Interviewed by John Biguenet and Tom Whalen in 1982.
Jorge Luis Borges, the distinguished Argentine author of short fiction, poetry, and essays and the winner of the International Publishers Prize, was interviewed by NOR on a recent trip to New Orleans to receive various academic honors. His most recent collections in English include Borges: A Reader, The Book of Sand, and The Gold of the Tigers. The interview was conducted in English on January 27, 1982.
New Orleans Review
In your work, your devotion to Buenos Aires is obvious.
Jorge Luis Borges
Yes, I don’t know why for such a drab city, and yet ten million people, it sprawls all over. Of course, since I was born there, the city has really changed. Now there are tall buildings. When I was a boy, tall buildings had two stories, not more than that. The houses had flat roofs, patios, cisterns; that was not just the downtown, the whole city was like that. And we had apartments; that was all the way back in 1899. And the first apartment house for rent—I think it was erected in 1910 or so. The whole city was different. Of course, it was a small city, but a growing city, often very elated. Today we’re rather, in a quiet way, hopeless—in a quiet way.
NOR
That sounds like New Orleans.
Borges
No. I think of New Orleans as brimming over with music and jazz. They speak of the tango. But you may spend several years in Buenos Aires and not hear a single tango. Usually you can spend a long time in, well, Brazil and not hear any music, as far as I am aware. But here, the city is brimming over with jazz. You’re hearing it all time and enjoying it and taking it in. But the tango in Buenos Aires, as most people have written about it, was evolved in the brothel houses about 1880. And the people didn’t accept it because they knew whom it came from. When people heard that they were dancing it in Paris, then they took it seriously. They were a nation of snobs. Paris, of course, they took for reality. So then people said, “Ah, the tango.” They all knew it came from the brothel houses and shouldn’t be talked about. It wasn’t accepted by the people, but when people knew that the right people were dancing it and it was being sung in Paris, then it was taken up by them. When I was a boy, yes, I can remember only two tangos. I was hearing all the time French music, Italian music, now and then perhaps Spanish music—no, that was rare.
NOR
When you describe the city, it often sounds like the sort of labyrinth that some of your fiction employs. Is the city a kind of labyrinth for you?
Borges
Well, it is today because it’s very large. When I was a boy, it wasn’t. It was quite small, but, somehow, very hopeful, very proud in 1910. But since then—well, of course, we had that awful scoundrel Peron. But even before Peron things were falling down, falling down. And I was declining and falling. I don’t suppose anyone would disagree, the whole thing has gone beyond it. But on the other hand, I don’t think anything can be done about it. Elections would be a mistake, of course, in which we would have lots of scoundrels like Peron; and the military do their best, but inefficient best I should say, maybe their well-meaning best, as far as I know. I was a conservative, then left the conservative party, and now I’m just a writer and not too conspicuous in my country. They know I’m there and that’s that.
NOR
As a writer, although you seem very rooted in Argentina and Argentinean history . . .
Borges
You shouldn’t say Argentina. There’s no such word. It’s Argentine. Because you see, Argentine means silvery. The Rio de la Plata means the Silver River. You don’t have to add Argentina, because that’s non-sensical. Someone invented it to rhyme with Bolivian and Peruvian, but Argentinean—there’s no such word. If you said, “Argentiniano,” the Spanish people would laugh at you. No, it’s Argentine. The Argentine Republic, yes, but the Argentine, not Argentina, wherever that may be.
NOR
Despite the fact that you are a citizen deeply rooted to your home, Pablo Neruda, even though he criticized your work, said you are one of the very few universal Latin American writers.
