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.You believe in that fact because until then you have been told a series of possible facts.The proof of this lies in one of my visits to Madrid when I was asked if I had seen the Aleph.I was aghast! The man, clearly not a subtle person, said, ‘But why not, if you gave us the street and street number?’ ‘But what is easier,’ I replied, ‘than naming a street and putting a number?’ (Laughs) ‘So you haven’t seen it?’ he asked again, wanting to make sure.When he realized that I was a hoaxer, a mere writer, that he needn’t take into account what I had said (both laugh), he went away.FERRARI.He couldn’t accept it was something you’d invented?BORGES.Yes.Something similar happened a few days ago—someone asked me if I had the seventh volume of the Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius encyclopaedia.I should have said yes, or that I had lent it to someone, but I made the mistake of saying no.So he said, ‘It’s all a lie then?’ ‘You could have used a more polite word,’ I said in reply, ‘you could have said fiction.’FERRARI.If we continue like this, imagination and fantasy will be banned at any moment.BORGES.That’s right.But I interrupted what you were saying.FERRARI.I said that the emotion behind what you write, in this case the emotion we find in the Platonic tradition, is creative in itself, although today it is no longer seen that way.That is, as opposed to that Platonic tradition that elevated you through love.Love has been degraded to two sexes who meet and who are almost nothing more than that—two sexes.BORGES.Yes, it has been degraded to that.FERRARI.The poetry has been stolen.BORGES.Yes, well, poetry has been stolen everywhere.Last week I was asked in several places—two people asked me the same question—what’s the use of poetry? And I answered them with: What’s the use of death? What’s the use of the taste of coffee? What the use of me? What’s the use of us? What an odd question, isn’t it?FERRARI.Everything is seen through utilitarian eyes.BORGES.Someone reads a poem.If they are worthy of it, they receive it, they are grateful and they feel an emotion.And that’s not too little a use.To feel moved by a poem is not an insignificant event—it’s something we should be grateful for.But it seems that these people are not—it seems that they read in vain.If they read at all.It’s something I’m quite unsure of.FERRARI.Instead of a poetic consciousness about life, there is now only a sociological and psychological one.BORGES.And political.FERRARI.And political.BORGES.And poetry makes sense only if it serves a cause.FERRARI.Utilitarian.BORGES.Yes, utilitarian.If not, no.It’s incomprehensible that a sonnet may exist, or a rose.FERRARI.Incomprehensible.But they will both survive this, let’s say, this desacralizing and anti-poetry trend.BORGES.Despite it, I believe that poetry doesn’t run any risks.FERRARI.Of course.BORGES.It would be absurd to suppose that it did.Another very common idea in our times is that a poet signals something special.Because, one may ask: What is the poet’s function in this society and this period? The function is, always, to write poems.This cannot change, and it has nothing to do with political or economic circumstances, absolutely nothing.But this is not understood.FERRARI.We return to the question of utilitarianism.BORGES.Yes, it is seen in terms of utility.FERRARI.It’s what you were telling me not long ago, that everything is seen in terms of success or lack of success, of acquiring or not acquiring that which you desire.BORGES.Yes, it seems that everyone has forgotten that Kipling poem which talks of success and failure as two impostors.Which says that you should recognize them and face them.Clearly, no one fails as much as they think and no one succeeds as much as they think.Failure and success are truly impostors.FERRARI.That’s true.Now, coming back to love.Among poets, love continues to be a way in, a path.BORGES.And so it should be, the more it spreads to people and things, of course.It’s not necessary, though.It is enough to believe in a person.That faith vindicates us, exalts us, leads us to poetry.FERRARI.I recall Octavio Paz saying that counter to different fashions and differing risks that these created in society, the poet always defended love.And I believe that is real.But the other tradition that we have diverged from, besides the Platonic one, is the Judaeo-Christian proposition—that love structures or shapes the family and, indeed, society itself.BORGES.It seems as though our epoch has discarded all versions of love, hasn’t it? As though love is something that must be justified, which is very strange because it doesn’t occur to anyone to have to justify the sea or a sunset or a mountain.These need no justifying.But love is far more intimate than those things which merely depend on our senses.Love curiously seems to need justification now.FERRARI.Yes, but when I referred to love I was thinking of its role in your work as inspiration and as a thread through several poems and stories.BORGES.Well, I think that I have always been in love, throughout my life, even in first memories.Always.But, of course, the pretext or theme (both laugh) has not been the same woman.There have been several women and each one unique.That’s how it should be, isn’t it?FERRARI.Of course.BORGES.The fact that they change appearance or name is not important.What counts is that I sensed them as unique.Sometimes I have thought that when, someone is in love, one sees the other person as God sees us, that is, in the best possible way.You are in love when you realize the other person is unique.Perhaps in God’s eyes everyone is unique.We can stretch this theory to a kind of ‘reductio ad absurdum’.Why not suppose, then, that each of us is irrefutably unique or believes that he is irrefutably unique.why not suppose that in God’s eyes every ant is an individual? We may not perceive these differences but God does.FERRARI.Each individuality?BORGES.Yes, even an ant’s.And why not a plant’s or a flower’s? A rock’s, a boulder’s? Why not suppose that everything is unique? I deliberately chose the most humble thing.That each ant is unique and that each ant shares this prodigious and inextricable adventure that is the cosmic process, that is the universe—why not suppose that each one serves an end? I have written a poem about this.but what else remains for an 85-year-old to do but repeat himself? Or try variations, which comes to the same thing.FERRARI.Of course, precious variations.But, Borges, seen this way, as you evoke it, love could be a form of revelation.BORGES.Yes, it’s the moment when a person reveals himself to another.Macedonio said, how can I put it politely? that the sexual act is a greeting that two souls exchange.FERRARI.That’s magnificent.BORGES.A splendid saying.FERRARI.It’s obvious that he had attained that deep understanding of love.BORGES.Yes, he said to me that it was a greeting, the greeting of one soul by another.FERRARI.Naturally, in this case, love, as it should, precedes sex.BORGES.Of course, well said.Yes, sex is one of the means.Another could be perhaps a word or a look or something shared—a moment of silence, a view of the sunset.These could also be forms of love [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]