Conversations. Volume 3 PDF
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CONVERSATIONS VOLUME 3 ALSO AVAILABLE Jorge Luis Borges,Osvaldo Ferrari CONVERSATIONS, VOLUME 1 Translated by Jason Wilson Jorge Luis Borges,Osvaldo Ferrari CONVERSATIONS, VOLUME 2 Translated by Tom Boll Jorge Luis Borges Osvaldo Ferrari CONVERSATIONS VOLUME 3 Translated by Anthony Edkins LONDON NEW YORK CALCUTTA Seagull Books, 2017 First published as Reencuentro Diálogos Inéditos by Editorial Sudamericana in 1998/1999 © Osvaldo Ferrari, 1999 Published by arrangement with Paterson Marsh Ltd. English translation © Anthony Edkins, 2017 ISBN 978 0 8574 2 423 5 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India Printed and bound by Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania, USA CONTENTS Borges in Us, Ourselves in Borges Osvaldo Ferrari vii Initial Conversation, 9 March 1984 1 Stevenson and Bunyan 11 Chance 19 Fantastic Literature and Science Fiction 26 James Joyce 30 The Book of Sand 37 Blaise Pascal 44 The Imitative Country 50 St Thomas and the Talmud 57 Liberalism and Nationalism 66 Emerson and Whitman 74 Stoicism 82 Jesus Christ 92 Apology for Friendship 102 Paul Valéry 108 ‘The Intruder’ 117 Oscar Wilde 121 The Desert, the Plain 131 Adolfo Bioy Casares 138 Politics and Culture 147 Bernard Shaw 157 On Film Criticism 164 A New Conversation about Paul Groussac 172 Letters in Danger 180 W. B. Yeats (I) 188 W. B. Yeats (II) 193 The Literary Thinker 201 Time 210 BORGES IN OURSELVES, OURSELVES IN BORGES Osvaldo Ferrari Fourteen years later, I find myself with them again, hearing the voice of Borges and being amazed, more even than then; these dialogues, doubly unpublished because never before have we dealt with the majority of the themes treated here and because never before have they appeared in book form. They reach up to the last days of our communication in 1985. Borges is so entirely in them that the encounter leaves me speech- less, just like the circular conjunction of his voice, his lucidity and his imagination. On familiarizing myself afresh with this content, I feel myself, as he said in our first dialogues about Yeats, ‘wounded, wounded by beauty’. All of us were awaiting this reencounter with Borges, with the unmistakeable flow of his intelligence and his sensibility; with the inexhaustible weave of his literary passion, his ethical passion and his zenithal perception of everything. vii JORGE LUIS BORGES OSVALDO FERRARI This reencounter is a sum of encounters in which we finally know ourselves, we recognize ourselves and we extend ourselves— Borges in us, ourselves in Borges. As he used to say: ‘When we read Shakespeare, we are, if only momentarily, Shakespeare.’ In these dialogues, tempered by time, everyone reading them, we are going to be Borges. Buenos Aires,November 1998 viii Initial Conversation 9 March 1984 OSVALDOFERRARI.Let’s begin then, this series of radio conversations. And the first thing I want to ask you, Borges, is how you, who have formed and expressed yourself in the silence of writing, feel about expressing yourself and communicating through the medium of radio. JORGELUISBORGES.I feel a bit nervous. Nevertheless, one spends one’s life talking, and here we are, you and I, talking. Writing is occasional and dialogue is continuous, isn’t it? FERRARI. Yes, but it would appear that, for the writer, dialogue is a natural form. BORGES. Yes, I think so. Moreover, it is something that occurred to Plato, didn’t it? He who invented dialogue. FERRARI. Of course, but unlike musicians and painters, for example . . . 1 JORGE LUIS BORGES OSVALDO FERRARI BORGES.Well, they have other means of expression, naturally, but I am limited . . . limited to the word. And, after all, the written word doesn’t differ all that much from the oral word. FERRARI. Now, consider in this epoch in which one thinks or speaks of auditory or visual transmission as a form of communication, if one intuits the listener’s presence, as, when writing, one anticipates the presence of the reader . . . BORGES.Oh, I don’t know, when I write, I do it . . . as a relief . . . I like to write. Yes, that doesn’t mean I believe in the value of what I write, but, yes, in the pleasure of writing. I mean, if I were Robinson Crusoe, I believe I’d write on my island. FERRARI. I understand. BORGES.Without thinking of readers. FERRARI. Without thinking of readers. BORGES. Yes, I never think about the reader, except in the sense of trying to write in a comprehensible way—it’s a simple act of polite- ness, although it is towards persons completely imaginary or absent. I don’t believe that confusion is a merit. FERRARI. And do you believe that without thinking of communica- tion, suddenly communication, of which so much is spoken, can be produced? BORGES.No, I don’t think about communication. When I write some- thing, it is because I have received something. That means I believe, humbly, in inspiration. That is to say, every writer is an amanuensis. An amanuensis doesn’t know who or what. We can think, as did the 2
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