Borges: Recommendations from a life of lectures and essays
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
Source: Born and raised in the area (I don't speak welsh, unfortunately, but have friends that do).
In 1871 she married Colonel Francisco Borges in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos. But the colonel died (or rather, deliberately got himself killed to prove his honor) in the Battle of La Verde (1874), final skirmish of a fruitless insurrection.
The couple had two children: Francisco Eduardo (who was to follow the military career of his late father) and Jorge Guillermo (who instead followed the bookish tradition of his British ancestors, and would eventually become the writer´s father)
After the colonel´s death, his widow, Frances Haslam was left to fend for herself - without ever having learned to speak proper Spanish.
British, Borges´ father was thus raised in a fully British atmosphere. His mother only spoke to him in English and he grew up reading reading English literature.
Colonel Borges´ premature death thus had the effect of duplicating his British widow´s British influence on coming generations. Even though Borges´ father was half "criollo" and half British, he was raised in a fully English household reading English literature.
He then passed this British tradition on to his son, the writer. Borges clearly states in his Autobiographical Essay that he first heard poetry in English and that his first acquaintance with literature was in English. He even remarked, that he first read that most famous of Spanish-language novels, Miguel de Cervantes´ Don Quijote, in English. And when he finally had the chance to read it in Spanish, he deemed the Spanish edition to be a poor translation from the English "original"
Fascinating. Did he say which translation he read?
His story "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" opens thus:
"Under the notable influence of Chesterton (contriver and embellisher of elegant mysteries) and the palace counselor Leibniz (inventor of the pre-established harmony), in my idle afternoons I have imagined this story plot which I shall perhaps write someday and which already justifies me somehow."
Tangentially, Bertolucci adapted this story for the film The Spider's Stratagem.
FWIW, I liked the book Professor Borges, which is (or purports to be) notes from an English literature class he taught. Whether it's accurate or not, it has a lot of what feel like the kinds of observations he would make.
This is also the reason for the quote before the foreword:
"I know, or rather I should say that I'm told, for I am certainly unable to see it, that my classes are increasingly crowded, with more and more students attending, and that many of them are not even registered in the course. I thus think we can safely assume that they want to listen to my lectures, right?"
When he says above that many students are attending without being even registered he means that they´re attending in spite of his course not being a requirement for them. They´re attending as listeners, regardless of their earning no credit for it, out of sheer pleasure and genuine interest.
In Spanish: "Yo sé, o más bien me dicen, porque desde luego yo no puedo verlo, que mis clases se llenan cada vez más de alumnos, y que muchos no están ni siquiera inscriptos en la materia. De modo que debiéramos suponer que quieren oírme, ¿no?”
The fact that Borges was, apparently at this point blind and doing these lectures essentially from memory is just mind boggling to me.
If there are any other hidden gems, these dialogues for example, please do share!
https://web.archive.org/web/20221128222820/https://www.lapha...
For other Borges fans, I'll mention the book: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. It references countless of Borges' stories.
The above are enjoyable for beginners - even though of course there are many more layers of meanings than are first apparent in those stories. But that deeper enjoyment can come later. They´re formidable narratives in their own right.
If you like the stories within, their original collections are exceptional (esp. The Aleph and Ficciones).
I still remember reading "The House of Asterion" (two pages) [1] and falling in love with Borges.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinths_(short_story_collec...
[1] https://klasrum.weebly.com/uploads/9/0/9/1/9091667/the_house...
But I like his big idea stories too. Absolutely "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" may be his masterpiece. But it's dense for an introduction to the author. Contrast this with "The Secret Miracle" which also has a beautiful big idea, but it's so elegantly small. in a sense the whole story fits into just one second.
Finally, I went overboard and calculated the number of books on the shelves in "the library of babel". I remember distinctly that the story made our very real universe feel small for the first time in my life. and to think, I barely scratched the surface. a whole book was published about the math in that one story alone: "The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel" by William Goldbloom Bloch.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/31/r...
Expansion on "The Library of Babel" [1]
"A Personal Library" is one of my favorite books list. Here's Borges own introduction:
> Over time, one's memory forms a disparate library, made of books or pages whose reading was a pleasure and which one would like to share. The texts of that personal library are not necessarily famous. The reason is clear. The professors, who are the ones who dispense fame, are interested less in beauty than in literature's dates and changes, and in the prolix analysis of books that have been written for that analysis, not for the joy of the reader.
> This series is intended to bring such pleasure. I will not select titles according to my literary habits, or a certain tradition, or a certain school or nation or era. I once said, "Others brag of the books they've managed to write; I brag of the books I've managed to read." I don't know if I am a good writer, but I think I am an excellent reader, or in any case, a sensitive and grateful one. I would like this library to be as diverse as the unsatisfied curiosity that has led me, and continues to lead me, in my exploration of so many languages and literatures. I know that the novel is no less artificial than the allegory or the opera, but I will include novels because they too have entered into my life. This series of heterogenous books is, I repeat, a library of preferences.
> Maria Kodama and I have wandered the globe of land and sea. We have visited Texas and Japan, Geneva, Thebes, and now, to gather the texts that are essential to us, we have traveled through the corridors and palaces of memory, as St. Augustine wrote.
> A book is a thing among things, a volume lost among the volumes that populate the indifferent universe, until it meets its reader, the person destined for its symbols. What then occurs is that singular emotion called beauty, that lovely mystery which neither psychology nor criticism can describe. "The rose has no why," said Angelus Silesius; centuries later, Whistler declared, "Art happens."
> I hope that you will be the reader these books await.
[0] http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtborges.html [1] https://therumpus.net/2009/08/06/searching-the-library-of-ba...
I admit that there is a certain awe for anyone becoming the kind of literary figure that can be quoted as saying such things, such ridiculous things, as if they are profound.