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A Lecture on Johnson and Boswell by Jorge Luis Borges (1966)
- narrator 7y agoBorges is such a pleasure to read. His writing is a continuous stream of wit and unusual, but consistent ideas.
- ableal 7y agoOne thing I noticed is the "this is the way I see it" manner of a reader who digested the works he mentions, but not citing chapter and verse the way we tend to do now since it became so easy ...
- abraCadabstrax 7y agoI noticed that too, as well as how darn well read Borges is. A true delight of an essay.
- benbreen 7y agoWhat’s interesting is that I’m pretty sure the beautiful quote about ghosts that he attributes to Carlyle is actually Borges himself (or at least, when I search for it, all I find is Borges “quoting” it, not any original). So the absence of citing chapter and verse has a little more to it sometimes...
- empath75 7y agoYou’re reading an English translation of a spanish paraphrase of something he possibly only read in Spanish translation to begin woth. Here’s the Carlyle quote. > The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?—Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.
- benbreen 7y agoThank you! This is great, much appreciated.
- vo2maxer 7y agoIt is unlikely that Borges preferred Carlyle in Spanish translation: “He learned to read English before Spanish and did most of his reading as a child in the former language.” [1] [1] https://www.borges.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/1110.pdf https://www.borges.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/1110.pdf
- machawinka 7y agoActually, Borges disliked translations. He read books in their original languages.
- maw 7y agoIt's true that Borges read books in their original languages, but he also did translations himself and even stated that a translation could improve upon the original--although I doubt that he'd say that his own translations were so-improved.
- empath75 7y agoI would read borges on pretty much any topic at all. You never walk away from his stories or essays thinking that it was time wasted. And I rarely put them down and stop thinking of them. I’m not the kind of person that often quotes books to prove points but I do reach for borges stories as metaphors to understand or explain situations.
- mattxxx 7y ago> I would read borges on pretty much any topic at all. Yup. For example, I read this article without any interesting in learning more about Johnson and Boswell...
- neves 7y agoI've read Borges after studying a little of philosophy. The amount of erudite references impressed me and made me see other layers of the stories. Probably there's a world I'm missing reading Borges, and that's what makes him so marvelous.
- billfruit 7y agoI think the same could be said even more emphatically of Boswell, and Johnson. Also since they wrote natively in English, there is level of virtuosity on display that is hard to preserve in translation.
- empath75 7y agoConsidering how well borges survives translation it must be breathtaking in the original.
- machello13 7y agoWhere would you recommend starting with him? I've read The Library of Babel short story (because of this cool website: https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/), but not sure where to go next.
- devmacrile 7y agoWould recommend reading everything in Collected Fictions.
- mcguire 7y agoAlternatively, you could check out his non-fiction, say Selected Non-Fictions (https://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Luis/dp/0140290117 https://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Lu...). Checking the table of contents, I particularly like "A New Refutation of Time" (Available from Gwern: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutationoftime.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutation...), "Pascal's Sphere" (also available: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1951-borges-pascalssphere.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1951-borges-pascalssphere....), and the lecture "Blindness" (https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1977-borges-blindness.pdf; https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1977-borges-blindness.pdf; there may be some copyright issues here).
- petecox 7y agoHe published a couple of short story anthologies in the 1940s: Fictions, Aleph - check your local library for a translation. I smiled when in this lecture when he goes off on a tangent about Don Quixote and then imagines a fictional version of himself "I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day". That may well be Borges' inception concerning a fictional author with the nom de plume Pierre Menard. Ostensibly this is a lecture about Boswell but he has left a cue to an earlier short story. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the...
- vo2maxer 7y agoHere is the original: https://borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2015/10/borges-profesor-clase-9-samuel-johnson.html https://borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2015/10/borges-profeso...
- iron_ball 7y agoThanks for that link! It's always nice to have access to the original language.
- vo2maxer 7y agoYou’re welcome. I would also recommend these two volumes of his collected works: 1. https://www.rae.es/obras-academicas/ediciones-conmemorativas/borges-esencial https://www.rae.es/obras-academicas/ediciones-conmemorativas... 2. https://librosdecibola.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/resena-jorge-luis-borges-miscelanea-debolsillo/ https://librosdecibola.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/resena-jorge...
- dmix 7y ago> He then published his edition of Shakespeare, which he finished only because his publishers had received payments from subscribers, so it had to be done. Thank god for deadlines and obligations, they’ve generated so much creative work for the world. You see a lot of successful people generate a lot less, especially older people with a wide open timeline. For ex Stanley Kubrick spent 10yrs working on a Napoleon film he never released and only published when he perfected his films. Which is good and bad. I also read Schoolboy Q recently made 3 albums and deleted them all because he wasn’t happy. The luxury of being successful without deadlines.
- denton-scratch 7y agoI love Borges. I wish I could read Spanish, just so I could read Borges (well OK, I guess I'd also like to dip my foot into Cervantes). I would like to read this bio; happily, my step-son works at Blackwells bookshop in Oxford, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a copy.
- thanatropism 7y agoWhen you learn Spanish read next (in this order) Cortázar, Onetti and Carpentier.
- mcguire 7y agoBe careful. IIRC, according to Borges, you can't just dip your foot into Cervantes. What bio are you talking about? The Life of Samuel Johnson, by Boswell? That should be reasonably easy to get anywhere. This article is from Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature, taken from a student's notes for the class.
- rebuilder 7y agoThis really makes me want to read Boswell's biography of Johnson - contemporary accounts from past eras are, in my experience, fascinating and often mind blowing, and by how Borges describes it, Boswell's account must be a rare gem.
- cafard 7y agoThe biography puts me in mind of Johnson's own "No, sir--do you read books through?" I've read a fair bit, but never have sat down to read it front to back. Penguin has a very handy volume combining Johnson's A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland and Boswell's A Tour to the Hebrides.
- dnchdnd 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSLV7t9DvN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSLV7t9DvN8 This is a fascinating series of lectures by Borges. Those who enjoy his erudition and his infectious love for English poetry will no doubt enjoy the investment of a few hours.
- cryptonector 7y agoI find it impossible to put anything by Borges down. It's good that he only wrote short stories, I think, and all the more amazing how packed with content and imagery (without even remotely overdoing it) his writing is.
- mcdermott 7y agoBorges is the master of the short story, but I think that he may need to share that title with Guy de Maupassant. I'm currently reading both of their collected works of fiction, alternating between them with each story and enjoying the experience.