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."