Jorge Luis Borges (1899~1986). 『書鏡中人：波赫士的文學人生』一句及其他
博爾赫斯說博爾赫斯 豪·路·博爾赫斯：作家和自修學者，１８９９年生於當時的阿根廷首都布宜諾斯艾利斯城。他的父親是心理學教師。他是諾拉·博爾赫斯（孀居）的哥哥。他愛好文學、哲學和倫理學。他喜歡寫短篇小說。他雖然只是似乎在日內瓦受過正式的中學教育（對此，評論界至今還在查證之中），卻在布宜諾斯艾利斯大學、得克薩斯大學和哈佛大學授過課。有傳聞說他在考試中從不提問，只是請學生隨意就命題的某個方面發表見解。他討厭開列參考書目，認為參考書籍會使學生捨本逐末。
博爾赫斯生活的年代適逢國家處於沒落時期。他出自軍人家庭，非常懷念先輩們那可歌可泣的人生。他深信勇敢是男人們難得能有的品德之一，但是，像其他許多人一樣，信仰卻使他崇敬起了下流社會的人們。所以他的作品中流傳最廣的是通過一個殺人兇手之口講出的故事《玫瑰角的漢子》。他為謠曲填詞，謳歌同一類殺人犯。他為某個小詩人寫了一篇感人的傳記，那人唯一的功績就是發掘了妓院裡的常用詞語。
博爾赫斯是否曾在內心深處對自己的命運感到過不滿呢？我們猜想他會的。
（上面這一詞條是博爾赫斯在1974年寫的詞條，原長3000字。他自稱是從2074年智利出版的《南美洲百科全書》摘錄下來的。）
豪爾赫·弗朗西斯科·伊西多羅·路易斯·博爾赫斯 1899 年的今天出生於阿根廷布宜諾斯艾利斯。“一本書不是一個孤立的存在：它是一種關係，是無數關係的軸”——摘自豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯的《FICCIONES》豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯是極少數改變了一種藝術形式面貌的創作者之一——對他而言，就是短篇小說。他的作品獲得了被世界各大洲無數作家挪用和模仿的最高榮譽。整個世界，回顧了一個不存在的作家試圖逐字重現堂吉訶德的嘗試，一個無法忘記自己經歷過的任何事情的人，以及其他形而上學的謎題。但博爾赫斯偉大的真正衡量標準在於，他的小說——精心設計的自相矛盾、後現代、智力上的美味——成功地將短篇小說帶回了神話般和神秘的境界，從中，寓言和童話，原來來了。更多資訊在這裡：http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/16193/ficciones/
除非你能改善沉默，否則不要說話。英國廣播公司文化豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯出生於 1899 年的這一天。這位阿根廷作家被認為是西班牙文學的關鍵人物之一。生日快樂，博爾赫斯！
博爾赫斯早期詩歌的第一版被盜，以及它所激發的徒勞追逐。
失蹤的博爾赫斯七年前，被偷走的博爾赫斯早期詩歌第一版被歸還給阿根廷國家圖書館。但它是正確的副本嗎？豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯，1963 年。
（本文感謝梁永安先生（他有一大段翻譯本之略比之說明，我暫時找不到）和「小讀者」等）
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『博爾赫斯：書鏡中人』王純譯，北京：中央編譯出版社，1999.
『書鏡中人：波赫士的文學人生』梁永安譯，台北：邊城，2005,
這本『博爾赫斯：書鏡中人』，可能連同『博爾赫斯全集』，是2000在明目書社買的，不過沒讀。校者王永年先生的『歐 亨利全集』的極少部分之翻譯討論，我們SU討論過。
我贊成：比較好，而又可應市的書，兩岸可以分別出版譯本，這樣會嘉惠讀者。
何況『書鏡中人：波赫士的文學人生』的梁先生，一向風評不錯。
月前，買『書鏡中人：波赫士的文學人生』，指出其中某些編輯毛病、錯誤。其實，對照過的人，馬上就可以知道，台灣版的注解遠多於大陸版，而且更抓得住要 點，行文更通暢。這本，又有人名索引—對於索引應多多益善，這只能算略勝一籌，因為我認為「波赫士之作品」也應該編索引，譬如說，他的名小說Aleph， 這篇，有許多人引用過（譬如說，『"恐怖的力量"』，頁29，譯注也不錯），不過梁本之注解說也很可以參考（頁229-30）。
我對於像『書鏡中人：波赫士的文學人生』作者這種西方職業作家之某些做法，很不欣賞，譬如說，將許多訪問親屬等碰到之醜聞寫進書中等等。不過這不太重要。我沒仔細讀此書，所以只把前天、昨天的討論資料錄下來，當參考。
hc：「對了，今天對比兩岸的『書鏡中人』，閣下的，當然好多了。
梁兄沒做『書鏡中人』之翻譯對照比較，可惜。看看余光中先生，他常常舉自己翻譯O. Wilde等作品來說明譯藝.......(譬如說，他的精彩的「淡江50?周年講座」.......
