tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post114577412887525152..comments2024-03-28T22:51:28.222+05:30Comments on The Middle Stage: Alberto Manguel with BorgesChandrahashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1146038493534836552006-04-26T13:31:00.000+05:302006-04-26T13:31:00.000+05:30Falstaff, those are some good thoughts. But there ...Falstaff, those are some good thoughts. But there isn't really that much of a gap between our views. Your assertion that "The poems take the more impressionist route to this end [of multiplying the imagined world through language], are more concerned with sensation; it is in the stories the Borges brings the discipline of intellect to bear on that magnificent imagination" is seconded by me, I think, when I say that "If the stories are a record of Borges's imaginings, the poems are a record of his longings." The only difference is that you privilege one thing and I the other.<BR/><BR/>But you have good things to say about the stories, and I happily defer to your judgment on these matters.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145991220456779342006-04-26T00:23:00.000+05:302006-04-26T00:23:00.000+05:30Wow thanks very much Chandrahas. Luckily for me my...Wow thanks very much Chandrahas. Luckily for me my library has a copy of "The Chronicles of Bustos Domecq" and I am checking it out right away!!<BR/><BR/><I>A couple of years later, as if obedient to the boundary line offered by its own name, it shut down</I><BR/><BR/>Wow very cool.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145976713919533862006-04-25T20:21:00.000+05:302006-04-25T20:21:00.000+05:30Bookish? Musty?!! Surely you jest. I love Borges' ...Bookish? Musty?!! Surely you jest. <BR/><BR/>I love Borges' short stories. They are, to me, the embodiment of the poetry of ideas, the Blake-ian ideal of seeing a World in a Grain of sand and Eternity in an hour. They are certainly baroque in construction, but running through their careful variations is a deeply human voice, a violin note of emotion and beauty (it's not coincidence that reading Borges always makes me think of Bach). In his best work - Labryinths, Aleph (I recommend the companion piece to the Selected poems, btw - the Collected Fictions) - Borges combines an almost mathematical precision of ideas with a dizzying sense of the infiniteness of possibility. His stories are set in 'Borges world', true, but it is not a "tiny" world, it is a system of alternate universes that open out in every multiplying splendour - and his ability to create those worlds, to make them seem so real, so necessary, in just a few short pages is one of Borges's greatest gifts. His stories are set in other worlds, true, yet for all that they manage to parallel, through a sort of imagist magic, the world we live in, becoming surreal echoes of our own thoughts and concerns (this notion of other parallel worlds, seperated from ours by thin walls that the imagination can easily pierce, is of course, a particularly Borgesian one). <BR/><BR/>Overall then, I don't see the poems and the stories as being two fundamentally different strains of Borges' writing. They both flow from the same richness of imagination, from the same concern with thought as a way of multiplying, via language, the imagined world. The poems (which I have nothing but admiration for) take the more impressionist route to this end, are more concerned with sensation; it is in the stories the Borges brings the discipline of intellect to bear on that magnificient imagination - and both, I think, are better for it.Falstaffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09791162324919462038noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145933196078234932006-04-25T08:16:00.000+05:302006-04-25T08:16:00.000+05:30'I possess *The Chronicles of H. Bustos Domecq* on...'I possess *The Chronicles of H. Bustos Domecq* only in my memory,'<BR/><BR/>Actually, this anecdote is like a story out of Borges--whether it really happened or not is immaterial! What is more important is the anecdote itself and the questions it throws up about about what is 'real' and what 'really' happened. <BR/><BR/>And the bookshop that no longer exists, 'as if obedient to the boundary line offered by its own name,' only helps matters along.<BR/><BR/>Nice!Space Barhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08251329008160756254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145869184942706272006-04-24T14:29:00.000+05:302006-04-24T14:29:00.000+05:30Swami - That is a worthy question, a very worthy q...Swami - That is a worthy question, a very worthy question. In fact that question suddenly brings back memories of days of my long-gone youth. Many thoughts come rushing up, and as I am in a grandly loquacious mood, I shall now share them at happy and exorbitant length.<BR/><BR/>Truth be told, I'm not overly fond of Borges's stories myself - I find them too bookish and musty, and while they are certainly ingenious, I read them with interest rather than delight.<BR/><BR/>But Borges's poems are another matter altogether. These are some of the most beautiful lyrics you could hope to read, and while the stories often conjure up their own tiny Borgesian universes, the poems appear by contrast to reach out and grasp the whole world. If the stories are a record of Borges's imaginings, the poems are a record of his longings. "Browning Decides To Be A Poet", "History of the Night", "Chess", "The Art of Poetry" ("Sometimes at evening there's a face/that sees us from the deeps of a mirror./Art must be that sort of mirror,/<BR/>disclosing to each of us his face") - one could read these poems every day of one's life and not tire of them ever. <BR/><BR/>So the thing to do might be to buy the lovely paperback edition of Borges's *Selected Poems* published by Viking a few years ago, easily available in India from Strand Bookstall (www.strandbookstall.com). It costs five hundred rupees, and I can't think of a better way of spending that sum. (Yet I am such a cheapskate that I haven't bought it yet.)