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Apr. 1st, 2010 03:08 amNotes to self re. "Garden of Forking Paths":
Bender, on being rejected by the Globetrotters, before his show started to suck: My life, and by extension everyone else's, is meaningless.
Something I think I missed in previous readings of "Garden" was that the narrator is referring to Albert when he says he has spoken for one hour with an Englishman the peer of Goethe. How was Stephen Albert like Goethe, exactly? In the interview book I quoted from before, Borges is asked about Goethe; he admits to not caring much for the plot of Faust or, apparently, for Goethe's literary work in general apart from Roman Elegies, but greatly admires his absolute freedom from national or racial pride. He was a sort of emblem for him. Borges even thought the Germans venerate him so much because he's tonic to their own worst habits, an example of someone utterly lacking them, as Shakespeare is for the English (...because they're boring? dispassionate? prosaic? one-personalitied?). The interview was conducted thirty years later, but in most matters Borges' opinions had achieved full and final intricacy by the late '30s.
Albert converts from being a Christian missionary to honoring the architect of the Garden.
Something Borges says several times in his poems is that we are time.
Bender, on being rejected by the Globetrotters, before his show started to suck: My life, and by extension everyone else's, is meaningless.
Something I think I missed in previous readings of "Garden" was that the narrator is referring to Albert when he says he has spoken for one hour with an Englishman the peer of Goethe. How was Stephen Albert like Goethe, exactly? In the interview book I quoted from before, Borges is asked about Goethe; he admits to not caring much for the plot of Faust or, apparently, for Goethe's literary work in general apart from Roman Elegies, but greatly admires his absolute freedom from national or racial pride. He was a sort of emblem for him. Borges even thought the Germans venerate him so much because he's tonic to their own worst habits, an example of someone utterly lacking them, as Shakespeare is for the English (...because they're boring? dispassionate? prosaic? one-personalitied?). The interview was conducted thirty years later, but in most matters Borges' opinions had achieved full and final intricacy by the late '30s.
Albert converts from being a Christian missionary to honoring the architect of the Garden.
Something Borges says several times in his poems is that we are time.
