Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

“Yes, I’m guilty, I ought to be shot; why not, this is as it should be and I would shoot you if I could.” Nobody said that. They were all apologizing and crying because there is something very weak and sentimental about the Germans, something I thoroughly disliked about them. I felt it before, but when I went to Germany I was feeling it all the time. I suppose I told you a conversation I had with a German professor, no?
    BURGIN: No, you didn’t.
    BORGES: Well, I was being shown all over Berlin, one of the ugliest cities in the world, no? Very showy.
    BURGIN: I’ve never been to Germany.
    BORGES: Well, you shouldn’t, especially if you love Germany, because once you get there you’ll begin to hate it. Then I was being shown around Berlin. Of course, there were any number of vacant lots, large patches of empty ground where houses had stood and they had been bombed very thoroughly by the American airmen, and then, you have some German, no?
    BURGIN: No, I’m sorry.
    BORGES: Well, I’ll translate. He said to me, “What have you to say about these ruins?” Then I thought, Germany has started this kind of warfare; the Allies did it because they had to, because the Germans began it. So why should I be pitying this country because of what had happened to it, because
they
started the bombing, and in a very cowardly way. I think Göring told his people that they would be destroying England and that they had nothing whatever to fear from the English airmen. That wasn’t a noble thing to say, no? In fact, as a politician he should have said, “We are doing our best to destroy England; maybe we’ll get hurt in the process, but it’s a risk we have to run”—even if he thought it wasn’t that way. So when the professor said to me “What have you to say about these ruins?”—well, my German is not too good, but I had to make my answer very curt, so I said, “I’ve seen London.” And then, of course, he dried up, no? He changed the subject because he had wanted me to pity him.
    BURGIN: He wanted a quote from Borges.
    BORGES: Well, I gave him a quotation, no?
    BURGIN: But not the one he wanted.
    BORGES: Not the one he wanted. Then I said to myself, what a pity that I have English blood, because it would have been better if I had been a straight South American. But, after all, I don’t think he knew it.
    BURGIN: He should have read “Story of the Warrior and the Captive” and then he would have found out.
    BORGES: Yes, he would have found out—yes.
    BURGIN: That’s a good story, don’t you think? It’s very concise.
    BORGES: Yes.
    BURGIN: You’re able to work in …
    BORGES: No! I worked in nothing; my grandmother told me the whole thing. Yes, because she was on the frontier and this happened way back in the 1800s.
    BURGIN: But you linked it with something that happened in history.
    BORGES: With something told by Croce, yes.
    BURGIN: And that’s what makes it effective.
    BORGES: Yes. I thought that the two stories, the two characters, might be essentially the same. A barbarian being wooed to Rome, to civilization, and then an English girl turning to witchcraft, to barbarians, to living in the pampas. In fact, it’s the same story as “The Theologians,” now that I come to think of it. In “The Theologians” you have two enemies and one of them sends the other to the stake. And then they find out somehow they’re the same man. But I think “The Warrior and the Captive” is a better story, no?
    BURGIN: I wouldn’t say so, no.
    BORGES: No? Why?
    BURGIN: There’s something almost tragic about “The Theologians.” It’s a very moving story.
    BORGES: Yes, “The Theologians” is more of a tale; the other is merely the quotation, or the telling, of two parables.
    BURGIN: I mean the Theologians are pathetic and yet there’s something noble about them—their earnestness, their self-importance.
    BORGES: Yes, and it’s more of a tale. While in the other I think that the tale is spoiled, by the fact of, well, you think of the writer as thinking himself clever, no? In taking two different instances and bringing them together. But “Story of the Warrior and the Captive” makes for easier reading, while most people have been utterly baffled and bored by “The Theologians.”
    BURGIN: No, I love that story.
    BORGES: Well, I love it also, but I’m speaking of my friends, or more of my friends. They all thought that the whole thing was quite pointless.
    BURGIN: But I also love “The Garden of