Jorge Luis Borges and Other Influences

Last night while looking for A Yellow Rose by Borges, I bumped into this stimulating passage, the opening to Bruce Lord's essay Some Lovecraftian Thoughts On Borges’ “There Are More Things”

I had read many of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories several years before discovering Lovecraft, let alone studying the latter seriously, and so the idea of Borges owing any debt to or admitting any influence from HPL was new and somewhat shocking to me when I first encountered it. While reading "Dreams In The Witch House" for the first time, however, I found it to be quite Borgesian (I didn't have any problem with taking such an anachronistic view of the relationship, as Borges has based entire stories around such errors). The story of an increasingly alienated and detached academic who becomes lost in his field of study and ends up transcending the known laws of the universe reminded me of the hapless people caught in "The Library Of Babel." In a similar vein, both authors used the technique of referring to fictional literary and scientific sources as well as legitimate ones (often combining the two in lists of books or thinkers) in order to better facilitate their stories’ fantastic elements.

The occasion for seeking out a story by Borges was my art opening tonight at Benchmark Tattoo here in Duluth. The title of the show is Influences, one of them being the stories of J. L. Borges.

This passage explains one of the devices by which Borges' stories become magical. You read and don't have a certainty about what is real and what is not. It's a device I've used, to greater or lesser effect, in some of the stories included in my collection of six titled Unremembered Histories, especially Two Acts That Changed The World, and The Empty Space.

This isn't why I sought out A Yellow Rose however. Rather, it's the notion at this very brief story's end that when we create art or books or anything, we're just adding more things to the world and not necessarily adding more meaning or value to it.

For forty years or more I've commented that it is the people we meet and the books we read that most influence us. I've said it so frequently and for so long that I have not really questioned it. But this morning I am thinking otherwise. Some people aren't readers but they watch movies and listen to music, both of which are highly influential.

As I prepared my show I realized that my ancestors have been a major influence. I've taken inspiration from being descended from men like the pioneer Daniel Boone as well as the heroic Rob Roy McGregor. And the belief that I have made more sensitive to the plight of our native peoples by the native blood that my brother and I believe is in our veins.

Andre Gide has noted that places influence us as well, and this is certainly true. Not only the places we go (I've lived a year each in Mexico and Puerto Rico) but also the places we have lived. (In my case, Cleveland, New Jersey, Minneapolis and Duluth.)

But there's still great power in the books we read. And actually, when you read a book you're meeting a person anyways, for books are written by people, and in point of fact you may very well get to know that person better through his or her writings than through any number of hours in social concourse.

The art opening tonight is at 1831 East 8th Street, in the new building across the street from Sara's Table, just east of Chester Bowl on Skyline Drive. Hope to see you there... I'll have copies of my book on hand. And from what I hear Kyle and Dane really make it a welcoming event worthy of your time.

Who have been your influences? And more importantly, who are you influencing? Regarding the latter, make it be good.

The Poet Declares His Renown

I discovered Borges in the 1971 Fall/Winter issue of Antioch Review. There were six short pieces, each no more than half a page, which were so dense with meaning and profound that one could not help but take notice.

"A Yellow Rose" was the first to capture my fascination. It later appeared in his book Dreamtigers, as does the sixth piece, "Everything and Nothing."

After you read these, try "The Circular Ruins," which is found in his collection Labyrinths.

The Poet Declares His Renown

The circle of the sky metes out my glory, 
The libraries of the East contend for my poems, 
Emirs seek me out to fill my mouth with gold, 
Angels already know by heart my latest ghazal. 
My working tools are humiliation and an aguish; 
Would to God I'd been stillborn.



Special greetings to all my blog followers in Russia.

Featured eBook of the Day: Unremembered Histories

One More Thing

It's been near twenty years since I first plugged a modem into the digital connectness of America Online. "You've Got Mail." Though I was ennyman then and and ennyman I've remained, there are many things that have changed. The first was when AOL opened up to yet a wider galaxy called the World Wide Web.

Over the years endless varieties of online communities and groups have formed, re-formed and disappeared. Over the years an endless stream of eNewsletters and other kinds of communication of entered and ceased from entering my inbox. I can tell when my interest has waned. As much as I used to enjoy them I find myself opening them less and less. They become just one more thing in a world of many things...

It is our response to these things that says they have value or no value to us. As they lose value, we become weary of them. Whereas before our interest was electro-magnetic, in the end that power has dissipated. It becomes driftwood to which we have become indifferent in a sea of driftwood.

Currently, of the half dozen or so eNewsletters that magically appear in my daily batch of emails the ArtDaily is one that always gets my attention. And there is a second to which I feel an affinity, The Floating Library. It's a blog that seems dedicated to churning up thought, dredging the deeper spaces beyond the sparkly little fireflies that glimmer briefly in the universe of time.

