Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations

by Jorge Luis Borges

  BURGIN: If enjoyment is paramount, then what do you suppose it is that gives one a sense of enjoyment from a book?

  BORGES: There may be two opposite explanations to that. The individual is getting away from his personal circumstances and finding his way into another world, but at the same time, perhaps that other world interests him because it’s nearer his inner self than his circumstances. I mean, if I, suppose I take one of my favourite authors, Stevenson, if I were to read Stevenson now, I would feel that, as I was reading the book, I wouldn’t think of myself as being in England or in South America. I would think I was inside the book. And yet that book might be telling me a secret, or half-guessed-at things about myself. But, of course, those explanations go together, no? If you accept one, you don’t have to refuse the other.

  BURGIN: Of all the books you’ve published, do you have a favourite book?

  BORGES: Of all my books, yes. The book called The Maker, El hacedor. Yes, because it wrote itself. And my English translator, or my American translator, he wrote to me and said that there was no English word for “El hacedor.” And then I wrote him back, saying that “El hacedor” had been translated from the English “The Maker.” But, of course, all words in a foreign tongue have a certain distinction behind them, no? So that “El hacedor” meant more to him than “The Maker.” But when I used “El hacedor” for the poet, for Homer, I was merely translating the Old English or the Middle English word “maker.”

  BURGIN: Some people didn’t take you seriously when you said that El hacedor, translated back into English as Dreamtigers, would make all your other books unnecessary. But as I read it, I think more and more that perhaps it was more than a joke on your part—saying that.

  BORGES: Well, I know, because the book seems to be slight, but it isn’t really slight.

  BURGIN: It has all your essential themes and motifs and, more important, your voice.

  BORGES: The book may be a slight book, but it isn’t a slight book to me, because when I go back to that book, I find that I’ve said the things I had to say or that I worked out the images I had to work out. And besides, the book has found some favour with the public. It’s not a boring book. In fact, it couldn’t be because it’s so short.

  BURGIN: When were the poems that were in that collection written?

  BORGES: They were written all through my life. My editor told me, “We want a new book from you; there should be a market for that book.” And I said, “I haven’t any book.” And then my editor said to me, “Oh yes, you have. If you go through your shelves or drawers you’ll find odds and ends. Maybe a book can be evolved from them.” So I think I remember it was a rainy Sunday in Buenos Aires and I had nothing whatever to do because, well, there was an appointment that had failed. I had my sight, I wasn’t blind, so I thought, I’ll look over my papers. Maybe I’ll find something in my drawers. I found cuttings, old magazines, and then I found that there was the book all ready for me.

  BURGIN: Of pieces that you had thought were insignificant before?

  BORGES: Yes, and I took them to the editor and said, “I want you to tell me honestly—you don’t have to answer me today or next week—whether you think this book, this kind of crazy-quilt patchwork, can be published; you take ten days or a fortnight or a month over it, and look it over carefully because I don’t want you to be spending money on a book that nobody will buy or that may find some very hard critics.” And then he answered me within a week, saying “Yes.”

  BURGIN: I wanted to ask you about one of your parables in El hacedor, your parable about Cervantes.

  BORGES: Ah, yes! I’m very interested in Cervantes. I think—I wonder how you feel about it—when I think of English literature I’m attracted to it, among many other things, because when I’m thinking of it, I’m thinking about men more than about books. I think that English literature, like England, is very personal. For example, if I think of Sir Thomas Browne or Doctor Johnson, George Bernard Shaw or John Bunyan, or the men who wrote the Saxon Elegies. I think of them as men even as I might think of the many characters in Dickens or in Shakespeare. While I get the sense, of course I may be wrong, I get the sense that when I’m thinking about Spanish literature, I’m thinking about books rather than about men. Really, because of my ignorance. I’m attracted to Cervantes even as I’m attracted to Dickens and Shaw—because I can imagine him. But in the case of other writers, I can hardly imagine them, I think of their books. I wonder, for example, had I the chance to talk to Lope de Vega, I wonder what we would have spoken about.

