tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11047330.post3536200167377470897..comments2023-10-24T21:04:32.920+03:00Comments on INTELect si ARTa: about 'borges'peromanestehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18138498600151502565noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11047330.post-84561980554019097632013-09-25T04:33:35.412+03:002013-09-25T04:33:35.412+03:00TheaKantorska
@MWnyc
Just the first and last p...TheaKantorska <br /><br />@MWnyc <br /><br />Just the first and last paragraph of his not entirely unpolitical essay 'Our poor individualism' (Buenos Aires, 1946):<br /><br /> "There is no end to the illusions of patriotism. In the first century of our era, Plutarch mocked those who declared that the Athenian moon is better than the Corinthian moon; Milton, in the seventeenth, observed that God is in the habit of revealing Himself first to His Englishmen; Fichte, at the beginning of the nineteenth, declared that to have character and to be German are obviously one and the same thing. Here in Argentina we are teeming with nationalists, driven, they claim, by the worthy or innocent resolve of promoting the best traits of the Argentine people. Yet they ignore the Argentine people; in their polemics they prefer to define them as a function of some external fact, the Spanish conquistadors, say, or an imaginary Catholic tradition, or "Saxon imperialism."<br /><br />...<br /><br />"Nationalism seeks to captivate us with the vision of an infinitely tiresome State; this utopia, once established on earth, would have the providential virtue of making everyone yearn for, and finally build, its antithesis."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />prometheus1 <br /><br />This is a rather sad portrait indeed. To reduce Borges to this is to know very little about him, his writing, his country or its history. What does Mr. O'Connell want him to say, exactly?<br /><br />The parochialism here reminds me of something a wise teacher once said: how extraordinary it is for a country like Argentina to have produced a Borges. The best the USA can do is an Updike. <br /><br /><br />TheaKantorska<br /><br />@prometheus1 <br /><br />You are right, although Borges would have possibly couched your opinion in scathingly softer terms ("the author's ignorance of Borges'/I's work approaches perfection", or somesuch). Skipping through Borges' reviews of the writings of General Ludendorff and the drawings of Elvira Bauer, as well as his view of the Argentinian Germanophiles at that time, I ask myself: What is wrong with being an anti-antisemite for aesthetic and logical reasons, instead of political ones? <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11047330.post-48099905165931031512013-09-25T04:31:42.335+03:002013-09-25T04:31:42.335+03:00Summumbonum
Borges was the observer, thinker, an...Summumbonum <br /><br />Borges was the observer, thinker, and "dreamer" that he described himself as, not some second-rate political pugilist on a soapbox, or a cable news personality. This cursory, by-numbers hatchet job on his work (itself generally full of reflection, experimentation, and pathos) on the basis of a few ironic soundbites only underscores his point about the immateriality of public appearances. Still true in 2013.<br /><br />In addition to the other examples mentioned below, Borges demonstrated his disappointing failure to be a misogynist in his translating the entirety of A Room of One's Own, and in his exceedingly high estimation of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji. There are other examples of course.<br /><br />Finally, for someone who has personally suffered under Peron to be more interested in Plutarch than in Peron, to find the latter merely ridiculous or illusory, that is a statement more meaningful and a greater blow for freedom than any political tweet or editorial reciting the mantra of the moment.<br /><br /><br />Shoot_the_Critic <br /><br />You misunderstand what it meant for Borges to be a-political. It might be similar to the way Nietzsche was "extra-moral". But it cannot be explained in a short article like this, which also happens to be off the mark in many ways. He did, indeed, express the "ramifying complexity of his own century" but in a more subtle, highly attuned way that is perhaps beyond your comprehension. And, by the way, he wrote one of the great feminist short stories in "Emma Zunz." <br /><br /><br /><br />MWnyc<br /><br />"Borges’s refusal to engage with politics wouldn't have been nearly so remarkable had he not lived through two World Wars and, in his own country, six coups d’états and three dictatorships."<br /><br />On the contrary, Borges's refusal to engage with politics is exactly the reason he was able to remain in his home producing great literature, rather than getting zapped with a couple hundred volts in a dark basement or getting drugged and thrown into the Atlantic.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11047330.post-11900693633134532542013-09-25T04:30:03.092+03:002013-09-25T04:30:03.092+03:00vkladchik
O'Connell's expression of disa...vkladchik <br /><br />O'Connell's expression of disappointment at Borges' failure to be more political is puzzling, since Borges was not, as a matter of fact, silent about politics. Either O'Connell doesn't know this, or - more likely - O'Connell simply finds Borges' politics distasteful. Borges called himself a classical liberal and was vocal about his disdain for communism and statism in general. Coupled with O'Connell's lament about the absence of women, it seems pretty obvious that what's going on here is your garden-variety ideological tut-tutting: Mr. Borges is not toeing the PC line!<br /><br />In other words, O'Connell's real complaint is that Borges wasn't a bien-pensant liberal in the New Yorker mold. <br /><br /><br /><br />BMerker <br /><br />By stipulating that every writer, to be taken seriously, must <br /><br />1. be interested in and write about WOMEN<br /><br />2. be interested in and write about POLITICS<br /><br />and telling us that Borges did not, Marc O'Connell tells us nothing of any consequence about Borges oeuvre but something significant about himself, namely that he toes the line of current trends and intellectual fashions. That this is likely to make him ill equipped to inform us about a writer who did not is roundly born out by his announcement of two books on Borges. <br /><br /><br /><br />IWuvSnugglyAnimals <br /><br />I agree that Borges doesn't have a lot women in his fiction, or a woman's perspective. But that's not so much a "flaw" as a difference in subject matter. Likewise in seeming a-political. Borges is concerned with The Big Issues, time and space, metaphysics, infinities and labyrinths. This isn't saying that politics is narrow-minded, but its main concern is with human beings and our time and place. The transcendent is another matter. If Borges were to write like George Orwell, with as strong a political slant, his fiction would simply not be Borgesian any longer; it would be the writing of someone else. Our society is very concerned with politics, and of course politics matters, because of the injustice Mark O'Connell spoke of in Hitler. But we already know Hitler is wrong, don't we? We don't need a more overt denouncement of Hitler than what Borges said, to know Hitler was an evil man. It's so obvious that Hitler was evil, it's not even worth saying.<br /><br />Why should we condemn a writer for his subject matter? Literary criticism has been looking for easy political truths in fiction for far too long. It doesn't usually want to address The Big Themes that lurk in Borges' labyrinths and mirrors.<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com