Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

good story.
    BURGIN: Strange choices.
    BORGES: Then somebody had a short Chinese story, quite a good story—three pages long. And then, I wonder what you will make of my choice? I took Hawthorne’s “Wakefield,” about the man who stays away from home all those years. Well, strangely enough, there were six stories and three by American authors: Melville, Lovecraft and Hawthorne.
    BURGIN: Did you have a hard time picking Hawthorne from the others or did you know it right away?
    BORGES: No. Well, of course, I really wasn’t thinking of all the stories I know. And it had to be a story already translated into Spanish. That limited my choice. Besides, as I didn’t want to astonish people, because I think that to take a story by Lovecraft and to say it’s the best story in the world, that’s done in order to amaze people. Because I don’t think that anybody would think that Lovecraft wrote the finest story in the world, if the phrase the finest story in the world can have any meaning. I hesitated between the story and some story by Kipling. And then I thought that that story was a very fine story to be written ever so long ago. The book came out and now there is going to be a second series, by different writers, of course. It was a book that sold very well.
    BURGIN: Have you had occasion to go to Salem since you’ve been here?
    BORGES: Yes, I went several times to Salem and then I went to Walden also. And I should say that the whole American adventure began here, no? That the history of America began here. In fact, I should say that the West was invented by New Englanders, no?

Tales and meanings; favourite poems; the gifts of unhappiness; a girl from Buenos Aires; Homer; parables …
    BORGES: You know, I want to tell you that some people have no literary sense. Consequently they think that if anything literary pleases them, they have to look for far-fetched reasons. I mean, for example, instead of saying, “Well, I like this because this is fine poetry, or because this is a story that I follow with interest; I’m really forgetting about myself and I’m thinking of the character,” they’re trying to think that the whole thing is full of half truths, reasons and symbols. They’ll say, “Yes, we enjoyed that tale of yours, but what did you mean by it?” The answer is, “I meant nothing whatever, I meant the tale itself. If I could have said it in plainer words, I would have written it otherwise.” But the tale itself should be its own reality, no? People never accept that. They like to think that writers are aiming at something. In fact, I think that most people think—of course they won’t say so to themselves or to anybody else—they think of literature as being a kind of
Aesop’s Fables
, no? Everything is written to prove something—not for the sheer pleasure of writing it, or for the sheer interest a writer may have in the characters or in the situation or in whatever it may be, no? I think that people are always looking for some kind of lesson, no?
    BURGIN: Maybe they hope that books will give them what the world doesn’t. They want some meaning. They want truths. They want to be told how to live, from books.
    BORGES: Perhaps. But if they thought of poetry as they think of music, that might make things easier for them, don’t you think so? When you’re hearing music, well, of course, I know nothing whatever about music, I suppose you’d just be pleased or displeased or bored. But if you’re reading a book, you’re hunting for a book behind the book, no? Consequently you have to invent all kinds of reasons … Well, maybe you wanted to ask me something far more concrete; I’m just rambling on. But I think that’s the only way for a real conversation to begin—by rambling on, no? I’m not looking too closely at what I’m saying.
    BURGIN: No, I think what you say is very true. In the colleges, at least in the schools I’ve gone to, the method is always to explicate things, explain very literally what everything means.
    BORGES: I’m thinking, for example, that you might have a very crude character in a skit, a comedy or whatever it might be, talking Shakespeare, “Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.” Now that’s very beautiful, very lovely. And yet you might have a very clumsy and very illiterate character, saying, “If you make music, why do you feel sad? And why does it make you sad?” And it would boil down to the