By Cesar Chelala
During a
recent trip to Argentina I was talking to an old friend, a successful
psychiatrist, about Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentine writer considered
by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
She told me
about the only time she had met him. “I had gone to a lecture by Borges at a
cultural centre in Buenos Aires. I was a 14-year old student planning to study
literature at the university and become a writer and Borges was a hero to me.
“I was
enraptured by Borges’ strong personality. However, there was a big discrepancy
between his physical appearance and the quality of his speech. I saw him as an
old man who looked very tired -a sensation increased by the poor lighting in
the place- but the magic of his words transported me to another world, the
world of the imagination.
“After the
lecture I decided that I wouldn’t study literature, since I would never be able
to write like him. On my way out, there were several books on sale. On an
impulse I bought a book called Psychosomatic Medicine, by Eric Wittkower and
Hector Warnes.
“I was so
taken by it that after reading it I decided to become a psychiatrist, a
decision I never regretted. I can truly say that although I saw Borges only
that one time, he dramatically changed my life.”
Although in
reading Borges, one may think he was a very serious person, he was actually a
man who loved jokes and always had unexpected responses to everyday events.
Mario
Rojman, a friend I met in Buenos Aires, told me that Borges visited Peru when
he was an attache at the Argentine embassy. Because he loved poetry, both he
and Borges would recite some of the writer’s poems aloud, each one a line at a
time. They were having a lot of fun, said Rojman. At this time, the king and
queen of Spain decided to visit Peru. When Rojman told Borges the news he
replied, with a mischievous smile, “I hope they won’t bother us...”
His sense
of irony never left him. In her book Seven Voices, Rita Guibert says that after
Borges published his first book called Fervor de Buenos Aires (Fervor of Buenos
Aires), he took 50 copies of the book and gave them to Alfredo Bianchi, who was
the editor of the magazine Nosotros.
Bianchi
looked at him in disbelief and asked Borges, “Do you want me to sell this
book?” Borges answered, “No, I am not mad. I want something that the book’s
format makes possible – for you to slip a copy into the pocket of every
overcoat that passes through your office.”
When a year
later Borges returned to the editor’s office, not a single copy of the book was
left.
During an
interview in Rome, an Italian journalist tried to embarrass him. As he failed
to do so he asked Borges: “Do you still have cannibals in your country?” Borges
replied, “No, we don’t. We ate them all...”
I had the
honour of meeting Borges personally. In 1970, I was doing biomedical research
in Buenos Aires, on a fellowship from Tucum?n, my hometown in the northern part
of the country. For my wife and me, living in Buenos Aires was a far cry from
the provincial kind of life we had been leading in Tucum?n.
We didn’t
have much money or personal contacts which made our daily life difficult and
dull. Life was also stressful due to the demands of working in a world-class
research institute where the director, Dr Luis F
Leloir, had received the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1970.
To make
ends meet my wife was working in jobs far below her professional capacity as a
university graduate. At the time, she was also taking language and literature
courses at the Instituto de Lenguas Vivas in Buenos Aires.
One of her
professors was an American named Donald A Yates, a professor emeritus of
Spanish American literature at Michigan State University (East Lansing). He is
the translator of both novels and short stories by many Spanish American
authors, including Labyrinths: Selected Writings of Jorge Luis Borges.
One day, he
invited both of us to join him and Borges for dinner at an upscale restaurant
in Buenos Aires. For us, it was a wonderful change from our daily life. And
Borges didn’t disappoint us. He was practically the only person who spoke the
whole evening, always full of charm and knowledge.
Learning
that my wife was of Basque descent from both sides of her family, he talked a
lot about Basque history. He had come to dinner alone and was virtually blind.
He ordered a pair of fried eggs, which were brought to him in a deep dish with
a spoon. All evening he kept trying to catch the eggs with the spoon, and only
succeeded in pushing them to the side of the dish.
Although we
felt bad about seeing this, Borges didn’t seem to mind at all, and kept talking
as if nothing unusual were happening. For a blind person used to living on past
memories, perhaps the life of the imagination was for him more important than
real life. And yet his life and work had a singular impact on the life of many.
- Dr Cesar
Chelala, a New York writer, is a winner of an Overseas Press Club of America
award and two awards from ADEPA, the organisation of Argentine newspapers. Last
year he received the Cedar of Lebanon Gold Medal in Tucuman, Argentina.
Fuente : Gulf
Times
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario