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Authors: Jorge Luis Borges
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reading him.
BURGIN: You’ve linked Henry James and Kafka before—you seem to associate them in your mind for some reason.
BORGES: I think that there is a likeness between them. I think that the sense of things being ambiguous, of things being meaningless, of living in a meaningless universe, of things being many-sided and finally unexplained; well, Henry James wrote to his brother that he thought of the world as being a diamond museum, a museum of monsters. I think that he must have felt life in much the same way.
BURGIN: And yet the characters in James or in Kafka are always striving for something definite. They always have definite goals.
BORGES: They have definite goals, but they never attain them. I mean, when you’ve read the first page of
The Trial
you know that he’ll never know why he’s being judged, why he’s being tried, I mean; in the case of Henry James, the same thing happens. The moment you know that the man is after the Aspern papers, you know, well, either that he’ll never find the papers, or that if he does find them, they’ll be worthless. You may feel that.
BURGIN: But then it’s more a sense of impotence than it is an ambiguity.
BORGES: Of course, but it’s also an ambiguity. For example, “The Turn of the Screw.” That’s a stock example. One might find others. “The Abasement of the Northmores”—the whole story is told as a tale of revenge. And, in the end, you don’t know whether the revenge will work out or not. Because, after all, the letters of the widow’s husband, they may be published and nothing may come of them. So that in the end, the whole story is about revenge, and when you reach the last page, you do not know whether the woman will accomplish her purpose or not. A very strange story … I suppose that you prefer Kafka to Henry James?
BURGIN: No, they stand for different things for me.
BORGES: But do they?
BURGIN: You don’t seem to think so. But I think that Henry James believed in society; he never really questioned the social order.
BORGES: I don’t think so.
BURGIN: I think he accepted society. I think that he couldn’t conceive of a world without society and he believed in man and, moreover, in certain conventions. He was a student of man’s behaviour.
BORGES: Yes, I know, but he believed in them in a desperate way, because it was the only thing he could grasp.
BURGIN: It was an order, a sense of order.
BORGES: But I don’t think he felt happy.
BURGIN: But Kafka’s imagination is far more metaphorical.
BORGES: Yes, but I think that you get many things in James that you don’t get in Kafka. For example, in Henry James you are made to feel that there
is
a meaning behind experience, perhaps too many meanings. While in Kafka, you know that he knew no more about the castle or about the judges and the trial than you do. Because the castle and the judges are symbols of the universe, and nobody is expected to know anything about the universe. But in the case of Henry James, you think that he might have had his personal theories or you feel that he knows more of what he’s talking about. I mean that though his stories may be parables of the subject, still they’re not written by him to be parables. I think he was really very interested in the solution, maybe he had two or three solutions and so in a sense I think of Henry James as being far more complex than Kafka, but that may be a weakness. Perhaps the strength of Kafka may be in his lack of complexity.
BURGIN: I think of James as being able to create characters, whereas Kafka has no characters. Kafka is closer to poetry really. He works with metaphors and types as opposed to characters.
BORGES: No, there are no characters.
BURGIN: But James could create characters.
BORGES: Are you sure of that?
BURGIN: You don’t seem to think so.
BORGES: No, I think that what is interesting in James are the situations more than the characters. Let’s take a very obvious example. If I think of Dickens,
BURGIN: You’ve linked Henry James and Kafka before—you seem to associate them in your mind for some reason.
BORGES: I think that there is a likeness between them. I think that the sense of things being ambiguous, of things being meaningless, of living in a meaningless universe, of things being many-sided and finally unexplained; well, Henry James wrote to his brother that he thought of the world as being a diamond museum, a museum of monsters. I think that he must have felt life in much the same way.
BURGIN: And yet the characters in James or in Kafka are always striving for something definite. They always have definite goals.
BORGES: They have definite goals, but they never attain them. I mean, when you’ve read the first page of
The Trial
you know that he’ll never know why he’s being judged, why he’s being tried, I mean; in the case of Henry James, the same thing happens. The moment you know that the man is after the Aspern papers, you know, well, either that he’ll never find the papers, or that if he does find them, they’ll be worthless. You may feel that.
BURGIN: But then it’s more a sense of impotence than it is an ambiguity.
BORGES: Of course, but it’s also an ambiguity. For example, “The Turn of the Screw.” That’s a stock example. One might find others. “The Abasement of the Northmores”—the whole story is told as a tale of revenge. And, in the end, you don’t know whether the revenge will work out or not. Because, after all, the letters of the widow’s husband, they may be published and nothing may come of them. So that in the end, the whole story is about revenge, and when you reach the last page, you do not know whether the woman will accomplish her purpose or not. A very strange story … I suppose that you prefer Kafka to Henry James?
BURGIN: No, they stand for different things for me.
BORGES: But do they?
BURGIN: You don’t seem to think so. But I think that Henry James believed in society; he never really questioned the social order.
BORGES: I don’t think so.
BURGIN: I think he accepted society. I think that he couldn’t conceive of a world without society and he believed in man and, moreover, in certain conventions. He was a student of man’s behaviour.
BORGES: Yes, I know, but he believed in them in a desperate way, because it was the only thing he could grasp.
BURGIN: It was an order, a sense of order.
BORGES: But I don’t think he felt happy.
BURGIN: But Kafka’s imagination is far more metaphorical.
BORGES: Yes, but I think that you get many things in James that you don’t get in Kafka. For example, in Henry James you are made to feel that there
is
a meaning behind experience, perhaps too many meanings. While in Kafka, you know that he knew no more about the castle or about the judges and the trial than you do. Because the castle and the judges are symbols of the universe, and nobody is expected to know anything about the universe. But in the case of Henry James, you think that he might have had his personal theories or you feel that he knows more of what he’s talking about. I mean that though his stories may be parables of the subject, still they’re not written by him to be parables. I think he was really very interested in the solution, maybe he had two or three solutions and so in a sense I think of Henry James as being far more complex than Kafka, but that may be a weakness. Perhaps the strength of Kafka may be in his lack of complexity.
BURGIN: I think of James as being able to create characters, whereas Kafka has no characters. Kafka is closer to poetry really. He works with metaphors and types as opposed to characters.
BORGES: No, there are no characters.
BURGIN: But James could create characters.
BORGES: Are you sure of that?
BURGIN: You don’t seem to think so.
BORGES: No, I think that what is interesting in James are the situations more than the characters. Let’s take a very obvious example. If I think of Dickens,
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