August 24, 2002: Borges at 103
From today's New York Times: "On Aug. 24, 1899, Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer of poems, essays and short stories, was born. Following his death on June 14, 1986, his obituary appeared in The Times."
I was introduced to Borges at Columbia, in a Latin American lit class taught by Alfred Mac Adam. Mac Adam was one of those professors you remember- he had this great passion for 20th Century literature, and in his spare time he translated books by Carlos Fuentes into English. After the class ended, I read Borges endlessly- reading some of the stories many times, trying to find the less popular works. I ended up reading a lot of his essays and reviews. With someone as prolific as Borges the project was almost impossible- but the Viking editions of his Collected Fictions and Non-fictions has made it a little easier. My favorite Borges story is the Lottery in Babylon- I think it is the most precise statement of his abilities at the very peak of his skills. Close runners up include The Garden of Forking Paths, The Library of Babel, and Pierre Mendard- each containing themes of death, infinity, and labyrinths. In terms of short essays, I'd say The Wall and The Books is probably the most memorable. Many people forget that Borges also wrote poetry. While some prefer the longer version of his poem "Limits", the shorter version is one of my all time favorites. It's better in the original Spanish, but Anthony Kerrigan's English version is very good:
There is a line of Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a nearby street forbidden to my step,
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
There is a door I have shut until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some I shall never reopen.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year:
Death reduces me incessantly.
Comments
Borges comes up a lot in life. People are always saying things like this or that is Borgesian or that an author or situation reminds them of him or of one of his stories. I'm reading Paul Auster's new volume, The Book of Illusions, and it, like all of his other stuff, reminds me of Borges. It's probably the use of coincidence as a plot device.
Borges. I don't think we will ever stop discussing his work.
A comment he made when he was appointed the National Librarian, while he was grappling with blindness..
"I speak of God's splendid irony in granting me at once 800 000 book and darkness."
I still love his Chinese Encyclopedia (Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge) found in The Analytical Language of John Wilkins; it harkens back to how Shakespeare used Florence as a place where fantastic things happened, and gently mocks the mad age of Linnaen categorization that has become a foundation for our systems of knowledge...
Animals are divided according to this Encyclopedia:
1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.
Can anyone spot the Russell paradox in that list?
The old Barber's paradox?
I guess numbers 8 and 12 would do it...
Eco's portrayal of Borges in The Name of the Rose wasn't so nice now that I look back on it...
Jake:
As a side note, I liked how Eco was alluded to in The Club Dumas.
A snippet from Eco that I find terribly amusing:
"I myself like easy books that put me to sleep immediately. But the normal reader who does not spend his day fighting with Kant or Hegel feels respected if there is a jujitsu with a novel, a resistance, a seduction. If the book says yes immediately, it is a whore."
That is an excellent quote. I guess Harry Potter is a pretty big ho, huh?
Here's a new site dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges. It's called
Internetaleph. It is fully bilingual (English/Spanish) and features hundreds of categorized links.
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