Conversations: Volume 3

Conversations #3

by Jorge Luis Borges, Osvaldo Ferrari, Anthony Edkins (Translator)

“I wrote a poem this morning, and one of the themes of the poem is that languages are not equivalent, that each language is a new way of feeling the world.”—Jorge Luis Borges 

 

Recorded during Borges’ final years, this third volume of his conversations with Osvaldo Ferrari offers a rare glimpse into the life and work of Argentina’s master writer and favorite conversationalist. In Conversations: Volume 3, Borges and Ferrari discuss subjects as diverse as film criticism, fantastic literature, science fiction, the Argentinian literary tradition, and the works of writers such as Bunyan, Wilde, Joyce, and Yeats, among others. With his signature wit, Borges converses on the philosophical basis of his writing, his travels, and his fascination with religious mysticism. He also ruminates on more personal themes, including the influence of his family on his intellectual development, his friendships, and living with blindness.  



The recurrent theme of these conversations, however, is a life lived through books. Borges draws on the resources of a mental library that embraces world literature, both ancient and modern. He recalls the works that were a constant presence in his memory and maps his changing attitudes to a highly personal canon. These conversations are a testimony to the supple ways that Borges explored his own relation to numerous traditions—the conjunction of his life, his lucidity, and his imagination.

Genres: Spanish Literature, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Politics, Poetry, History

235 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1987

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

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of interviews with Jorge Luis Borges has me jonesing to read a collection of his short fiction. I must admit that, despite Borges’ great stature as an author, I’ve only ever read one of his stories, and that was lost amid a huge anthology (also perhaps a poem or so under the same constraints.) However, I was intrigued by the possibility of gaining some insight into the Argentinian author credited as one of the founders of the magic realism genre in Latin America. I not only gained said insight, but I also developed an affinity for Borges as a thinker. These interviews not only discuss literature, but also philosophy, politics, and other topics as they interact with the literary world. The chapters, of which there are almost thirty, are topically organized and a few pages each.

The interviews are published as dialogues between Osvaldo Ferrari and Borges. That is to say, they are in transcript form so that one can experience the question and response as if you were witnessing the conversation. I found this worked well, and one could sense a camaraderie between the two men.

Let me answer a few questions about which readers might be interested. First, I came in late to the game, and one might wonder if there was any problem reading this, the third volume, first. It caused me no problems. Once in a while Ferrari would reference something the two discussed at an earlier point, but I didn’t feel any confusion (it was never necessary to have heard what they said earlier to interpret a reply.)

Second, given that the conversation is between two Argentinians, readers from other parts of the world might wonder if there is any difficulty following the discussions if one doesn’t know much about the art and social worlds of Argentina. Again, I would say the answer is no – for the most part. There are brief forays into Argentinian literature and politics, but the bulk of the discussion is cosmopolitan. I’d say there was considerably more page space devoted to Irishmen (e.g. Joyce and Yeats) and Americans (e.g. Emerson and Whitman) than there was to Argentinians.

Finally, if you’re wondering whether the book is highly focused on Borges’ work, the answer to that, too, is no. Borges discusses his own work enough, for example, that I now feel I know where I should begin my reading of him. However, he generally seems reticent to discuss his own work and the interviewer was responsive to that preference and picked his questions carefully.

If you’re interested in literature, I’d highly recommend this book. I found Borges penchant for minimalism and simplicity appealing, and yet he had deep insights to offer into a wide range of topics.

[Pollo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Último tomo de una trilogía de diálogos. Conversaciones muy chéveres sobre diversos temas: desde libros, hasta la llegada del hombre a la Luna. Borges expone sus ideas, gustos y preferencias de forma más asequible que en muchos de sus ensayos.

[Alan Davies]

One of my first jobs after arriving in NYC in 1977 was at a marvelous store called Books and Company. It had recently opened. It was a couple of storefronts down from the Whitney / and was well known as a shop where taste was on display. It was owned and run by Jeannette Watson until the Whitney proposed a new lease at two and a half times what it had been. It was a great place to work. The clients were discerning / and well-known ones stopped by / eg Truman Capote and Bill Cosby.

During my tenure / there began to be published a uniform English edition of Borges’ books in paperback. I read them one after another as they appeared / that magical and precise mind very much to my taste / at least at that time.

This present volume contains a series of short interviews that were originally broadcast over the radio. It is the third volume of three. The university professor Osvaldo Ferrari did the interviewing. He was enormously sympathetic to Borges’s work / and seems to have known him / and it / for some time. There are twenty-eight interviews / each of which transcribed is a few pages long. In 1985 Borges would have been about eighty-six / and would have had about a year to live.

