an imaginary one, by a real writer, no? When a man writes he feels rather lonely, and then he has to keep his spirits up, no?
BURGIN: Of course, it must be much more difficult for you to write now because of your blindness.
BORGES: It’s not difficult, it’s impossible. I have to limit myself to short pieces. Yes, because I like to go over what I write; I’m very shaky about what I write. So before I used to write any amount of rough drafts, but now, as I can’t do them, I have to imagine drafts. So then, walking up and down the streets or walking up and down the National Library, I think what I want to write, but, of course, they have to be short pieces because otherwise, if I want to see them all at once—that can’t be done with long texts. I try to shorten them as much as I can, so I write sonnets, stories maybe one or two pages long. The last thing I wrote, rather a long short story, well, it was six pages.
BURGIN: “La intrusa.”
BORGES: “La intrusa,” yes. I don’t think I’ll ever go any farther than that. No, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it. I want to see at one glance what I’ve done … that’s why I don’t believe in the novel because I believe a novel is as hazy to the writer as to the reader. I mean a writer writes maybe a chapter, then another, then another one, and in the end he has a kind of bird’s eye view of the whole thing, but he may not be very accurate.
BURGIN: Have you written anything since you’ve been in America?
BORGES: I wrote some quite short pieces; I’ve written two sonnets, not too good ones, and then a poem about a friend who had promised us a picture. He died. He’s a well-known Argentine painter, Larco, and then I thought of the picture he had promised us, promised my wife and me—I met him in the street—and then I thought that in a sense he had given us a picture because he had intended to do so, and so the picture was in some mystic way or other with us, except that the picture was perhaps a richer picture because it was a picture that kept growing and changing with time and we could imagine it in many different ways, and then in the end I thanked him for that unceasing, shifting picture, saying that, of course, he wouldn’t find any place on the four walls of a room, but still he’d be there with us. That was more or less the plot of the poem. I wrote that in a kind of prose poem.
BURGIN: That’s very nice.
BORGES: Well, I wander. Now, when I was in New York, I began writing a poem and then I realized it was the same poem I had written to my friend all over again, yes, because it was snowing and we were on the, I don’t know, sixteenth floor of one of those New York towers, and then I lay there, it was snowing very hard, we were practically snowed in, snowbound, because we couldn’t walk, and then I felt that somehow the mere fact of being in the heart of New York and of knowing that all those complex and beautiful buildings were around us, that mere fact made us see them and possess them better than if we had been gaping at shop windows or other sights, no? It’s the same idea, of course. And suddenly I realized that I’d been going over the same ground, the idea of having something because you don’t have it or because you have it in a more abstract way.
BURGIN: This seems to be the type of feeling one gets from a story like “The Circular Ruins.” Can you tell me what the pattern was behind the story?
BORGES: No. I can’t say much about the conception, but I can tell you that when I wrote that story the writing took me a week. I went to my regular business. I went to—I was working at a very small and rather shabby public library in Buenos Aires, in a very grey and featureless street. I had to go there every day and work six hours, and then sometimes I would meet my friends, we would go and see a film, or I would have dinner with somebody, but all the time I felt that life wasunreal. What was really near to me was that story I was
BURGIN: Of course, it must be much more difficult for you to write now because of your blindness.
BORGES: It’s not difficult, it’s impossible. I have to limit myself to short pieces. Yes, because I like to go over what I write; I’m very shaky about what I write. So before I used to write any amount of rough drafts, but now, as I can’t do them, I have to imagine drafts. So then, walking up and down the streets or walking up and down the National Library, I think what I want to write, but, of course, they have to be short pieces because otherwise, if I want to see them all at once—that can’t be done with long texts. I try to shorten them as much as I can, so I write sonnets, stories maybe one or two pages long. The last thing I wrote, rather a long short story, well, it was six pages.
BURGIN: “La intrusa.”
BORGES: “La intrusa,” yes. I don’t think I’ll ever go any farther than that. No, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it. I want to see at one glance what I’ve done … that’s why I don’t believe in the novel because I believe a novel is as hazy to the writer as to the reader. I mean a writer writes maybe a chapter, then another, then another one, and in the end he has a kind of bird’s eye view of the whole thing, but he may not be very accurate.
BURGIN: Have you written anything since you’ve been in America?
BORGES: I wrote some quite short pieces; I’ve written two sonnets, not too good ones, and then a poem about a friend who had promised us a picture. He died. He’s a well-known Argentine painter, Larco, and then I thought of the picture he had promised us, promised my wife and me—I met him in the street—and then I thought that in a sense he had given us a picture because he had intended to do so, and so the picture was in some mystic way or other with us, except that the picture was perhaps a richer picture because it was a picture that kept growing and changing with time and we could imagine it in many different ways, and then in the end I thanked him for that unceasing, shifting picture, saying that, of course, he wouldn’t find any place on the four walls of a room, but still he’d be there with us. That was more or less the plot of the poem. I wrote that in a kind of prose poem.
BURGIN: That’s very nice.
BORGES: Well, I wander. Now, when I was in New York, I began writing a poem and then I realized it was the same poem I had written to my friend all over again, yes, because it was snowing and we were on the, I don’t know, sixteenth floor of one of those New York towers, and then I lay there, it was snowing very hard, we were practically snowed in, snowbound, because we couldn’t walk, and then I felt that somehow the mere fact of being in the heart of New York and of knowing that all those complex and beautiful buildings were around us, that mere fact made us see them and possess them better than if we had been gaping at shop windows or other sights, no? It’s the same idea, of course. And suddenly I realized that I’d been going over the same ground, the idea of having something because you don’t have it or because you have it in a more abstract way.
BURGIN: This seems to be the type of feeling one gets from a story like “The Circular Ruins.” Can you tell me what the pattern was behind the story?
BORGES: No. I can’t say much about the conception, but I can tell you that when I wrote that story the writing took me a week. I went to my regular business. I went to—I was working at a very small and rather shabby public library in Buenos Aires, in a very grey and featureless street. I had to go there every day and work six hours, and then sometimes I would meet my friends, we would go and see a film, or I would have dinner with somebody, but all the time I felt that life wasunreal. What was really near to me was that story I was
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