Table Of ContentCONVERSATIONS
VOLUME 3
ALSO AVAILABLE
Jorge Luis Borges,Osvaldo Ferrari
CONVERSATIONS, VOLUME 1
Translated by Jason Wilson
Jorge Luis Borges,Osvaldo Ferrari
CONVERSATIONS, VOLUME 2
Translated by Tom Boll
Jorge Luis Borges
Osvaldo Ferrari
CONVERSATIONS
VOLUME 3
Translated by Anthony Edkins
LONDON NEW YORK CALCUTTA
Seagull Books, 2017
First published as Reencuentro Diálogos Inéditos
by Editorial Sudamericana in 1998/1999
© Osvaldo Ferrari, 1999
Published by arrangement with Paterson Marsh Ltd.
English translation © Anthony Edkins, 2017
ISBN 978 0 8574 2 423 5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India
Printed and bound by Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania, USA
CONTENTS
Borges in Us, Ourselves in Borges
Osvaldo Ferrari vii
Initial Conversation, 9 March 1984 1
Stevenson and Bunyan 11
Chance 19
Fantastic Literature and Science Fiction 26
James Joyce 30
The Book of Sand 37
Blaise Pascal 44
The Imitative Country 50
St Thomas and the Talmud 57
Liberalism and Nationalism 66
Emerson and Whitman 74
Stoicism 82
Jesus Christ 92
Apology for Friendship 102
Paul Valéry 108
‘The Intruder’ 117
Oscar Wilde 121
The Desert, the Plain 131
Adolfo Bioy Casares 138
Politics and Culture 147
Bernard Shaw 157
On Film Criticism 164
A New Conversation about Paul Groussac 172
Letters in Danger 180
W. B. Yeats (I) 188
W. B. Yeats (II) 193
The Literary Thinker 201
Time 210
BORGES IN OURSELVES, OURSELVES IN BORGES
Osvaldo Ferrari
Fourteen years later, I find myself with them again, hearing the voice
of Borges and being amazed, more even than then; these dialogues,
doubly unpublished because never before have we dealt with the
majority of the themes treated here and because never before have
they appeared in book form. They reach up to the last days of our
communication in 1985.
Borges is so entirely in them that the encounter leaves me speech-
less, just like the circular conjunction of his voice, his lucidity and
his imagination. On familiarizing myself afresh with this content, I
feel myself, as he said in our first dialogues about Yeats, ‘wounded,
wounded by beauty’.
All of us were awaiting this reencounter with Borges, with the
unmistakeable flow of his intelligence and his sensibility; with the
inexhaustible weave of his literary passion, his ethical passion and
his zenithal perception of everything.
vii
JORGE LUIS BORGES OSVALDO FERRARI
This reencounter is a sum of encounters in which we finally
know ourselves, we recognize ourselves and we extend ourselves—
Borges in us, ourselves in Borges. As he used to say: ‘When we read
Shakespeare, we are, if only momentarily, Shakespeare.’ In these
dialogues, tempered by time, everyone reading them, we are going
to be Borges.
Buenos Aires,November 1998
viii
Initial Conversation
9 March 1984
OSVALDOFERRARI.Let’s begin then, this series of radio conversations.
And the first thing I want to ask you, Borges, is how you, who have
formed and expressed yourself in the silence of writing, feel about
expressing yourself and communicating through the medium of
radio.
JORGELUISBORGES.I feel a bit nervous. Nevertheless, one spends one’s
life talking, and here we are, you and I, talking. Writing is occasional
and dialogue is continuous, isn’t it?
FERRARI. Yes, but it would appear that, for the writer, dialogue is a
natural form.
BORGES. Yes, I think so. Moreover, it is something that occurred to
Plato, didn’t it? He who invented dialogue.
FERRARI. Of course, but unlike musicians and painters, for example
. . .
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JORGE LUIS BORGES OSVALDO FERRARI
BORGES.Well, they have other means of expression, naturally, but I
am limited . . . limited to the word. And, after all, the written word
doesn’t differ all that much from the oral word.
FERRARI. Now, consider in this epoch in which one thinks or speaks
of auditory or visual transmission as a form of communication, if
one intuits the listener’s presence, as, when writing, one anticipates
the presence of the reader . . .
BORGES.Oh, I don’t know, when I write, I do it . . . as a relief . . . I
like to write. Yes, that doesn’t mean I believe in the value of what I
write, but, yes, in the pleasure of writing. I mean, if I were Robinson
Crusoe, I believe I’d write on my island.
FERRARI. I understand.
BORGES.Without thinking of readers.
FERRARI. Without thinking of readers.
BORGES. Yes, I never think about the reader, except in the sense of
trying to write in a comprehensible way—it’s a simple act of polite-
ness, although it is towards persons completely imaginary or absent.
I don’t believe that confusion is a merit.
FERRARI. And do you believe that without thinking of communica-
tion, suddenly communication, of which so much is spoken, can be
produced?
BORGES.No, I don’t think about communication. When I write some-
thing, it is because I have received something. That means I believe,
humbly, in inspiration. That is to say, every writer is an amanuensis.
An amanuensis doesn’t know who or what. We can think, as did the
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