Jorge Luis Borges Read Free

was just saying, for example, well, “Hercules attempted twelve labors” or Hercules killed the Nemean Lion.”
    BURGIN: So you must have been reading those books when you were very young.
    BORGES: Yes, of course, I’m very fond of mythology. Well, it was nothing, it was just a, it must have been some fifteen pages long … with the story of the Golden Fleece and the Labyrinth and Hercules—he was my favourite—and then something about the loves of the gods, and the tale of Troy. That was the first thing I ever wrote. I remember it was written in a very short and crabbed handwriting because I wasvery shortsighted. That’s all I can tell you about it. In fact, I think my mother kept a copy for some time, but as we’ve travelled all over the world, the copy got lost, which is as it should be, of course, because we thought nothing whatever about it, except for the fact that it was being written by a small boy. And then I read a chapter or two of
Don Quixote
, and then, of course, I tried to write archaic Spanish. And that saved me from trying to do the same thing some fifteen years afterwards, no? Because I had already attempted that game and failed at it.
    BURGIN: Do you remember much from your childhood?
    BORGES: You see, I was always very shortsighted, so when I think of my childhood, I think of books and the illustrations in books. I suppose I can remember every illustration in
Huckleberry Finn
and
Life on the Mississippi
and
Roughing It
and so on. And the illustrations in the
Arabian Nights
. And Dickens—Cruikshank and Fisk illustrations. Of course, well, I also have memories of being in the country, of riding horseback in the estancia on the Uruguay River in the Argentine pampas. I remember my parents and the house with the large patio and so on. But what I chiefly seem to remember are small and minute things. Because those were the ones that I could really see. The illustrations in the encyclopedia and the dictionary, I remember them quite well.
Chambers Encyclopaedia
or the American edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
with the engravings of animals and pyramids.
    BURGIN: So you remember the books of your childhood better than the people.
    BORGES: Yes, because I could see them.
    BURGIN: You’re not in touch with any people that you knew from your childhood now? Have you had any lifelong friends?
    BORGES: Well, some school companions from Buenos Aires and then, of course, my mother, she’s ninety-one; my sister who’s three years, three or four years, younger than I am, she’s a painter. And then, most of my relatives—most of them have died.
    BURGIN: Had you read much before you started to write or did your writing and reading develop together?
    BORGES: I’ve always been a greater reader than a writer. But, of course, I began to lose my eyesight definitely in 1954, and since then I’ve done my reading by proxy, no? Well, of course, when one cannot read, then one’s mind works in a different way. In fact, it might be said that there is a certain benefit in being unable to read, because you think that time flows in a different way. When I had my eyesight, then if I had to spend say a half an hour without doing anything, I would go mad. Because I had to be reading. But now, I can be alone for quite a long time, I don’t mind long railroad journeys, I don’t mind being alone in a hotel or walking down the street, because,well, I won’t say that I am thinking all the time because that would be bragging.
    I think I am able to live with a lack of occupation. I don’t have to be talking to people or doing things. If somebody had gone out, and I had come here and found the house empty, then I would have been quite content to sit down and let two or three hours pass and go out for a short walk, but I wouldn’t feel especially unhappy or lonely. That happens to all people who go blind.
    BURGIN: What are you thinking about during that time—a specific problem or …
    BORGES: I could or I might not be