5 ms·

A Lecture on Johnson and Boswell by Jorge Luis Borges

62 points by gruseom 13y ago

jacques_chester 13y ago
It's worth mentioning that Borges is a great author for STEM types. Apart from being a towering critic of literature, he wrote short stories. He treated these as a poetry problem -- compressing the most story into the least number of words. They are spare, lean, but powerful. The Lottery in Babylon and The Library of Babel, in particular, are combinatorial horror stories. They take simple concepts and slowly unfold them. The sense of escalating dread at the possibilities of infinity and the uncertainties of infinitude reminds me of HP Lovecraft, yet it's all matter of fact without the purple prose. I also greatly enjoyed Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, where Borges similarly shows the power of mere ideas to reshape the entire world; even ideas which are later shown to be utterly false.
- earljwagner 13y ago
  Also recommended Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" about a writer who rewrites Don Quixote word-for-word, though of course imbuing with a radically new meaning given the different historical context: "It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine): '...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.' Written in the seventeenth century, written by the 'lay genius' Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes: '...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.' History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases—exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor —are brazenly pragmatic. The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard—quite foreign, after all—suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time."
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Yes! An excellent meditation piece for language designers thinking about syntax and semantics. Similarly Kafka and his Predecessors for working out who should be acclaimed an inventive genius. In fact, let's just give up and say that every one of his short stories is a delight.
  - tubelite 13y ago
    "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is perhaps my favourite short story. Borges is so powerful that he shines through the translation barrier like it didn't exist. While he is best known for his short stories, his non-fiction - essays, book and film reviews - are, if anything, even better.
  - bhickey 13y ago
    I was reading this exact passage aloud this very afternoon. It's Borges at his funniest! He's a stand out among the greats, surpassing Joyce, Marquez, Saramago and Solzhenitsyn. There's a pervasive magic to his writing. The prose equals the subject. It reminds me of the best of Dostoevsky or Bulgakov's trial before Pilate.
    - chevreuil 13y ago
      > It's Borges at his funniest Exactly. My feeling in the first pages of Fictions was : is it some kind of joke ? For those who read the House of Leaves, it's good to know that Danielewski took a lot of inspiration from Borges (among other things). If I recall correctly The Garden of Forking Paths is very similar in its purpose and construction.
- pash 13y ago
  Mathematically inclined Borges nerds will enjoy William Goldbloom Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel [0]. It's a pop-math book, but much better written than most, and intriguing enough in uncovering mathematical connections to the Library that I recommend it even to readers already familiar with all the math it discusses. (Curiously, as far as I remember, Bloch doesn't ask whether there's a comprehensive meta-catalogue of those catalogues in the Library that do not mention themselves.) 0. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195334574 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195334574
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    And the further question of whether those meta-catalogues are accurate, or how many of them are deceptive, or how many of them mention themselves under a million different titles, or ... I wonder if Borges knew about Russell's Paradox. It seems unlikely that he wouldn't.
    - pash 13y ago
      I don't know; Bloch does try to note what Borges knew about the math, and he sometimes speculates (for example in the chapter in which he models librarians as Turing machines). ... By the way, having now read the submitted article, let me point out a selection that exemplifies what I love about Borges's writing: There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him. In Borges's short stories there are very many selections like this, but it's mostly pseudo-realistic wisdom (or paradox) that's the product of Borges's own mind.
- arethuza 13y ago
  He also throws in some wonderfully obscure historical references: "Last night I killed a man in Brunanburh" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh
wslh 13y ago
If you are interested in Borges you can't miss the Norton Lectures (1967-1968) that he gave in Harvard. They are available in MP3 format for download: http://ubu.com/sound/borges.html http://ubu.com/sound/borges.html (sadly my original post on HN only had two points and zero comments)
- kranner 13y ago
  Seconded; these have had a permanent place in my iTunes library.
richardjordan 13y ago
My current bedside reading is: Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges - http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802 http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/d... (NOT an affinity link, just the link). He was a genius. His writing is wonderful. As others have said his ideas are well suited to the kinds of folks who frequent HN. The other interesting thing is that never before have I had people approach me about my reading. But sit in a cafe in San Francisco with Borges and suddenly the world and her friend wants to spark up a conversation about my choice of book. Cannot recommend this highly enough. If you are looking for reading material that takes you away from technology and work and the usual stuff we fill our heads with, explore the universe through the words of Borges. You won't regret it.
- tubelite 13y ago
  When you're done with Fictions, do read the other book, "Selected Non-Fictions" http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Luis/dp/0140290117 http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Lui... (not an affiliate link either) Not only are they excellent pieces in their own right, you can catch occasional glimpses of the evolution of some of his best stories as well. The biography of Paul Valéry, for instance, foreshadows Pierre Menard.
ableal 13y ago
Ah, delightful, unread Borges texts still popping up after a four course meal of collected works I got presented with a few years ago (not an English edition). Thanks. In Lisbon, there's a small, discrete monument to Borges - just a carved stone with a few lines of one of his poems. It is situated in a small garden diagonally opposite the crossroads from the Argentine embassy (GPS 38.736322, -9.142172 ). I first came across Borges, many moons ago, in an SF collection, with the story of the man who was, recursively, another man's dream ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circular_Ruins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circular_Ruins ). But I think he did catch us out with this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolen...): The list divides all animals into one of 14 categories: Those that belong to the emperor Embalmed ones Those that are trained Suckling pigs Mermaids (or Sirens) Fabulous ones Stray dogs Those that are included in this classification Those that tremble as if they were mad Innumerable ones Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush Et cetera Those that have just broken the flower vase Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

