When a book begins, as Kafka’s Metamorphosis does, by proposing: “Gregory Samsa awoke one morning after a restless sleep to find himself in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect,” the reader, any reader, has no other recourse but to decide as quickly as possible on one of two equally intelligent responses: either throw away the book or read to the end without stopping. Knowing that countless bored readers would decide on the comfortable first solution, Borges does not overwhelm us by telegraphing his first punch. He is more elegant, or more cautious. Like Swift, who begins Gulliver’s Travels by innocently telling us that the protagonist is merely the third son of a harmless small landowner, Borges introduces us to the marvels of Tlön by going to a villa in Ramos Mejía in the company of a friend, who is so real that at the sight of an unsettling mirror he happens to “remember” something like this: “Mirrors and copulation are abominable because they increase the number of men.” We know that this friend, Adolfo Bioy Casares, exists; that he is a man of flesh and blood who writes fantasies; but if this were not so, merely attributing this sentence to him would justify his existence. The horrifying, realistic allegories of Kafka begin with an absurd or impossible event and then immediately relate all the effects and consequences of this event with calm logic and a realism that is difficult to accept without the reader’s prior good faith or credulity; yet one always has the conviction that this is pure symbol, something necessarily imagined. But when one reads Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, the most natural response is simply to consider it a rather tedious scientific essay that is attempting to demonstrate, not very emphatically, the existence of an unknown planet. Many people will go on believing this until the day they die. Some may have their suspicions and will ingenuously repeat the words of that bishop, described by Rex Warner, who boldly declared that as far as he was concerned the events narrated in Gulliver’s Travels were nothing but a pack of lies. A friend of mine was so disoriented by the collection The Garden of Forking Paths that he confessed that what attracted him most about the story “The Library of Babel” was the stroke of genius revealed by using an epigraph from The Anatomy of Melancholy, a book, according to him, that was clearly apocryphal. I showed him the volume by Burton and thought I had proved to him that all the rest was invented, but from that moment on he opted to believe everything or absolutely nothing, I can’t remember which. Factors that contribute to the effect of authenticity in Borges are the inclusion in the story of real people like Alfonso Reyes, presumably real people like George Berkeley, well-known, familiar places, works that may not be readily available but whose existence is in no way improbable, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which one can attribute anything; the serene, journalistic style, in the manner of Defoe; the consistent solidity in his use of adjectives, because for countless readers nothing is more convincing than the precise placement of a good adjective.
And, finally, the great problem: The temptation to imitate him was almost irresistible, but imitating him was pointless. Anyone can, with impunity, imitate Conrad, Greene, Durrell, but not Joyce, not Borges. It is too easy, and too obvious.
The encounter with Borges never occurs without consequences, both advantageous and disadvantageous. I have listed some of the things that can happen.
1. You pass him and don’t realize it (disadvantageous).
2. You pass him, go back, and follow him for a while to see what he is doing (advantageous).
3. You pass him, go back, and follow him forever (disadvantageous).
4. You discover that you are a fool and have never had an idea that was even moderately worthwhile (advantageous).
5. You discover that you are intelligent, for you like Borges (advantageous).
6. You are dazzled by the fable of Achilles and the Tortoise and believe that it contains the answer to everything (disadvantageous).
7. You discover the infinite and eternity (advantageous).
8. You are concerned with the infinite and eternity (advantageous).
9. You believe in the infinite and eternity (disadvantageous).
10. You give up writing (advantageous).
FECUNDITY
Between the provocation of hunger and the passion of hatred, Humanity cannot think about the infinite. Humanity is like a great tree full of flies buzzing angrily beneath a stormy sky, and in that buzz of hate, the deep, divine voice of the universe cannot be heard.
Today I feel well, like a Balzac; I am finishing this line.
YOU TELL SARABIA THAT I SAID HE SHOULD HIRE HER AND PLACE HER HERE OR WHEREVER, THAT I’LL EXPLAIN LATER
It is known that the ancient gentiles worshiped the vilest, most contemptible brutes. The goat was the deity of one nation, the tortoise of another, of a third, the beetle, of a fourth, the fly.
To the memory of the Wright Brothers
It was late when the civil servant decided to follow the flight of the fly again. And the fly, as if he knew himself to be the object of scrutiny, took great pains in the programmed execution of his acrobatics, buzzing to himself but always aware that he was a common ordinary housefly, and that among the many possible ways he could shine, buzzing could not compare to the increasingly wide and elegant circles he was flying around the civil servant who, on seeing them, remembered dimly but insistently and as if he were denying it all to himself how he had been obliged to circle around other civil servants in order to reach his present high position, and without making too much noise either, and perhaps with less joy and more somersaults but with a little more brilliance if brilliance is what you could call, with no sarcasm, what he had achieved before and during his ascent to the heights of public office.
Then, overcoming the sultry heat, he went to the window, opened it firmly, and with two or three brusque movements of his right hand and forearm, forced the fly to leave. Outside, the warm breeze gently shook the treetops, while in the distance the last golden clouds sank definitively to the bottom of the afternoon.
Back at his desk, exhausted by his efforts, he pressed one of five or six buttons and, leaning comfortably on his left elbow (thanks to a clever mechanism in the swivel chair), waited to hear
“Yes sir?”
so that he could order, almost at the same time
“Have Carranza come in”
whom he quickly saw half-serious, half-smiling, pushing
the door in
coming in
and then turning his back tactfully to bend over the knob to close the door again with all necessary care so that it would make no noise except the slight inevitable click that doors make when they are closed and, turning around immediately, as he usually did, he heard
“Do you have Payroll C handy?”
and answered
“Not really handy but I can bring it in five minutes; you look exhausted; what’s wrong?”