Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

deaths, as they didn’t know them themselves, why should you know them? Why should you know more than the authors did? And as to articles, bibliographies and so on, you don’t have to worry about that. What you have to do is to read the authors. Then, as to histories of literature, they are all more or less copies of one another, with variation.
    BURGIN: If enjoyment is paramount, then what do you suppose it is that gives one a sense of enjoyment from a book?
    BORGES: There may be two opposite explanations to that. The individual is getting away from his personal circumstances and finding his way into another world, but at the same time, perhaps that other world interests him because it’s nearer his inner self than his circumstances. I mean, if I, suppose I take one of my favourite authors, Stevenson, if I were to read Stevenson now, I would feel that, as I was reading the book, I wouldn’t think of myself as being in England or in South America. I would think I was inside the book. And yet that book might be telling me a secret, or half-guessed-at things about myself. But, of course, those explanations go together, no? If you accept one, you don’t have to refuse the other.
    BURGIN: Of all the books you’ve published, do you have a favourite book?
    BORGES: Of all my books, yes. The book called
The Maker
,
El hacedor
. Yes, because it wrote itself. And my English translator, or my American translator, he wrote to me and said that there was no English word for “El hacedor.” And then I wrote him back, saying that “El hacedor” had been translated from the English “The Maker.” But, of course, all words in a foreign tongue have a certain distinction behind them, no? So that “El hacedor” meant more to him than “The Maker.” But when I used “El hacedor” for the poet, for Homer, I was merely translating the Old English or the Middle English word “maker.”
    BURGIN: Some people didn’t take you seriously when you said that
El hacedor
, translated back into English as
Dreamtigers
, would make all your other books unnecessary. But as I read it, I think more and more that perhaps it was more than a joke on your part—saying that.
    BORGES: Well, I know, because the book seems to be slight, but it isn’t really slight.
    BURGIN: It has all your essential themes and motifs and, more important, your voice.
    BORGES: The book may be a slight book, but it isn’t a slight book to me, because when I go back to that book, I find that I’ve said the things I had to say or that I worked out the images I had to work out. And besides, the book has found some favour with the public. It’s not a boring book. In fact, it couldn’t be because it’s so short.
    BURGIN: When were the poems that were in that collection written?
    BORGES: They were written all through my life. My editor told me, “We want a new book from you; there should be a market for that book.” And I said, “I haven’t any book.” And then my editor said to me, “Oh yes, you have. If you go through your shelves or drawers you’ll find odds and ends. Maybe a book can be evolved from them.” So I think I remember it was a rainy Sunday in Buenos Aires and I had nothing whatever to do because, well, there was an appointment that had failed. I had my sight, I wasn’t blind, so I thought, I’ll look over my papers. Maybe I’ll find something in my drawers. I found cuttings, old magazines, and then I found that there was the book all ready for me.
    BURGIN: Of pieces that you had thought were insignificant before?
    BORGES: Yes, and I took them to the editor and said, “I want you to tell me honestly—you don’t have to answer me today or next week—whether you think this book, this kind of crazy-quilt patchwork, can be published; you take ten days or a fortnight or a month over it, and look it over carefully because I don’t want you to be spending money on a book that nobody will buy or that may find some very hard critics.” And then he answered me within a week, saying “Yes.”
    BURGIN: I wanted to ask you about one of your parables in
El hacedor
, your parable about Cervantes.
    BORGES: Ah, yes! I’m very interested in Cervantes. I think—I wonder how you feel about it—when I think of English literature I’m attracted to it, among many other things, because when I’m thinking of it, I’m thinking about men more than about books. I think that English literature, like England, is very personal. For example, if I think of