Friends of Borges

Fervour of Borges

[ In the upper photo Borges in his Mother's room which, after her death in 1975 aged 99 years, Borges kept intact until his own death in 1986.]

Confessions of saint Borges:

"... (Mother) She has always been a companion to me -especially in later years when I was blind- and an understanding and forgiven friend. For years, until recently, she handled all my secretarial work, answering letters, reading to me, taking down my dictation, and also travelling with me in many occasions both at home and abroad. It was she, though I never gave a thought to it at the time, who quietly and effectively fostered my literary career."
On Leonor Acevedo widow Borges, fragment from An Autobiographical Essay by Jorge Luis Borges (written near 1970 for The New Yorker with the assistance of Norman Thomas Di Giovanni.)

Below: Georgie & Adolfito(circa 1934)
an everyday lifelong "English" friendship

" ; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful"'
Two English Poems' by J L Borges, 1934

"II Samuel 2, 26 : I am distressed for thee, my brother, Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: to know thy love was to me most wonderful, passing the love of women."
'The intruder' by Jorge Luis Borges

"At times he (Shakespeare = the other, the self) would leave a confession hidden away in some corner of his work, certain that it would not be deciphered"'
'Everything and Nothing' by Jorge Luis Borges

"Hay un Borges personal y un Borges público, personaje que me desagrada mucho, quien suele contestar a reportajes y aparecer en el cinematógrafo y en la televisión. Yo soy el Borges íntimo, es decir: creo que no he cambiado desde que era niño, salvo que cuando era niño no sabía expresarme"
J L Borges

Borges entrevistado por Neustandt:... "agregó en voz baja: si llego a decir que quisiera ver a un hombre ¿sabe lo que dirían de mí...?".

Books we recommend:

La falsa viuda Borges criticó el libro con confidencias del autor a su entrañable compañero de toda la vida, Adolfo Bioy Casares, porque el volumen revela que el autor de El Aleph temía causarle enojos y se quejaba del carácter "extraño" de la señorita que hoy posee los derechos exclusivos de la millonaria explotación comercial de su obra: ...La afirmación aparece en el libro Borges (Destino), recientemente publicado por el albacea literario de Bioy Casares, Daniel Martino, que recoge los diarios de Bioy sobre su relación con Borges y ofrece la crónica de una amistad legendaria que ambos escritores cultivaron durante décadas... En el libro "Borges", Bioy Casares -fallecido en 1999- relata su larga amistad con Borges y apunta que su viuda "es una mujer de idiosincrasia extraña. Acusaba a Borges por cualquier motivo, lo castigaba con silencios; lo celaba (se ponía furiosa ante la devoción de los admiradores). Junto a ella vivía temiendo enojarla"... más en diarios La Nación

Pulse sobre la pantalla para ver y escuchar a Bioy entrevistado por Bernardo Neudstadt.

"Crónicas Malditas" de la reconocida periodista Olga Wornat, Editorial Grijalbo 2005 [es importante comprar la edición completa, que también trae un reportaje sobre Adolfo Bioy Casares, porque la abreviada no tiene todos los reportajes de investigación]:
"Afuera llueve torrencialmente y adentro Epifanía Ubeda de Robledo, la mujer que compartió cuarenta años con Jorge Luis Borges, juguetea con la punta de su delantal de cocina. Tiene la mirada dulce y el cabello encanecido, recogido en la nuca. Ya no hay plantas que la esperen y tampoco departamento. De la casa del escritor, Fanny -como la conocen todos y como la llamaba su patrón- fue expulsada violentamente por indicación de María Kodama, la viuda*. ...lo conoció tanto como su madre y muchísimo más que María Kodama, la mujer que lo arrastró muy enfermo a Suiza, lo separó de sus amigos, se casó con él y se quedó con todos sus bienes. La misma que luego de morir Borges regresó a Argentina y en el invierno de 1986 echó a Fanny del departamento y la dejó en la calle, sin nada. Todo lo contrario a lo que había dispuesto Borges en un testamento que Kodama hizo desaparecer." ...fragmento del capítulo "La mucama de Borges" que puede leer en El Gatopardo pulsándo aquí [*viuda putativa, para más información leer el libro de investigación "La posesión póstuma de Borges", de Juan Gasparini]

With Borges by Alberto Manguel
Or how to learn to see from a blind master. In 1964 the adolescent Alberto Manguel was working during his school holidays at a bookshop. One day a customer invited him to come to his house, after his job, to read for him. That customer was Jorge Luis Borges ... the rest you may want to know is inside this well written book.
To know more also read the article on The Times and the interview by Robert Birnbaum in The Morning News

The lesson of the Master: on Borges and his Work by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, published by Continuum Books where you can buy this book now or buy it at Foyles .
Di Giovanni, translator and writer, is also the author of the novel Novecento on which Bernardo Bertolucci's famous film about the rise of fascism, leading to the II World War, is based.

In Orbis Tertius you can listen Bertolucci's interview on BBC - Radio 3, speaking on Freud and Borges.

"From De Quincey, Borges had learned that Oedipus himself, and not the man in general, was the profound solution to the riddle. Blind Oedipus, Homer, Joyce, Milton, Borges: they form a five-in-one. Borges's mother died at ninety-nine, after many devoted years as her son's secretary. Urbane, ironic, beautifully mannered, Borges loses his composure only when Freud is mentioned to him. Let us honor Borges by attaching to him Oedipus the man rather than the complex. The genius of Borges, particularly his nonfictions, is to exemplify what is man: the subject and object of his own quest."
From "Genius : A Mosaic of 100 Exemplary Creative Minds" by Harold Bloom

The signification of Pycho's story to understand the case of Borges

"I am out to give the public good, healthy, mental shake-ups..."
Alfred Hitchcock.

What do you think of Psychoanalysis?
Borges: "Psychoanalysis is the ob-scene face of science fiction."


..."Borges confessed many times that, as far as painting was concerned, he had always been blind. He also seemed deaf to music. He said he admired Brahms (one of his best stories is called Deutsches Requiem) but he rarely listened to his music. He remembered the music that accompanied certain films, but less for the music itself than for the way in which it assisted the story, as in the case of Bernard Herrmann's score for Psycho, a film he very much admired as “another version of the doppelgänger, in which the murderer becomes his mother, the person he has murdered”. He found this notion mysteriously appealing."
A fragment from the recent book "With Borges" by Alberto Manguel.

Related texts and interviews we invite you to read:

Click on the screen to watch and listen Hitchcock presenting Psycho

Script for Psycho
Oedipal nightmare by the writer Alan Vanneman
Welles influence on Hitchcock's film, both published in Bright Lights Film Journal
On Hitchcock by Camille Paglia
About Hitchcock, women and The Birds listen Camille Paglia interviewed in radio NPR
"The savage Id" by Camille Paglia and Michael Sragow in the review Salon.com
"All in the family" interview to Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell where she recalls working with her father, Alfred, on "Strangers on a Train" and "Psycho"; in the review Salon.com

Turn on the player to listen Psycho's prelude composed by Bernard Herrmann and performed by Danny Elfman . The musical scores will be followed by an audio fragment of the poet Betina Edelberg -a friend and co-author of Borges ("Leopoldo Lugones" and "The lost Image", an spoken-ballet satirical on dictatorships) - speaking on the Argentina National Radio about Borges, his Mother (with whom Borges lived all her life until she died at 99 years of age and he was almost 76 years old, all her life - and beyond - under her management) and on other women.