Saturday, August 31

Borges and Peyrou are over for dinner. We're reading poems for the contest.

(Samuel Johnson's house and statue,  Lichfield.)

Speaking of England, Borges says, "I was so excited to see Lichfield. I liked it tremendously.  But then I'm more partial to Johnson than I am to Shakespeare,  and (turning to me) I think you are as well. In Stratford on Avon everything seemed unreal...like in the short story by Henry James. When I was saying that Johnson is much more English than Shakespeare, the English listened to me with open mindedness and responded that, well, mine was an idea that they'd have to get used to, and one they had never thought of, but, if it was correct, that in order to accept it, they would have to think of it before getting used to it."

He also says, "How different Scotland is from England: villages of stone houses and villages of brick houses. Some are very quaint here and there. The character of the people is distinct. The Scottish are more like the Spanish, open and spontaneous."

BORGES: "Metaphor and alliteration are poor poetic devices. I might have imagined that Saxon poetry, over the course of its evolution, would have intensified its use of these devices. Now I realize that's not correct. In the later stages, kennings and alliteration almost dropped out of use completely. It's natural. Manley Hopkins and others in England returned to the ancient alliterated poetry, but the effect is very distinct when you read an Anglo-Saxon text and a modern one. The ancient Anglo-Saxons anticipated alliteration, such that the poet didn't have to signal it much. But now it's not anticipated, and so it has to be stressed. At times, the commentators remark that in such-a-such ancient text there is alliteration, because the present-day reader cannot notice it. We could imagine a gentleman who speaks strenuously, pronouncing the punctuation marks, 'Your behavior, comma, sir, comma, is truly unjustifiable, semicolon; I confess to you that at moments I am saddened, comma, at moments I am annoyed, colon: restraining, comma, as I can, comma, these recent impulses, comma, I order you, open parenthesis, (because I still believe in you), closed parenthesis, not to bother the storks, comma, noble animals, exclamation point!'"

Geneva, Switzerland, 1914.

Borges remembers, "My father used to tell me, 'Look at the churches, the butcher shops, the barracks, the stockades, the soldiers, the priests. One day you will be able to say that you have seen them. It will make a good anecdote, "I saw a priest; I saw a butcher shop, with sides of animals hanging." And the flag. When they ask you what was that cloth and where did they put it, you will have difficulties. "In the schools and the commissaries." "And what were the commissaries?" "The commissaries were were they took the people who were misbehaving." It seems a child's game.'  My father had a great hope in humanity.  Or perhaps he amused himself thinking so. He made sure I received my first communion. Norah had maternal impulses and the talent for painting. Father, very seriously, when we were in Switzerland, suggested to Mother that in order to satisfy the maternal impulses of Norah, who was without a husband who might distract her from painting, we should look for a young farmer, of good health but little future, who would give her a boy and disappear. Mother said no, and Father, who was very easygoing, abandoned his project. He was professor of psychology in the Institute of Modern Languages. He didn't want to be one; he explained that psychology wasn't a science...they kept insisting, and they told him someone would have to teach and he at least would not lead the students astray."

We're talking about Ruben Dario. We read "Salutación del optimista" and "A Francia". We remark on the metres of twelve and fifteen syllables.
BORGES: "Few gave such life to words. Verlaine preceded him, he started all that, but he isn't superior. One would have to suppress from the works of Ruben the 'Song to Argentina' and everything he wrote on commission. Who was as intense? San Juan de la Cruz, who is superior to Quevedo, to Lope and, perhaps, to the very Fray Luis of Leon, no?"
BIOY: "You're right. Fray Luis has horrible things like, 'ni del dorado techo / se admira, fabricado / del sabio moro, en jaspes sustentado'. "
BORGES: "Might Antonio Machado be as intense? No."

At a ceremony, Borges had to present Jose Antonio Oria, who was going to talk about Joaquin V. Gonzalez.
BORGES: "Oria said that, before the speech, the speaker didn't know what he was going to say; that during the speech, he didn't know what he was saying, and afterword he didn't know what he had said. I just introduced Oria and said not a word about Gonzalez: I could not speak of him effusively without the hypocrisy being noted. For what Oria mentioned, intelligent man he is, it was clear that Gonzalez was a bluff. If nothing more...Father told me that the classes of Gonzalez in the College of Law were dreadful; that Gonzalez couldn't construct a single sentence. Apparently some who knew him liked him a lot."
BIOY: "Yes, my parents had some affection and respect for Gonzalez."

BORGES: "When someone gets really bored, the whole body aches. This happens to me sometimes watching films. I still might think I'm enjoying a film, but my thighs and knees know I'm getting bored."

