#borges

Ser inmortal es baladí; menos el hombre, todas las criaturas lo son, pues ignoran la muerte; lo divino, lo terrible, lo incomprensible, es saberse inmortal. (…) 

La muerte (o su alusión) hace preciosos y patéticos a los hombres. Éstos conmueven por su condición de fantasmas; cada acto que ejecutan puede ser último; no hay rostro que no esté por desdibujarse como el rostro de un sueño. (…)

Entre los Inmortales, en cambio, cada acto (y cada pensamiento) es el eco de otros que en el pasado lo antecedieron, sin principio visible, o el fiel presagio de otros que en el futuro lo repetirán hasta el vértigo. (…)

Cuando se acerca el fin, ya no quedan imágenes del recuerdo; sólo quedan palabras. No es extraño que el tiempo haya confundido las que alguna vez me representaron con las que fueron símbolos de la suerte de quien me acompañó tantos siglos. Yo he sido Homero; en breve, seré Nadie, como Ulises; en breve, seré todos: estaré muerto. 

Fragmentos de ‘El Inmortal’ por Jorge Luis Borges (El Aleph, 1949).

Nadie es la patria. Ni siquiera el jinete

Que, alto en el alba de una plaza desierta,

Rige un corcel de bronce por el tiempo,

Ni los otros que miran desde el mármol,

Ni los que prodigaron su bélica ceniza

Por los campos de América

O dejaron un verso o una hazaña

O la memoria de una vida cabal

En el justo ejercicio de los días.

Nadie es la patria. Ni siquiera los símbolos.

Nadie es la patria. Ni siquiera el tiempo

Cargado de batallas, de espadas y de éxodos

Y de la lenta población de regiones

Que lindan con la aurora y el ocaso,

Y de rostros que van envejeciendo

En los espejos que se empañan

Y de sufridas agonías anónimas

Que duran hasta el alba

Y de la telaraña de la lluvia

Sobre negros jardines.

La patria, amigos, es un acto perpetuo

Como el perpetuo mundo. (Si el eterno

Espectador dejara de soñarnos

Un solo instante, nos fulminaría,

Blanco y brusco relámpago, su olvido.)

Nadie es la patria, pero todos debemos

Ser dignos del antiguo juramento

Que prestaron aquellos caballeros

De ser lo que ignoraban, argentinos,

De ser lo que serían por el hecho

De haber jurado en esa vieja casa.

Somos el porvenir de esos varones,

La justificación de aquellos muertos;

Nuestro deber es la gloriosa carga

Que a nuestra sombra legan esas sombras

Que debemos salvar.

Nadie es la patria, pero todos lo somos.

Arda en mi pecho y en el vuestro, incesante,

Ese límpido fuego misterioso.

Jorge Luis Borges.

Él Ángel Caído de Ciudad Gótica

Everything happens for the first time, but in a way that is eternal.
Whoever reads my words is inventing them.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Happiness”

Perhaps a god is deceiving me.
Perhaps a god has sentenced me to time, that lasting illusion.
I dream the moon and I dream my eyes perceiving the moon.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Descartes”

Three very ancient faces stay with me:
one is the Ocean, which would talk with Claudius,
another the North, with its unfeeling temper,
savage both at sunrise and at sunset;
the third is Death, that other name we give
to passing time, which wears us all away.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Elegy”

I shall be all or no one. I shall be the other
I am without knowing it, he who has looked on
that other dream, my waking state. He weighs it up,
resigned and smiling.

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Dream”

How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Things”

We are Oedipus and everlastingly
we are the long tripartite beast; we are
all that we were and will be, nothing less.
It would destroy us to look steadily
at our full being. Mercifully God grants us
the ticking of the clock, forgetfulness.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Oedipus and the Enigma”

The road is fatal as an arrow’s flight
But God is watching in the narrowest light.

El camino es fatal como la flecha
Pero en las grietas está Dios, que acecha.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “For a Version of I Ching”

The glass is no more fragile than the rock.
All things are their own prophecy of dust.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “Adam Is Your Ashes”

Despite my many wondrous wanderings,
I am the one who never has unraveled
the labyrinth of time, singular, plural,
grueling, strange, one’s own and everyone’s.
I am no one.

Jorge Luis Borges, “I Am”

We are our memory
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors.
– Jorge Luis Borges, “Cambridge”

My friends have no faces,
women are what they were so many years ago,
these corners could be other corners,
there are no letters on the pages of books.
All this should frighten me,
but it is a sweetness, a return.