建議你，抄 p.378之Shaw之妙語，給我們開開眼界。」
hc：「謝謝梁兄：我們把找原文的工作交給「小讀者」（PetitReader）---- 鼓掌通過……
◎大陸『博爾赫斯：書鏡中人』：「我喜歡性交，因為它具有產生欲仙欲死的情感湧動和生存激揚的驚人的力量，不管時間多麼短暫，它例證了有朝一日人類達到精神上的忘我境界時可能感知的正常狀態。」
◎梁譯本：「我喜愛性事，因為它可以帶來欲仙欲死的美妙經驗，而不管多短暫，這種經驗都向我例示了有朝一日會成為人類常態的知性狂喜的感受。」
（「校長」就別陷害小讀友了…… 早忘了這段文字，看到大陸譯文有「情感湧動和生存激揚的驚人的力量」之語，心下一驚︰難不成我這個黑心翻譯承包商偷工減料的行徑人贓並獲了！）
PetitReader 彈手之力就找到：
「I liked sexual intercourse, because of its amazing power of producing a celestial flood of emotion and exaltation of existence which, however momentary, gave me a sample of what may one day be the normal state of being for mankind in[58] intellectual ecstasy. (((I always gave the wildest expression to this in a torrent of words, partly because I felt it due to the woman to know what I felt in her arms, and partly because I wanted her to share it.)))
(Shaw to Frank Harris) 」
hc：「（先談點Shaw） 終於稍微懂啦！小讀者似乎非查書 而是直接 Google的
對了，google可以寫一套叢書 。我接觸過幾個教授院長級的，他們對於 Google之資源，也幾乎一竅不通。所以這相關和引發的知識技能等等 ，或與民智之開發關係或許不小 。可惜許多"服務"都還沒中文的版本。」
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"作家們的作家-- "Jorge Luis Borges
最近翻 "作家們的作家-- " 雲南人民出版社 1995
英國等文學或名人訪問 喜歡問如果你被丟到某荒島，
而只能帶一本或幾本書，你會選什麼？
"博爾赫斯"答：大英百科或羅素的西方哲學史
不過。這些都可能不是一般定義下的經典。
他在別處談許多他認為的經典。
到他六十歲了，他又可以更隨心所欲談經典。
從比較嚴格的角度看，詩，幾乎無法翻譯。
所以，神曲或莎士比亞的作品等等，都只能讓人感受一下。
Activist for rights of sex workers buried among luminariesAP, GENEVA
Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009, Page 6
A well-known one-time prostitute who campaigned for the rights and dignity of sex workers was given an honored place of rest on Monday in the same cemetery where Protestantism’s John Calvin is buried, drawing criticism from some.
Griselidis Real, who died in 2005, was buried in the presence of 200 people at the Cemetery of the Kings, which is reserved for individuals who profoundly marked Swiss or international history. Argentine writer Jose Luis Borges and child psychologist Jean Piaget are interred there.
查一下此網
On Doctoring 收(故)名作家 Jorge Luis Borges的 The Immortals (論永生)： 他願意的是其身體與精神俱去；他不想來生再作Jorge Luis Borges。
A Prophet in Reverse
In March 1984, Jorge Luis Borges began a series of radio “dialogues” with the Argentinian poet and essayist Osvaldo Ferrari, which have now been translated into English for the first time. The following conversation appears in the second volume of these dialogues, translated by Tom Boll, which will be published by Seagull Books in October.
—The Editors
Osvaldo Ferrari: One of your essays, Borges, is called “On the Cult of Books.” It made me think of titles and authors you mention repeatedly.
Jorge Luis Borges: I don’t remember anything at all about that . . . Do I talk about sacred books, about the fact that each country has a preference for a particular book?
Ferrari: You mention the former, yes, but you also refer to people who have criticized books in favor of oral language. For example, there’s a passage in Plato where he says that excessive reading leads to the neglect of memory and to a dependence on symbols.
Borges: I think that Schopenhauer said that to read is to think with somebody else’s mind. Which is the same idea, no? Well no, it isn’t the same idea but it is hostile to books. Did I mention that?
Ferrari: No.
Borges: Perhaps I talked about the fact that each country chooses, prefers to be represented by a book although that book isn’t usually characteristic of the country. For example, one regards Shakespeare as typically English. However, none of the typical characteristics of the English are found in Shakespeare. The English tend to be reserved, reticent, but Shakespeare flows like a great river, he abounds in hyperbole and metaphor—he’s the complete opposite of an English person. Or, in Goethe’s case, we have the Germans who are easily roused to fanaticism but Goethe turns out to be the very opposite—a tolerant man, a man who greets Napoleon when Napoleon invades Germany. Goethe isn’t a typical German. Now, this seems to be a common occurrence, no?
