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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #borg
I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. 'This was my country and it might be yet,' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: 'But something came between it and the sun.' This couplet he claimed (I have never been able to locate it) was from Edmund Blunden, whose gnarled hand I had been so excited to shake all those years ago, but it was not the Videla junta that Borges meant by the allusion. It was the pre-existing rule of Juan Perón, which he felt had depraved and corrupted Argentine society. I didn't disagree with this at all—and Perón had victimized Borges's mother and sister as well as having Borges himself fired from his job at the National Library—but it was nonetheless sad to hear the old man saying that he heartily preferred the new uniformed regime, as being one of 'gentlemen' as opposed to 'pimps.' This was a touch like listening to Evelyn Waugh at his most liverish and bufferish. (It was also partly redeemed by a piece of learned philology or etymology concerning the Buenos Aires dockside slang for pimp: canfinflero. 'A canfinfla, you see,' said Borges with perfect composure, 'is a pussy or more exactly a cunt. So a canfinflero is a trafficker in cunt: in Anglo-Saxon we might say a 'cunter."' Had not the very tango itself been evolved in a brothel in 1880? Borges could talk indefinitely about this sort of thing, perhaps in revenge for having had an oversolicitous mother who tyrannized him all his life.) ↗
#bawd #edmund-blunden #evelyn-waugh #jorge-luis-borges #jorge-rafael-videla
It is love. I will have to run or hide. The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams? Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time. Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace. It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession. It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics. There exists a corner that I dare not cross. Now the armies confine me, the hordes. (This room is unreal; she has not seen it.) The name of a woman gives me away. A woman hurts me in all of my body. ↗
Marcel ise şöyle öldü: Bir gün bütün berduşların Paris'in kent manzarasından silinmelerine karar verilmişti. Sosyal yardım örgütü, aynı zamanda kentin doğru dürüst bir görünümde olmasıyla da ilgilenen ve düşünülebilecek en resmi nitelikteki sosyal yardım örgütünün ilgilileri, polisle birlikte Rue Monge'a geldiler, tek istedikleri, yaşlı adamları yaşama geri döndürmek, dolayısıyla da yaşama hazır olsunlar diye önce yıkayıp paklamaktı. Marcel yerinden kalkıp onlarla birlikte gitti, çok sakin bir adamdı, birkaç kadeh şarap sonra bile hâlâ bilge ve uysal kalabilen bir insandı. Gelmelerini o gün büyük bir olasılıkla hiç umursamamıştı, belki de caddedeki iyi yerine, metronun sıcak havasının mazgallardan dışarı çıktığı yere geri dönebileceğini düşünüyordu. Ama kamunun esenliği için yapılmış olan, içinde çok sayıda duşun bulunduğu yıkanma salonunda sıra Marcel'e de geldi, onu duşun altına soktular ve duş hiç kuşkusuz ne fazla sıcak, ne de fazla soğuktu, ama Marcel yıllardan beri ilk kez çıplaktı ve ilk kez suyun altına girmişti. Daha kimse durumu kavrayıp yardımına koşamadan düştü ve hemen oracıkta öldü. Ne demek istediğimi anlıyor musun! Malina, biraz ne yapacağını şaşırmış gibi bakıyor, oysa ne yapacağını asla şaşırmaz. Bu öyküyü anlatmayabilirdim. Ama duşu bir defa daha hissediyorum, Marcel'in üstündeki neleri yıkamaya hakları yoktu, bunu biliyorum. Eğer bir insan kendi mutluluğun buharları arasında yaşıyorsa, eğer bir insanın "Allah sizden razı olsun"un dışında söyleyecek pek sözü yoksa, o zaman o insanı yıkamaya kalkışmamalı, o insan için iyi olanı o insanın üstünden yıkayıp akıtmamalı, birini olmayan bir yaşam için arındırmaya kalkışmamalı... ↗
If you have feelings about reading, you feel the rhythm of prose or of a poem like music. It awakens something in your soul and then of course you study, read, you grow up and you begin to understand the message and that is the first step towards understanding life. ↗
Non sono mai nato, non mi vergogno di essere nell'equivoco italiota, non mi interessano gli italiani. Qualunque governo come qualunque arte (o tutta l'arte borghese), tutta l'arte è rappresentazione di Stato, è statale. È uno stato che si assiste fin troppo, se no alla mediocrità chi ci pensa? La mediocrità, par excellence, è proprio lo Stato. Lo Stato dovrebbe smetterla di governare, ecco. Si può dare uno Stato senza governo, mi spiego? Non deve amministrare, deve lasciarlo fare a dei privati. ↗
The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different. ↗
The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself. ↗