BIOY: "I think the article published about you in Panorama is excellent."
BORGES: "I don't know.  Mother wanted to read it to me. I wouldn't let her. I get annoyed whenever someone reads me an article about me."

Thursday, August 29

Borges is over for dinner. We're reading poems for the contest.

Wednesday, August 28

Borges is over for dinner, back from Montevideo.

BORGES: "In Montevideo everything is as it used to be. Everyone there was really nice. You go there and see that world of writers, so occupied in their local problems, as if they held reality. They're in hell and they don't notice it. We're in another hell: we know that they are in one and don't know it, and that reminds us that we must be in one similar yet distinct. We feel like returning right away in order to put an end to these disagreeable visions and intuitions. The writers there live in a false world, with ideas like the cosmic destiny of Uruguay. The journalists who called on me are much better: they read wire reports from all over the world and have a better idea of how things are. The writers believe they should not say anything simply. I spoke with an intelligent journalist, accompanied by a young writer who didn't understand anything. Regarding the Lawrence of Arabia film, I told them, 'If the character of the hero is a bit ambiguous, it can be attributed partly---for Lawrence was ambiguous---to the modesty the English have in not showing very heroic heroes. Imagine if you all made a film on Artigas or if we made one on San Martin...' 'That's what I'm saying,' complained the young poet,  'Why doesn't Argentinian cinema exalt the great national myths,  San Martin and the gaucho?' 'Okay, okay...,' went the journalist."

Pedro Leandro Ipuche

He was with Ipuche, the author of La defensa de Paysandu: "He's become Catholic. He is tall, a creole of the city or a peasant of the fields, with the air of an artisan whom one addresses as señor. Very proud and honorable. He would always come to see me at the hotel. I would invite him to eat but he wouldn't accept. The Uruguayan government has bought the rights to his books, in order to publish the complete works. The pay is a monthly annuity, sort of like a pension. They probably won't publish his works. 'They have enough expenses in paying me,' he explained. In his book on the Cycle of Paysandu, a few unintentionally funny lines jump out, like, 'In Paysandu there remained only two inscrutable Indians, frightening the solitude.' He compares Rafael Hernandez to a teru teru: 'Brother of the immortal  teru teru'. He doesn't know anything about many of his characters. He covers them with praise, but one finds they should be be obscure characters. What a difference with the author of the Alamo who draws attention to common people overcoming their mediocrity and acting heroically in the moment of battle: it is the effect that can be taken from the situation. Ipuche doesn't believe it that way, or the possibility hasn't occurred to him, and he awkwardly insists that all were extraordinary people. If he has to say that someone was promoted to captain, he writes, 'They awarded him the romantic title of captain.'  He knows little of the Charruas. The names he knows come from Barco Centenera, where Zorilla de San Martin got his information. Barco Centenera mentions an Indian, Capican, of whom only remains a name. Well, Ipuche speaks of the capican destiny of Uruguay. According to Ipuche, things turned out well for Zorilla de San Martin, who had good models in Becquer and Carlyle. On the other hand, things didn't turn out well for Dr. Carlos Roxlo, whom everyone praises....He doesn't read much and his model of writing is Quintana. According to Ipuche, Silva Valdes believes he has evolved because now he is writing vulgar couplets, and Ipuche objects with, 'Everyone writes vulgar couplets.'"

BORGES (to his nephew Miguel): "You, you're a history buff, have you read Ipuche's book?"
MIGUEL: "It's not a book for reading."
BIOY: "A while ago many books were published that weren't for reading. I myself have written a few of them. I want to believe that we have progressed in that regard and today such books are infrequent."

Borges relates, "In Tucuman they made a saber as a gift for Artigas. They sent it, but the saber remained in Cordoba, because the civil wars of the Banda Oriental made the carrier's journey hazardous. Someone, long after the death of Artigas, looked for the saber in Cordoba and brought it to Uruguay. It was enough for Ipuche to see it and reanimate himself and redeem his ways. I don't know why they venerate such an object that Artigas never even saw. Well, okay, the curved saber of San Martin must not have had much more contact with its owner either."

Fernan Silva Valdes

Sometimes I have wondered if the preference of Borges for Ipuche might have something to do with a policy, perhaps not at all conscious, of supporting the lesser acclaimed of two writers who are often named together. Now I think not: I think he feels that at times in Silva Valdes there is even less merit or that even Ipuche is more original in his modest poetry.

BORGES: "Silva Valdes told me about a thug from the barrio of Cerro who, in his conquest of women, would introduce himself with his fly open and say, 'There it is. Get on it if you want it.' One could qualify this guy as a misogynist. Dabove told me of another thug who at the moment of leaving would say, 'Attention, I am leaving.'"
BIOY: "What a wretch. To think that perhaps you were a feared thug."
BORGES: "Well, it's the same: a wretch."

Clara Silva mentioned that it bothered her that Victoria was an opponent of Uruguay.
BORGES: "An opponent? Why?"
CLARA: "Because she doesn't publish Uruguayan books in Sur."
Afterwards, Borges observes, "How do you explain that she doesn't have a geographical criterion?"

Apparently Mastronardi published in some magazine or little-read newspaper an article against Zum Felde entitled 'Ego Zum Felde'.
BORGES: "If that pun would occur to you, it would be difficult to contain yourself and not write the article. "
In Uruguay, the article went down well.

On Emir Rodriguez Monegal, who married a millionaire from an old family and went from comunizante to old-fashioned conservative, Borges says, "It seems like he is getting out of hand. He is corrompu, riche et triumphant."

Arturo Humberto Illia

BORGES: "Are you going to see Illia Thursday with that group of writers?"
BIOY: "What makes you ask?"
BORGES: "Mother went the other day, but really, why suppose a visit to Illia will be something memorable? It will be an uncomfortable moment, nothing more. I'm not going. It seems that Illia said that he could not protect the arts, but only understand them. It's a phrase that wants to be modest, that has already passed into history according to those who have already seen him, but in reality and without any doubt of error, he is arrogant. As president Illia can protect the arts, but do you think that he can understand them admiringly? That he can make a great critic?"
BIOY: "Did your mother find him to be a weak and finished man?"
BORGES: "No. Why? Because Paquette is already impatient?"
BIOY: "Do you remember, when in the days prior to the election of 45, we visited Dr. Gallo, candidate for vice president? I haven't forgotten that visit: what a poor thing of a man, how nice the little house in the neighborhood, how disastrous the results of the immediate elections, how contrary to our hopes. It's a pathetic memory, of a moment in Argentina's history. I congratulate myself for going. It is clear that the man wasn't Gallo, but Mosca."
BORGES: "That error in zoology put things in order. It's not important."

Saturday, August 24

Borges is over for dinner. We read seventy poems for the contest.

Borges tells me that according to his father children would never play anything if they didn't start playing something: "We're going to play this or that," they would say, and everything would remain a plan. Afterwards he adds, "Your father was so generous that once he let me win a hand of cards."

Guillermo de Torre,
Borges' brother-in-law

Maria Kodama

BORGES: "What a man Guillermo is. He's always irritated. That's a fact: equally irritated with everyone. You would never believe he's indifferent. Nothing escapes him. He shows up at home and if something is new, he asks what it is, what is it doing there. This line of questioning gives him a reason for being irritated. The kids don't answer him. They have the right idea. How are you going to argue with someone like that? Maria Kodama had sent me some very pretty flowers, arranged in the Japanese style. Right away Guillermo noticed them and asked who had sent them. Mother told him: 'Maria Kodama, an anglosaxon.' Guillermo said that couldn't be: the students who study Literature in the College of Philosophy and Letters are poor and these flowers were obviously expensive. Well, Mother told him she was sorry, but there were the flowers, and Maria Kodama had sent them and Maria Kodama wasn't poor. Then Guillermo told her that couldn't be because all the students in Letters are poor and have to work, while the rich study Sociology, etcetera. He asked how the contest was going and right away explained that he was very disillusioned with such contests because the jury never reads the original submissions. 'Well,' I answered, 'In this contest you have Bioy and me, who are reading every submission; and I think that Carmen Gandara and Mallea are also reading everything.' Then, upset, he replied there was no point in reading everything, because the level of this contest was low, and that La Nacion was sponsoring this contest for propaganda purposes, but that, between us, as propaganda goes it was very counterproductive. I told him that these reflections did not concern him and that he wasn't a stockholder in La Nacion. He said that he only took part in one contest, but that he did it because one of the judges was his friend and he knew at the outset that he would be given the prize. 'The only decorous way in which one can enter such a contest,' he concluded. 'Better that you don't say that,' replied Mother, 'And who knows if decorous is the right word.' He's against all contests except that one."

Borges is talking about a variety of horrible feelings. To feel, in bed, at night, that everything is horrible, repeated, incomprehensible. "To see, suddenly, that life is a succession of trivial cycles and repetitions. You go to the window, then inevitably move back a little; you throw down some food, then go to the bathroom and expel it; you say, 'Good morning, how are you?'; you get dressed, you get undressed; you lie down on the bed, you cover yourself in blankets, you uncover yourself, you get up....Kipling describes the sensation very well in several short stories. I think this desolate vision is delivered abruptly in 'The House Surgeon'." Another awful sensation: to feel suddenly the horror of being inside your head, to emit arms and legs, to be unable ever to leave that prison that is your body.