Borges and I
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I
walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps
mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the
grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name
on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like
hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee
and the prose of Stevenson; He shares these preferences, but in a vain
way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an
exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let
myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and
this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that
he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me,
perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but
rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to
perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in
him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am
quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying
things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being;
the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall
remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but
I recognise myself less in his books than in many others or in the
laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from
him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time
and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to
imagine other things. thus my life is a flight and I lose everything
and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page.
Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by J. E. I.
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This piece is from a favourite collection of Borges, "Labyrinths".
Like Latin rythm and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of
Solitude", this story speaks to me of the very core of this human's
condition with passion and a strong life force.
I had a long discussion with a great many tears involved with a teen
this week surrounding the nature of self doubt. I'm so lucky to have
young people in my life that can remind me of what's important to
growing up. When that process is finished, I'll be dead. Hopefully
that can be combined with the time when my heart no longer beats.
"Jesus, please don't save me till I die" -
Murray McLauchlan
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