Borges
Yes, of course. I’m a kind of world-wide superstition. I don’t take myself seriously as all that. I dislike what I write and I like what I read in my other writers, not my own stuff, my own output. I don’t like it, but I put up with it. I’m 82, too old to attempt new tricks. I just go on writing. Yes, what else can I do? I’m 82. I’m blind. I’ve been pensioned off with two pensions. From the library, of course, then as a professor of English literature. Then when the time came, I had two pensions and royalties, but royalties— you can’t make a living in my country from books. Perhaps the booksellers can, but not the writers. And the publishers can’t either, because they only get 20 percent for a book sold. They have to pay for the printing, for the propaganda, for sending the book all over. While the writer, whoever writes the book, has no expenses but he may be paid royalties every six months (that’s theoretically), but really quite possibly he might not get a cent. And then there are the lectures. I lecture in Buenos Aires. If I lecture, let’s say, at a library or a school, then of course I don’t charge them anything. But if it’s an institution, people pay for hearing me or chatting with me then, of course. They give me something. But who would make a living out of my literature? Nobody can. Even if you condescend to pornography. But even then, you are obscene and still poor, no?
NOR
Even someone as widely translated as you doesn’t make—
Borges
No, because it goes through so many hands before it reaches the writer. Yes, I’ve been widely translated. I don’t know why, because there are far better writers than I in my country. Somehow they don’t get translated, and I do. I don’t know why it is. I never thought in terms of fame or selling or even of finding readers. The only reason was that I felt an inner urge to do so. And my father advised me, “Don’t, above all, don’t rush into print. Publish as little as you can.” I published my first book when I was 24, a book of poems and already I had destroyed three or four books before I published that one. Not a very good book, either.
NOR
You have said that translations are different perspectives of an object in motion.
Borges
Yes, I suppose they are. But every translation is a new version. And every book is really a rough draft. As [Alfonso] Reyes said to me, we publish our books in order not to spend our lifetimes going over rough drafts. We publish a book and then we’re rid of it. We can go on to other or perhaps better things. When I publish a book, I let it find its way in the world. I don’t worry about it. I haven’t read a single line written about me. I haven’t read the translations, either. I never reread my own work because I’d get very discouraged if I did so. So I go on writing. Because what else can I do? I’m blind. I would like to go on reading, that would be far better than to go on writing. But unhappily that is forbidden me. But I keep on buying books. I don’t know why. I like being in a bookish atmosphere. Of course the books, well, they might as well be in Timbuktu since I don’t read them. Friends come and visit me and then we read, we reread; then generally, we take some history or philosophy or Schopenhauer or if not, well many favorites of mine. We go in for poetry; generally we read Browning or Emerson. I love Emerson. He was somewhat influenced by Whitman.
NOR
And Emerson was the only one to see Walt Whitman as a great poet.
Borges
Yes. You know what he called Poe? He said, “Oh, Edgar Allan Poe, the jingle man.” He was thinking of “The Bells,” I suppose; it was really a jest. It was all the same. These things don’t have to be right or not. The jingle man.
NOR
I would like to ask you about a writer that most American readers are still unaware of and that’s the Austrian Gustav Meyrink.
Borges
Well, they should not be. I taught myself German in order to read Schopenhauer (just for reading purposes, I don’t speak German). I taught myself German with this method. I recommend it to everybody. I got hold of Heinrich Heine’s Buch der Lieder [Book of Songs]. And then, a German-English dictionary, since English was the only language they had. And then I began reading. I was looking all the time in the dictionary. The only German I had was “Der, die, das, die. Den, die, das, die.” Then I began reading. Then after three or four months, at another moment (it was in Geneva; I must have been seventeen at the time), I cried because I was reading a poem in an unknown tongue, in German, “In der Fremde” [“Abroad”] It went thus:
Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland. Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft. Es war ein Traum.
Das küsste mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch (Man glaubt es kaum
Wie gut es Klang) das Wort: “Ich liebe dich!” Es war ein Traum.
[Once I had a lovely fatherland The oak trees
Grew high there, the violets nodded gently. It was a dream.
It kissed me in German and said in German (It’s hard to believe
How good it sounded) the words: “I love you!” It was a dream.]
