Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

I haven't thought about this man in a while. Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), best known as a poet and writer, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 24, 1899. His poetry is magnificent, and the themes of his short stories tend to be about time, infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality and identity. His claim is that there is no material substance; the sensible world contains only ideas, which exist for so long as they are perceived. I was introduced to him in 1996 by my long-lost friend, Jose, someone else I haven't thought of in a long time. It struck me that I've posted NONE of his stuff here yet! So here are my favourites...in tribute to Mr. Borges (may he rest in peace).


Two English Poems (the first work by Borges I ever read)

The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
     corner; I have outlived the night.
  Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
     laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with
     things unlikely and desirable.
  Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
     of things half given away, half withheld,
     of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
     that way, I tell you.
  The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
     and odd ends: some hated friends to chat
     with, music for dreams, and the smoking of
     bitter ashes.  The things my hungry heart
     has no use for.
  The big wave brought you.
  Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
     and incessantly beautiful.  We talked and you
     have forgotten the words.
  The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
     of my city.
  Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to
     make your name, the lilt of your laughter:
     these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
  I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
     them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and
     to the few stray stars of the dawn.
  Your dark rich life ...
  I must get at you, somehow; I put away those
     illustrious toys you have left me, I want your
     hidden look, your real smile -- that lonely,
     mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

                      II
 
  What can I hold you with?
  I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
     moon of the jagged suburbs.
  I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
     long and long at the lonely moon.
  I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
     that living men have honoured in bronze:
     my father's father killed in the frontier of
     Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
     bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
     the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
     --just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
     three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
     vanished horses.
  I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
     whatever manliness or humour my life.
  I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
     been loyal.
  I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
     somehow --the central heart that deals not
     in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
     untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
  I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
     sunset, years before you were born.
  I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
     yourself, authentic and surprising news of
     yourself.
  I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
     hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
     with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The Labyrinth

Not even Zeus himself could undo my nets
Of stone about me. I forget
The men I was; I take the hateful
Way of monstrous walls
That is my destiny. Straight galleries
Secretly curve into circles
At the stub of years. Parapets
Cracked with the usury of days.
I've deciphered in the pallid dust
Tracks I fear. The air brings me
In concave evenings a roaring
Or echo of a desolate roar.
I know that in the dark there is Another
Out to wear out the vast solitudes
Making and marring this Hades
And yearn for my blood and gorge on my death.
We look for each other. Would that this
the last hopeful day were.

The Other Tiger

It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse

And I also have always loved the following quotes:

"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."

"No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist."

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

"I was always afraid of mirrors."

I, too, as a youngster, was always afraid of mirrors. I had the biggest fear that I would look in one and my reflection would be that of a demonic creature. That there would be something beastly and other-worldly looking back at me. So, one day I woke up in the morning, thought to myself, 'what the hell am i so afraid of? This is riciculous' and immediatley decided that I should go and make the scariest, most evil looking face I could in the mirror to help myself get rid of this irrational fear. So I did...and got one of the biggest shocks of my life. My teeth and mouth were covered in blood! WEIRD. Bad timing, or what? I assume that my gums must have bled as I slept, because I was in no pain from a bitten tongue or cheek. It had never happened before and hasn't since. I don't know if that was a case of strong fear creating reality or if it was some kind of horrible coincidence, but needless to say, my fear of mirrors was not abated that morning. To this day, mirrors still kind of creep me out, but now I fear seeing someone else's reflection...someone who shouldn't be there. When I had stumbled upon Borges's hatred of mirrors, I felt that Borges and I were on the same wave length, even though his reason for the fear was for slightly different reasons.

"From the remote depths of the corridor, the mirror spied upon us. We discovered (such a discovery is inevitable in the late hours of the night) that mirrors hare something monstrous about them....mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men.... Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe."
I think what he is saying is that mirrors simply replicate the world, thereby perpetuating deception...creating an illusion of an illusion...which creates an illusion of an illusion of an illusion and so forth. I knew then that this man had also stood on the precipice of infinity, and had become tormented by the void which he now faced.

I can't believe I had forgotten Borges. Thanks for the reminder, Yeshe.