Should I approach this anthology in any order or should I just go cover to cover? Having read the opinions on this thread I will approach Borges with some more inquisitiveness. JCamillo, indeed I found him very readable. I have no problem retaining my attention as the prose is so fluid and unassuming.
Maybe its just me but these stories seem very distant from each other. Is there a certain Borges ness that holds them together other than authorship? And if so please enlighten.
The certain Borges ness is the man himself, Octavio Paz once said, which is also true for many others, "Borges is his work"...
He had a strong aversion to long texts, so he never build one, unless we talk about his autobiography and a few critical essays (Borges is a very good critic, because he retain his aesthetical approach while writing and teaching, to the point that his "fictions" are nothing but illustrations of his own vision about art and literature). You will notice he re-tells a few stories (sometimes two inside one), later in life he did it a lot, somehow to reflect his destachment to the world (Borges went progressivelly blind and also, affllicted by some short of desapointment with the world who didnt understood his vision to justify anything in name of aesthetical creation). I gave an example, In Library of Babel there is the suggestion that the entire library could be replaced by a single book, this single book is the book that the inner story of Garden of Forking Paths presents. Or Funes's memory and the Zahir and The Alleph...
A side note, Borges was related to a few modernist groups, but he never took it too seriously, because he always saw himself as a pre-modernist writer (A man of XIX century) and he was too ironic to accept any label. His first steady work was as critic, prefaces and essays. Then he discovered a way to replace romances and novels for short stories, with Almostasin. And he never left that, a master miniaturist, in fact, with Chekhov the best argument about short stories relevance. Nobody debunke those two and they are leveled with the long novels and romance writers.
But I think in the end, you will see that (while pleasure still high), reading Borges is akim to studying because the gaps between the stories are the necessary references. You end hearing about a hundred writers, several minor works, different perspectives and they build up his work, because Borges was able to do very original interpretative analogies and also, expand traditional interpretations of some well know stories.
Yes, I think Drkshadow was just unhappy when he says "weakness", I understood as he saying that was a weakness for those who reading and not an weakness of Borges himself, but it was not something very clear.Originally Posted by JBI
I do not know if the Comedy/tragedy duality could be applied so easily to both. I do not see as a tragedy theme the birth of puppies while guys like Calvino, Kafka or Borges seems to be, while not exactly faithful, seeking divine concepts. Obviously, it would not be easy, they are not greek after all. Fact is, I think those guys I would compare more with the traditional oral forms like Parables and Fables. (Except they use no moral), exactly because the allegorical potential of such works, how they can be always interpreted under a new light, and how they always worked with simple and economic language - this is obviously with Kafka, due his jewish heritage.In a sense, one could argue that this goes back to the fundamental difference between comedy and tragedy. In Tragedy, the characters are over developed, and their psychology seems almost more than human, and more than real. I think perhaps Chekhov comes the closest, and one would argue the bulk of his stories tend toward the tragic. On the other side, one could say that Marco Polo in Calvino's Ctitą Invisibili (Invisible Cities), to use a more concrete example, is a comic genius, playing off the concept of women as compared to cities, and that they are each different and beautiful, yet all the same (I don't think it is hard to miss that every city happens to have a female name, and the features tend toward physical descriptions at times). Of course, the characters there are reduced to mere caricatures, and made less than human, as to be more comical.
I don't think that's too much of a stretch to argue. Perhaps Aristotle is still the most valid critic of literature.
But one thing that amaze me is that the Borges and Chekhov are very alike with their concepts of how to write a short story. (In the end, both have something with Poe, but anyways), and Borges, the guy who was supposed to know it all, do not mention Chekhov. He was not specially found of russian literature, specially while compared with british literature. But considering what was their craft and I found very doubtful Borges didn't knew Chekhov (Borges seems very found of Dostoievisky, even if claiming to be unable to read his entire books, so he was not obvious to the russian literature)... After a considerable amount of reading of Borges I can not remember a single reference. Of course, Chekhov is the intelectual who leaves his tower, works from the proximity with people, while borges kept the distance (perhaps a good way to show the difference of what is romantic and what is classic, if one would use both a two different yet universal paradigms of art) but it is too strange. Then I remember how much Borges liked to say that in the Koran the word camel never appears, because it was too obvious to mentioned... Of course, using Borges to justify Borges is never too wise, the guy liked to play. (And I think Chekhov had a lot of sense of humor too, he also was under Gogol's coat)
*applauds from the sidelines*
finally a substantive thread in this forum that has "literature" in its title.
