Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

Buenos Aires. Now somehow they’ve died out. Well, the whole city is decaying.
    BURGIN: You think so?
    BORGES: Oh yes, we all feel that we are living in a very discouraged, skeptical and hopeless country. Perhaps the only strength our government has lies in the fact that people think that any other government would be quite as bad, no? That doesn’t make for real strength.
    BURGIN: You once wrote the lines, “To have seen nothing or almost nothing except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires, a face that does not want you to remember it.”
    BORGES: I wrote that when I was in Colombia. I remember a journalist came to see me, and he asked me several questions about the literary life in Buenos Aires, my own output and so on. Then I said to him, “Look here, could you give me some five minutes of your time?” And he said, he was very polite, and he said “Very willingly.” And then I said, “If you could jot down a few lines.” And he said. “Oh, of course.” And I dictated those lines to him.
    BURGIN: They used it as the epilogue in the
Labyrinths
book.
    BORGES: Yes.
    BURGIN: But the reason I mention that to you, well I don’t want to over-explicate, but it seems to say that love is the only thing that man can see or know.
    BORGES: Yes, it might mean that, but I think it’s not fair to ask that because the way I said it was better, no? But when I was composing that poem, I wasn’t thinking in general terms, I was thinking of a very concrete girl, who felt a very concrete indifference. And I felt very unhappy at the time. And, of course, after I wrote it, I felt a kind of relief. Because once you have written something, you work it out of your system, no? I mean, when a writer writes something he’s done what he can. He’s made something of his experience.
    BURGIN: I’ve been wondering. I know you like “The Gifts” and “The Other Tiger.” Do you have any other favourite poems?
    BORGES: The poems I’ve written or the poems I’ve read?
    BURGIN: No, the poems you’ve written.
    BORGES: Yes, I think that quite the best poem is the poem called “El golem.” Because “El golem,” well, first, Bioy Casares told me it’s the one poem where humour has a part. And then the poem is more or less an account of how the golem was evolved, and then there is a kind of parable because one thinks of the golem as being very clumsy, no? And the rabbi is rather ashamed of him. And in the end it is suggested that as the golem is to the magician, to the cabalist, so is a man to God, no? And that perhaps God may be ashamed of mankind as the cabalist was ashamed of the golem. And then I think that in that poem you may also find a parable of the nature of art. Though the rabbi intended something beautiful, or very important, the creation of a man, he only succeeded in creating a very clumsy doll, no? A kind of parody of mankind. And then I like the last verses:
    En la hora de angustia y de luz vaga,
en su Golem los ojos detenía.
¿Quién nos dirá las cosas que sentía
Dios, al mirar a su rabino en Praga?

    At the hour of anguish and vague light,
He would rest his eyes on his Golem.
Who can tell us what God felt,
As He gazed on His rabbi in Prague?

    I think that’s one of my best poems. And then another poem I like that’s quite obvious is “Límites.” But I think I can give you the reason. The reason is, I suppose, that it’s quite easy to write an original poem, let’s say, with original thoughts or surprising thoughts. I mean, if you think, that’s what the metaphysical poets did in England, no? But in the case of “Límites,” I have had the great luck to write a poem about something that everybody has felt, or may feel. For example, what I am feeling today in Cambridge—I am going tomorrow to New York and won’t be back until Wednesday or Thursday and I feel that I am doing things for the last time.
    And yet, I mean that most common feelings, most human feelings, have found their way into poetry and been worked over and over again, as they should have been, for the last thousand years. But here I’ve been very lucky, because having a long literary past, I mean, having read in many literatures, I seem to have found a subject that is fairly new and yet a subject that is not thought to be extravagant. Because when I say, especially at a certain age, that we are doing things for the last time and may not be aware of it—for all I know I may be looking out of this window for the last time, or there are