Two New Books About Jorge Luis Borges | Hacker News Reader

Two New Books About Jorge Luis Borges

newyorker.com

48 pointsableal24 comments

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"?

I filched this from an old mainstay of the web, the Arts and Letters Daily ( 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A response concerning the claim that Borges was not political: http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/borges-politics-and-the-pos...

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"

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.

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).

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]

oh. ok, so that's worrying / embarrassing. since i am no expert perhaps i have misunderstood things. i'm just leafing through ficciones now and i guess there may be words i think are invented that are simply obscure. or maybe he uses non-latin words that, for me, seem easy but are unusual in spanish?

how is someone like donoso rated? that's the kind of thing i find impenetrable...

[edit i just googled to see what others think, and i guess you don't get articles like this http://theclubofcompulsivereaders.blogspot.com/2011/07/es-ta... if he's as easy as i thought]

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.

I am also Argentinian and not everybody reads and follows Borges writings in spanish. I will not enter in a "reference game" since is public knowledge here, even if it's not written formally.

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.

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.

I'm from Argentina, and I have heard that many many times, but I've never read one of his book.

I don't have any references, this is based on personal experience of living in Argentina and having seen what people say about his books here (he's considered the hard writer). It's a shame though, because his writing is really wonderful.

Borges is "hard" because of his ideas of the infinite, time and so on, not because it's hard to understand what he writes. His Spanish is quite plain and easy to follow. That doesn't mean one understands completely the message.

I don't think any native Spanish speaker would have trouble understanding what he writes.

I don't think he's a hard read myself. But I do think it is an usual occurrence that Spanish speakers find it hard to read, and I think it is because of the language mainly, and not because of the content. But because I don't think it is hard myself, and because I didn't make a survey, I can't say this is exactly the case for most of the population.

Maybe it's the English influence? He was an avowed admirer of English literature and spoke fluent English, which he got from his half-English father.

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/

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

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...:

"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.

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