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Oct. 6th, 2008 01:17 amSupposed to be writing about Pound, who I spent some unhappy hours reading today (Pound poems = piddle), but I'm still thinking about Borges.
1. I wish someone would translate his detective novel, one of his Bioy-Casares collaborations.
2. Curious how his failed writer father and related nostalgia for a life of action so closely parallel Yeats'--as do a few other personality and work aspects. Yet Borges never let that nostalgia color his beliefs. (Its aesthetic expression did lead to his least interesting stories.)
3. What's this Atlas thing?
4. Have I said this before, that The Garden of Forking Paths is the only perfect short story I've read? As perfect as To the Lighthouse, among novels. Can't think of a poem that stands out that way for me, offhand. Maybe "Stanzas Written in Dejection", among Shelley's. Narrowly defining perfection as completely successfully doing and only doing whatever it's trying to do. Lame definition but such a happiness to have it happening.
4a. But Sect of the Phoenix is still my favorite.
5. His Introduction to American Literature (candidate for book others don't have?) is amusingly, relentlessly laconic, so much so that his scattered handful of brief opinions strike fire: Hammett's stories have a disagreeable atmosphere, Robinson is eloquent in the good sense of that word. It's very pre-68 in its choices and presentation--as was Borges to the end, I guess, excepting the portion of him exterior to time.
6. I like the "poets' jam" approach to translation evident in his two English selected poemses. That was quite popular for a while there, c. 1960-1980, wasn't it? Virtually the rule. They did it for Guillen, Hofmannsthal, Goethe more than once, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery etc. etc. Still happens now and then, like with Inferno in the '90s and the recent Horace volume. Usually the same double handful of great translators stand out in those, among the triple handfuls of Hubert Creekmores. Also I think Merwin contributes to practically every one--wonder if he's the catalyst.
7. Even when Borges is wrong he's wrong right. He joins Bishop at the head of the most humanly likeable writers list.
1. I wish someone would translate his detective novel, one of his Bioy-Casares collaborations.
2. Curious how his failed writer father and related nostalgia for a life of action so closely parallel Yeats'--as do a few other personality and work aspects. Yet Borges never let that nostalgia color his beliefs. (Its aesthetic expression did lead to his least interesting stories.)
3. What's this Atlas thing?
4. Have I said this before, that The Garden of Forking Paths is the only perfect short story I've read? As perfect as To the Lighthouse, among novels. Can't think of a poem that stands out that way for me, offhand. Maybe "Stanzas Written in Dejection", among Shelley's. Narrowly defining perfection as completely successfully doing and only doing whatever it's trying to do. Lame definition but such a happiness to have it happening.
4a. But Sect of the Phoenix is still my favorite.
5. His Introduction to American Literature (candidate for book others don't have?) is amusingly, relentlessly laconic, so much so that his scattered handful of brief opinions strike fire: Hammett's stories have a disagreeable atmosphere, Robinson is eloquent in the good sense of that word. It's very pre-68 in its choices and presentation--as was Borges to the end, I guess, excepting the portion of him exterior to time.
6. I like the "poets' jam" approach to translation evident in his two English selected poemses. That was quite popular for a while there, c. 1960-1980, wasn't it? Virtually the rule. They did it for Guillen, Hofmannsthal, Goethe more than once, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery etc. etc. Still happens now and then, like with Inferno in the '90s and the recent Horace volume. Usually the same double handful of great translators stand out in those, among the triple handfuls of Hubert Creekmores. Also I think Merwin contributes to practically every one--wonder if he's the catalyst.
7. Even when Borges is wrong he's wrong right. He joins Bishop at the head of the most humanly likeable writers list.
