
Two New Books About Jorge Luis Borges - ableal
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/two-new-books-about-borges.html
======
tubelite
With re Borges' attitude to Hitler and Nazism: clearly, neither the
interviewer (Cavett) nor the author of this article (O'Connell) seem to be
very familiar with Borges' writings.

No one who has read Borges' half a dozen essays on the war (written before and
during WW2, collected in "Selected Non-Fictions") could accuse him of "refusal
to engage with politics", at least as far as Hitler was concerned.

I quote:

"If I had the tragic honor of being German, I would not resign myself to
sacrificing to mere military efficiency the intelligence and integrity of my
fatherland; If I were English or French, I would be grateful for the perfect
coincidence of my country's particular cause with the universal cause of
humanity.

It is possible that a German defeat might be the ruin of Germany; it is
indisputable that its victory would debase and destroy the world. I am not
referring to the imaginary danger of a South American colonial adventure; I am
thinking of those naive imitators, those homespun Ubermenschen that inexorable
chance would bring down upon us.

I hope the years will bring us the auspicious annihilation of Adolf Hitler,
this atrocious offspring of Versailles."

"Those who hate Hitler usually hate Germany; I have always admired Germany. My
blood and love of literature make me a natural ally of England; the years and
books draw me to France; but in Germany, pure inclination. I am certainly not
one of those fake Germanists who praise the eternal Germany in order to deny
it any participation in the present. I am not sure that having produced
Leibniz and Schopenhauer cripples Germany's capacity for political action.
Nobody asks England to choose between its Empire and Shakespeare, nor insists
in France that Descartes and Conde are incompatible. I naively believe that a
powerful Germany would not have saddened Novalis or been repudiated by
Holderlin. I detest Hitler precisely because he does not share my faith in the
German people; he has decided that to undo 1918, the only possible lesson is
barbarism; the best incentive, concentration camps..."

"Things are much worse in Russia, I hear people say. I infinitely agree, but
Russia does not interest us as much as Germany. Germany - along with France,
England, the United States - is one of the essential nations of the Western
world. Hence we feel devastated by its chaotic descent into darkness..."

Does this sound like "refusal to engage with politics"?

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ableal
I filched this from an old mainstay of the web, the Arts and Letters Daily (
[http://www.aldaily.com/](http://www.aldaily.com/) ), and submitted it with
the ALD blurb that caught my attention: "Borges never wrote a work of fiction
longer than fourteen pages". It comes up midway through the piece:

 _Borges never wrote a work of fiction longer than fourteen pages. “It is a
laborious madness and an impoverishing one,” he wrote in 1941, “the madness of
composing vast books—setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be
perfectly related orally in five minutes.”_

This is not complimentary, a backhand comes up next. The writer is critical of
Borges, mostly on rather shaky grounds at the end, but he does offer a few
worthwhile contributions.

------
elliptic
I thought that one of the comments - to the effect that this article tells us
relatively little about Borges and perhaps more about the author - was very
perceptive. I am going to try to remember not to fall into that trap.

~~~
defen
Nabokov, who as a novelist was similar to Borges in many ways, wrote a whole
book about this - _Pale Fire_. Of course it's about many things, but that is a
major theme.

------
mbillie1
With respect to O'Connell's highlighting of Borges' apparent anti-woman views,
I think that there is an interesting conversation to be had about looking at
authors from prior eras with ethical standpoints only developed relatively
recently. I recall a professor asking me whether Plato was sexist because
there were no women in the academy (a clearer example), and having similar
thoughts to those I had when reading that section of this article.

~~~
slurry
At the same time, it's naive to look back on the past as a monolith, where
just _everyone_ was racist, sexist, etc. until - what's our cutoff point, the
60s, 70s, 80s? 90s, even?

Borges' best work was arguably done in the 40s, and he was at the peak of his
fame probably in the late 70s (thanks in part to promotion by the Videla
dictatorship, which he supported). That's a while ago but not classical
Athens. There were a lot of people with more progressive views on women around
during those years, many of whom Borges considered political enemies.