And then I cried. Not only was it the beauty of the verses, but I was reading in German, actually. I had conquered the German language. It’s the best method. When you are Spanish speaking, then I think the best writer would be Oscar Wilde because Oscar Wilde writes with many Latin words, where for example Browning or Kipling, no, they use plain Saxon words.
NOR
I was wondering if you agreed with a character of yours, Dr. Zimmerman, who says in the story “Guayaquil” that The Golem is the only book by Meyrink worth reading. Didn’t you edit a collection of short stories by Meyrink, translated into French?
Borges
Yes, I did. A book called Fledermäuse [Bats]. Then he wrote the story about a wandering Jew. In German it’s the everlasting Jew. That book is called Das grüne Gesicht [The Green Face]. Then a book about English wizards, with a beautiful title Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, The Angel of the Western Window. But his book is The Golem. It was the first book I read in full in German. After Heine, I went on to prose, and then I found a fascinating book, Der Golem. So, it was two Jews who led me to German, Heine and Meyrink. Meyrink was actually called Meyer, but that was too commonplace. He changed his name. Meyrink sounds better, no? Meyer in German is like Smith or Lopez. Borges is a very common Portuguese name. Every other man is called Borges in Lisbon.
NOR
There are many American, European and British writers that you have recommended to us for whom we’re grateful. I was wondering if there are some South American writers that you think we should be reading?
Borges
Yes, perhaps. But I know very little about them. Still I think we have a pretty fine poet; her name is Silvina Ocampo. She’s been done into English now. And, well, I won’t go in for any more names because all people notice is the omissions, the exclusions. Someone is left out, he stands out, in a sense. Well, I know very little about those writers. Garcia Marquez is a fine writer. Of course, Alphonso Reyes, I think, wrote the finest Spanish prose ever written on this side of the Atlantic. He was a great writer. A great prose writer. He was my master—well, I had many masters. Lugones, in my country. But Lugones here is an unknown quantity, I should say. You see, you have been in the world so much, and we in the world so little. I mean, what we have done is important to us and to Spain but not to the outside world. Such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Emerson, Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Thoreau, Frost, Faulkner—well, you can’t think them away. There they are; they influence us all the time. What have we given the world? A few words simply, no? For example, Bolivar, pampas, gaucho, Rio de Janeiro, Montezuma, Cortez, Pizarro, perhaps tango—well, that’s that.
NOR
Many people would argue that Borges, too, belongs on that list of writers.
Borges
Oh, no. Not him. Not him.
NOR
What do you think of the young poet Borges who wrote Fervor de Buenos Aires?
Borges
Well, he was trying to imitate Walt Whitman and failing, of course. He did his best to be Walt Whitman; he failed miserably. But somehow, people remember him still. No, maybe there are one or two pages that may still be readable. But I don’t know since I don’t read my own output.
NOR
How do you weigh your poetry against your fiction? Do you prefer your poems to your stories?
Borges
I suppose they are essentially the same. I like my poems. My friends tell me, no, my verses are a mistake. Well, I say maybe my poor friends are also mistaken. I like my poems. Well, of course, if I’m writing in verse about something, I’ll write about it. A story, after all, is a kind of verbal object you invent. It’s outside you. But poetry should surely be flowing. But maybe there’s no great difference. After all, you have to fall back on inspiration. I don’t think books can be explained. If they’re explained, they’re explained away. See, you can’t say that in Spanish. It can’t be said because the language wouldn’t allow it. Remember some very fine verses by Rudyard Kipling, the famous “The Ballad of East and West.” There you have a British officer who is pursuing an Afghan horse thief. They’re riding. Then Kipling writes, “They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn.” Now, you can’t ride the moon out of the sky and you can’t drum up the dawn in Spanish because the language doesn’t allow it. It can’t be done.
NOR
So the translations in Spanish are infinite, then?
