The Book of Sand, by Jorge Luis Borges
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianNotes on the Book of Sand (short story collection)
I am amused by Borges's tendency to refer to himself as Borges. It seems to be because he had a view of himself externally as A Writer, even An Institution, the works viewing himself externally, as a character, the story where he meets his younger self, a different person with whom he has difficulty relating.
Am fascinated by two points in this story: the way the author convinces his younger self that this is not a dream, but a genuine encounter with the future, by reading a line from Hugo (L'hydre-Univers tordant son corps écaillé d'astres), which both agree they could have never have written. If you are an author, you cannot create a character who is a better writer than you, y/n?
The other point: "the supernatural, if it occurs twice, ceases to be terrifying" A magician does not perform the same trick twice? The difference between the horror genre and the fantasy genre?
Sabina claimed that all authors repeat themselves, and this certainly is true in the case of Borges (he even refers to this), but it is also true that one doesn't mind much, in his case.
Some motifs: the secret society of the elect (or not; sometimes the elect is all of humanity, yet the idea of the cult, the sect, the conspiracy echoes all through Borges work: vaguely Chestertonian?), the double, the world of knife-fighting toughs, the labyrinth, the coin, heresy, and others.
"Climbing to the upper floor, I noticed that the wall s were papered in the style of William Morris, in a deep red, with a design of fruits and birds intertwined. Ulrike went on ahead. The dark room was low, with a slanted ceiling. The awaited bed was duplicated in a dim mirror, and the polished mahogany reminded me of the looking glass of Scriptures. Ulrike had already undressed. She called me by my real name - Javier. I felt that the snow was falling faster. Now there were no longer any mirrors or furniture. There was no sword between us. Time passed like the sands. In the darkness, centuries old, love flowed, and for the first and last time I possessed Ulrike's image."
(Exactly where is the sword between in bed from? I seem to recall it from medieval romances, but is it really from Scandinavean epics?)
Borges has a thing for Scandinavian women. Well, to be fair he also has a thing for Scandinavian epics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule Huh.
Some of these stories are actually science fiction, IMHO. Well, obviously an open homage to Lovecraft would qualify as genre, yet in some ways (perhaps because I've been recalling Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, where beings from other planets resemble demon and beings from other planes), that and the utopia story give off a geometrical feel more like science fiction than fantasy.
The latter section, The Gold of the Tigers, is a compilation of some of his later poems.
"A language is a tradition, a way of grasping reality, not an arbitrary assemblage of symbols."
"A writer can conceive a fable, Kipling acknowledged, without grasping its moral."
"The mission of the poet should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force. All verse should have two obligations: to communicate a precise instance and to touch us physically, as the presence of the sea does."
A Tanka:
"Not to have fallen,
like others of my lineage,
cut down in battle.
To be in the fruitless night
he who counts the syllables."
Too long for me to quote, but I also like Borges's poem El centinela (The watcher). Also, "To the Nightingale": in which the entire literary history of the bird is alluded to. Actually, I haven't heard the song of the nightingale.
The White Deer
Out of what country ballad of green England,
or Persian etching, out of what secret region
of nights and days enclosed in our lost past
came the white deer I dreamed of in the dawn?
A moment's flash. I saw it cross the meadow
and vanish in the golden afternoon,
a lithe, illusory creature, half-remembered
and half-imagined, deer with a single side.
The presences which rule this curious world
have let me dream of you but not command you.
Perhaps in a recess of the unplumbed future,
again I will find you, white deer from my dream.
I too am dream, lasting a few days longer
than that bright dream of whiteness and green fields.
Reading the poems after reading Borges short stories is kind of like cheating. Having contemplated, in a way, having read the explications of Borges's mind, within the stories, the recurring motifs and images at once became clearer. The 'deer with the single side' is the coin of Odin for which the woodkeeper murders the beggar king, and maybe through that Borges's coins and other talismanic objects.
I am amused by Borges's tendency to refer to himself as Borges. It seems to be because he had a view of himself externally as A Writer, even An Institution, the works viewing himself externally, as a character, the story where he meets his younger self, a different person with whom he has difficulty relating.
