BORGES:
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
And at the end, we get the same line “I have been one acquainted with the night.” In the beginning, at the first reading, you think that acquainted with the night means: I have walked through a city at night. But then you foresee, as you come to the last lines, that the night stands for evil, especially for sensual evil as felt by a Puritan, because
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
And that, I think, is the chief achievement of Frost. He could write poems that seem simple, but every time you read them you are delving deeper and finding many winding paths and many different senses. So Frost has given us a new idea of metaphor. He gives us metaphor in such a way that we take it as a simple, straightforward statement. And then you find that it is a metaphor. “And miles to go before I sleep/ And miles to go before I sleep.” There we see that the same words have two different meanings. In the first of the last two verses, the words stand for miles and going and sleeping. And in the last line, sleep stands for death. But in a very unobtrusive way. He was a shy man, I suppose. But I think of him as being, perhaps, the greatest poet of the century, if “greatest poet” means anything. I think of Frost as being perhaps a finer poet than the other candidate, and that would be William Butler Yeats. I prefer Frost, but that would be a personal bias. Of course I revere Yeats. When I think back to such lines as “That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.” That of course is gorgeous writing, the kind of writing that Frost tried to avoid, that I try to avoid also. But Yeats could also write straightforward verses. For example:
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Then:
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
but O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
AUDIENCE: I would like to know what you think of the Nobel Prize, and what Borges, the other Borges, thinks of it.
BORGES: I think that both of them feel very greedy about it. But they’ll never get it.
BARNSTONE: The Nobel Prize committee keeps failing each year.
AUDIENCE: I’d like to hear you speak more about Old English, perhaps only because I love it also, Anglo-Saxon.
BORGES: I remember a disciple of mine, a fellow student, who said: “What a pity, what a pity, the battle of Hastings! Now Anglo-Saxon has come down to English, and we have to put up with Shakespeare. What a pity!” Really, I fell in love with Old English. I think that perhaps the Old English sounds, the open vowels, the hard Scottish rs, are better than the hushed English we speak today. It has a more resonant ring to it. That’s the reason. My memory is full of Old English verses. In Old English poetry we are getting the impression that the poems have been composed, have been chanted by or, rather, given to the brave and simple man. They did not abound in vanity. Vanity might have been found in the kennings. But the Anglo-Saxons very soon found out that the kennings did them no good and so they became merely synonyms. They were the first to speak out. I remember the elegies, the beginning of The Seafarer: “I can now tell a true song about myself./ I can tell my travels,” Maeg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,/ sipas secgan.* There the first lines are really Walt Whitman. In Old English poetry you get something essential, not only to England, but to all the world. You get the sea. The sea is always around the corner in Old English poetry. Even in that very dreary poem Beowulf, you find the sea in the beginning:
Men ne cunnon
secgan to , selerædende,
under heofenum, hwa pæm hlæste onfeng.†
There is the sea. And of course in The Seafarer, where he speaks of the bitterness and of the attraction of the sea. People have thought of The Seafarer as being a dialogue. That, I think, is wrong. We should think of it as being written by one man who had been defeated by the sea, who had suffered but went on loving it. Perhaps that piece is the best of all we have left of Anglo-Saxon literature. But there is also a poem written after the Battle of Hastings, and done into English by Longfellow. The poem “The Grave.” Longfellow translates: “Doorless is that house,/ And dark it is within.”* But if you go back to the original you find still better: Durelass is ðæat hus/ And deerc hit is wiðinnen.
AUDIENCE: Could you elaborate more on your relationship with Ariosto, or your feelings about Italian literature and Dante?
BORGES: I think that the Divine Comedy is perhaps the peak of all literature. And I think I am in the right, because there is no other cause that would make me love that thing. For example, I have no Italian blood as far as I know. I am not a Catholic. I cannot accept the mythology of the poem. I cannot think of hell, of purgatory, and of heaven. And yet I know that Dante is right every time. In the case of Shakespeare, we are being let down at any moment. In the case of Dante, he is very dependable. He won’t let you down. He knows what he’s doing. There is another strange point I would like to tell you. It is Dante’s idea that in a lifetime there is only a single moment. That moment stands for years and years of life, or stands for a man. For example, we are told nothing whatever of Paolo and Francesca. We know nothing about their political opinions, if any, of their ideas, if any, but we know that they were reading a book that came out of Britanny and that suddenly they knew that the characters in the book were themselves, and they knew that they were in love. That is sufficient. So Dante chooses a moment in every life. That is sufficient for him, since from that particular moment he gives us the whole character of the man and his whole life. That character may last three verses, and yet, there he is, forever. That is one of the feats of Dante. One of the many feats of Dante. As I have never studied Italian, I began by reading Longfellow’s translation. And reading the notes. Then I had a bilingual edition, and I read, firstly, the English text, a canto, then the Italian text. I went on, and when I refound myself in purgatory, I could do without the English text and go on reading in Italian. To try to translate Dante into Spanish is a mistake, since the two languages are so much alike that anybody can understand them both. Besides, the Italians have made a very fine job of it. I have read the Divine Comedy through already some ten or twelve times. Every time in a different edition, and have been given new interpretations. Ariosto has also meant much to me. In fact, I wrote a poem called “Ariosto and the Arabs.” Therein I lamented that nobody seemed to read Ariosto since the Arabian Nights had taken over, and we don’t even read the Arabian Nights as we should. But we have forgotten Ariosto and we should not forget him. Those two works, the Furioso and the Arabian Nights, resemble each other in the fact that they are really endless. And the fact that we are reading very long is a virtue. They have to be long. A labyrinth has to be long.
