Diffido dell'immortalità. Conversazione con Liliana Heker

by Jorge Luis Borges, Liliana Heker, Mercedes Ariza (Translator)

«La parola “morte”? Mi suggerisce… una grande speranza. La speranza di smettere di essere. Sono sicuro, come mio padre, che moriremo corpo e anima. A volte, mi sento un po’ sfortunato – capita a tutti noi –; soprattutto a un uomo che è solo, che è cieco, che ha senza dubbio alcuni cari amici, ma non molti, un uomo timido come me; a volte, mi sento triste». Così confessa nel 1980 Jorge Luis Borges, ormai ottantenne, alla scrittrice argentina Liliana Heker durante l’intervista per il libro Diálogos sobre la vida y la muerte. In queste pagine Borges ci parla con intimità di Dio, del suicidio di Gesù, della bellezza del buddhismo, della vita segreta delle piante e delle vere ragioni della sua avversione per gli specchi; ci confida i suoi ricordi, ci racconta la vecchiaia e la frustrazione che presagiva nel suo sogno di immortalità.

59 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Ronnie Picciotto]

Gradevole intervista che si legge in un attimo.