Conversations, Volume 1

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s master fabulist, was also an extraordinary conversationalist. There’s not a subject he doesn’t throw surprising new light on, whether it’s to do with Kipling or tango. In fact, there’s an impish element in his thinking. In these dialogues with a receptive Osvaldo Ferrari, he covers Buddhism, love, Henry James, Dante and much more as he circles round and digresses at whim. One cannot be sure where the 84-year-old blind man’s wit will lead him, except that it’s his form of freedom. Even if he’s covered the subject before, this time round there’s a new flash of insight. He’s an optimist. There’s always more to say. As with his written work as a whole, these dialogues configure a loose autobiography of a subtle, teasing mind. Looking back on his long life, it’s no surprise that time and dreaming become topics, but these dialogues are not a memoir for all time is now. As in his tale ‘The Other’, where two Borges meet up on a bench beside the river Charles, we have a dialogue between a young poet and the elder teller of tales where all experience floats in a frightening miracle that defies linear time.