The "Do You Get Bored with..?" and "Do you no longer read long novels?"
threads get pretty tiresome
(yes, I understand there is an option to NOT READ them...but see, I must because philistenes need to be eliminated, muu ha ha ha)
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You must admit though, even in the bleakest of stories by Kafka and Borges, there is always a strong vein of savage comedy. I suspect this sort of thinking has its roots in Byron, or perhaps Moliere's Don Juan or something, but the thread of savage comedy seems to have overtaken much of the mainstream in fiction by the Victorian period, and then become perhaps a little darker, and more comical by the time you get Kafka. I think one, when reading the Book of Sand, for instance, is supposed to laugh, or at laugh at the helplessness of the reader within the book of sand. Likewise, in the Aleph, one is supposed to laugh at Daneri, also known as Neruda. In truth, I can't really think of any tragedy stories by Borges - the closest he comes are perhaps the stories ending in complete despair at the helplessness of the author, but even those are more comical than tragic.
Compare that to something like Chekhov's "The Kiss", and there is a huge, beyond measurable difference. The closest I think Chekhov would come to being like Borges, would be in "The Bet", but even that is tinged with Chekhov's tragic melodrama.
Of course, this isn't a general rule, but I see the two as completely apart, and purposely so. Realism is very different I guess, than magical realism in the Borges/Calvino sense, when you deal with character. Chekhov tries to capture human misery at the moment it is most profound, whereas Borges tries to laugh at human misery and helplessness.
I am the first to admit it. Kafka is hilarious. Borges is a "bromeiro"
Borges liked Byron, but I think his humor belongs to the irony lineage: Lucan, Swift, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, etc. Philosophy mixed with storytelling. He always bring up some upper intelectual reference and at sametime, distance from the subjects...I suspect this sort of thinking has its roots in Byron, or perhaps Moliere's Don Juan or something, but the thread of savage comedy seems to have overtaken much of the mainstream in fiction by the Victorian period, and then become perhaps a little darker, and more comical by the time you get Kafka. I think one, when reading the Book of Sand, for instance, is supposed to laugh, or at laugh at the helplessness of the reader within the book of sand. Likewise, in the Aleph, one is supposed to laugh at Daneri, also known as Neruda. In truth, I can't really think of any tragedy stories by Borges - the closest he comes are perhaps the stories ending in complete despair at the helplessness of the author, but even those are more comical than tragic.
Kafka I think it is easier. Jewish traditional parables (Which by the way, is also part of Borges heritage) are very humorous. They have a big traditions of anedoctes. Mixed with their capacity for allegories and the bleakness from the XIX century end, we have Kafka.
I think neither are tragic indeed. They are too skeptical, for the tragic it is necessary some belief, either in the destiny or in the capacity to overcome it (or just the possibility). For both of them this didn't made any sense. Kafka is not even conclusive to allow any possibility to have a "destiny" and Borges is all about all possibilties...
Yeah, Chekhov is tragic. He is a good guy, in any sense of the world, really touched by the troubles of people around him. He was very pratical however, with a scietific mind, due his medical background. His letters are very interesting, I suggest everyone to read it also.Compare that to something like Chekhov's "The Kiss", and there is a huge, beyond measurable difference. The closest I think Chekhov would come to being like Borges, would be in "The Bet", but even that is tinged with Chekhov's tragic melodrama.
Yeah, what I mean is more in the sense of pratical application, just suggestions, not excess of descriptions, capture the right emotion, careful use of words... The themes are different of course. But Tchekhov also have some critical humor... the judgment of a guy who robbed irons from raillroad to fish, the guy who is a new rich and enamored with a maiden, but as time passes he became critical, but also a sorrowful individual, the dude that tried to convice others that Siberia was a cool place... He is sentimental, of course.Of course, this isn't a general rule, but I see the two as completely apart, and purposely so. Realism is very different I guess, than magical realism in the Borges/Calvino sense, when you deal with character. Chekhov tries to capture human misery at the moment it is most profound, whereas Borges tries to laugh at human misery and helplessness.
As the realism goes, magical realism owns much to them, because the development of the language and we can see the roots of Magical Realism on Flaubert, even Tolstoy, Machado de Assis, Henry James, and I remember that Gorki once complained that Tchekhov would kill realism because he wrote in such way that everything seemed magical.
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