  BURGIN: He wrote eighteen hundred plays, or something like that.

  BORGES: Yes, I would think of his plays rather. While if somebody said, “You’ll be having supper with Sir Thomas Browne, or even with Doctor Johnson”—of course, he would have been full of sweeping statements—I would have said, “I’ll enjoy this evening; I can imagine it.” Well, Cervantes is one of the few Spanish authors I can imagine. I know, more or less, what a chat with him would be. I know, for example, how he might apologize for some of the things he’s written. How he wouldn’t take himself too seriously. I’m sure of it, even as in the case of Samuel Butler or Wells, so one of the reasons why I feel attracted to Cervantes is that I think of him not only as a writer, one of the greatest of novelists, but also as a man. And as Whitman says, “Camerado, this is no book. Who touches this touches a man.” But I hardly ever get that feeling with Spanish books, or with Italian books. But I get that feeling, I get it all the time, when I’m reading American or English literature.

  BURGIN: But now, I’m curious, you have this parable of Cervantes, and you have written other parables about Dante and Homer and Shakespeare; I was wondering how you got the idea, because I don’t know of any other writer who has ever done this. I mean, to have written parables in which you tried to imagine or re-imagine the history of particular compositions or of their authors’ lives or destinies?

  BORGES: I think the explanation is fairly simple. The explanation is that I am interested in literature, not only for its own sake, but also as one of the many destinies of man. I mean, as I am interested in soldiers and in adventures and in mystics—well, I come from a military family and so on—I am also interested in literary men. I mean, in the fact of a man dedicating himself to his dreams, then trying to work them out. And doing his best to make other people share them. I’m interested in literary life. Of course, I’m not the first writer to do that because there are many Henry James stories about literary subjects, about literary men.

  BURGIN: You’ve really based your whole literature on literature itself in a way.

  BORGES: Yes. That may be an argument against my literature, and yet why? In many of my stories and poems the central character is a literary man. Well, this means to say that I think that literature has not only enriched the world by giving it books but also by evolving a new type of man, the man of letters. For example, you might not care for the works of Coleridge; you might think that outside of three or four poems, “The Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” “Kubla Khan,” maybe “Time, River, and Imagining,” what he wrote is not very interesting, it’s very wordy, and very perplexed and perplexing stuff, confused and confusing stuff, and yet I’m sure that you think of Coleridge as you might think of somebody you had known, no? I mean, that though his writing is sometimes rather unreal, yet you think of him as being a real man—perhaps because of his unreality also, and because he lived in a kind of haze world or dream world, no? So that I think literature has enriched the world not only through books, but through a new type of man, the man of letters.

  BURGIN: Have you ever tried writing in a more realistic way, basing your stories not on literature but on developed characters and …

  BORGES: Yes. I have done that.

  BURGIN: You did try that first?

  BORGES: No, no. I’m going back to that. I wonder if you’ve seen the last edition of El Aleph?

  BURGIN: “La intrusa,” yes, that’s a very atypical story of yours in some ways.
But in some ways it isn’t.

  BORGES: No, but I find that “La intrusa” is a different story from the others. Well, I have several plots of the same kind and when I’m back in Buenos Aires, I’ll go on with them.

  BURGIN: Why do you suppose you’ve changed your direction?

  BORGES: Well, there might be many reasons. I suppose the real reason is that when I thought of “La intrusa” I was very interested in it and I wrote it down in quite a short time. That might be a reason. And the other reason might be that I feel that the kind of stories you get in El Aleph and in Ficciones are becoming rather mechanical, and that people expect that kind of thing from me. So that I feel as if I were a kind of high fidelity, a kind of gadget, no? A kind of factory producing stories about mistaken identity, about mazes, about tigers, about mirrors, about people being somebody else, or about all men being the same man or one man being his own mortal foe. And another reason, which may be a rather malicious one, is that there are quite a few people all over the world who are writing that kind of story and there’s no reason why I should go on doing it. Especially as some of them do it far better than I do, no?