Ferrari is always rather solicitous. He never disagrees with Borges / which must be seen as a shortcoming of himself as interviewer / and of the book. Toward the very end of it there are a handful of slight disagreements / but these are never pursued. The two are always courteous with one another. Either person’s bit of conversation often begins with – yes / of course / that’s true, yes / certainly / clearly / exactly / without any doubt / and the doubly robust – Clearly, certainly.

Borges has a rather affected tone / at times even arch. He is inordinately erudite / amazingly so. It is not unusual for him to refer to a dozen authors and books and countries and the like in the course of one conversation. Either Borges is modest / or he affects modesty / projects it as part of his persona. For example / he tells Ferrari that he has none of his own books in his house. Oh, of course, yes, when people call me ‘maestro’, I look somewhere else…like when they say ‘Doctor’ I think they are addressing a third party. On the other hand he was delighted when a former student stopped him in the street and thanked him for making Stevenson known to him.

Borges is capable of thinking about a topic or issue from more than one point of view / but he rarely does so. His mind showed a strong tendency to have been already strongly committed to a particular stance.

Clearly, a means of communication in itself cannot be either good or bad. It’s how it is said that writing is good or bad. But perhaps the imprint has been bad, since it has facilitated the multiplication of books—maybe there is already a sufficient number of books. Furthermore, now whichever book immediately receives publicity. In exchange, before a manuscript copy was necessary. Then, people, before copying a text, hesitated. Now, no, now it is a question of a few days and they multiply, they centuplicate the copies. It becomes a public danger. And the National Library has to receive all that.

I can assure you that from the context he is not trying to be funny.

There is much less talk of fiction in these interviews than there is of poetry. I wonder if Borges fashioned himself / first and foremost a poet. People who have written well in both genres are very rare – one thinks of Thomas Hardy / Gertrude Stein / D H Lawrence.

Borges preferred Emerson’s poems to those of Whitman and Poe. Emerson was an intellectual poet, of course. Not a passionate poet, I should say not…but who knows if passion is a necessary element in poetry. He thought of Poe as a bit too déclassé. Now Poe: I don’t believe he read a lot but he pretended to be very erudite. And Whitman: possibly. Emerson / on the other hand / was a man who is reflecting, who is, well, renovating the past each time he recalls it, who is changing his opinion, that intellectual activity has to be a form of happiness. And Emerson certainly has it.

Ferrari refers to Borges’s poem to Emerson / which I will quote here in its entirety / so we can see what it was he admired –

EMERSON

Closing the heavy volume of Montaigne,
The tall New Englander goes out
Into an evening which exalts the fields.
It is a pleasure worth no less than reading.
He walks toward the final sloping of the sun,
Toward the landscape’s gilded edge;
He moves through darkening fields as he moves now
Through the memory of the one who writes this down.
He thinks: I have read the essential books
And written others which oblivion
Will not efface. I have been allowed
That which is given mortal man to know.
The whole continent knows my name.
I have not lived. I want to be someone else.

In addition to Emerson he admired –

Carlyle

Oscar Wilde / but only up to a point / in part because Borges associates being witty with being irresponsible. He is / in spite of that / rather taken with Wilde as a phenomenon. But I should say Wilde’s great work is his poetry, well, we could call it decorative. Asked about Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol / he responds – I don’t know if it’s good. Compared with a ballad like those of Coleridge or Kipling, it’s nothing, or the authentic ballads of the people. [ Does anyone, anywhere, read Oscar Wilde’s poetry? I think not. For that matter / does anyone read JLB’s? I think not. ] Borges does however quote approvingly Wilde’s – If it were not for the classical forms of verse, we should be at the mercy of genius.

Shaw / who he values over Wilde

Valéry

Kipling / Stevenson / Chesterton / their stories / but not Conan Doyle

Tennyson / who he refers to as the obvious master of all poetry

Kierkegaard

Yeats / of whom he says –

Eliot believed that Yeats was the maximum poet of this century. He had that opinion, and I think I share it, although for me, personally, I like more another type of poetry—I like more the type of poetry of Frost, or Browning. The poetry of Yeats is, as you know, for saying, verbal, but all poetry is verbal. In the case of Yeats, like the case of his compatriot Joyce, one notes more than emotion the love of words, a kind of sensuality of words. And that they impress us, let’s say, as verbal objects beyond what they want to say.

