Jorge Luis Borges Read Online Free PDF Page B

This must have been some five years ago. And then the same sort of thing happened twice again, and I reacted much in the same way, but afterwards I felt very, very much ashamed of it.
    BURGIN: This was a strike against the university?
    BORGES: Yes.
    BURGIN: What were they striking for?
    BORGES: They were striking because there was a strike among the labourers in the port and they thought the students had tojoin them. But I always think of strikes as a kind of blackmail, no? I wonder what you think about it?
    BURGIN: Students are often striking in this country.
    BORGES: In my country also. That they should do it is right, but that they should prevent other people from going to classes, I don’t understand. That they should try to bully me? And then I said, well if they knock me down, that doesn’t matter, because, after all, the issue of a fight is of no importance whatever. What is important is that a man should not let himself be bullied, don’t you think so? After all, what happens to him is not important because nobody thinks that I’m a prizefighter or that I’m any good at fighting. What is important is that I should not let myself be bullied before my students, because if I do, they won’t respect me, and I won’t respect myself.
    BURGIN: Sometimes values, then, are even more important than one’s well-being?
    BORGES: Oh yes, of course. After all, one’s well-being is physical. As I don’t think physical things are very real—of course they are real, if you fall off a cliff. That’s quite real, no? But in that case I felt that whatever happened to me was quite trifling, utterly trifling. Of course, they were trying to bluff me, because I don’t think they had any intention of being violent. But that was one of the few times in my life I’ve been really angry. And then I was very much ashamed of the fact. I feltthat, after all, as a professor, as a man of letters, I shouldn’t have been angry, I should have tried to reason with them, instead of that “well, come on and have it out,” because after all I was behaving in much the same way as they were.
    BURGIN: This reminds me a little bit of “The South.”
    BORGES: Yes.
    BURGIN: I think that’s one of your most personal stories.
    BORGES: Yes, it is.
    BURGIN: The idea of bravery means a lot to you, doesn’t it?
    BORGES: I think it does because I’m not brave myself. I think if I were really brave it wouldn’t mean anything to me. For example, I’ve been ducking a dentist for a year or so. I’m not personally brave and as my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather were personally brave men, I mean some of them fell in action …
    BURGIN: You don’t think writing is a kind of bravery?
    BORGES: It could be, yes. But perhaps if I were personally brave I wouldn’t care so much about bravery. Because, of course, what one cares for is what one hasn’t got, no? I mean if a person loves you, you take it for granted, and you may even get tired of her. But if you are jilted, you feel that thebottom is out of the universe, no? But those things are bound to happen. What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
    BURGIN: You say people should be ashamed of anger, but you don’t think people should be ashamed of this, of “what to make of a diminished thing?”
    BORGES: I don’t think one can help it.
    BURGIN: Can you help anger?
    BORGES: Yes, yes, I think that many people encourage anger or think it a very fine thing.
    BURGIN: They think it’s manly to fight.
    BORGES: Yes, and it isn’t, eh?
    BURGIN: No. It isn’t.
    BORGES: I don’t think there’s anything praiseworthy in anger. It’s a kind of weakness. Because really, I think that you should allow very few people to be able to hurt you unless, of course, they bludgeon you or shoot you. For example, I can’t understand anybody being angry because a waiter keeps him waiting too long, or because a porter is uncivil to him, or because somebody behind a counter doesn’t take him