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Quote by Jorge Luis Borges

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The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

This book delves into the rich tapestry of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, intertwining them with the metaphor of infinite sand to explore themes of time, memory, and the human condition. more

Author

Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer, poet, and literary critic. His works are known for their unique fantasy and philosophical thinking, which have had a profound impact on 20th-century literature. more

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“I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. 'This was my country and it might be yet,' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: 'But something came between it and the sun.' This couplet he claimed (I have never been able to locate it) was from Edmund Blunden, whose gnarled hand I had been so excited to shake all those years ago, but it was not the Videla junta that Borges meant by the allusion. It was the pre-existing rule of Juan Perón, which he felt had depraved and corrupted Argentine society. I didn't disagree with this at all—and Perón had victimized Borges's mother and sister as well as having Borges himself fired from his job at the National Library—but it was nonetheless sad to hear the old man saying that he heartily preferred the new uniformed regime, as being one of 'gentlemen' as opposed to 'pimps.' This was a touch like listening to Evelyn Waugh at his most liverish and bufferish. (It was also partly redeemed by a piece of learned philology or etymology concerning the Buenos Aires dockside slang for pimp: canfinflero. 'A canfinfla, you see,' said Borges with perfect composure, 'is a pussy or more exactly a cunt. So a canfinflero is a trafficker in cunt: in Anglo-Saxon we might say a 'cunter."' Had not the very tango itself been evolved in a brothel in 1880? Borges could talk indefinitely about this sort of thing, perhaps in revenge for having had an oversolicitous mother who tyrannized him all his life.)”

ArgentinaJorge Luis BorgesEvelyn WaughJorge Rafael VidelaBawdEdmund BlundenJuan PeronLingustics
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Todos los hechos pueden ocurrirle a un hombre, desde el instante de su nacimiento hasta el de su muerte, han sido prefijados por el. Asi, toda negligencia es deliberada, todo casual encuentro una cita, toda humillacion una penitencia, todo fracaso una misteriosa victoria, toda muerte un suicidio. No hay consuelo mas habil que el pensamiento de que hemos elegido nuestras desdichas.”

Jorge Luis BorgesEl Aleph
Book:The Aleph and Other Stories
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“The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day—terrified of letting him slip and tumble—I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the following morning but I had to decline. I pleaded truthfully that I was booked on a plane for Chile. 'I am so sorry,' said this courteous old genius. 'But may I then offer you a gift in return for your company?' I naturally protested with all the energy of an English middle-class upbringing: couldn't hear of such a thing; pleasure and privilege all mine; no question of accepting any present. He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. 'You will remember,' he said, 'the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.' And he then recited the following: What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed? The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)—'Inclusiveness'—may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. I was mumbling my thanks when he said, again with utter composure: 'While you are in Chile do you plan a call on General Pinochet?' I replied with what I hoped was equivalent aplomb that I had no such intention. 'A pity,' came the response. 'He is a true gentleman. He was recently kind enough to award me a literary prize.' It wasn't the ideal note on which to bid Borges farewell, but it was an excellent illustration of something else I was becoming used to noticing—that in contrast or corollary to what Colin MacCabe had said to me in Lisbon, sometimes it was also the right people who took the wrong line.”

PoetryJorge Luis BorgesPinochetDante Gabriel Rossetti
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“As coisas A bengala, as modeas, o chaveiro, A dócil fechadura, as tardias Notas que não lerão os poucos dias Que me restam, os naipes e o tabuleiro, Um livro e em suas páginas a desvanecida Violeta, monumento de uma tarde Sem dúvida inesquecível e já esquecida, O rubo espelho ocidental em que arde Uma ilusória aurora. Quantas coisas, Limas, umbrais, atlas, taças, cravos, Servem-nos, como tácitos escravos, cegas e estranhamente sigilosas! Durarão para além de nosso esquecimento Nunca saberão que partimos em um momento.”

PoesiaJorge Luis Borges
Book:Elogio de la sombra
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