[ A bit of an idealist, perhaps? ].

Speaking of poetry in general – The same thing happens to me with language—it seems to me convenient to avoid luxurious language and luxurious descriptions.

He speaks disparagingly of Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. He speaks of them as if are similar / which they certainly are not. He doesn’t seem to have understood the story in Ulysses / and thought of Finnegan’s Wake as nothing more than something Joyce had intended as an experiment.

Ferrari/Borges also talk about Eisenstein’s films / and about some Argentinian films that Borges reviewed. About the transition from silent films to talkies he said –

The cinema, which had reached a sort of perfection with Josef von Sternberg, with Stroheim, with King Vidor—and all that was lost with the opera. Yes, it was a real shame.

Soap operas moved from the radio to the cinema in the 1950s. Perhaps it was thinking of them that Borges deplored the talkies. Or perhaps he thought that movies became operatic when sound was added to image. Not sure. He says that at one time he went to the cinema twice a week.

Borges refers to the New Testament as immortal / and says he had considered writing a fifth gospel. He spoke of Jesus as a great man / perhaps the greatest that ever had lived. In his opinion Jesus both delivered his sermons with great craft / and lived beautifully. He considered the parables to be great works of literature. I believe they are the most extraordinary books in the world, the four Gospels.

He said it’s odd that Christianity forbids suicide / when Christ’s death was voluntary – that it had to be or it wouldn’t have been redemptive.

Borges repeatedly stated the importance of ethics – That is to say, I have faith in ethics, and I have faith in the imagination also, even in my imagination. But I have above all faith in the imagination of others, in those who have taught me to imagine. He speaks highly of friendship and of some of his friends / and their friendships. He speaks with great regard about his long-term friendship with the younger Argentinian fiction writer Adolfo Bioy Cesares. They sometimes collaborated on works.

Borges recounts a story that he either wrote or thought of writing. Basically / two brothers both fall for the same beautiful woman / the elder telling the younger in Borges’s words that he should use her, if he wants. A rivalry develops. There is jealousy. The elder brother sells her to a brothel. Then the two meet in that house of ill repute in Moron, taking turns to be with her. The elder brother buys her / only to kill her. Yes, everything was understood without saying. Moreover, it was understood that, well, the most precious had been saved, that is, the friendship of the two brothers. So we’re considering a man / Borges / who thought so highly of friendship that he valued it above the life of a woman.

He complained about what he saw as the decline of the universities. He speaks of a new course being taught about social psychology. His response was adamant – Social psychology, and then when it is applied to the individual, it insists, above all, on an obscene interpretation of things, doesn’t it?; Freud, etcetera. Perhaps it’s because he made a living from his dreams that he dreads having then taken from him through analysis. He says about sociology that that science goes on being insisted on, a science possibly no less imaginary than alchemy.

Ferrari / perhaps to get a rise out of Borges / brought up the words sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. [ Word knows those words. ] They were being used to describe a new course taught at the university / quite probably the one where Borges had taught for twenty years or so.

Good, I can’t say anything about those things because they are mere neologisms, and don’t even correspond to disciplines. In any case, they would be such recent disciplines that for many they would be hypothetical. Why prefer to the aesthetic taste the study of those disciplines whose very name is arid?

He was a conservative fellow. Very conservative.

They also talk about more local matters. Borges responded positively to Ferrari’s suggestion that places are best written about from elsewhere. They talk also about the pampas of Argentina / about the gauchos and the creoles and the gringos / about Spanish and Castilian / to name a few.

Let’s give him a couple of last words –

I am not sure about being a good writer, but I believe myself to be a good reader (laughs) which is more important, since, well, one dedicates a small part of time to writing and a lot to reading.

But the important thing is what a writer has dreamt and the books he has left us.

*

The book was published by Seagull Books / who started out producing exorbitantly over-priced little hardcover chapbooks. $20 for a book as thin as a pencil. Their current modus operandi seems to be to get their now larger books into print ASAP. The present book contains more than its share of typos. And there is no index / an unconscionable choice for a book flourishing with Proper Nouns of many sorts. They have done not only their readers / but Borges as well / a huge disservice.

/ Copyright © Alan Davies 2021

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third volume in a series. It is a little more scattered and less interesting than the earlier two volumes, as if Borges and interviewer Osvaldo Ferrari were running out of topics for their 1985 series of radio interviews. There were some excellent individual interviews, such as the one about Christ and Christianity, but there were also a lot of subjects of interest only to Argentinians.