Esperanza,
I've been reading /Borges, This Craft of Verse; /which consists of the
Charles Eliot Norton lectures he gave in 1967-1968. On page eight (in
the Lecture "The Riddle of Poetry") he wrote-said "Seneca wrote against
large libraries; and long afterwards, Schopenhauer wrote that many
people mistook the buying of a book for the buying of the contents of
the book. Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home I feel I
shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the
temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and
find a book on one of my hobbies -- for example, Old English or Old
Norse poetry -- I say to myself 'What a pity I can't buy that book, for
I already have a copy at home.'"
I stopped after reading this to ask Google when Borges became blind:
1955. I then felt in urgent need of an Argentinian to explain why
Borges would speak-write the words above if he was blind. Was there
someone always with him? There must have been. How could he wander
about in a strange bookshop without someone leading him and reading the
titles for him? Was that "someone" someone who would read to him at
home? Is his "looking at the many books I have" therefore merely a
simplification to avoid derailing his lecture by having his audience
focus on his blindness rather on his words? I have been derailed long
after the fact. Perhaps I'll pick up another old issue of the NYROB and
wait for word from Buenos Aires.
Lawrence
