Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

a cliff. That’s quite real, no? But in that case I felt that whatever happened to me was quite trifling, utterly trifling. Of course, they were trying to bluff me, because I don’t think they had any intention of being violent. But that was one of the few times in my life I’ve been really angry. And then I was very much ashamed of the fact. I felt that, after all, as a professor, as a man of letters, I shouldn’t have been angry, I should have tried to reason with them, instead of that “well, come on and have it out,” because after all I was behaving in much the same way as they were.
    BURGIN: This reminds me a little bit of “The South.”
    BORGES: Yes.
    BURGIN: I think that’s one of your most personal stories.
    BORGES: Yes, it is.
    BURGIN: The idea of bravery means a lot to you, doesn’t it?
    BORGES: I think it does because I’m not brave myself. I think if I were really brave it wouldn’t mean anything to me. For example, I’ve been ducking a dentist for a year or so. I’m not personally brave and as my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather were personally brave men, I mean some of them fell in action …
    BURGIN: You don’t think writing is a kind of bravery?
    BORGES: It could be, yes. But perhaps if I were personally brave I wouldn’t care so much about bravery. Because, of course, what one cares for is what one hasn’t got, no? I mean if a person loves you, you take it for granted, and you may even get tired of her. But if you are jilted, you feel that the bottom is out of the universe, no? But those things are bound to happen. What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
    BURGIN: You say people should be ashamed of anger, but you don’t think people should be ashamed of this, of “what to make of a diminished thing?”
    BORGES: I don’t think one can help it.
    BURGIN: Can you help anger?
    BORGES: Yes, yes, I think that many people encourage anger or think it a very fine thing.
    BURGIN: They think it’s manly to fight.
    BORGES: Yes, and it isn’t, eh?
    BURGIN: No. It isn’t.
    BORGES: I don’t think there’s anything praiseworthy in anger. It’s a kind of weakness. Because really, I think that you should allow very few people to be able to hurt you unless, of course, they bludgeon you or shoot you. For example, I can’t understand anybody being angry because a waiter keeps him waiting too long, or because a porter is uncivil to him, or because somebody behind a counter doesn’t take him into account because, after all, those people are like shapes in a dream, no? While the only people who can really hurt you, except in a physical way, by stabbing you or shooting you, are the people you care for. A friend was saying to me, “But you haven’t forgiven so and so, and yet you have forgiven somebody who has behaved far worse.” I said, “Yes, but so and so was, or I thought he was, a personal friend and so it’s rather difficult to forgive him, while the other is an utter stranger so whatever he does, he can’t hurt me because he’s not that near to me.” I mean if you care for people they can hurt you very much, they can hurt you by being indifferent to you, or by slighting you.
    BURGIN: You said the highest form of revenge is oblivion.
    BORGES: Oblivion, yes, quite right, but, for example, if I were insulted by a stranger in the street, I don’t think I would give the matter a second thought. I would just pretend I hadn’t heard him and go on, because, after all, I don’t exist for him, so why should he exist for me? Of course, in the case of the students walking into my room, walking into my classroom, they knew me, they knew that I was teaching English literature; it was quite different. But if they had been strangers, if they had been, well, brawlers in the street, or drunkards, I suppose I would have taken anything from them and forgotten all about it.
    BURGIN: You never got into any fights as a child?
    BORGES: Yes, I did. But that was a code. I had to do it. Well, my eyesight was bad, it was very weak and I was generally defeated. But it had to be done. Because there was a code and, in fact, when I was a boy, there was even a code of dueling. But I think dueling is a very stupid custom, no? After all, it’s quite irrelevant. If you quarrel with me and I quarrel with you, what has our swordsmanship or our marksmanship to do with it? Nothing—unless you have the mystical idea that God will punish the wrong. I don’t think anybody has that