Borges
Well, you have to find some way or you fall flat, I suppose. For example, you can say in English, you are dreaming away your life. Well, that can’t be said in Spanish or any romance language as far as I know. It might be said perhaps in German or one of the Scandinavian tongues, but not in a romance language. There are many words that have no Spanish or French translations. Somebody in English will say, “Uncanny.” That’s Scots, I suppose. In German, unheimlich. But you can’t say it in Spanish, because the Spanish never had that feeling. They had no need of the word.
NOR
So does that mean that a Spaniard can’t dream his life away because he can’t say it?
Borges
Yes, he can do it, but he can’t say it. He can do it, of course. Just as we can die even if we don’t think of death. But English has another virtue. The virtue of Anglo-Saxon words: they’re short. If you say selini in Greek, that’s far too long—three syllables. In Spanish, luna, or in Latin, two syllables. In French, just one syllable really, lune. But in English that beautiful, lingering word moon. It’s the right word, no? But in Old English the word is quite ugly, mona. Moon and sun, those two were the right words. Or the difference between sky and heaven. In Spanish, you say cielo, or for example, well, in English you have a difference between weather and time. In Spanish, no, it’s tiempo and that’s that. In French also. Such a beautiful English word as dim. You don’t have any Spanish equivalent for dim. In German, of course, you have Dämmerung, the twilight, and Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods.
NOR
When you were speaking about your fiction and your poetry, you spoke of fiction as if it were a perfect little object and poetry as a kind of song?
Borges
Yes. I suppose that they both come from the imagination. I mean inspiration comes to you; it may be a story or it may be a poem. I suppose the starting point is the same.
NOR
And the experience finds its own way to the right genre?
Borges
Yes. And the less you meddle with it, the better. The writer shouldn’t allow it, should not try to meddle with his writing. His opinions should not be allowed to find their way into his writing. Since opinions, after all, come and go. Emotions, well, emotions go away.
NOR
I was teaching this morning H. G. Wells’s “The Country of the Blind”—
Borges
What a fine story, eh? I read that in the Strand Magazine when I was a boy. It came with its own pictures, the Strand Magazine. In it I read “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” also. What a fine story, eh, “The Country of the Blind”?
NOR
A beautiful story—it echoes for me your short story “The South.” The possibility that Nunez’s fall down the mountain is his fall to his death, that Dahlmann’s journey south is only a dream on the operating table. Many times when one reads your work, there are echoes from literature, “The Book of Sand” echoing “The Blast of the Book” by Chesterton.
Borges
Of course there are. I try to be a good reader even if I am a bad writer. And Wells was a man of genius, of course.
NOR
Literature that begets literature—some critics see this as a sign of literature being exhausted.
Borges
No, I think that Emerson wrote that poetry comes out of poetry. Whitman thought that poetry came from experience, no? I don’t think so. I think Emerson was right. I think Victor Hugo said, “Homer, of course, had his Homer.” “Homer avait son Homer.” I suppose he had; he lived in a literary tradition. It’s like time, really, beginningless.
NOR
Maybe that’s why you say that you are quite incapable of invention. Why should we invent when we have Wells and Stevenson and Chesterton to draw from?
Borges
Yes, because we keep on inventing the same stories, eh?
NOR
Many critics come back again and again to the subject of time as your most profound concern.
Borges
Yes, it is. I think time would be the central riddle, no? If we knew what time was, of course we would know ourselves.
NOR
The other evening, you spoke of the metaphor, “Time is a river.”
Borges
Yes, I think that’s the real metaphor, no? When you think of time, you think in terms of a river, no? Well, the Mississippi, why not? You think of it as being a river. Yes, I was quoting that verse, that line that Tennyson wrote when he was fourteen. “Time flowing through the middle of the night.” A fine line. He wrote it when he was fourteen or fifteen. Then he forgot all about it, and it was somehow dug up by his critics.
NOR
Living on the banks of the Mississippi, we see things washed past us by the river, but it seems that you’re able to swim upstream to get back to Homer and Chesterton.
