Horhe Luis Borhes

Justina

Obećava
Poruka
53
Borges and I


The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borhes from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stivenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books that in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.


Dakle? :)
 
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Horhe Luis Borhes

Pretnja

To je ljubav. Pokušaću da se sakrijem ili pobegnem.
Rastu zidovi njene tamnice, kao u strašnom snu. Lepa maska se promenila, ali, kao i uvek, jednistvena je. Čemu moji talismani: bavljenje književnošću, nepouzdana erudicija, učenje reči koje je koristio oštri sever da opeva svoja mora i svoje mačeve, vedrina prijateljstva, galerije Biblioteke, obične stvari, navike, mlada ljubav moje majke, ratničke seni predaka, bezvremena noć, ukus sna?
Biti sa tobom ili ne biti sa tobom je mera moga vremena.
Već se vrč razbija na izvoru, već čovek ustaje na cvrkut ptice, potamneli su oni koji gledaju sa prozora, ali tama nije donela spokoj.
To je, već znam, ljubav: nemir i olakšanje kad čujem tvoj glas, čekanje i sećanje, užas življenja u budućnosti.
To je ljubav sa svojim mitologijama, sa svojim nepotrebnim malim vradžbinama.
Ima jedan ulični ugao kojim se ne usuđujem da prođem.
Vojske me već opkoljavaju, horde.
(Ova soba je nestvarna; ona je nije videla.)
Ime jedne žene me odaje.
Boli me jedna žena svuda po telu.
 
Tigar


Hodao je tamo-amo, nezan i koban, ispunjen beskrajnom snagom, sa one strane cvrstih gvozdenih shipki i svi smo ga gledali. Bio je jutrosnji tigar, iz Palerma, i tigar sa istoka, i Blejkov tigar, i Igoov, i Shir Kan, i tigrovi koji su bili i koji ce biti, i isto tako tigar arhetip, jer jednika, u njegovom slucaju, jeste citava vrsta. Pomislili smo da je krvolocan i lep. Nora, devojcica, rekla je: Stvoren je za ljubav.
 
ARGUMENTUM ORNITHOLOGICUM
Zatvaram oči i vidim jato ptica. Vizija traje jednu sekundu, moda i manje; ne znam koliko sam ptica video. Da li je njihov broj bio određen ili neodređen? Taj problem obuhvata i problem postojanja Boga. Ako Bog postoji, broj je određen, jer Bog zna koliko sam ptica video. Ako Bog ne postoji, broj je neodređen, jer niko nije mogao da ih izbroji. U tom slučaju video sam, recimo, manje od deset, a više od jedne ptice, ali nisam video devet, osam, sedam, šest, pet, četiri, tri ili dve ptice. Video sam broj između deset i jedan, koji nije devet, osam, sedam, šest, pet i tako dalje. Taj celi broj je nezamisliv; dakle Bog postoji.
 
The Wall and the Books

He, whose long wall the wand’ring
Tartar bounds …
Dunciad, II, 76


I read not long ago that the man who ordered the building of the almost infinite Chinese Wall was the first Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who also decreed the burning of all the books that had been written before his time. The fact that the two vast undertakings – the construction of five or six hundred leagues of stone to ward off the barbarians, and the rigorous abolition of history, or rather, of the past – had proceeded from the same person and had come to be regarded as expressions of his character, unaccountably satisfied and, at the same time, disturbed me. To investigate the reasons for that emotion is the purpose of this note.

Historically speaking, there is nothing abstruse in the two measures, Shin Huang Ti, King of Tsin, who lived at the time of the wars of Hannibal, conquered the Six Kingdoms and put an end to the feudal system. He built the wall, because walls were defenses; he burned the books because his opponents were invoking them to praise the emperors who had preceded him. Burning books and erecting fortifications are the usual occupations of princes; Shih Huang Ti was unusual in the scale on which he worked. At any rate, that is the opinion of some Sinologists, but I believe those two acts are more than an exaggeration or hyperbole of trivial orders. It commonly occurs that an orchard or a garden is enclosed within a wall, but not a whole empire. Nor is it a small matter to induce the most traditional of races to renounce the memory of its mythical or real past. The Chinese had had three thousand years of chronology (and during those years, the yellow Emperor and Chuang-tze and Confucius and Lao-tzu) when Shih Huang Ti ordered that history should begin with him.

