Thursday, September 19, 2013

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."

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