Borges
Well, I do my best, after all. Homer and Chesterton are really desirable goals. I wish I could. Really, I am unworthy. My writing is unworthy of my reading, eh? I’m beginning to see language. You see, at home we spoke English and Spanish. My maternal grandmother was English, spoke both languages. Then I went to Geneva when I was fourteen. There I was taught French, and there I was taught Latin, a very fine language. After all, I spoke Spanish and French; I just said, “Now Latin.” I’d just think of it in that way. And then, I taught myself German. And when I went blind, I said to myself, “I won’t abound in loud self-pity,” quoting Kipling. And then I began studying Old English, Anglo-Saxon. And now I go in for Icelandic, for Old Norse. (I love all things Scandinavian.) Old English is a very beautiful language; it’s a large language like modern English. If I give you a piece in Old English, it will be—what do you prefer, elegy or epic? I can tackle both. What do you prefer? Elegy or epic?
NOR
Elegy.
Borges
Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,
siþas secgan, hu ic geswincdagum
earfoðhwile oft þrowade,
bitre breostceare gebiden hæbbe,
gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela,
atol yþa gewealc, þær mec oft bigeat
nearo nihtwaco æt nacan stefnan,
þonne he be clifum cnossað.
That’s Old English [“The Seafarer”] with a line of French, I think. And the other verses are the same. That was done into English by Ezra Pound. He wrote, although he was off his head, he wrote, “May I for my ownself song’s truth reckon.” Because he was translating the sounds, when the literal translation is “I can offer a true song about myself.” And “to tell my travels” he translated as “journey’s jargon.”
NOR
When you speak of Chesterton and Stevenson and other English writers, you seem most delighted by their styles.
Borges
In the case of Chesterton, there are many other things, eh? Of course, Stevenson was a great poet. I mean the plots, the style, the metaphors are overwhelming really. Do you remember, for example, “Marble like solid moonlight, gold like a frozen fire.” Those are wonderful metaphors. “I shall not be too old to see enormous night arise. A cloud that is larger than the world. And the monster made of eyes.” “A monster made of eyes,” that’s weird, isn’t it?
NOR
Can you speak about your own style?
Borges
Well, when I was a young man, I did my best to be Chesterton, to be Lugones, to be Quevedo, to be Stevenson. Then after that, I said, no, I’ll just be Borges, and that’s that. A very modest ambition. But after all, people like it.
NOR
And you think Borges is more plain-spoken than these authors?
Borges
Oh, of course he is. I began by being baroque, because all young men are. I tried to astonish, I went in for far-fetched metaphors; now I try to avoid that kind of thing. I like to use, well, easy words that aren’t dictionary words.
NOR
“Blindness is a confinement,” you have written, “but it is also a liberation, a solitude propitious to invention, and an algebra.”
Borges
Yes, but I was cheating myself. No, really it’s not. Well, of course, you’re lonely. I mean you have to read. I used to read all the books in my house. I used to read all the books.
NOR
So you think blindness is a kind of loneliness?
Borges
It is. One feels lonely. And most of the time. After all, my friends cannot afford to give me all their time. I spend most of my time at home. Most of my contemporaries have died; they’re in the cemetery.
NOR
You still have your good friend Bioy Casares?
Borges
Yes, he’s far younger than I am, but he forgives me for being an old man. We meet, perhaps, once a month. Buenos Aires is far too big a city. Ten million inhabitants. Somehow, we drift apart. The telephones don’t work, because they’re no good.
NOR
Do you think your work has lost something by your being blind?
Borges
Well, I try to think that it has gained. But really I’m cheating myself. But I want to go on.
NOR
How has your work changed since your blindness?
Borges
For example, when I had my eyesight, I attempted free verse. But now that I have to make a rough mental draft, of course I go in for sonnets or rhymed verse—those things make the memory easier. You can remember a sonnet. I can remember many sonnets. Both in English and French and Spanish and Italian. But I can’t remember free verse to memorize. Even in the case of Walt Whitman, who I’ve read and reread. I wonder if I can quote a page of Walt Whitman for you, if I may. I might decline and fall at any moment.