62 points by gruseom 13y ago

It's worth mentioning that Borges is a great author for STEM types. Apart from being a towering critic of literature, he wrote short stories. He treated these as a poetry problem -- compressing the most story into the least number of words. They are spare, lean, but powerful. The Lottery in Babylon and The Library of Babel, in particular, are combinatorial horror stories. They take simple concepts and slowly unfold them. The sense of escalating dread at the possibilities of infinity and the uncertainties of infinitude reminds me of HP Lovecraft, yet it's all matter of fact without the purple prose. I also greatly enjoyed Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, where Borges similarly shows the power of mere ideas to reshape the entire world; even ideas which are later shown to be utterly false.

earljwagner 13y ago
Also recommended Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" about a writer who rewrites Don Quixote word-for-word, though of course imbuing with a radically new meaning given the different historical context: "It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine): '...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.' Written in the seventeenth century, written by the 'lay genius' Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes: '...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.' History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases—exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor —are brazenly pragmatic. The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard—quite foreign, after all—suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time."
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Yes! An excellent meditation piece for language designers thinking about syntax and semantics. Similarly Kafka and his Predecessors for working out who should be acclaimed an inventive genius. In fact, let's just give up and say that every one of his short stories is a delight.
- tubelite 13y ago
  "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is perhaps my favourite short story. Borges is so powerful that he shines through the translation barrier like it didn't exist. While he is best known for his short stories, his non-fiction - essays, book and film reviews - are, if anything, even better.
- bhickey 13y ago
  I was reading this exact passage aloud this very afternoon. It's Borges at his funniest! He's a stand out among the greats, surpassing Joyce, Marquez, Saramago and Solzhenitsyn. There's a pervasive magic to his writing. The prose equals the subject. It reminds me of the best of Dostoevsky or Bulgakov's trial before Pilate.
  - chevreuil 13y ago
    > It's Borges at his funniest Exactly. My feeling in the first pages of Fictions was : is it some kind of joke ? For those who read the House of Leaves, it's good to know that Danielewski took a lot of inspiration from Borges (among other things). If I recall correctly The Garden of Forking Paths is very similar in its purpose and construction.
pash 13y ago
Mathematically inclined Borges nerds will enjoy William Goldbloom Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel [0]. It's a pop-math book, but much better written than most, and intriguing enough in uncovering mathematical connections to the Library that I recommend it even to readers already familiar with all the math it discusses. (Curiously, as far as I remember, Bloch doesn't ask whether there's a comprehensive meta-catalogue of those catalogues in the Library that do not mention themselves.) 0. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195334574 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195334574
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  And the further question of whether those meta-catalogues are accurate, or how many of them are deceptive, or how many of them mention themselves under a million different titles, or ... I wonder if Borges knew about Russell's Paradox. It seems unlikely that he wouldn't.
  - pash 13y ago
    I don't know; Bloch does try to note what Borges knew about the math, and he sometimes speculates (for example in the chapter in which he models librarians as Turing machines). ... By the way, having now read the submitted article, let me point out a selection that exemplifies what I love about Borges's writing: There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him. In Borges's short stories there are very many selections like this, but it's mostly pseudo-realistic wisdom (or paradox) that's the product of Borges's own mind.
arethuza 13y ago
He also throws in some wonderfully obscure historical references: "Last night I killed a man in Brunanburh" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brunanburh

wslh 13y ago

If you are interested in Borges you can't miss the Norton Lectures (1967-1968) that he gave in Harvard. They are available in MP3 format for download: http://ubu.com/sound/borges.html http://ubu.com/sound/borges.html (sadly my original post on HN only had two points and zero comments)

kranner 13y ago
Seconded; these have had a permanent place in my iTunes library.

richardjordan 13y ago

My current bedside reading is: Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges - http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802 http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/d... (NOT an affinity link, just the link). He was a genius. His writing is wonderful. As others have said his ideas are well suited to the kinds of folks who frequent HN. The other interesting thing is that never before have I had people approach me about my reading. But sit in a cafe in San Francisco with Borges and suddenly the world and her friend wants to spark up a conversation about my choice of book. Cannot recommend this highly enough. If you are looking for reading material that takes you away from technology and work and the usual stuff we fill our heads with, explore the universe through the words of Borges. You won't regret it.

tubelite 13y ago
When you're done with Fictions, do read the other book, "Selected Non-Fictions" http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Luis/dp/0140290117 http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-Lui... (not an affiliate link either) Not only are they excellent pieces in their own right, you can catch occasional glimpses of the evolution of some of his best stories as well. The biography of Paul Valéry, for instance, foreshadows Pierre Menard.

ableal 13y ago

Ah, delightful, unread Borges texts still popping up after a four course meal of collected works I got presented with a few years ago (not an English edition). Thanks. In Lisbon, there's a small, discrete monument to Borges - just a carved stone with a few lines of one of his poems. It is situated in a small garden diagonally opposite the crossroads from the Argentine embassy (GPS 38.736322, -9.142172 ). I first came across Borges, many moons ago, in an SF collection, with the story of the man who was, recursively, another man's dream ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circular_Ruins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circular_Ruins ). But I think he did catch us out with this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolen...): The list divides all animals into one of 14 categories: Those that belong to the emperor Embalmed ones Those that are trained Suckling pigs Mermaids (or Sirens) Fabulous ones Stray dogs Those that are included in this classification Those that tremble as if they were mad Innumerable ones Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush Et cetera Those that have just broken the flower vase Those that, at a distance, resemble flies