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Authors: Jorge Luis Borges
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greatest novelist. And then after ten years or so, when I reread him, I felt greatly disappointed. I felt that the characters were unreal and that also the characters were part of a plot. Because in real life, even in a difficult situation, even when you are worrying very much about something, even when you feel anguish or when you feel hatred—well, I’ve never felt hatred—or love or fury maybe, you also live along other lines, no? I mean, a man is in love, but at the same time he is interested in the cinema, or he is thinking about mathematics or poetry or politics, while in novels, in most novels, the characters are simply living through what’s happening to them. No, that might be the case with very simple people, but I don’t see, I don’t think that happens.
BURGIN: Do you think a book like
Ulysses
, for example, was, among other things, an attempt to show the full spectrum of thought?
BORGES: Yes, but I think that
Ulysses
is a failure, really. Well, by the time it’s read through, you know thousands and thousands of circumstances about the characters, but you don’t know them. And if you think of the characters in Joyce, you don’t think of them as you think of the characters in Stevenson or in Dickens, because in the case of a character, let’s say in a book by Stevenson, a man may appear, may last a page, but you feel that you know him or that there’s more in him to be known, but in the case of
Ulysses
you are told thousands of circumstances about the characters. You know, for example, well, you know that they went twice to the men’s room, you know all the books they read, you know their exact positions when they are sitting down or standing up, but you don’t really know them. It’s as if Joyce had gone over them with a microscope or a magnifying glass.
BURGIN: I imagine you’ve revealed a lot about English literature to your students.
BORGES: Nobody knows a lot about English literature, it’s so rich … But I believe, for example, that I have revealed Robert Browning to many young men in Buenos Aires who knew nothing whatsoever about him. Now I’m wondering if Browning, instead of writing poetry—of course he should have written poetry—but I think that many of Browning’s pieces would have fared better, at least as far as the reader goes, had they been written as short stories. For example, I think that he wrote some very fine verses in
The Ring and the Book
. We find it burdensome because I suppose we’ve grown out of the habit of reading long poems in blank verse. But had he written it in prose, had
The Ring and the Book
been written as a novel, and the same story told over and over again by different characters, he might have been more amusing, no? Though he would have lost many fine passages of verse. Then I should think of Robert Browning as the forerunner of all modern literature. But nowadays we don’t, because we’re put off by the …
BURGIN: … poetic technicalities.
BORGES: Yes, the poetic technicalities, by the blank verse, by the rather artificial style. But had he been, let’s say, well, yes, had he been a good prose writer, then I think that we should think of Browning as being the forerunner of what is called modern literature.
BURGIN: Why do you say that?
BORGES: Because when I told the plots of his poems to my students, they were wild about them. And then, when they read them, they found them, well, a task. But if you tell somebody the framework of
The Ring and the Book
, it’s very interesting. The idea of having the same story told by different characters from different angles, that seems to be, well, more or less, what Henry James would have liked to do—a long time before Henry James. I mean that you should think of Browning as having been the forerunner, quite as good as the forerunner, of Henry James or of Kafka. While today we don’t think of him in that way, and nobody seems to be reading him, except out of duty, but I think people should enjoy
BURGIN: Do you think a book like
Ulysses
, for example, was, among other things, an attempt to show the full spectrum of thought?
BORGES: Yes, but I think that
Ulysses
is a failure, really. Well, by the time it’s read through, you know thousands and thousands of circumstances about the characters, but you don’t know them. And if you think of the characters in Joyce, you don’t think of them as you think of the characters in Stevenson or in Dickens, because in the case of a character, let’s say in a book by Stevenson, a man may appear, may last a page, but you feel that you know him or that there’s more in him to be known, but in the case of
Ulysses
you are told thousands of circumstances about the characters. You know, for example, well, you know that they went twice to the men’s room, you know all the books they read, you know their exact positions when they are sitting down or standing up, but you don’t really know them. It’s as if Joyce had gone over them with a microscope or a magnifying glass.
BURGIN: I imagine you’ve revealed a lot about English literature to your students.
BORGES: Nobody knows a lot about English literature, it’s so rich … But I believe, for example, that I have revealed Robert Browning to many young men in Buenos Aires who knew nothing whatsoever about him. Now I’m wondering if Browning, instead of writing poetry—of course he should have written poetry—but I think that many of Browning’s pieces would have fared better, at least as far as the reader goes, had they been written as short stories. For example, I think that he wrote some very fine verses in
The Ring and the Book
. We find it burdensome because I suppose we’ve grown out of the habit of reading long poems in blank verse. But had he written it in prose, had
The Ring and the Book
been written as a novel, and the same story told over and over again by different characters, he might have been more amusing, no? Though he would have lost many fine passages of verse. Then I should think of Robert Browning as the forerunner of all modern literature. But nowadays we don’t, because we’re put off by the …
BURGIN: … poetic technicalities.
BORGES: Yes, the poetic technicalities, by the blank verse, by the rather artificial style. But had he been, let’s say, well, yes, had he been a good prose writer, then I think that we should think of Browning as being the forerunner of what is called modern literature.
BURGIN: Why do you say that?
BORGES: Because when I told the plots of his poems to my students, they were wild about them. And then, when they read them, they found them, well, a task. But if you tell somebody the framework of
The Ring and the Book
, it’s very interesting. The idea of having the same story told by different characters from different angles, that seems to be, well, more or less, what Henry James would have liked to do—a long time before Henry James. I mean that you should think of Browning as having been the forerunner, quite as good as the forerunner, of Henry James or of Kafka. While today we don’t think of him in that way, and nobody seems to be reading him, except out of duty, but I think people should enjoy
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