*“Nota sobre Walt Whitman,” “Note on Walt Whitman,” Discusion (1932).
*“Song of Myself,” 24, lines 497–98.
*“Salut Au Monde,” lines 122–23. In Whitman’s version “gaucho” is “Wacho,” a member of a Caddoan Indian Tribe, Texas.
† “Song of Myself,” 17, lines 355–60.
*“Song of Myself,” 34, lines 871–74.
†“Starting from Paumanok,” II, line 148.
**The Spanish word for “comrade” (masculine and feminine) is camarada.
‡“So Long!” lines 53–57.
*“So long!” line 71.
†Guillén (b. 1893) later added two more books, Clamor and Homenaje, which he incorporated into one book, Aire Nuestro (1968).
*“Starting from Paumanok,” 3, line 37.
*Trans. Willis Barnstone.
*“To Helen,” lines 21–24, 30. This poem was written for Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman.
†Lines 131–32.
*Lines 1–2.
†Beowulf, lines 42, 50–52.
*Lines 24–25.
11
I Always Stood in Fear of Mirrors
Indiana University,
April 1980 I always stood in fear of mirrors. When I was a little boy, there was something awful at my house. In my room we had three full-length mirrors. Then also the furniture was of mahogany, and that made a kind of dark mirror, like the mirror to be found in Saint Paul’s epistle. I stood in fear of them, but being a child I did not dare say anything.
ALBERTO COFFA: All Borges readers are familiar with the fact that his favorite philosophers tend to be related to the idealist tradition, and Schopenhauer is certainly one of those.
JORGE LUIS BORGES: Hume, Berkeley, and Schopenhauer, yes.
COFFA: So perhaps starting with the easiest and silliest questions and then proceeding to still silly but nonetheless less silly questions—
BORGES: We will be as silly as we can!
COFFA: I might start with the following. Borges was quoted as saying about Schopenhauer: “Today, were I to choose a single philosopher, I would choose him. If the riddle of the universe can be stated in words, I think those words would be in his writings.”
BORGES: Have I said that, really?
COFFA: I think you have. Did you agree with this?
BORGES: Of course I agree.
COFFA: In his biography of Borges, Rodríguez Monegal raises the question—
BORGES: I haven’t read it. I have read no biography about myself.
COFFA: Well, you lived it, that’s better.
BORGES: I underwent it, yes.
COFFA: He raises the question of what the nature of Schopenhauer’s influence was, and he makes a conjecture, which I would like to read and ask you how you feel about it. Is he right or wrong or something in between? “In Schopenhauer, Borges may have found the notion that art is the only way to meaning. That art, as much as science, creates a meaningful natural cosmos out of the crumbling social order.” So taking this quotation as an excuse, you might tell us whether this is close to the truth.
BORGES: I wonder whether the crumbling social order has anything to do with philosophy. I think philosophy is eternal. But as for the first part of the question you asked?
COFFA: The very beginning of his point is that in Schopenhauer, Borges may have found the notion that art is the only way to meaning.
BORGES: Well, I can hardly agree to that. I suppose all language is a way to meaning. Every single thing in the world may be used for meaning. But why art should be the only one, I am at a loss to understand.
COFFA: You have a poem to Sarmiento, who happens to be an Argentine political hero.
BORGES: He is the one man of genius we have produced, and perhaps the poet Almafuerte also. The others are men of talent only.
COFFA: In this poem, you contrast him—
BORGES: I wonder what I said about Sarmiento.
COFFA: Well, I’ll tell you what you said about Sarmiento.
BORGES: Thank you, I am curious.
COFFA: You’ll probably disagree, but you contrast him to what you call the white heroes of Argentine politics, those people—
BORGES: You mean the founding fathers, what we call the próceres.
COFFA: That’s right, like maybe Washington here or Bolívar in Bolivia.
BORGES: Or maybe San Martín.
COFFA: People who are so ambiguous that anyone will admire them, regardless of politics. On the other hand, Sarmiento is hated by half the Argentines and loved by the other half, even today.
BORGES: Which is a proof that he is still living, that he still has enemies and friends.
COFFA: Now this brings me to Schopenhauer, in a mysterious way.
BORGES: Very mysterious to me.
COFFA: Here it comes. I wonder when we try to test Schopenhauer, using this criterion of his ability to be unequivocal, aren’t you worried by the fact that Schopenhauer can be admired and taken as an example both by such a nice man as Mr. Borges and by such a nasty fellow as Otto Dietrich Tzurlinde, the concentration camp leader, in a story of yours, as a matter of fact.