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands—they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
He says at the end: “I love you. I depart from my materials.” (That’s rather ugly.) “I love you. I depart from my materials, I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.” The words get shorter and shorter. “I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.” It rings out, as it should. Whitman was a great poet, of course.
NOR
In reading your work, I often feel as if there are many Borgeses, perhaps an infinite number of them.
Borges
There should be. Let’s be endless.
NOR
Which Borges are we talking to?
Borges
Well, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
NOR
Can you tell about the books you still have to write, your future projects?
Borges
I have many future projects. What else can I have but projects at my age? I am translating with Maria Kodama from the German Angelus Silesius’s Der cherubinishe Wandersmann. He was a seventeenth-century German mystic. That’s about to be printed in Chile. Then I am going to write a book about the great historian and writer Snorri Sturluson. That will be the first book on him in Spanish. Then I’m also preparing a book of short stories and another book of poems. Then, at this moment, a book of mine has just come out in Madrid, The Cipher, a book of poems. Then, I have two anthologies. One of the Argentine poet Lugones, selected and with a foreword by me, and the other of the famous Spanish writer Quevedo, also selected and with a foreword by me. That’s that at the moment, but I keep on writing.
NOR
That’s a busy schedule.
Borges
Yes.
NOR
If you were the headmaster of a school for young poets, what would be your curriculum?
Borges
Well, when I taught English literature, I said to my students (I had classes for twenty years, and they were always in Buenos Aires), I said, I can’t teach you English literature because I don’t know it. But I can teach you the love of English literature. Don’t go in for dates or place names; don’t go in for bibliography. Try to find a way into the book itself. Some of them fell in love with Old English, others fell in love with Chaucer, others with Dr. Johnson, or else with Shakespeare or Marlowe or Milton or Bernard Shaw or Chesterton or Edgar Allan Poe or Emerson, whatever the case might be. They all fell in love with some book or another, and that’s the gist, that’s the important thing, yes?
NOR
I was wondering if you ever thought of the universe as being designed by a divinity in a state of delirium.
Borges
No. I think what Bernard Shaw said is true. God is in the making, and we are the making, of course. The whole cosmic process is the making. The universe is history and so on. I don’t think of God as a person or a being at all, except he may be. He may be myself for all I know. I may be one of his many disguises. I believe this is more or less the Buddhist idea. I wrote a small handbook on Buddhism, and that was done into Japanese. When I went to Japan, I saw the book on Buddhism. Of course they know far more about it than I do. Buddhism is one of the two or three religions of Japan. Shinto and Buddhism. There is a very strange word in Japanese: hotoke. According to the context, it may stand for the Buddha. It may stand for Jesus Christ, or it may stand for anybody who has died. The thought is really the same, no?
NOR
You mentioned this week that you looked very hopefully toward death, as a great adventure.
Borges
No, not as a great adventure, I should say as a liberation. My father said, I want to die all together. I want to die body and soul. I’m looking forward to death as a kind of sleep. My father, in a sense, committed suicide. He got himself killed on purpose. One of those small battles in the civil wars. That was in 1874. Yes, Colonel Borges. And his death was more or less famous, because he rode a white horse, wore a white poncho, he rode very slowly toward enemy lines, and he got two shots fired into him. The first time the Winchester rifle was used in my country. Of course, it was used in the War between the States, the Civil War. The first time the Winchester rifle was used. The Remington came afterwards I think.
NOR
Do you have something you consider your greatest weakness as a writer?
