About the Speakers

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, born in Buenos Aires.

  • His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature".
  • His most famous books are Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), collections of short stories on shared themes - dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, infinity, fictional writers, philosophy, religion and God.
  • He became blind later in life; at the time of this interview he was eighty-three.

Roberto Alifano (born 1943, General Pinto, Buenos Aires province) is a poet, storyteller, essayist and journalist. He worked with Borges from 1974 to 1985.

About the lesson. It is an interview: excerpts from Twenty-four Conversations with Borges by Roberto Alifano. Alifano asks the questions; Borges answers.

[Exam Tip] — The interviewer is Roberto Alifano; the person interviewed is Jorge Luis Borges. Do not mix them up in MCQs or reported-speech questions.

Summary, Part 1: Family, Blindness and Books

First reading. Borges's first reading was Grimm's Fairy Tales in an English version. He says he was educated by his father's library, perhaps more than by high school or university.

His mother, Dona Leonor. He calls her an extraordinary person, kind, intelligent and gracious, with no enemies. He feels guilty that he was not a happy man and so could not give her the happiness she deserved. He says all children, when their mother dies, feel they took her for granted - like the moon, the sun or the seasons.

Blindness. For Borges, blindness is now a way of life, not entirely unhappy. A writer must think that whatever happens to him is a resource. Humiliations, misfortunes and embarrassments are given to us as raw material, like clay, to shape our art.

  • He quotes Homer's Odyssey: the gods spun ruin for men "that there might be a song for those yet to be born".
  • He quotes Goethe: "All that is near becomes far" - true of the sunset and of life. The visible world has moved away from his eyes, but other things have replaced it.
  • He still pretends he is not blind - he still buys books and fills his house with them.

A dream about books. He dreamt of the burning of a great library, perhaps the Library of Alexandria. Alifano suggests he write a history of the book; Borges likes the idea but wonders whether an eighty-three-year-old man can take it on, and recalls that Spengler wrote remarkable comments on books in The Decline of the West.

Summary, Part 2: What a Book Is, What Poetry Is

The spirit of a book. Borges agrees with Bernard Shaw: "Every book worth being re-read has been written by the spirit." A book goes beyond its author's intention, which is "a meager thing - a fallible thing". Every book has something mysterious. Reading an ancient book is like reading all the time that has passed since it was written. A book may have errors and we may disagree with its author, but it keeps something sacred, magical, which brings happiness.

What is poetry? Poetry is so intimate and essential that it cannot be defined without oversimplifying it - like trying to define the colour yellow, love, or the fall of leaves in autumn.

  • Poetry is the aesthetic act. It is not the poem; a poem may be only a series of symbols.
  • Poetry is the poetic act that happens when the poet writes it and when the reader reads it - a little differently each time.
  • It is "magical, mysterious and unexplainable - although not incomprehensible". If the reader does not feel it, the poet has failed.

Precise words. Precise words create emotion. Emily Dickinson wrote "This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies". The idea (we all become dust) is a cliche; the magic lies in "gentlemen and ladies". "Men and women" would have been trivial.

Metaphors. True metaphors have existed from the beginning of time; only their expression changes. Borges reduces them to five or six essential metaphors: time and a river; life and dreams; death and sleep; stars and eyes; flowers and women. The poet's task is to discover metaphors, even if they already exist.

Summary, Part 3: Why Books Will Never Disappear

Alifano says some people believe modern communication will replace books with something faster.

Borges answers: "I believe that books will never disappear."

  • Of all man's inventions, the book is the most astounding. Other inventions are extensions of the body:
  • the telephone - of our voice;
  • the telescope and microscope - of our sight;
  • the sword and the plough - of our arms.
  • Only the book is an extension of our imagination and memory.

Literature is a dream - "a controlled dream". We owe literature almost everything we are, have been and will be. Our past is a sequence of dreams; remembering is like dreaming.

Books are the great memory of all centuries. Their function is irreplaceable: if books disappear, history would disappear, and man would disappear.

Central Idea

The interview presents Borges's view of life, literature and books.

  • Every experience, even blindness and humiliation, is raw material for art.
  • A book is more than its author's intention; it carries something sacred and magical.
  • Poetry is an experience - the aesthetic act between poet and reader - not merely the printed poem, and it depends on precise words.
  • The book is man's greatest invention, an extension of imagination and memory, and so it can never disappear.

[Exam Tip] — The 2025 paper used this lesson three times: an MCQ matching Grimm's Fairy Tales, Dona Leonor and The Odyssey; a 3-mark question on how Borges defines poetry; and the reported speech question (Alifano: "Can we talk about Dona Leonor, your mother?").