Conversations with Borges

Borges at Eighty: Conversations

☄️ Highlights of the work:
An extremely influential classic writer of modern literature and an important pioneer of Spanish-American literature, Borges' conversations are as profound and wise as his works, and they are timeless. Borges said, "I always imagine paradise as a library," and he himself is a living library.
This is an unsurpassed must-read for writers discussing art, consistently ranking in the top two of Douban's popular interview books! —Your understanding of Borges begins with this book.
Like Socrates, Borges developed conversation into an art form. Those who have heard or read his words will be influenced by him for the rest of their lives: "The crowd is an illusion. It does not exist. I am talking to you individually."
A famous poet translates another writer who is essentially a poet - "one of the major figures in contemporary poetry" Xichuan has devoted his efforts to translating, and the 2023 newly revised commemorative edition.
📖 Introduction:
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was a world-renowned Argentine poet, writer, and translator. Considered the father of Spanish-American literature, his style was profound, erudite, and unique. He was particularly known for his labyrinthine compositions that blended reality with fiction, creating a mysterious and mystical experience. He had a significant influence on contemporary literary creation and criticism worldwide.
In 1976, Borges participated in a series of conversations at Indiana University about his life and work. In the spring of 1980, he returned to Indiana as Paden Professor for a month. He also visited Chicago, New York, and Boston, engaging in conversation along the way. This book, a collection of interviews conducted during these two trips to the United States, consists of eleven conversations covering Borges's perspectives on the times, religion, philosophy, literature, and writing.
Borges's personality and conversation are at least as profound and witty as his writings. In the final decades of his life, he traveled extensively, dictating poems, fables, and stories. Through his travels and conversations, he developed a unique oral literature. Themes that pervade Borges's work, the culmination of his intellectual mastery even in his octogenarian years, intertwine and shine in these eleven conversations, offering a glimpse into the inner world of this literary giant.
Borges Conversations is a poetic collaboration between Borges, Barnstone, and Nishikawa, transcending time, space, and language. Nishikawa began translating Borges in the 1980s, revising and refining the translation two decades later. Editor Barnstone's new "Afterword" reassesses Borges's literary legacy.
⭐ Recommended reviews:
"In my experience, no one has ever spoken to others the way Socrates did. His conversations are full of profound and moving reflections and rebuttals. ... In all his voyages and in all his conversations, Borges developed a special oral literature, and his audience was everywhere. This blind man walked slowly with his cane, seeming to live in his own world, but once he spoke, he was undoubtedly the spokesman of his time." - Willis Barnstone "In Borges's Conversations we find Borges's familiarity with past writers. Borges said that his home was like a A library is like the people who work within it. He possesses a sense of the literary past that I even consider a kind of "reawakening." At a time when literary historical narratives have become clichéd, figures like Borges allow literary history to continually acquire new meaning in a new era. Borges offers us a perspective that allows us to delve deeply into the secrets of past literature and culture. Literature holds countless secrets, but with the passing of these great figures, these secrets gradually close their doors until someone suddenly appears, allowing us to re-enter these mysteries. ——Nishikawa "In the book Conversations with Borges (the translator is the poet Nishikawa—and it is most appropriate for a poet to translate the conversations of another writer who is essentially a poet), we can sometimes sense the performativity and playfulness of 'another Borges' when he talks. However, more often than not, this eighty-year-old man is humble (sometimes overly humble), kind, talkative, and genuine: he talks about his philosophical views, creative themes, and favorite writers with brief, wise, poetic answers that sometimes read more like riddles than answers, illuminating those short stories that might seem obscure and mysterious if one knows little about Borges's thoughts." ——btr

2023-07-01

北京日报出版社

Ideal Country

388

9787547746042