Monday, September 30

Borges is over for dinner. We're reading a lot of poems, for the contest. He floats the idea to me of writing the lyrics to a sort of History of the Tango, in sketches, for Julio De Caro.

Sunday, September 29

For Bomarzo, Mujica Lainez has received First Place in the National Prize for Literature. I read to Borges the statement of the award:

"We are for many---perhaps the majority---a curious breed, an absurd lot, idolators of words, minstrels of images, inventors of labyrinths, those who take harsh reality and mold it and adapt it to the laws of its random games; and we are also---perhaps for only a few---those who carry out the most difficult and subtle tasks, most passionately humane, the only who dare to descend, with their tiny torchlights, to the most frightening, pathetic and beautiful inner depths of the souls who surround us....Accompanying me is my Duke of Bomarzo, so inseparable that its bulk is like my shadow cast over the marbles and tapestries of the 16th century."

BORGES: "No? It says that? You're making that up." And he bursts out laughing.

He tells me he has corrected his book on the Antiguas literaturas germánicas, for a translation: "They don't pay me more to correct it. According to Silvina and Peyrou, I shouldn't....What's important to me is to tell the truth."

Saturday, September 28

Manuel 'Manucho' Mujica Lainez

With Silvina, we all go to Manucho's, to the cocktail party for Billy Whitelow. Afterwards, Borges and Peyrou come over for dinner.  The table talk concerns Manucho's home: "So many depressing knick-knacks and artifacts," etc. Afterwards we talk of cocktail parties. BORGES: "Sometimes I think I might have really enjoyed the company of the those I met at a cocktail party. But if there are ten people, there is only a tenth part of each one I get along with; if there are fifty, only a fiftieth part. I leave these cocktail parties disappointed, as if I had been spat out. I used to like them, but now I'm too old to see so many people."

When I get up from the table, Silvina and Borges are arguing bitterly. Silvina, backed up by Peyrou, insists that writers must be payed better. Borges says no: "There's already more literature than the world can read. Why stimulate this excess? People need food, clothing, furniture---but not more poems. Generous pay only stimulates bad literature. I prefer the approach of the Jews, who are required to learn a trade---carpenter, blacksmith, whatever it may be---and if you have something to say, write."
BIOY: "I'm not so sure about what you're saying. Decent pay has allowed England to have a practical literature, with barely any self-indulgence; and renumeration in glory, as it is styled here, is probably the reason there are the type of books here among us that satisfy not a single one of the their readers and that serve only as milestones in the careers of their authors."
BORGES: "In all likelihood, no self-indulgent literature could originate in England."

Manuel Peyrou, Silvina Ocampo, JLB

Afterward, I find out that Peyrou, very fed up with Borges, remarked: "Because he's never had to earn a living, because he's so selfish, he maintains these foolish ideas."
Silvina is sorry to have started the argument.

Talking later of committed literature, I tell him I always forget the meaning of the expression, confusing it with what's practiced in the Soviet Union. BORGES: "No, committed literature supposes the freedom of its author; the freedom to defend always a political party, a religion. Now in the Soviet Union, there is complete freedom to enlist in one party, but none in any other. No one writes committed literature in favor of the plutocracy. Perhaps, indeed yes, it's done in favor of catholicism....If I were a christian, I would be a protestant. No Church of England; Presbyterian, Church of Scotland, a church without bishops, rather abstract." Peyrou and Silvina ask Livio if there's much committed literature associated with the Left in Italy. "All of it," he answers, "Every one has reserved a seat, as if tomorrow communism arrives."

Friday, September 27

Borges and Livio Bacchi Wilcock are over for dinner. We're reading poems.

Antonio Porchia

I believe I've discovered that Porchia is an author of a few epigrams.
BORGES: "If Porchia were an ancient author he would would be one of the greatest poets of the world. He would beat Heraclitus on his own turf."
BIOY: "And we'd know his poems by heart. Perhaps Wally would have translated and annotated them."
BORGES: "But he isn't an ancient. He's forgotten. If they asked you who were the best Argentinian poets, the list wouldn't include Porchia."

I also think I've recognized an entry by that Albino Gomez, member of the Frondizi administration, who was at my side during the banquet for Tedin Uriburu. The guy told me he had written the lyrics to a tango for Piazzolla. And right here in front of me are some lyrics for a tango for Piazzolla.

The submissions are teeming with poems about creole ancestors and the Palermo barrio.
BIOY: "They aren't bad, above all for the tone. Their merits are chiefly that of omission: the omission of discordant notes. Nothing more."
BORGES: "Their ancestors were defined by the times they lived in. One would not differentiate them from his own contemporaries. Many people write poems like that nowadays."
BIOY: "There are long genealogies of poets who write like that." I don't conclude with my thought: "They start with your books and imitate them."

Tuesday, September 24

Borges is over for dinner.

He is gathering materials on the Iberra brothers, and is thinking of writing something, although he says he's not sure what (a poem, a story, an essay, or a chronicle): "They were active until the twenties. Afterwards the times changed. They were a breed of men who rode horses and rustled cattle. They viewed themselves as gauchos despite the fact they lived in the suburbs. In Lomas, Turdera or Llavallol there is a street that is still called Camino de las tropas."

I ask him if he enjoys writing stories more than he does essays. BORGES: "Yes, unless one puts something of a story into the essay."