Shih Huang Ti had exiled his mother because she was a libertine; the orthodox saw nothing but impiety in his stern justice. Perhaps Shih Huang Ti wanted to destroy the canonical books because they were his accusers; perhaps Shih Huang Ti wanted to abolish the whole past in order to abolish a single memory: the memory of his mother’s dishonor. (It was not unlike the case of king in Judea who, seeking to kill one child, ordered that all children should be killed.) That is a valid conjecture, but it tells us nothing of the wall, the either aspect of the myth. According to historians, Shih Huang Ti forbade the mention of death and searched for the elixir of immortality. He became a recluse in a figurative palace, which has as many rooms as the number of days in the year. Those facts suggest that the wall in space and the fire in time were magic barriers to halt death. Baruch Spinoza has written hat all things desire the continuance of their being; perhaps the Emperor and his magicians believed that immortality was intrinsic and that decay could not enter a closed sphere. Perhaps the Emperor wanted to re-create the beginning of time and called himself First in order to be really first. Perhaps he called himself Huang Ti in an endeavor to identify himself with that legendary Huang Ti, the writing and the compass and who, according to the Book of Rites, gave things their true names; for Shih Huang Ti boasted, on inscriptions that sill exist, that all things under his reign had names that befitted them. He dreamed of founding an immortal dynasty, he decreed that his heirs should be called Second Emperor, Third Emperor, Fourth Emperor, and so on to infinity.

I have spoken of a magic plan; we might also suppose that building the wall and burning the books were not simultaneous acts. And so, depending on the order we chose, we should have the image of a king who began by destroying and then resigned himself to conserving; or the image of a disillusioned king who destroyed what he had previously defended. Both conjectures are dramatic, but as fast as I know there is not historical truth in either. Herbert Allen Giles relates that anyone who concealed books was branded with a hot iron and condemned to work on the mammoth wall until the day of his death. That favors or tolerates another interpretation. Perhaps the wall was a metaphor; perhaps Shih Huang Ti condemned those who adored the past to a work as vast as the past, as stupid and as useless. Perhaps the wall was a kind of challenge and Shih Huang Ti thought,

“Men love the past and I am powerless against that love, and so are my executioners; but some day there will be a man who feels as I do, and he will destroy the wall, as I have destroyed the books, and he will erase my memory and will be my shadow and my mirror and will not know it.”

Perhaps Shih Huand Ti walled his empire because he knew that it was fragile, and destroyed the books because he knew that they were sacred books (another name for the books that teach what the whole universe or each man’s conscience teaches). Perhaps the burning of the libraries and the building of the wall are operations that secretly nullify each other.

The tenacious wall, which at this moment, and always, projects its system of shadows over lands I shall never see, is the shadow of a Caesar who ordered the most reverent of nations to burn its past; and that idea – apart from the many conjectures it permits – is probably what we find so touching. (Its principal virtue may be in the contrast between construction and destruction on an enormous scale.) We could generalize, and infer that all forms posses’ virtue in themselves and not in a conjectural ‘content’. That would support the theory of Benedeto Croce; in 1877 Pater had already stated that all the arts aspire to resemble music, which is pure form. Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces molded by time, certain twilights and certain places – all these are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something; that imminence of a revelation that in not yet produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality.

