terça-feira, dezembro 28, 2010

With Borges (an excerpt)

"FOR BORGES, THE core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end. Books restored the past. 'In time,' he said to me, 'every poem becomes an elegy.' He had no patience with faddish literary theories and blamed French literature in particular for concentrating not on books but on schools and côteries. Adolfo Bioy Casares once told me that Borges was the only men he knew who, concerning literature, 'never gave in to convention, custom or laziness'. He was a haphazard reader who felt content, at times, with plot summaries and articles in encyclopaedias, and who confessed that, even though he had never finished Finnegans Wake, he happily lectured on Joyce's linguistic monument. He never felt obliged to read a book down to the last page. His library (which like that of every other reader was also his autobiography) reflected his belief in chance and the rules of anarchy. 'I am a pleasure-seeking reader: I've never allowed my sense of duty to have a hand in such a personal matter as that of buying books.'"
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MANGUEL, Alberto. 'With Borges'. London, Telegram, 2006. p. 31-32.

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