Borges doesn't like Peyrou's book Acto y ceniza: "Why did he choose a protagonist so unfamiliar, of whom he knows so little? He didn't imagine him well enough. The first encounter between the judge and the woman, in the apartment,  reads like a comedy starring Chaplin and Agapito.  Before, he used to be meticulous with his style; now, he writes willy-nilly. In the most meticulously written paragraph, the leaves and shadows of the trees are compared to little hands; to achieve that better, I wish he wouldn't go to such trouble." Afterwards he recognizes, "Today Miguel was reading the book to me: it's not so bad. Read by someone who likes it, the book improves. Mother read it with such disdain....She read it saying things like, 'Well, well. Huh! '. Mothers likes other books: the novels of Hugh Walpole...Portrait of the Man with Red Hair. And she has a weakness for the fine writing."

Borges and Manuel Mujica Lainez

Here a little window opens into that household, offering me a surprising vision. Stunned by certain preferences of Borges, who hasn't liked my recent books, nor those of Sivina nor those of Peyrou, I ask myself:  How is it possible I didn't take into account the evident optical correction? The mother is the one who reads to him. At first, he doesn't like the books she does, but then later, after he doesn't find in the them any hard proof that she's mistaken,  he adopts her opinions. It's better to think a book is bad rather than commit yourself to the struggle of reading it. I realize this without bitterness. I say to myself: "That's all there is to it." All this explains the favorable opinion of Borges---so lucid, so sensitive to the presence of vulgarity---to the novels of Mujica Lainez: Mujica Lainez is his mother's favorite author. One sees his mother with the tolerant affection that one feels for the elderly, for the old parents of a friend; but one must not forget that Borges' mother has a real stuffy personality.

Julio de Caro

BORGES: "Mother used to listen to me with disapproval when I told her I knew Julio de Caro, that tango composer and band leader. She recently ran into him at a cocktail party, she found out that he is settled down with a nice girl and she thinks he's a real gentleman. In one matter she approves of Guillermo instead of me: Guillermo doesn't waste time like I do. He doesn't spend his time with unknown girls, like the anglosaxons. Guillermo is seen with important people. Mother loves important people.

Monday, September 23

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

King James Bible
Genesis, Chp. III

Adam and Eve
Abrecht Durer (1507)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

BORGES: "Often a minor event leads to severe consequences. A perfect example of this is in the book of Genesis, where the whole human race is condemned forever after an ordinary couple eats the fruit of the forbidden tree. Fate is always unkind: it punishes us in a moment of distraction---the chance of going right rather than left---with death. On a dare, let's say, a boy mounts a stallion, he falls and lands with such bad luck that something severs in his spine and he is left paralyzed for the rest of his life."

Sunday, September 22

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

Thursday, September 19

Borges is over for dinner. I'm very tired, but reading poems.

Maurice Le Roux

Borges tells me about a French orchestra conductor, Maurice Le Roux, "I had dinner with him last night. He admires us a lot. I found him unpleasant. When you meet a person, you shouldn't spend the first ten minutes insulting his country. Maybe the second ten, but not the first. This man---fat, overbearing and loquacious---complained of his misfortune at being in Buenos Aires, where all is dead and grey. He comes from Brazil, imagine, from a wonderful world, and he lands in Buenos Aires, plain Zurich all around. I wish we were in Switzerland. And Brazil has to be a dump...."

The Obelisk of Buenos Aires

BORGES: "In order for two people to have a conversation, they must pretend on some level that they agree. Talking to Maurice Le Roux, all you notice is the fiction that you are agreeing with him. Of all things, he talked about the obelisk, which he called the oblique creux de Monsieur Prebisch. Well, no one here takes the obelisk seriously. In fact, it's something to joke about....He's called Maurice Le Roux. You see? There's nothing more suspicious: the correct form is Gaston Le Roux and Maurice Le Blanc."

Wednesday, September 11

Borges is over for dinner.

He says, "I need to get your advice on something." He's brought a book, Cuentos breves y maravillosos, written by a Salvadoran, Menen Desleal, and a letter, written by someone else, a Guatemalan I gather, who had sent him the book. The title, obviously, calls to mind that of our anthology, Cuentos breves y extraordinarios. As a sort of introduction, the book has a letter from Borges, who praises the stories contained within. The letter is without doubt apocryphal: a sort of patchwork of sentences and phrases of Borges. Borges remarks: "It's unlikely Mother would have answered a letter for me without telling me." We soon reject that hypothesis altogether: the letter is too long, and his mother would not have written such a long letter; and he himself, never.  Moreover, she would not have imitated his style.  As to the phrase, grandes barbas rizadas, Borges is sure he has never written that.

We read a few of the stories. One, entitled "Los cerdos", is amusing. When the village miller reads some manuscripts he found in his mill, he is turned into a pig. Then his wife reads them, and she too is turned into a pig. The same fate befalls the children, the village priest, and so on. Towards the end of the story some students from some unnamed university observe the mill from a safe distance.

The book has a postface in which the author begs Borges to forgive him for the apocryphal letter. The Guatemalan who sent the letter says that, although he grants that the author writes of the authentic customs of San Salvador and even all of Central America, he wishes to call attention to the plagiary. The apocryphal letter probably earned the author a second place in the National Prize for Literature.

Borges doesn't quite know what to do. He thinks the author of the book is more intelligent than the one writing him. However, the one writing him has a point, because if the apocryphal letter was meant to be a joke, the author should not have made it work in his favor: the effusive praise for his stories invalidates its character as a disinterested work. I tell him, "You can't put yourself at odds with a poor individual, bright enough, who has backed himself into a corner such that he lacks the freedom and opportunity to write in any way other than how he imagines you to write."

He decides to answer, at last, without giving any greater importance to the matter. He even praises the book and the apocryphal letter.