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."