I can't even recall how I found it, but as with all gardens of forking paths in life, we resonate with certain things and inner instincts prod us to investigate further. I find a quote by Rilke, and links to Borges, and I know I've found a mind after my own heart.

Today's blog post there was titled Marginalia. It is a collection of notes from the margins of the books of medieval scribes and copyists.

On another occasion, Sineokov shared The Yellow Rose, a short, short story by Jorge Luis Borges, which many decades ago was my first introduction to this Argentine literary giant, enriching as a dark veil.

I did not know Pessoa at the time, but he and Rilke and Goethe are all here in The Floating Library. Each somehow had a way of seeing. Perhaps it was their shared vantage point, from the deepest dark trenches of their own inner labyrinths.

Yesterday I was feeling the weight of this thought, the idea that is so poignantly captured by the author of Ecclesiastes after he had embraced everything and was so painfully aware of his nothingness, the idea so pointedly presented here in Borges. And I wonder... why does the meaninglessness of it all somehow comfort us when so beautifully put into words like this. Is it because we are persons made in the image of God, and noble and the awareness of a beautifully profound idea, even tragic, affirms our nobility? Is it a divine paradox?

So it is, I offer this blog entry as one more thing...

A Yellow Rose
When on that afternoon or the next the renowned Giambattista Marino died - he whom the unanimous mouths of Fame (to use an image dear to him) proclaimed the new Homer and new Dante - the still, silent event that was essentially the last in his life had already taken place. Burdened with years and glory, the man lay dying in a wide Spanish bed with tall carved corner posts. It is easy to picture a quiet balcony a few steps away, facing the sunset, and, down below, marble statuary and laurel trees and a garden whose terraces are reflected in a rectangular pool. A woman has placed a yellow rose in a vase; the man murmurs the inevitable verses of which he himself, to be honest, is rather weary:

Crown of the garden, pride of the lawn,
Springtime's jewel, fair April's eye ...

Then came the revelation. Marino saw the rose as Adam first saw it in Paradise, and he felt that it lived in an eternity of its own and not in his words; he felt that we may mention or allude to a thing but not express it, and that the tall proud volumes casting a golden haze there in a corner of the room were not (as his vanity dreamed) a mirror of the world but only one thing more added to the world.

This illumination came to Marino on the eve of his death, as perhaps it had to Homer and Dante as well.

[1956]

A Yellow Rose

"Myth is the nothing that is all." ~Fernando Pessoa

Every now and then you experience something that touches you in a deeper place than the other mundane things you encounter daily. Something deep within you stirs, awakens. An inner voice whispers, "What is this that has so moved me?"

This can happen in certain geographic localities where we suddenly find ourselves startled. Goethe, upon arriving in Rome, declared, "At last I am born!" For another it might have been Africa, Paris, or an Irish countryside.

It can also be people who awaken us. This includes the minds of those we encounter when we read a great story or a great book. The person behind the ink, as it were, is a mind alive that can leave its mark on those who chance upon it. It may be a small thing but it transcends explaining.

For me, one such experience was a single description on a page of a story by Hemingway, The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife from his first collection of short stories, In Our Time. Several years later it occurred again when I picked up an old Antioch Review from a garage sale and read the story which I have reproduced here, A Yellow Rose, by Jorge Luis Borges.

What is it in this very short burst of light that touched me so deeply? Perhaps it was the density of the prose. Or perhaps it was the scope of the story, extending from the birth of man through the Renaissance into the present and envisioning our very own futures.

A Yellow Rose

Neither that afternoon nor the next did the illustrious Giambattista Marino die, he whom the unanimous mouths of Fame — to use an image dear to him — proclaimed as the new Homer and the new Dante. But still, the noiseless fact that took place then was in reality the last event of his life. Laden with years and with glory, he lay dying in a huge Spanish bed with carved bedposts. It is not hard to imagine a serene balcony a few steps away, facing the west, and, below, marble and laurels and a garden whose various levels are duplicated in a rectangle of water. A woman has placed in a goblet a yellow rose. The man murmurs the inevitable lines that now, to tell the truth, bore even him a little:

Purple of the garden, pomp of the meadow,
Gem of the spring, April’s eye . . .

Then the revelation occurred: Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen it in Paradise, and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall, proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not — as his vanity had dreamed — a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world.

Marino achieved this illumination on the eve of his death, and Homer and Dante may have achieved it as well.

Note: This particular translation is by Mildred Boyer and currently resides in a short volume of Borges' writings titled Dreamtigers. If you are a fan of Borges, you might enjoy a few stories of my own inspired by this master storyteller. They can be found in my book Unremembered Histories.