<BR/><BR/>As for myself, the Borges book that I like the best is one that I no longer possess, but often remember with nostalgia. <BR/><BR/>In the year 1999 I was a college student in Delhi, and two minutes away from our residence in Connaught Place there was a most dusty and smelly bookshop called Twentieth Century Bookshop. (A couple of years later, as if obedient to the boundary line offered by its own name, it shut down, but clearly it was founded at a point when an enormous swathe of the twentieth century stretched out before the proprietor, and for him the name was in with the times; now it was only a relic of it.)<BR/><BR/>It was here one afternoon that I joyfully bought, for the sum of fifty rupees, a small pink paperback authored by Borges and his longtime collaborator, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, called *The Chronicles of Bustos Domecq*. This is as fine a book as I have ever read, and I will not let anybody speak ill of it.<BR/><BR/>The pompous and gullible H. Bustos Domecq was among the best characters Borges ever created. He was supposedly a literary journalist, and the book is a collection of highly earnest essays written by him on subjects like modernism, abstract art, and so on. In truth these pieces were devastating indictments of literary fads and fashions, and in particular the excesses of Modernism. Thrilling things were achieved by the slyness of Borges and Bioy-Casares hiding behind their pedantic and credulous creation, and I remember this as one of the first books that showed me how much fun could be had with literary criticism. <BR/><BR/>Sadly, in those days I was more youthful, less wise and more kind than I am now, and in zest for somebody to share my enthusiasm for my book I lent it to a friend, who promptly lost it. To my regret I have never been able to find another copy. <BR/><BR/>I possess *The Chronicles of H. Bustos Domecq* only in my memory, and often it seems to me as if that book is a symbol of those beautiful days, now lost forever, to use a Borgesian phrase, in the labyrinth of time.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145858970057688102006-04-24T11:39:00.000+05:302006-04-24T11:39:00.000+05:30Enjoyed this piece thoroughly. Thanks, Hash.Enjoyed this piece thoroughly. Thanks, Hash.Sonia Faleirohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00110570082643289106noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145836196895728922006-04-24T05:19:00.000+05:302006-04-24T05:19:00.000+05:30I'm going to give Borges a try once more (I starte...I'm going to give Borges a try once more (I started reading Labyrinths and had to give up for a variety of reasons). Which book of his do you recommend I start with? (something that is not too circling, allusive or aphoristic :) ) <BR/><BR/>thanksAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145811592690133942006-04-23T22:29:00.000+05:302006-04-23T22:29:00.000+05:30Okay, Alberto Manguel just went to the top of my l...Okay, Alberto Manguel just went to the top of my list of people I envy to the point of hatred. Reading to Borges has to be the best job in the world. Aaargghh!<BR/><BR/>I wonder if the Roth family has any history of blindness?Falstaffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09791162324919462038noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145808417160775942006-04-23T21:36:00.000+05:302006-04-23T21:36:00.000+05:30Cheshire Cat, that Blake poem is an excellent ampl...Cheshire Cat, that Blake poem is an excellent amplification of Bradley's remark. Thanks very much. The lineaments of gratified desire indeed.<BR/><BR/>Shreya, the book's just come out in the UK. So it might be a while before it's available in India. I had the book sent to me as India's eleventh-best Borges expert. <BR/><BR/>Space Bar - yes, we must get down to writing a whole essay now just on that remark by Bradley, the beginnings of which have already been provided by Cheshire Cat above.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145791741547312202006-04-23T16:59:00.000+05:302006-04-23T16:59:00.000+05:30I was going to comment on this statement:'The iron...I was going to comment on this statement:<BR/><BR/>'The irony about this is that Borges produced some of the twentieth century's best poems about love.'<BR/><BR/>when I read further and found this:<BR/><BR/>'the philosopher FH Bradley, who says "For love unsatisfied the world is a mystery, a mystery which satisfied love appears to understand." (And perhaps one can tell, from Manguel's "Borges in Love", why Borges attached such importance to this remark.)'<BR/><BR/>and wondered if I really needed to make a comment at all. <BR/><BR/>But, put another way, it is in the eternally possible that the erotic resides. <BR/><BR/>Something about the cover of the book reminds me of the film, Beyond The Clouds by Antonioni and Wenders.Space Barhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08251329008160756254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145788863996404372006-04-23T16:11:00.000+05:302006-04-23T16:11:00.000+05:30Chandrahas, the book sounds very interesting. wher...Chandrahas, <BR/>the book sounds very interesting. where did you manage to get your hands on it? is it available in india..?xyzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09425863732092605043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-1145787954346928312006-04-23T15:55:00.000+05:302006-04-23T15:55:00.000+05:30Excellent post - thanks. You come close to Benjami...Excellent post - thanks. You come close to Benjamin's ideal. The Bradley quote reminded me of this masterful poem of Blake:<BR/><BR/>"What is it men in women do require?<BR/>The lineaments of gratified desire.<BR/><BR/>What is it women do in men require?<BR/>The lineaments of gratified desire."<BR/><BR/>Perhaps a clue here as to why Borges found such happiness in books. It is in books that the "lineaments of gratified desire" achieve the utmost clarity and significance.Cheshire Cathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463645065346922684noreply@blogger.com