This book is a collection or transcript of lectures by Jorge Luis Borges, given in English at Harvard in late 60s (Norton Lectures). These lectures were in tape form, apparently lost and recently rediscovered, and then printed in the year 2000 in a book form.
I have had a copy each of the collected fictions and non-fictions of Jorge Luis Borges for years now. But I have not been able to complete either of them. I have finished off parts of these books, books by themselves; however, not the complete collections yet. There are areas where I still find myself stuck. This one, hence, counts as my first Borges, sort of.
After reading a lot of Borges in translation, it is nice to hear his thoughts directly in English. And, it is a short book. What I like is where it takes me. One can read it quickly. Then one re-reads. And then one looks up all the references and poets. And all that takes a bit of time. Time well spent, nothing I complain of. For instance, Borges mentions 'Chestertonian mood', and calls it the very best mood to be in. And I haven't read anything by Chesterton. So after reading all the one-liners and quotes I could easily find online, I am now pretty deep in "The Man Who was Thursday". (As I write this, I am in the final third of the novel). Or all those poem fragments and poets you come across. They all demand a google looking up and then the thread can extend and extend, until you trace back your steps. Like, for some reason, through the web, I found myself reading Ithaca by Cavafy, and then found myself re-reading Brodsky's essay on Cavafy (Pendulum's Song from his collection, Less than One), and then wishing to read more from both Cavafy and Brodsky.
I haven't read a lot of poetry. Just a little bit. And mostly poems that I have revisited often. Some poems reveal what they hold soon. Some take a lot of patience and time, or certain moods when their meaning or what you take away from them becomes apparent. And at times, once the meaning becomes apparent, some poems can form the background music of life itself for months on end; call it a particular poem phase. (I recall my recent Four Quartets phase. That poem has so much in it. One can spend a lifetime dipping in and out and still take something from it). I am still a beginner in terms of understanding poetry. At the moment, I have a couple of other books next to me which have poetry for beginners kind of titles. But who better to hold your hand as you stare into this new world, than Borges himself.
There is a humility in the book which makes it and him endearing. And then there is this philosophy or ways of looking at life that are interspersed throughout the book. As much about the mechanics of verse - from metaphor to word music, as it soon becomes a larger, deeper, way of looking at life itself. I'll best convey this by directly quoting from the book.
Consider the following from his discussion on Metaphor where he discusses the last stanza from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening". The initial part is an analysis, a discussion on what is happening in these lines. Like any other lecture. But where he takes the discussion, and what you come away with, perhaps very few people are able to convey in such unassuming, simple manner. One feels lucky and privileged to be able to have access to or to come across such thoughts.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
These lines are so perfect that we hardly think of a trick. Yet, unhappily, all literature is made of tricks, and those tricks get - in the long run - found out. And then the reader tires of them. But in this case the trick is so unobtrusive that I feel rather ashamed of myself for calling it a trick (I call it this merely for want of a better word). Because Frost has attempted something very daring here. We gave the same line repeated word for word, twice over, yet the sense is different. "And miles to go before I sleep": this is merely physical; - the miles and miles in space, in New England, and "sleep" means "go to sleep". The second time - "And miles to go before I sleep" - we are made to feel that the miles are not only in space but in time, and that "sleep" means "die" or "rest". Had the poet said so in so many words, he would have been far less effective. Because, as I understand it, anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: Arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments. Then we look at them, we weigh them, we turn them over, and we decide against them.
But when something is merely said or - better still - hinted at, there is a kind of hospitality in our imagination. We are ready to accept it.
And later in the book, another reference to the same stanza:
Perhaps I am doing no good for us by pointing this out. Perhaps the pleasure lies not in our translating "miles" into "years" and "sleep" into "death", but rather in feeling the implication.
Through the book, you also get to hear his view on not just the craft of verse, but that of prose too, and how to consider them or appreciate them. And it is a great new perspective (for me). Take the following example. In his lecture on "the telling of the tale" and singing of verse, he reconsiders epic, and that if it can be done, it should be done. Here is him talking about modern epic.
I have been thinking about the subject only rather late in life; and besides, I do not think I could attempt the epic (though I might have worked in two or three lines of epic). This is for younger men to do. And I hope they will do it, because of course we all feel that the novel is somehow breaking down. Think of the chief novels of our time - say, Joyce's Ulysses. We are told thousands of things about the two characters, yet we do not know them. We have a better knowledge of characters in Dante or Shakespeare, who come to us - who live and die - in a few sentences. We do not know thousands of circumstances about them, but we do know them intimately. That, of course, is far more important.He talks about himself in the final chapter, called "A Poet's Creed". Here, he is talking about listening to his father reading Keats, from his "Ode to a Nightingale".
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
I thought I knew all about words, all about language (when one is child one feels that one knows many things), but those words came as a revelation to me. Of course, I did not understand them. How could I understand those lines about birds' - about animals' - being somehow eternal, timeless, because they live in the present? We are mortal because we live in the past and in the future - because we remember a time when we did not exist, and foresee a time when we shall be dead. Those verses came to me because of their music. I had thought of language as being a way of saying things, of uttering complaints, of saying that one was glad, or sad, and so on. Yet when I heard those lines (and I have been hearing them, in a sense, ever since), I knew that language could also be a music and a passion. And thus was poetry revealed to me.
(My underline). It is what he takes away from those lines. And what makes poetry so interesting. What one takes away depends so much on how deeply one thinks, and how one sees things. This is as much about the art of seeing. Such beautiful stuff!
What I take away - that I should live in the moment more often.
An awesome read. A book for keeps and for sharing.
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This was one of those few books, where by reading aloud often from, I have hooked K on to it as well. And he is reading it now.
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See what I found on google: a recording of Borges giving these lectures. Find them here.