Buenos Aires, 1950
 
Borhes i ja

Drugome, Borhesu, nešto se događa. Ja hodam Buenos Airesom i ponekad zastanem, možda mahinalno da bih pregledao luk nekog predvorja i gvozdenu rešetku neke kapije. O Borhesu saznajem preko pošte a njegovo ime nalazim na listi univerzitetskih profesora ili nekom bigorafskom rečniku. Volim peščane časovnike, mape, tipografiju 18v., etimologiju, ukus kafe i Stivensovu prozu; onaj drugi ima iste sklonosti, ali sa nekom taštinom koja ih pretvara u osobine jednog glumca. Bilo bi preterano tvrditi da su naši odnosi neprijateljski. Ja živim i prepuštam se življenju da bi Borhes mogao da smišlja svoju književnost i ta književnost me opravdava. Rado priznajem da je uspeo da napiše nekoliko stranica od vrednosti, ali te stranice ne mogu da me spasu, možda zato što ono što je dobro ne pripada nikome.
(dalje me mrzi)
 
Il' je ovaj pretrazivac glup, al' temu o njemu ne nadjoh. :???:
Dakle, dragi moji, ko ce da caska na temu Borhesa bice mi drago da vas citam, izabrala sam da pisem o njegovim pricama u svom poslednjem radu na faksu.
Yupiiii! :-D
 
Obozavam Borhesa!
kupila sam na sajmu knjizicu Alberta Mangela - Sa Borhesom, koji mu je citao kad je oslepeo. sad se meracim da je procitam. Volim Borhesovu poeziju, ali posebne su mu kratke price.....
 
one of my favourites

Tigar

Hodao je tamo-amo, nezan i koban, ispunjen beskrajnom snagom, sa one strane cvrstih gvozdenih shipki i svi smo ga gledali. Bio je jutrosnji tigar, iz Palerma, i tigar sa istoka, i Blejkov tigar, i Igoov, i Shir Kan, i tigrovi koji su bili i koji ce biti, i isto tako tigar arhetip, jer jednika, u njegovom slucaju, jeste citava vrsta. Pomislili smo da je krvolocan i lep. Nora, devojcica, rekla je: Stvoren je za ljubav.
 
loonie:
Tigar

Hodao je tamo-amo, nezan i koban, ispunjen beskrajnom snagom, sa one strane cvrstih gvozdenih shipki i svi smo ga gledali. Bio je jutrosnji tigar, iz Palerma, i tigar sa istoka, i Blejkov tigar, i Igoov, i Shir Kan, i tigrovi koji su bili i koji ce biti, i isto tako tigar arhetip, jer jednika, u njegovom slucaju, jeste citava vrsta. Pomislili smo da je krvolocan i lep. Nora, devojcica, rekla je: Stvoren je za ljubav.

TIGAR

Tigre, tigre, plame jak
Što sijevaš kroz šumski mrak,
Koji vječni dlan, i kad,
Stvori taj tvoj strašni sklad?

S kojeg neba, ili dna,
Žar zjenica tvojih sja?
Čiji polet i dlan sam
Smjede taj osvojit plam?

Koja snaga, pokret strog
Splete žice srca tvog?
Kada život bje mu dan;
Koje noge? koji dlan?

Lanac? čekić? koja peć
Um tvoj skova, tko će reć?
I nakovanj? koji hvat
Grozu će mu sputat znat?

Kad na nebo kao mač
Pade zvijezda sjaj i plač,
Da l' to osmijeh onom gna
Što s tobom i Janje zda?

Tigre, tigre
, plame jak
Što sijevaš kroz šumski mrak,
Koji vječni dlan, i kad,
Stvori taj tvoj strašni sklad?

Borhes je napravio u stvari aluziju na Tigra Vilijama Blejka. Izvor za svoja dela Borhes je nalazio u drugim knjizevnim delima. Smatrao je da je knjizevno stvaranje vise citanje nego pisanje. Svet knjizevnosti je za njega bezgranicni prostor u kome ne postoji vreme. Odatle je uzimao gradju. Citanje drugog dela inspirise ga na stvaranje novog. Kao na ovom primeru. ;-)
 
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