Imaginary Conversation with Borges about Imaginary Writers and Books*
To the other one, to Borges, is to whom things happen. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and I delay myself, perhaps almost mechanically, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; from Borges I find out through the mail and I see his name in a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary.
Jorge Luis Borges
-Borges and I
I met the blind Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who was accompanied by an assistant, at a local park in Buenos Aires. He wore a brown suit.
“Señor Borges,” I said, sitting next to him on a park bench on an overcast April day, “thank you for taking the time to converse with me.”
“Borges, yes. But which Borges?” he asked, “Borges, the man of letters or the little boy who grew up loving the Encyclopedia Britannica, libraries, and books – inspired by his father’s library?”
“I know the literary Borges. I wonder what the Borges of flesh and bones can tell me about the world of imaginary writers and their books.”
“Ah yes, the four essays about I.M. Peterson you sent me. I have read them with much enthusiasm.”
“I brought them with me,” I said.
“No need to worry. I approve. I have committed them to memory. Quite a world you have created around Señor Peterson, young man. I take Peterson’s existence in the same vein as my Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. The important thing is what Pierre Menard tells us about ‘the imprecise and prior image of a book not yet written.’”
“Like you, I can visualize imaginary beings that might have been,” I told him. He nodded and padded me on the shoulder, the same way a loving grandmother in a previous era would her grandchildren.
“You see, beings are ethereal, like wispy clouds that dissipate as soon as they are formed. That is the mystery of being… Your first essay…the one about dreams…let us take them one by one. Agreed?”
“As you wish,” I smiled.
I.M. Peterson, In Dreams
“I like the title – In Dreams,” Borges began, “read me the essay,” he said, tapping his dark brown walking cane on the ground.
I began to read aloud:
In Dreams, a novel with a flair for romanticism, life, and romance in the balance. How best to describe a work of fiction, imaginary escape into the oblivion suggested by the spaces between the lines of a fictional literary reality? Who entertains such a dreamy romance? That is the bread and butter of lifelong readers. Non-readers rarely string together the threads of life and romance that the best tales, especially short stories and novels, weave.
Life-as-romance is art without pretense; a surplus of content and form. The stringing together of these two antithetical poles requires love, a scarce commodity in late postmodernity. That alone makes life as romance like a rare bird today.
“Yes, rare indeed,” Borges added.
I continued reading:
In Dreams is a novel of life as dream that brings to mind the Spanish writer Calderon de la Barca’s play Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueño). Life is transient, ephemeral, always gliding through thin ice on glass skates. How best to grasp this fleeting cloud of existential dissolution and tears?
“Calderon… I think of him as a proto-surrealist of literature. Life is indeed like a dream,” Borges said, “go ahead, and read on. This is interesting.”
In Dreams is not about the sensual components of life, life as mere residue of the five senses. This is not Peterson’s orbit. Other writers take the senses and run with them. On the contrary, Peterson’s life-as-romance is a premonition of transcendence that distances man from sterile and corrosive immanence.
Following the trajectory of one man’s obsession with intuition as the scaffolding of the house of being, the narrator of In Dreams, Peter Enme, uncovers a window into the timeless essence of the permanent things: love. Salvation unveils itself to him in snippets of irony and laughter, and many winks of the eyes.
“Yes. Very good. A beguiling universe, no doubt,” Borges interrupted. “Please….” he motioned me to go on.
Peterson is an uncommon storyteller. His stories show more than they tell, while building a bridge between the immanence of the here-and-now and the invisible world that is the purview of the few. Readers and critics who are not accustomed to the fictional niche that Peterson creates can either accept this writer’s literary conventions or seek refuge in the protective bunker of bestsellers.
The dance of space and time that encapsulates being is a waltz that requires uncommon dexterity, Peterson reminds readers. Mental clarity rounds off this dance, where only one alone can dance at any given time.
Fiction that delivers thoughtful readers to portals that showcase parallel dimensions, the interstices that complement the sterility of the sensual world, comes at a price to writers and readers alike. Peterson takes this hedge, brandishing a pen of magical realism.
“But why Realism? Who is to say?” Borges objected, “I prefer to focus on the empty spaces between sentences. In a sense, my work is about things that I have not written. You understand…for good listeners, few words.”
I continued reading:
Peter, a Boy who Loves the Circus and Fairs
Peter Enme loves the circus and fairs. As a young boy, he was excited by the sight of circus tents, always lamenting the idea of a transitory spectacle that cannot last. Peter’s imagination soared, “who are these people who build and take apart a circus and fair on demand?”
Borges interrupted my reading.
“I like Peter’s name, Enme. Or is it – and me?’’ he emphasized, ‘clever. Like Borges y Yo.”
“Perhaps?” I smiled and went on reading:
Peter anxiously awaited the traveling circus and fair that come to his town annually. As a young boy Peter went to the circus with his family to take in the spectacle of sight, color, and sound. As a teenager, he continued to go with his friends.
While in high school, Peter began to cover these two events as a photographer for the school newspaper and yearbook.
