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An Interview With Jorge Luis Borges PDF
An Interview With Jorge Luis Borges PDF
commonwealmagazine.org
1 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
CW: You began writing as a poet and essayist, and it was not
until after a serious illness that you started writing stories. Do
you value one form of writing more than another?
CW: So you evolve the form and the content as you go along?
JLB: Yes. When I feel I'm going to write something, then I just
am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through.
And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it. And then,
when I begin to hear what's coming through, I write it down. I
try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing…
because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it
comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to
me. It's up to chance.
2 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
Let's say that the words "an unreal thing" or "an unreal
happening"—are a contradiction in terms. Because if you can
speak about something, or even dream something, then that
something is real. Unless of course you have a different
meaning for the word "real." But I don't see how things can be
3 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
unreal. I don't see any valid reason why Hamlet, for example,
should be less real than Lloyd George.
Symbols are there all the time. If I write about a certain street
corner in Buenos Aires, that street corner may pass away for
all I know. But if I write about mazes, or about mirrors, or
about the night, or about evil, and fear, those things are
everlasting—I mean they will be always with us. So, in a
sense, I suppose a writer of the fantastic is writing of things far
more real than, well, what newspapermen write about.
Because they're always writing about mere accidents,
circumstances. But, of course, we all live in time. I think that
when we write about the fantastic, we're trying to get away
from time and to write about everlasting things. I mean we do
our best to be in eternity, though we may not quite succeed in
our attempt.
4 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
CW: What about people like E.T.A. Hoffmann and the German
romantics? Have you felt any sympathy with them?
CW: You have said that the purpose of your writing is "to
5 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
JLB: No, I don't have, but I hope to have one. Of course, I can
believe in God, in the sense that Matthew Arnold gave to that
word, something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
But I suppose that that's rather shadowy. I suppose you want
more on that. Now as to a personal god, I don't like to think of
God as a person—though I'm quite fond of people, and I
suppose I'm a person myself, after all. But I don't think I have
any use for a god who is very much interested, let us say, in
ethics, in what I am doing. I would rather like to think of God
as being a kind of adventurer—even as Wells thought about
6 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
JLB: Well no, I look forward to a better literary future than that.
CW: Let me ask about one more German that I'm curious how
you feel about, I mean Rainer Maria Rilke.
7 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
8 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
CW: Are there any contemporary writers that you are attracted
to and feel an affinity for?
JLB: Well, I'm very ignorant of music. I can only plead the
doctrine of invincible ignorance. But when we were writing,
9 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
JLB: I suppose the reason is that I think too much about it.
When I write, I try to get away from personal feelings. I
suppose that's the reason. But there has to be another
reason. The other reason may be that it's been worked to
death, and I know that I can't say anything new or very
interesting about it. Of course, you may say that the other
subjects I treat have also been worked to death. For example,
loneliness, identity. And yet, somehow I feel that I can do
more with the problems of time and identity than with what
was treated by Blake when he spoke of "weaving through
dreams a sexual strife, and weeping o'er the web of life." Well,
I wonder if I have woven through dreams the sexual strife. I
don't think so. But after all, my business is to weave dreams. I
10 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
JLB: Because after all, if you sell a thousand copies you might
as well sell no copy at all, no? Infinity and zero come together.
But 37 people—with faces, with circumstances, with likes, with
dislikes, with relatives and so on. So I was very grateful when I
had sold 37 copies. But I think I was exaggerating, it may have
been 21 only, or 17 for that matter.
11 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
CW: There are many of us who are afraid about the directions
that art—or the arts in general—have been taken most
recently, and there's the feeling that there may be a
dehumanization in the arts, to use Ortega's term. Do you feel
that danger?
12 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
13 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM
An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges about:reader?url=https://www.commonwealmaga...
14 of 14 7/31/17, 11:17 PM