But being younger, I would prefer not to remember this one in the other. Yet perhaps I’m wrong, and what follows is another life on another plane, no less interesting than this one, and I will accept that life too, just as I have accepted this one.
When I’m sad, I think, What does it matter what happens to a twentieth-century South American writer? What do I have to do with all of this? You think it matters what happens to me now, if tomorrow I will have disappeared? I hope to be totally forgotten. MARI: Among these enigmas, one is the enigma of truth, the other is the enigma of death.īORGES: For me death is a hope, the irrational certitude of being abolished, erased, and forgotten. ĮNRIQUE MARI: Among the important philosophical enigmas, in spite of the fact that there are many, there is one-īORGES: I would say there’s nothing else. Now that I’m eighty-five, I’m seriously terrified. Now other questions, and I hope I can answer them with fewer digressions, more concretely.
APOSTLE CORY BUTLER RADIO FULL
My memory is full of quotes in many languages, and I think, returning to philosophy, that we are not enriched by its solutions, as these solutions are doubtful, they are arbitrary, but philosophy does enrich us by demonstrating that the world is more mysterious than we thought. I can’t see past the year 1955-I lost my reader’s vision-but if I think about my past life, I think of course about friends, lovers also, but I think most of all about books. And since I have committed the indecency of turning eighty-five, I confirm without melancholy that my memory is full of verses and full of books. Suppose Alonso Quijano had never left his library, or bookstore, as Cervantes called it, I believe that his life reading would have been as rich as when he conceived the project of turning himself into Quixote.įor him the latter life was more real, for me reading about him has been one of the most vivid experiences of my life. The life of a reader can be as rich as any other life. When I was young, I thought about what I considered the heroic life of my military elders, a life that had been rich, and mine-the life of a reader-seemed to me a poor life. When writers talk about the torture of writing, I don’t understand it. For me reading and writing are two equally pleasurable activities. The world continues to be more enigmatic, more enchanting.
Reading has to be a happiness, and philosophy gives us happiness, and that is the contemplation of a problem. My father showed me his library, which seemed to me infinite, and he told me to read whatever I wanted, but that if something bored me I should put it down immediately-that is, the opposite of obligatory reading. I’ve read very few novels in my life for me the foremost novelist is Joseph Conrad. I’ve entered into poetry, and also fables- that is, I’m not a novelist. What works of poetry are comparable to something as astonishing as Spinoza’s god: an infinite substance endowed with infinite attributes? Every philosophy creates a world with its own special laws, and these models may or may not be fantastic, but it doesn’t matter. If you look at theology or philosophy as fantastic literature, you’ll see that they are much more ambitious than poetry. On the contrary, it can be said that it is exactly the same as poetry, although the syntax is from two distinct places, and that philosophy deserves a place in the order of aesthetics. But I didn’t mean anything against philosophy. We have a poet-ĪBRAHAM: A supposed poet, then, of whom we can ask what relationships exist between philosophy and poetry.īORGES: Some time ago I said that philosophy is a fantastic branch of study. TOMAS ABRAHAM: Today, philosophy invites poetry to a discussion.
RUSSOVICH: Bereshit bara elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. JORGE LUIS BORGES: In the beginning, bereshit bara elohim, no? Translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Acker. Norbert Bleiįrom an interview with Jorge Luis Borges, in Habitus 03, conducted in 1984 at the University of Buenos Aires by philosophy professors Tomas Abraham, Alejandro Russovich, and Enrique Man. Borges, along with Rilke, Transtromer, Neruda, Kafka…don’t get me started. I’d say, if you’re a serious writer (poetry, fiction, essay), you put Borges on that special shelf of writers to read at least once a year, writers who exercise the thinking/dreaming mind. Just when I think everyone’s heard ort or read Jorge Luis Borges, I run into people who have near heard him or not read him in years. NOTES from the UNDERGROUND… No.143 | May 15, 2008
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