  BURGIN: Well, they followed you, and no, I don’t think they do it better or as well. Though, of course, some of your stories, like “The Form of the Sword,” are more “realistic.”

  BORGES: That’s one of the stories I like least, because it’s a trick story after all. Now a friend of mine told me that he saw through the trick, and I thought that is as it should be because I did think of the story as a trick story. I thought that if the reader felt that the man was talking about himself, it would make the whole thing more “pathetic,” but if he were merely telling a story about somebody who betrayed him, then that’s a mere episode. But if a traitor in a bashful way found that the only way of telling the story was to think of himself as outside the story, or rather, joining together with the central character, the story might be better and besides it might be said for the story that, well, let’s suppose—let’s suppose you made me some confession about yourself, no? You told me something that nobody knew or that nobody was supposed to know, or that you wanted hidden and suppose that in the moment you were telling it to me, you felt outside the whole thing because the mere fact of telling it made you the teller and not the told.

  BURGIN: I think you underrate that story because, though, as you say, it ends in a trick, an O. Henry kind of reversal, I think that …

  BORGES: But of course, when I wrote that story I was quite young and then I believed in cleverness, and now I think that cleverness is a hindrance. I don’t think a writer should be clever, or clever in a mechanical way, no?

  BURGIN: I think it’s deeper than the plot. I think it’s thematically very interesting and I think it’s somewhat akin to that story “The Theologians” because …

  BORGES: No. “The Theologians” is a better story.

  BURGIN: “The Theologians” is a better story.

  BORGES: But, perhaps, perhaps “The Form of the Sword” makes for easier reading?

  BURGIN: Yes, but what I’m saying is that essentially the person who was telling the story could have been either one of the men. Just like in “The Theologians,” the two men were the same to God.

  BORGES: Yes, that’s true. I never thought of that.

  BURGIN: He could have been either one of the men, and in a sense he was.

  BORGES: I never thought of that. Well, you have enriched the story. Thank you.

  BURGIN: You noticed something very interesting about Don Quixote. That he never does kill a man in all his adventures, although he often engages in fights.

  BORGES: Ah, yes! I wonder about that.

  BURGIN: And then you wrote that parable.

  BORGES: Well, I suppose the real reason or the obvious reason would be that Cervantes wanted to keep within the limits of farce and had he killed a man, then the book, then that would have been too real, no? Don’t you think so? I mean if Quixote kills a man, then he somehow is a real, bad man, whether he feels himself justified or not. I don’t think Cervantes wanted to go as far as all that, no? He wanted to keep his book within certain bounds, and had Don Quixote killed a man that would have done Cervantes no good.

  BURGIN: Also, there’s the idea you’ve mentioned that the author at some time in the book becomes the main character. So perhaps Cervantes couldn’t bear to kill a man himself, if he became Don Quixote.

  BORGES: Yes, yet I suppose he must have killed many in his life, as a soldier. But that’s different, no? Because if a soldier kills a man, he kills him impersonally, no? Don’t you think so? I mean if you kill a man as a soldier you don’t really kill him. You’re merely a tool. Or somebody else kills him through you or, well, you don’t have to accept any responsibility. I don’t think a soldier feels guilty about the people he’s killed, no? Except the men who threw the bomb on Hiroshima.

  BURGIN: Well, some of them have gone insane, some of those people who were involved with the bomb.

  BORGES: Yes, but somehow, now I suppose you are—I shouldn’t say this to you, I’ll be blurting it out.

  BURGIN: Well, say it.

  BORGES: I can’t think of Hiroshima as being worse than any battle.

  BURGIN: What do you mean?

  BORGES: It ended the war in a day. And the fact that many people are killed is the same fact that one man is killed. Because every man dies his own death and he would have died it anyhow. Then, well, of course, one hardly knows all the people who were killed in Hiroshima. After all, Japan was in favour of violence, of empire, of fighting, of being very cruel; they were not early Christians or anything of the kind. In fact, had they had the bomb, they would have done the same thing to America.