Ferrari: Especially in the case of the classics.
Borges: Especially in the case of the classics, yes. Well, and the Spain of Cervantes’ time is the Spain of the burnings of the Inquisition, the fanatical Spain. And Cervantes, although he’s Spanish, he’s a cheerful man, one imagines him as tolerant, he didn’t have anything to do with all that. It’s as if each country looks for a form of antidote in the author it chooses. In France’s case, however, it has such a rich literary tradition that it hasn’t chosen one figure, but if one goes for Hugo—clearly, Hugo isn’t like the majority of French people.
Ferrari: As for your personal cult of books, Borges, I recall that your favorites include The Thousand and One Nights, the Bible and, among many others, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Borges: I think that the encyclopedia, for a leisurely, curious man, is the most pleasing of literary genres. And, besides, it has an illustrious forerunner in Pliny, whose Natural History is an encyclopedia too. There you have information on art, history—it isn’t simply a natural history in the current meaning of the term—and on legends, also on myths. So that when he talks about some animal, he doesn’t simply give factual information but everything recorded by legend—the magical properties attributed to it, even though Pliny probably didn’t believe in them. But, in the end, he did produce that splendid encyclopedia which was also written in a baroque style.
Ferrari: Talking specifically about the Encyclopaedia Britannica, what have you discovered in it over the years?
Borges: Mostly, long articles. Encyclopedias are made for reference now, so there are long articles and extremely short ones. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, however, was made for reading, that is, it was a series of essays—essays by Macaulay, Stevenson, Swinburne. In the later editions there were occasional essays by Shaw as well. Essays by Bertrand Russell, for example, on Zeno of Elea. I must have told you that I used to go to the National Library with my father. I was very shy—I’m still very shy—so I didn’t dare request books. But there were reference works on the shelves, and I would simply take down by chance, for example, a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. One day I was extremely fortunate, because I took down the volume D–R, and I was able to read an excellent biography of Dryden, who Eliot has written a book about. Then, a long article on the druids, and another on the Druzes of Lebanon who believe in the transmigration of souls. There are Chinese Druzes too. Yes, that day I was very lucky: Dryden, druids and Druzes, and all those things in the same volume that went from D to R. At other times, I wasn’t so fortunate. I’d go with my father, my father would look up books on psychology—he was a psychology teacher—while I would read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Later I’d read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in the National Library. And it never occurred to me that, one day, in an improbable future, I’d become director of the library. If someone had told me that, I’d have thought they were joking. Yet that’s what happened. And when I was director I remembered that boy who would visit with his father and timidly take down a volume of the Encyclopaedia from the shelf.
Ferrari: And you were director for almost two decades, I think.
Borges: I don’t know the precise dates, but they appointed me in 1955, until . . . I don’t know what year Perón came back, because I couldn’t rightly carry on.
Ferrari: In 1973. So eighteen years in the library.
Borges: Well, that’s not bad, is it? Who’s the director now?
Ferrari: Up until quite recently it was Gregorio Weinberg.
Borges: Ah, yes. I think he resigned, didn’t he?
Ferrari: He resigned, and I still don’t know who replaced him.
Borges: I remember that the budget we received was paltry. Maybe that’s not changed. Perhaps that was the reason for Weinberg’s resignation.
Ferrari: As usual. You’d have to manage with the bare minimum then?
Borges: And the Ministry of Education has been the most debilitated, the most vulnerable of all. Perhaps it still is.
Ferrari: In that essay, Borges, you also refer to the eighth book of The Odyssey, where it says that God has given misfortune to men so that they will have something to sing about.
Borges: Yes, I think that it says that they weave misfortunes so that men from generations to come will have something to sing about, no?
Ferrari: Yes.
Borges: Well, that would be enough to prove that The Odyssey comes after The Iliad, because one can’t imagine a reflection like that in The Iliad.
Ferrari: Of course, because Homer gives the idea of beginnings . . .
Borges: Yes, and as Rubén Darío said: Doubtless Homer had his own Homer. Since literature always presupposes a precursor, or a tradition. One could say that language is itself a tradition—each language offers a range of possibilities and of impossibilities as well, or difficulties. I don’t remember that essay, “The Cult of Books.”
Ferrari: It’s in Other Inquisitions.
Borges: I’m sure it exists, since I don’t think you’ve made it up to test my memory, or my lack of memory.
Ferrari: (laughs) It exists, and it’s also from 1951.
Borges: Ah good, right, in that case I have every right to have forgotten it. It would be very sad to have remembered the year 1951.
Ferrari: But you end with that remark by Stéphane Mallarmé.