Am fascinated by two points in this story: the way the author convinces his younger self that this is not a dream, but a genuine encounter with the future, by reading a line from Hugo (L'hydre-Univers tordant son corps écaillé d'astres), which both agree they could have never have written. If you are an author, you cannot create a character who is a better writer than you, y/n?
The other point: "the supernatural, if it occurs twice, ceases to be terrifying" A magician does not perform the same trick twice? The difference between the horror genre and the fantasy genre?
Sabina claimed that all authors repeat themselves, and this certainly is true in the case of Borges (he even refers to this), but it is also true that one doesn't mind much, in his case.
Some motifs: the secret society of the elect (or not; sometimes the elect is all of humanity, yet the idea of the cult, the sect, the conspiracy echoes all through Borges work: vaguely Chestertonian?), the double, the world of knife-fighting toughs, the labyrinth, the coin, heresy, and others.
"Climbing to the upper floor, I noticed that the wall s were papered in the style of William Morris, in a deep red, with a design of fruits and birds intertwined. Ulrike went on ahead. The dark room was low, with a slanted ceiling. The awaited bed was duplicated in a dim mirror, and the polished mahogany reminded me of the looking glass of Scriptures. Ulrike had already undressed. She called me by my real name - Javier. I felt that the snow was falling faster. Now there were no longer any mirrors or furniture. There was no sword between us. Time passed like the sands. In the darkness, centuries old, love flowed, and for the first and last time I possessed Ulrike's image."
(Exactly where is the sword between in bed from? I seem to recall it from medieval romances, but is it really from Scandinavean epics?)
Borges has a thing for Scandinavian women. Well, to be fair he also has a thing for Scandinavian epics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule Huh.
Some of these stories are actually science fiction, IMHO. Well, obviously an open homage to Lovecraft would qualify as genre, yet in some ways (perhaps because I've been recalling Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, where beings from other planets resemble demon and beings from other planes), that and the utopia story give off a geometrical feel more like science fiction than fantasy.
The latter section, The Gold of the Tigers, is a compilation of some of his later poems.
"A language is a tradition, a way of grasping reality, not an arbitrary assemblage of symbols."
"A writer can conceive a fable, Kipling acknowledged, without grasping its moral."
"The mission of the poet should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force. All verse should have two obligations: to communicate a precise instance and to touch us physically, as the presence of the sea does."
A Tanka:
"Not to have fallen,
like others of my lineage,
cut down in battle.
To be in the fruitless night
he who counts the syllables."
Too long for me to quote, but I also like Borges's poem El centinela (The watcher). Also, "To the Nightingale": in which the entire literary history of the bird is alluded to. Actually, I haven't heard the song of the nightingale.
The White Deer
Out of what country ballad of green England,
or Persian etching, out of what secret region
of nights and days enclosed in our lost past
came the white deer I dreamed of in the dawn?
A moment's flash. I saw it cross the meadow
and vanish in the golden afternoon,
a lithe, illusory creature, half-remembered
and half-imagined, deer with a single side.
The presences which rule this curious world
have let me dream of you but not command you.
Perhaps in a recess of the unplumbed future,
again I will find you, white deer from my dream.
I too am dream, lasting a few days longer
than that bright dream of whiteness and green fields.
Reading the poems after reading Borges short stories is kind of like cheating. Having contemplated, in a way, having read the explications of Borges's mind, within the stories, the recurring motifs and images at once became clearer. The 'deer with the single side' is the coin of Odin for which the woodkeeper murders the beggar king, and maybe through that Borges's coins and other talismanic objects.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 01:42 am (UTC)Actually, it's both: in "Tristan and Iseult", king Mark finds the lovers asleep in a forest with that sword separating them (which, come to think of it, doesn't make much sense, seeing how their love was consummated waaay before that, right at the beginning of the tale); but there's also Brunhilde & Siegfried from Nibelungenlied, which I don't remember well, but AFAIR, the sword was more for Siegfried's protection, as Brunhilde kicked ass :)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 02:35 am (UTC)(doesn't seem very practical though... what if you roll over on it? ouchy)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 12:10 pm (UTC)(ouchy indeed - but it all ended badly anyways, in the emoporny final showdown of anime scale XD )
no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 02:54 pm (UTC)