Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

viewing the world?
    BORGES: I don’t think languages are essentially synonymous. In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words. For example, if you say
slowly, quickly
, in English, what you hear is the meaningful part of the word:
slow-ly, quick-ly
. You hear
slow
and
quick
. But in Spanish you say
lentamente, ràpidamente
, and what you hear is the
-mente
. That is gratis, so to say. A friend of mine translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into Spanish. I said that he needed two Spanish sonnets to a single English one, since English words are short and to the point, but Spanish words are over-long. And English also has a physical quality to it. Well, in English, you can say:
to explain away
. In Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West,” an English officer is pursuing an Afghan horse thief. They’re both on horseback. And Kipling writes: “They have ridden the low moon out of the sky. / Their hooves drum up the dawn.” Now you can’t
ride the low moon out of the sky
in Spanish, and you can’t
drum up the dawn
. It can’t be done. Even such simple sentences as
he fell down
or
he picked himself up
, you can’t do in Spanish. You have to say
he got up the best he could
or some lame paraphrase. But in English you can do much with verbs and positions. You can write:
dream away your life; live up to; something you have to live down
. Those things are impossible in Spanish. They cannot be done. Then you have compound words. For example you have
wordsmith
. It would be in Spanish
un herrero de palabras
, rather stilted, rather uncouth. But it can be done in German, you can make up words all the time, but not in English. You are not allowed the freedom that the Anglo-Saxons had. For example, you have
sigefolc
, or
victorious people
. Now in Old English, you don’t think of these words as being artificial, but in Spanish it can’t be done. But of course, you have what I think is beautiful in Spanish: the sounds are very clear. But in English you have lost your open vowels.
    CAPE: What was it that attracted you to Anglo-Saxon poetry originally?
    BORGES: Well, I lost my eyesight for reading purposes when I was made chief librarian for the Argentine National Library. I said, I won’t bow down and allow self-pity. I will attempt something else. And then, I remember, I had at home
Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader
and
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
. And I said, We’ll attempt Anglo-Saxon. And then I began; I studied through
Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader
. And then I fell in love with it through two words. Those two words, I can still recall them, those words were the name of London,
Lundenburh
; and then Rome,
Romeburh
. And now I’m attempting Old Norse, which was a finer literature than Old English.
    CAPE: How would you describe a twentieth-century mythology for writers?
    BOURNE: That’s a big question!
    BORGES: I don’t think it should be done consciously. You don’t have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don’t think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars.
    CHARLES SILVER: I wondered if there were any particular mystical or religious readings you’ve done that have influenced you?
    BORGES: Yes, I have done some reading, of course, in English and in German, of the Sufis. And then, I think, before I die, I’ll do my best to write a book on Swedenborg the mystic. And Blake also was a mystic. But I dislike Blake’s mythology. It seems very artificial.
    BOURNE: You said, “When one reads Whitman, one is Whitman,” and I was wondering, when you translated Kafka did you feel at any time that you were Kafka in any sense?
    BORGES: Well, I felt that I owed so much to Kafka that I really didn’t need to exist. But, really, I am merely a word for Chesterton, for Kafka, and Sir Thomas Browne—I love him. I translated him into seventeenth-century Spanish and it worked very well. We took a chapter out of
Urne Buriall
and we did that into Quevado’s Spanish and it went very well—the same period, the same idea of writing Latin in a different language, writing Latin in English, writing Latin in Spanish.
    BOURNE: You were the first to translate Kafka into Spanish. Did you feel a sense of mission while you were translating him?
    BORGES: No, that was when I translated Walt