Borges: Ah yes, that everything leads to a book, no?
Ferrari: Of course.
Borges: Yes, because I take those lines from Homer and I say that they both say the same thing. But Homer was still thinking about song, about poetry that wells up in a surge of inspiration. In contrast, Mallarmé was already thinking about a book, and, in a sense, about a sacred book. In fact, they’re the same thing—everything exists in order to end up in a book, or everything leads to a book.
Ferrari: That’s to say, events are ultimately literary. But a book you always recommend, even to people who aren’t literary enthusiasts, is the Bible.
Borges: Well, because the Bible is a library. Now, how strange that idea of the Hebrews to attribute such disparate works as Genesis, the Song of Songs, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, to attribute all of those works to a single author—the Holy Spirit. They are clearly works that correspond to quite different minds and quite different localities and, above all, to different centuries, to diverse periods of thought.
Ferrari: Well, it must have something to do with that other saying in the Bible: “The spirit blows where it will.”
Borges: Yes, which is in the Gospel according to St. John, I think, no? In the first verses.
Ferrari: Yes, if you compare it with that phrase from Whistler, “Art
happens,” in another of our conversations.
happens,” in another of our conversations.
Borges: I hadn’t realized, but of course, that’s the same idea, “Art happens,” “The spirit blows where it will.” That is, it’s the opposite of, well, a sociology of poetry, no? Of studying poetry socially, of studying the conditions that have produced poetry. . . . That reminds me of Heine, who said that the historian is a retrospective prophet, someone who prophesies what has already happened. It amounts to the same idea.
Ferrari: Of course, a prophet in reverse.
Borges: Yes, someone who prophesies what has already happened, and what one already knows has happened, no? “The prophet who looks backwards”—the historian.
Ferrari: Who’s that from, Borges?
Borges: Heine. History would be the art of divining the past, no?
Ferrari: Yes, the art of the historian.
Borges: Yes, once something has happened, one demonstrates that it happened inevitably. But it would be more interesting to apply that to the future.
Ferrari: That’s more difficult than to predict the past—it’s harder to
be a prophet than a historian.
be a prophet than a historian.
Borges: Well, that’s how literary histories are written. One takes each author, then one demonstrates the influence of his background and, then, how the work must logically stem from that author. But this method doesn’t apply to the future, that is, one doesn’t give the names and works of twenty-first-century Argentine writers, does one?
Ferrari: But in literary histories there isn’t such a demand for correctness as in history proper—one is still allowed to be literary.
Borges: Yes, one would hope so.
Ferrari: Another book that appears frequently in your library is, I think, The Thousand and One Nights.
Borges: Yes, and my ignorance of Arabic has allowed me to read it in many translations, and of course I must have told you that, of all the versions I’ve read, perhaps the most pleasing is by Rafael Cansinos Assens. Although even more pleasing is the earliest one, the one by Antoine Galland who first presented that book to the West.
Ferrari: In your essay, there’s another idea that I find interesting—you say that, for the ancients, the written word was merely a substitute for the spoken word.
Borges: Yes, I think Plato says that books are like living things but that they are also like statues—one talks to them but they can’t talk back.
Ferrari: Ah, of course.
Borges: Then, precisely so that books could talk back, he invented
the dialogue which anticipates the reader’s questions and allows for explanation and a proliferation of thought.
the dialogue which anticipates the reader’s questions and allows for explanation and a proliferation of thought.
Ferrari: Yes, that applies to oral language, but you add that, towards the fourth century, written language begins to predominate over oral language.
Borges: Ah, and I refer to the anecdote of the person who is astonished at another person reading in silence.
Ferrari: Of course. Saint Augustine is astonished at Saint Ambrose, I think.
Borges: Yes, he’s astonished because he sees something he has never seen before—someone reading quietly to himself. Of course, he had to, because the books were written by hand. You must have experienced it many times—when you receive a letter, and the handwriting in that letter isn’t faultless, let’s say, you read it aloud to make sense of it, no?
Ferrari: Yes.
Borges: And if the books were written by hand, it was only natural that they be read aloud. Aside from that point, I think that if you’re reading silently, and you come to a powerful passage, a passage that moves you, then you tend to read it aloud. I think that a well-written passage demands to be read aloud. In the case of verse, it’s obvious, because the music of verse needs to be expressed even if only in a murmur—it has to be heard. On the other hand, if you’re reading something that’s purely logical, purely abstract, it’s different. In that case, you can do without reading it aloud. But you can’t do without that reading if you’re dealing with a poem.
Ferrari: It’s part of that exaltation, however minimal, that poetry requires.
Borges: Yes, but of course that’s becoming lost now, since people no longer have an ear for it. Unfortunately, everyone is now capable of reading in silence, because they don’t hear what they read—they go directly to the meaning of the text.
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