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.