  Hold it, I know that I shouldn’t be saying these things because they make me seem very callous. But somehow I have never been able to feel that way about Hiroshima. Perhaps something new is happening to mankind, but I think that if you accept war, well, I should say this, if you accept war, you have to accept cruelty. And you have to accept slaughter and bloodshed and that kind of thing. And after all, to be killed by a rifle, or to be killed by a stone thrown at you, or by somebody thrusting a knife into you, is essentially the same. Hiroshima stands out, because many innocent people were involved and because the whole thing was packed into a single moment. But you know, after all, I don’t see the difference between being in Hiroshima and a battle or—maybe I’m saying this for the sake of argument—or between Hiroshima and human life. I mean in Hiroshima the whole tragedy, the whole horror, is packed very close and you can see it very vividly. But the mere fact of man growing, and falling sick, and dying is Hiroshima spread out.

  You understand what I mean? For example, there’s a part in Cervantes and in Quevedo where they speak against firearms, no? Because they say that, after all, a man may be a good marksman and another may not be. No, but what I think is this: I think that really all arms are horrible, no? Are awful. We’ve grown more or less accustomed, our sensibilities have been blunted, by ages and ages and so we accept a sword. Or we accept a bayonet or a spear, and we accept firearms, but whenever a new arm is about, it seems peculiarly atrocious, though after all, if you are going to be killed, it hardly matters to you whether you are killed by a bomb, or by being knocked on the head, or by being knifed.

  Of course, it might be said that war is essentially awful or rather that killing is essentially awful or perhaps that dying is essentially awful. But we have our sensibilities blunted, and when a new weapon appears, we think of it as being especially devilish—you remember that Milton makes the Devil invent gunpowder and artillery, no? Because in those days artillery was sufficiently new to be specially awful. And perhaps a day will come when people will accept the atomic bomb when we shrink from some keener invention.

  BURGIN: Then it’s a certain idea that you find awful. The idea of a man being killed.

  BORGES: Yes, but if you accept that, and war accepts that, or else there would be no war … the idea of a man fighting
a duel is the same idea, essentially.

  BURGIN: Well, the soldier may accept it while he’s fighting under orders, but I, as an individual, don’t have to accept it. And the soldier may not be a person who thinks in terms of accepting something or not; he may just do something because he’s told to by his government. He doesn’t necessarily question it. Do you think that each soldier debates with himself whether a given war is right or not, or examines the reasons and debates whether it’s worth taking another human life?

  BORGES: I don’t think he has to. I don’t think he could do it, no? Yet I remember my great-grandfather, Colonel Suárez, who had fought the War of Independence, the War of Brazil and the Civil War. When he was about to marry, his wife asked him about the men he had killed. And then he told her that he had only killed one man, and that was a Spaniard he had to run through with a lance in order to save a friend of his who had been taken prisoner. He said that was the one man he killed in the War of Independence, the War of Brazil and the Civil War. Now I suspect that he was lying, but that he knew at the same time that she must have felt a kind of horror at the idea that she was going to give herself to a bloodstained man, no? So I suppose he invented that in order to calm her.

  You remember, the battle of Junín lasted three quarters of an hour—not a shot was fired, the whole thing was done with spears and swords. It stands to reason that someone was going to get killed, and that he would have known it. And besides, I knew he had many executed. But I suppose that in a sense he felt that what he had done was awful, or rather, perhaps he felt that those things were awful to a woman but not to a man, no? I don’t think he was a clear thinker or anything of the kind, but he must have felt what all soldiers feel, well, these things have to be done and I’ve done them, and I’m not ashamed of it, but why speak of those things to a woman who cannot be expected to understand? I suppose he was lying, because battles, well, they were very primitive in those days and quite small affairs, but the fact that they were primitive and small affairs may, I suppose—if a man killed anybody he had to be quite sure about it, no? Because if you are hacking away with a sword at somebody, you know whether you’ve killed him or not.