Fernando Sorrentino - Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges

....................................................................

seven conversations

with

Jorge Luis Borges

FERNANDO SORRENTINO

Translated, with Notes and Appendix

by CLARK M. ZLOTCHEW

PAUL DRY BOOKS Philadelphia 2010

CONTENTS

First Paul Dry Books Edition, 2010

Paul Dry Books, Inc.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
www.pauldrybooks.com

Copyright 1982, by Fernando Sorrentino & Clark M. Zlotchew

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Borges, Jorge Luis, 18991986.

[Siete conversaciones con Jorge Luis Borges. English]

Seven conversations with Jorge Luis Borges / Fernando Sorrentino ;
translated, with Notes and Appendix by Clark M. Zlotchew.

1st Paul Dry Books ed.

p. cm.

Includes indexes.

Originally published: Troy, N.Y. : Whitston Pub. Co., c1982.

ISBN 978-1-58988-060-3 (alk. paper)

1. Borges, Jorge Luis, 18991986Interviews. 2. Authors, Argentine 20th centuryInterviews. I. Sorrentino, Fernando. II. Zlotchew, Clark M. III. Title.

PQ7797.B635Z47713 2009

868dc22

2009033107

seven conversations with
Jorge Luis Borges

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman

Jorge Luis Borges is the most eminent Latin-American writer of the twentieth century. It is even safe to say that he is the best known and most admired living writer in the Spanish language. Translated into all the major tongues, his poetry, essays, and short fiction are among the most important pieces of modern world literature. Very few authors are as widely praised, criticized, loved, abhorred, discussed, or argued over. A respected critic and novelist has described him in these contradictory terms: arbitrary, brilliant, tender, precise, weak, great, triumphant, daring, timid, a failure, magnificent, wretched, limited, infantile, immortal. To say any more about Borges within the confines of these introductory pages would be to say too much and, at the same time, to say too little. Too much because his fame would make redundant any catalog of his accomplishments. Too little because the detailed critical and philosophical discussion his work gives rise to would be far beyond the scope of a foreword to a series of conversations in which Borges speaks for himself.

These dialogues with Borges have been called the best book of its kind, the one that provides the most reliable picture of Borges derived from tape-recorded conversations with him. The same critic finds in these interviews an exceptionally open and intimate tone.the overly frank tone of Borges political statements, could not be commercially distributed until after the overthrow of Isabel Pern in 1976.

Fernando Sorrentino is Borges interviewer in these pages. Born in 1942, this young Argentinean writer is an author of fiction in his own right as well as a devoted anthologist of Spanish-American short stories and an instructor of literature in the secondary schools of Buenos Aires. His literary production (consisting of over thirty short stories published in various newspapers, three books of short stories, a collection of juvenile stories, and a novel) is predominantly satirical in nature, ranging from the dryly ironicat times sardonicobservation of human foibles to the frankly hilarious exaggeration of normal situations to the point in which they take on alarming proportions which approach the surreal. Sorrentinos novel, Sanitarios centenarios (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1979), concerning the advertising campaign mounted on behalf of a bathroom fixture firm celebrating its hundredth anniversary, is a satire involving the delusions of grandeur of ordinary people; it is also an uproariously funny narrative.

A series of interviews even with the most talented author can result in a bleak succession of banalities that prove to be a disappointment for the avid fan; a great deal depends on the skill of the interviewer. Fernando Sorrentino is endowed with literary acumen, sensitivity, urbanity, a familiarity with Borges work, and the ability to allow Borges to roam freely over unsuspected paths while at the same time maintaining a firm control over the direction taken by the conversation. All these qualities are as responsible for this warm and personal glimpse of one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary world literature as Borges own personality is.

Borges wanders from nostalgic reminiscence to literary criticism and from philosophical speculation to political pronouncements. His thoughts on literature alone run the gamut from the Bible and Homer to Hemingway and Cortzar. We learn that Dante is the writer who has impressed Borges most, that Borges considers Garca Lorca to be a second-rate poet, and that he feels Bioy Casares is one of the most important authors of this century. Borges dwells lovingly on Buenos Aires, too.

As in his prose and more often in his poetry, in these pages Borges refers to the outskirts of the City and to the denizens of those humble quarters. In those frequent references, he speaks of a Buenos Aires which essentially no longer exists. The fact that the Buenos Aires of Borges youth bears much less resemblance to a North American city than does the Argentine Capital of today (the city Borges has not seenthrough blindnessfor a quarter of a century) makes it difficult to translate some of the terms he employs when commenting on the Buenos Aires of old.

The term suburbio literally denotes suburb, deriving from the same Latin sub and urbs as does the English word. But here the similarity ends. When the North American thinks of suburbs, he thinks of two-car garages, manicured lawns, country clubs, good schoolsin other words: affluence. The Latin-American suburbio is typically a marginal zone, both literally and figuratively: a zone on the edges of society. It is the poorer quarters huddled on the cheaper land at the outskirts of the big city where destitute country folk settle hoping to find a better life. An entire sub-culture develops in these suburbs characterized by poverty and the cult of violence and machismo. In this respect, the Latin-American suburb is practically synonymous with the North American slum or inner city; yet, like the Northern affluent suburb, it is situated around the fringes of the city. The situations are reversed, making a simple one-word translation unfeasible. In the text of this English version, the term suburb, because of the peculiar connotations it has for the North American, is avoided. Instead, expressions such as outlying slums, outer limits, less affluent fringe areas, and the like are employed.

The compadre might be thought of as an urbanized (or semi-urbanized) gaucho. Many of the traits of the gauchoself-assurance, courage, love of personal freedom and of being footloosewere typical of the compadre.

The compadrito (diminutive of compadre) was the young man of the suburbios whose only interests were women, dancing, guitar playing, and drinking the local rum called caa. He customarily lived at his womans expense. He differed from the compadre mainly in his youth and his avoidance of work. By extension, the term compadrito came to include the young men who liked to imitate the attitudes and flashy dress of the genuine article. Toward the 1880s many compadritos became out-and-out pimps. (The slang term for pimps as such was canfinfleros or cafishos.) They would exploit only one woman (unlike the pimp of the North American inner city who maintains an entire stable) or two, at most, who would work in a house of prostitution for the