different. Yet the structure is the same, for that structure allows the voice to find its own intonation, so that sonnets all over the world have the same structure and are entirely different. Each poet contributes something to it. So I would advise a young poet to begin by rigorous stanzas.

  BARNSTONE: Would you like to compare the various sonnets in the English language with the use of sonnets in the Spanish language and your own writing of sonnets?

  BORGES: My own writing of sonnets should be forgotten. We speak of literature!

  BARNSTONE: Nevertheless, your own writing of sonnets has something to do with the English language.

  BORGES: Well, I hope it has. Of course the Spanish sonnets can be very different also. If we take a sonnet by Góngora, a sonnet by Garcilaso, a sonnet by Quevedo, by Lugones, by Enrique Banchs, they are quite different. And yet the form is the same. But the voice, the intonation behind the sonnet, is completely distinct.

  BARNSTONE: Borges, if I could return to another kind of question, a personal question, and ask you about your feelings: When have you had a feeling of peace, if ever?

  BORGES: Yes, but perhaps not now. Yes, I have had some moments of peace. They were given me perhaps sometimes by mere solitude. Sometimes by books, and sometimes in memory. And sometimes when I wake and find myself strangely enough in Japan or in New York. Those are very pleasant gifts and moments of peace.

  BARNSTONE: When have you felt moments of fear?

  BORGES: I am feeling it now at this moment. I have stage fright.

  BARNSTONE: Any other moments?

  BORGES: Well, I have felt also the fear of beauty. Sometimes reading Swinburne, or reading Rossetti, or reading Yeats, or reading Wordsworth, I may have thought, well, this is too beautiful. I am unworthy of the verses I am reading. But I have felt fear also. Before writing I always think: Who am I to attempt writing? What do I know about it? And then I make a fool of myself—but I’ve done that so many times one more time won’t matter. And I also fear that certain fear before the blank page. And then I say to myself: After all, what does it matter? I’ve written far too many books. What else can I do but go on writing, since literature seems to be—I will not say “my destiny”—my “to do,” and I am grateful for it. The only kind of destiny I can imagine.

  BARNSTONE: Recently you spoke about having experienced, twice, moments you would call timeless, mystical. Would you be willing to speak about the unspeakable?

  BORGES: Yes. Two timeless moments have been given me. One came through quite an ordinary way. Suddenly I felt somehow I am beyond time. And the other came after a woman had told me that she couldn’t love me and I felt very unhappy. I went for a long walk. I went to a railway station in the south of Buenos Aires. Then, suddenly, I got that feeling of timelessness, of eternity. I don’t know how long it lasted, since it was timeless. But I felt very grateful for it. Then I wrote a poem on the railway station wall (I shouldn’t have done that!). The poem is still there. So I’ve had the experience only twice in my life. But at the same time, I know people who’ve never had it and I know people who are having it all the time. My friend, a mystic, for example, abounds in ecstacies. I don’t. I’ve only had two experiences of timeless time in eighty years.

  BARNSTONE: When you are in time—

  BORGES: I’m in time all the time.

  BARNSTONE: The other ninety-eight moments of your life, there’s the time of your mind, of dream, and then there’s the external time, the clock time, the measured time. You talk and write very much about time.

  BORGES: Time is the essential riddle.

  BARNSTONE: Would you speak to us about the time of dream?

  BORGE
S: If you use the word dream, I think of it in terms of that tiger of the dream, the nightmare. I have the nightmare every other night. The pattern is always the same. I find myself, let’s say, always on a street corner in Buenos Aires, or in a room, quite an ordinary room, and then I attempt another street corner and another room and they are the same. That goes on and on. Then I say to myself, well, this is the nightmare of the labyrinth. I merely have to wait, and I wake up in due time. But sometimes I dream I wake up and find myself on the same street corner, in the same room, or in the same marshland, ringed in by the same fog or looking into the same mirror—and then I know that I am not really awake. I go on dreaming until I wake, but the nightmare feeling lasts for two minutes, perhaps, until I feel that I am going mad. Then suddenly all that vanishes. I can go back to sleep. One of my bad habits, the nightmare, I should say.

  BARNSTONE: One of your old habits is friendship.

  BORGES: All of my habits are old.

  BARNSTONE: What has happened to your friendships over the last sixty years?

  BORGES: Unhappily, when I think of my friends, I am thinking of dead men or dead ladies. But I have still some living friends. Of course at my age I have practically no contemporaries. Who is to blame? Nobody. I should have died long before. And yet still, life has made for good, since I am here in America and since I am among you.

  BARNSTONE: You have contempt for most fame and even for your own publications.

  BORGES: Of course.

  BARNSTONE: Yet today we’re speaking to this very friendly group here. Tell me how you feel about speaking to them and letting them in on your knowledge.

  BORGES: I am not speaking to them. I am speaking to every individual of you. After all, a crowd is an illusion. No such thing exists. I am talking to you personally. Walt Whitman had it: “Is it right, are we here together alone?” Well, we are alone, you and I, and you stands for an individual, not for the crowd, which is nonexistent, of course. Even I myself may be nonexistent also.

  AUDIENCE: It is said that you are very fond of New York City.

  BORGES: I am of course. I am not a lunatic!

  AUDIENCE: Why do you think New York City is such a special place?