BORGES: Yes, of course I remember. It comes back to me.
COFFA: Doesn’t that bother you?
BORGES: No, I suppose that we are both in the right, if we admire Schopenhauer.
COFFA: But why does it bother you that San Martín and all the other white heroes can be all things to all people, and you prefer the unambiguous Schopenhauer, but it doesn’t bother you that Schopenhauer can be taken by the Nazis to mean what they say and on the other hand he can be taken by you to mean what you want to say.
BORGES: Schopenhauer can be used by the Nazis, but that means they haven’t understood him. Even as Nietzsche. Nietzsche, for example, said, when the German empire was founded: “Another empire, another tomfoolery.” But he has been used by the Nazis. Yet Schopenhauer was his master, and certainly they were anything but nationalists. I hate all nationalism. I try to be a cosmopolitan, to be a citizen of the world. And also I am a good Argentine citizen. The Argentine Republic is part of the world.
COFFA: Some people would challenge that.
BORGES: What is it a part of? Of hell, of purgatory?
COFFA: Probably.
BORGES: Paradise?
COFFA: No, not paradise.
BORGES: No, not paradise, certainly not. That may be unattainable, or nonexistent. While hell is with us all the time, or most of the time. Not today of course.
COFFA: What is, then, the right interpretation of Schopenhauer? What is it in Schopenhauer that attracted you so very early on?
BORGES: Schopenhauer, if I remember rightly, wrote that he had but one idea: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung “the world as will and idea,” and that the shortest way to explain that idea might be found in the two very pleasant volumes he wrote. That, he said, is the shortest way. I know no other. But what I am really saying all the time is Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Of course I have to clarify it, since those words in themselves are more or less meaningless. And of course what Schopenhauer called Wille is the same thing as Bergson’s élan vital and Bernard Shaw’s “life force.” They amount to the same thing. And as for Vorstellung, I suppose it is the same idea that you get in Buddhism, the idea of maya, of illusion, of things not existing in themselves but only as phenomena. In the case of Schopenhauer, I think I have also been reading him throughout my life because he is a charming writer. Philosophers are not expected to be charming. And yet philosophers wrote quite well before Kant and Hegel. Then they evolved a peculiar jargon of their own. While in the past Plato was a fine writer, Saint Augustine was a fine writer, Descartes was a fine writer. And then of course we have Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, they were fine writers also, and so was Schopenhauer. But today philosophy seems to be linked to some kind of uncouth jargon.
COFFA: Rodríguez Monegal says that you used to meet with your father and Macedonio Fernández to talk about philosophy and that you did talk about Schopenhauer. What were the things that you discussed?
BORGES: I remember when I was a boy my father taught me the essential riddles, the essential problems, of philosophy without using any proper name or any date. For example, he would take the chessboard, and using the chessboard as a tool, he would give me the paradoxes of Zeno, of the Presocratics, and not speaking about them. Or I remember a night when we were at home, he asked me—he held an orange in his hand, we were having dinner—and he asked me: “What color is this orange?” Then I said: “Well, I suppose it’s orange color.” But I found out that was not sufficient and said: “Let’s say between red and yellow.” And he said: “Yes, but if I put out the light or if you close your eyes…. ” Then I stared at him. The next night he would ask me: “What’s the taste of the orange?” And I said: “Well, orange taste.” And he would say: “Do you really think that the orange is tasting its own flavor all day lon
g and all night long?” And I said: “Well, I won’t go as far as that.” And then he would ask me: “What’s the weight of this orange?” And then he held it in his hand. And so I slid on to idealism, without the word idealism being used. But I was being led, not to understanding, but to sensing, a feeling for the paradoxes of Zeno, and yet he had never mentioned those things. Afterwards, he gave me a book, a book by Lewis, a Jew, a friend of George Eliot, and the book was called A Biographical History of Philosophy. I still have that book by me at home. And therein I found that all those jokes, all those puzzlements of my father, all were to be found in that book and were called idealism, Presocratic philosophy, and so on. I was led to them by my father, who knew how to teach. He was a professor of psychology; he thoroughly disbelieved in psychology. But he taught me in that very pleasant way, by asking plain questions. He taught me philosophy by means of the orange and the chessboard. Then I have gone in for feeling those problems myself. Sometimes I lie awake and I ask myself, Who am I? or even What am I? What am I doing? And I think of time flowing on. I remember a very fine line that Tennyson wrote when he was fifteen: “Time flowing through the middle of the night.” Of course that’s Newton’s time, I suppose. Tempus absoluto. And there are other lines about time, since time is such a fine subject. It seems to be the one subject to me. It seems to me to be the essential riddle. If we knew what time is—though of course we never shall—then we would know who we are and what we are. Since the problem of identity is like the problem of time. The fact that I am here with you today and that I’ll be in Buenos Aires within ten days, and that I remember periods in Uruguay and in the Argentine when I was a boy. And all those things belong to me in a fashion that I cannot express, that I cannot understand. But I will go on trying to solve these problems, knowing of course that all my attempts will be useless, and that the pleasure lies not in the answer but in the riddle.
Borges at Eighty: Conversations Page 17