Borges
I don’t know. Maybe I’m impatient. I’m very clumsy. I take many pains with my writing. Usually it seems to be, well, spontaneous and it isn’t. I worry carefully over it. Every page of mine stands for at least a half a dozen rough drafts. They are mental, of course. I have to dictate, I can’t write. If I tried to write, it would overlap, the writing would overlap, it couldn’t be read by anybody. I’ve read but few novels, but I’ve read many short stories. In the beginning, of course, I read Grimm’s fairy stories, I read the The Arabian Nights. And then to Stevenson, to Chesterton, to Edgar Allan Poe, to Jack London also. The first novel I ever read through in my life was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Then I went on to Life on the Mississippi and to Roughing It, and Flush Days in California, those books few folks seem now to have read. Enjoyable books. He was a man of genius, of course, Mark Twain. He was unaware of the fact that he was a man of genius.
NOR
Why do you consider Borges a “minor” writer?
Borges
Well, because I have read him, but not only read him, I have written him, I know all about him. Still there may be something in all that stuff for all I know, since so many people have taken it seriously, taken it in earnest. There should be something there.
NOR
There are many people who are very grateful for your having devoted yourself to your stories.
Borges
They’re very generous. Very mistaken, I should say. Generous mistakes.
NOR
What does literature have to offer us?
Borges
I should say everything, eh? The universe at least. Literature, of course. I am tone deaf, I am blind. I have never greatly enjoyed architecture. Painting, yes, perhaps—Turner, Velasquez. And that’s that. Words have meant much to me, and languages. I am very fond of words, etymologies.
NOR
So, literature is like an aleph, a little window onto the universe?
Borges
Well, thank you for remembering that story. It’s quite a good story, I should say, even though I wrote it.
NOR
I can tell you a story that may please you. I worked with a program where poets went into school classrooms and taught poetry to children. And one of the games we played with them was to give them invisible alephs. And they could hold them up to the light we told them, and they would see the universe pass in front of them. And they would write down what they saw.
Borges
Oh good for you. Far better than the story I wrote.
NOR
I think it’s the same story. And the children wrote wonderful poetry by looking through the invisible alephs.
Borges
It was a prism, no? Of course, it had to be a prism.
NOR
For the children, we said it was an invisible prism and gave each one his own.
Borges
That’s far better than what I wrote.
NOR
We learned from you.
Borges
What’s good for me, was good for you. Good for me especially.
NOR
And good for the children.
Borges
A man in Spain asked me whether the aleph actually existed. Of course it doesn’t. He thought the whole thing was true. I gave him the name of the street and the number of the house. He was taken in very easily.
NOR
But perhaps, as you say, if literature gives us everything, then the aleph is the short story and the poem. Because through it we see everything as through that small prism.
Borges
Yes. That piece gave me great trouble, yes. I mean I had to give a sensation of endless things in a single paragraph. Somehow, I got away with it.
NOR
Yes, it’s a beautiful catalogue.
Borges
Yes. But a lot of trouble.
NOR
Is that an invention, the aleph, or did you find it in some reference?
Borges
No. I’ll tell you. I was reading about time and eternity. Now eternity is supposed to be timeless. I mean, God or a mystic perceives in one moment all of our yesterdays, Shakespeare says, all the past, all the present, all the future. And I said, why not apply that, well, that invention to another category, not to time, but to space? Why not imagine a point in space wherein the observer may find all the rest. I mean, who invented space? And that was the central idea. Then I had to invent all the other things, to make it into a funny story, to make it into a pathetic story, that came afterwards. My first aim was this: in the same way that many mystics have talked of eternity . . . that’s a big word, an eternity, an everness. And also neverness; that’s an awful word. Since we have an idea of eternity, of foreverness in time, why not apply the same idea to space, and think of a single point in space wherein the whole of space may be found? I began with that abstract idea, and then, somehow, I came to that quite enjoyable story.
NOR
Physicists came up with the same idea when they thought of the big bang theory, that the universe might be moving toward a single point, which would condense and then explode into a universe again. Perhaps they, too, learned from you.
Borges
Well, I don’t think so. I don’t think they would trouble about a minor South American writer, no?
