Reality Is Perplexing Enough: An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

[keiferski]

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/interview-jorge-luis-borges

[BLKNSLVR]

My introduction to Borges was stumbling across this taxonomy of animals:

    those that belong to the Emperor,
    embalmed ones,
    those that are trained,
    suckling pigs,
    mermaids,
    fabulous ones,
    stray dogs,
    those included in the present classification,
    those that tremble as if they were mad,
    innumerable ones,
    those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
    others,
    those that have just broken a flower vase,
    those that from a long way off look like flies.

The mental boundaries that were broken as a result of this list...

https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html

[keiferski]

Borges spoke English fluently, too, and there is a great lecture series by him on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/YSLV7t9DvN8

[lioeters → keiferski]

Wow, what a treat! Thank you, I will enjoy this.

> Jorge Luis Borges giving his 6 Norton Lectures in fall 1967 and spring 1968.

> 1. The Riddle of Poetry

> 2. The Metaphor

> 3. The Telling of the Tale

> 4. Word-Music and Translation

> 5. Thought and Poetry

> 6. A Poet's Creed

[every]

As luck would have it, I am currently revisiting The Book of Imaginary Beings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Imaginary_Beings

[_p4lt]

Wow, thanks for posting that, what a great read!

I always loved Theroux's more narrative article about Borges [0], but this one you can really feel where he's coming from directly.

[0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/31/r...

[siraben]

One of my favorite short stories by Jorge Luis Borges is The Library of Babel[0], in which characters live in an infinite library that enumerates all possible strings of a certain length in book form. It even has an online version[1]! You can find the version of this post at[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

[1] https://libraryofbabel.info/

[2] https://libraryofbabel.info/book.cgi?c4rswwjyq92rx9b0t433js5...

[dcolkitt → siraben]

"You who read me, are you sure you understand my language?”

[glial → siraben]

Agreed, it is wonderful. Funes the Memorious is also delightfully thought-provoking. It’s about an individual that remembers absolutely everything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funes_the_Memorious

[jorgenveisdal]

Check out the podcast ‘Very Bad Wizards’ and their episodes about Borges

[zedakhtar]

This was refreshing. Thanks for sharing