------
da-bacon
A response concerning the claim that Borges was not political:
[http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/borges-politics-and-the-
pos...](http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/borges-politics-and-the-postcolonial)

------
sakai
Where is the reference to 14 pages in the article? (Think I read the whole
thing and didn't see it, but I am on my phone)

Edit: Note: The title a moment ago was something like "Borges never wrote a
work of fiction longer than fourteen pages"

~~~
sakai
Ok. See it now. I was confused seeing that as the title -- but don't need to
weigh in on the whole HN perennial titling debate.

------
andrewcooke
fwiw, if you have basic spanish, he's _very_ easy to read in the original.
very clear, simple prose (and you only need to read one story at a time).

~~~
hhm
This is kind of surprising, because he is typically considered a tough read
for native Spanish readers. I wonder if the reason for this is that, although
he uses a much wider vocabulary than other authors (making it harder to read
for native speakers, specially young ones), he writes in such a precise and
masterful way that it ends being easier for non-native readers. [or maybe
because he is like a programmer between writers; his writings have some kind
of formal language feeling in them]

~~~
graeme
Do you have any references that he's hard for Spanish speakers? I'm curious.

I find him easier to read than most other Spanish short story writers. Could
be the logic.

~~~
slurry
Had an old boss who was a Romance languages PhD dropout. He told me that
Borges' first language was English (his father was half-English and it was the
primary language at home), he went to boarding school in Switzerland, so he
basically doesn't write Spanish as a native speaker. This can make his writing
in Spanish more accessible to English speakers, but jarring and dissonant to
native Spanish speakers.

Can't judge the merits of it myself, but it seems plausible.

~~~
hhm
Borges use of the Spanish language was perfect. He had a very deep knowledge
about the precise meaning of words native speakers use in a more careless way.
And he had the accent, etc. of a native speaker. People might find it hard
precisely because he uses the language with an exactitude and a vocabulary
that is really uncommon.

------
doug1001
not a single post has mentioned the brilliant taxonomy, Borges "claimed" to
have discovered in a Chinese text entitled "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent
Knowledge", and mentioned in a 1942 essay by Borges on John Wilkins.

Highly Recommended reading (and only a hundred or so words):
[http://eendress.com/acts-of-knowledge/](http://eendress.com/acts-of-
knowledge/)

------
ajarmst
For any who care, Christopher Hitchens had a delightful essay on Borges. It
was reprinted recently in his collection "Arguably".

------
enriavc
For anyone curious this is the complete text of "Borges and I". It is much
more nuanced than what is implied by the article. I have made minor stylistic
changes to Antonios Sarhanis' English translation available at
[http://anagrammatically.com/2008/01/31/borges-and-i-
borges-y...](http://anagrammatically.com/2008/01/31/borges-and-i-borges-y-
yo/):

"Borges and I" by Jorge Luis Borges

To the other one, to Borges, is to whom things happen. I walk through Buenos
Aires and I pause, one could say mechanically, to gaze at a vestibule’s arch
and its grillwork; of Borges I receive news in the mail and I see his name in
a list of professors or in some biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses,
maps, eighteenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the
prose of Stevenson; the other shares these preferences, but in a vain fashion
that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration
to claim that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live so that
Borges may weave his literature, and that literature justifies me. It poses no
great difficulty for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, yet
these pages cannot save me, perhaps because whatsoever is good does not belong
to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition. In any case,
I am destined to lose myself, definitively, and only a fleeting moment of
myself will be able to live on in the other. Little by little I am ceding
everything to him, even though I am aware of his perverse tendency to falsify
and magnify. Spinoza understood that all things strive to persevere in their
being; the stone eternally wishes to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I will
remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognise
myself less in his books than in those of many others, or in the laborious
strum of a guitar. Years ago, I tried to free myself from him and went on from
the mythologies of the slum to games with time and the infinite. But those
games are now Borges’ and I will have to conceive of other things. Thus my
life is an escape and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or
to the other one.

I do not know which of the two is writing this page.

"Borges y Yo" por Jorge Luis Borges

Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires
y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la
puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una
terna de profesores o en un diccionario biográfico. Me gustan los relojes de
arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo XVIII, las etimologías, el sabor del
café y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte esas preferencias, pero de un
modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Sería exagerado
afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir para que
Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me
cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no
me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del
otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a
perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el
otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre
de falsear y magnificar. Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren
perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un
tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me
reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso
rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las
mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito, pero esos
juegos son de Borges ahora y tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una
fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.

No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.