– Jorge Luis Borges, “In Praise of Darkness”

thepostmoderntestament-blog:

“A man sets himself the task of making a plan of the universe. After many years, he fills a whole space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. On the threshold of death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines has traced the likeness of his own face.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, Epilogue to The Maker

itsbenedict:

etirabys:

Was staring at a piece of infrastructure, pondering on the strangeness that, as sturdy as it was, it required maintenance and eventually replacement. That everything was like this – except for biological constructs that could perpetuate themselves. But they mutate. So – what if we could build everything out of biology? Our sinks and bridges become immortal – yet destined to become eerie, shifted, unrecognizable things within thousands of years.

this is an out-of-context journal entry you find discarded in an abandoned science lab in a horror game

Algunas personas de barrios populares visitan barrios ricos para recoger sus migajas y uno que otro corazón conformista se acostumbra a mendigar las palabras sin hechos de quien no le corresponde. Muchos se acostumbran a sobrevivir con menos de lo que merecen.

¿Cómo volverse mochilero? , Quetzal Noah

Tú sabes que é hay chicas con las que puedes mantener una relación durante años y de pronto, así como así, dejas de pensar en ellas. Sin embargo, hay otras como Adriana. A quien conoces en la más anticipada de las rutinas una tarde cualquiera. Le hablas porque necesitas saber la hora o prender un cigarrillo y lo curioso es que con esos detalles comienzan las conversaciones más largas. Para tu suerte ella no tiene planes para la tarde y tú tampoco. Comen un helado y tienen una charla sumamente profunda en la banca de un parque. Hablan de Dios, las películas inolvidables, los libros que les hicieron llorar y reír. Y tienen una tarde maravillosa. Bueno, lo que quiero decir es que hay chicas que conoces apenas unas horas una tarde y su sonrisa cabalga como un jinete invencible en tus recuerdos casi a diario. Ese es el poder de los planes improvisados y de las chicas que te hacen volver a creer en que el destino también tiene una magia que te seduce a creer en lo divino.

Acuarela Mexicana, Quetzal Noah

I was looking through the shelves thinking which book to write about next and I came across Stapledon’s Star Maker. I’d read it recently and it’s a remarkable book (rather, it’s an ongoing read*). I thought it wouldn’t be suitable as it was re-published as part of Gollancz’s SF Masterworks series, I thought it was still culturally significant. Yet, looking through a number of ‘greatest science fiction’ lists (I know I shouldn’t do that). It was notably absent, even from Pringle’s list. Looking through the NPR list World War Z was in the top 50, but no Stapledon. Anyway, I’m not here to rant on relative merit, I’m here to talk a little about a classic work of literature that seems to be slipping.

So, a little about the author. Stapledon’s known as much for his academic work as for his fiction writing. His earliest academic publications were in the realm of philosophy and psychology, though these were preceded by a couple of volumes of poetry from 1914 and 1923. his philosophical ideas around society and community passed through into his fiction, starting with Last and First Men of 1930. Stapledon’s works was read by many of the next generation of SF writers.

Star Maker itself was highly acclaimed by a number of contemporary writers including Woolf, Wells and the outstanding Borges. Arthur C. Clarke is noted for having been highly influenced by the novel. Within the first few pages, Stapledon does something I absolutely love in science fiction; he dismisses entirely the science. We’re taken on an odyssey to the edges of our galaxy with no mention of the method. That’s not to say the science is lacking, Freeman Dyson’s Dyson sphere was based in part on Stapledon’s idea. His discussion of a collective mind is also quite a forward-thinking idea for the time.

It is a tricky book though, I had to rest after the first few pages because the overall feel of the writing is quite colourless - it reads more technical than dramatic. However, given the breadth and depth of ideas therein it is certainly an important milestone in the history of speculative fiction, particularly as it exists in that hinterland between the birth of science fiction and it’s full flowering.

The book was published on the 24th June in 1937 (initially intended to be the 10th) by Methuen. The first issue is identified by having blue boards with red lettering. Here’s a link to our copy of the first British edition in the Bip Pares jacket: £2750

* The ongoing read has been something of a habit of mine for many years, but only recently have I structured it into my reading habits. I figured that a novel is on average 250 pages long. I figured a short story is around 20 pages. One novel is roughly equal to around 12 short stories. I find it difficult to sit and read a full book of short stories. So here’s how I structure it; I read a novel, then 12 short stories (or novellas etc). But rather than read 12 stories by one author I read 12 stories by 12 authors. So the last iteration in the cycle was: [Novel] Ubik, [Shorts] Grimm’s Fairy Tales, J.G. Ballard, H.P. Lovecraft, Sophocles, Neil Gaiman, Arabian Nights, John Milton, Virgil, Malory, Asimov, E.T.A. Hoffman, Ray Bradbury. Anyway, just thought I’d share because it works for me!