Right before his high school graduation Peter met a young woman, as he casually walked through the fairground. He was fascinated by her accent, her subtle, delicate movements. The young woman, who he would eventually marry, was named Mathilde Vaganova, a Polish-Russian ballerina who had just started performing with the travelling circus. Mathilde and her parents were Catholic dissidents who defected from the Soviet Union.
Peter and Mathilde got to know each other; he asked her if he can photograph her. She acquiesced, luckily for Peter, who became enthralled by the young woman; this exchange took place on the first day that the fair opened. The fair would go on for the next three weeks, which Peter returned to daily.
When not performing at the fair, Peter drove Mathilde around in his father’s car and showed her his town, often stopping to bathe and picnic at a local lake. Peter purchased a used silent video camera and began to film Mathilde performing. On the next to last day of the fair, Peter asked a local news channel to come and witness Mathilde’s dancing. The next day Mathilde saw herself on the midday news; she began to weep.
The fair travelled on to another town for another extended stay; Peter promised her that he would join her. He took a bus and met up with her. He continued to photograph Mathilde, selling several pictures, and her story as a defector from the Soviet Union, to several magazines
Peter narrated the story of their initial friendship and the eventual love that developed. Peterson interweaves the action of the novel with commentary on the short videos that Peter shot of Mathilde dancing. The two characters describe their vision of life. Mathilde being mature beyond her years, told Peter about freedom and censorship in the Soviet Union.
Borges nodded and let out a laugh: “Reminds me of Juan Peron in my own Argentina. God help us. Go on, please. I believe that Peter is about to get married?”
“Yes,” I continued to read:
Marriage and Professional Classical Ballet
Peter’s photographs and videos of Mathilde garnered attention from magazines and several ballet companies. He became her manager. After they were married, Mathilde received several offers from professional classical ballet companies. Mathilde eventually settled into the role of artistic director of a fledging ballet company in the Midwest.
Peter and Mathilde’s life together became the inspiration for Peter’s book of photographs that he took of her, dating back to when they first met. Peter wrote a second book with Mathilde, each accenting their ability to transcend their sensual life together. The title of their book is In Dreams, from which Peterson gets the title of his novel; essentially, a novel about a novel.
“That is a fitting title,” Borges said, nodding in approval.
After Mathilde passed away in her eighties, Peter took solace in the books, chronicles of a magical life spent together, the trajectory of which appears more real in retrospect than in the present.
“Memories are a clear testament to life as dream,” Borges added.
Throughout the novel, Peterson’s narration captures the essence of the moment by accenting it with singular, heartfelt dialogue that tells a story of love and the romance the two characters cultivate with life, as a stage curtain drops…
“It is proper to leave the ending of the story at that,” Borges said, “read me The Ever-Present Man. I am captivated by Peterson‘s story of that quasi omniscient man. You bring to mind my Funes the Memorious. Ireneo Funes is a man who cannot forget anything after he is thrown from a horse. A human memory bank. What a curse. Imagine that,”Borges said.
I began to read:
The Ever-Present Man
The Ever-Present Man is an imaginative, restorative literary tale.
The story revolves around an intuitive wise man, a combination of rationalist and mystic, a man who from an early age has envisioned the trajectory of his life. The title refers to Jacques Lowell, who is the ever-present man. Jacques is a seer and master of perspicuity.
While other men may be good at tennis, baseball or business, Jacques is adept at seeing the essences that inform human existence, that, as he states: “Are the subtle stamp of God’s intelligent design.”
Jacques sees through the appearances the daily world places in his path. Like a gothic cathedral, his life is multi-layered; Mount Saint Michel, towering and symmetrical, his psyche a revolving camera-eye that captures the minutiae of human existence.
Starting in his early twenties, Jacques began to view appearances as obstacles that occlude the true meaning of the lived-experience. As a young man he realized his destiny was intertwined with his iron will.
Jacques eventually came to the realization that his control over appearances offered him the best chance at redemption; salvation a singular matter, the cultivation of the soul a personal dialogue with God.
What is most interesting about Jacques is the level of perspicuity and wisdom by which he lives his life. As a young man he came to doubt whether everyone has a soul, the absence of which makes people live on animal instincts.
Jacques no longer found it important to convey his innate gifts to others, knowledge that his wisdom provides him. For a long time, Jacques suffered for not being successful in communicating his vision of reality with others. Eventually, he accepted that his visionary perspicuity, the ability to map human reality, came with a price. As a young man he often wished he did not have to suffer as much for being the ever-present, cognizant man, as he came to think of himself.
“I know this line of thinking,” Borges chimed in, “this reminds me of my imaginary magazine, Papers for the Suppression of Reality. All tongue-in-cheek, you can imagine. Please, don’t stop,” Borges said smiling, “I was trying to perfect a technique –‘the contamination of reality by dream’ – in The Circular Ruins.”
After spending his teen years and a vast portion of his twenties trying to communicate his visionary ability to others, Jacques came to the life-saving realization that he was merely explaining himself away. Talk, he realized, is cheap, people become inebriated with it. Explanation takes time and will, exhaustible human commodities that, Jacques reasoned, everyone must cultivate on their own.
As a younger man, Jacques worried he was wasting himself away in his appeals to others. He eventually realized he had many years of life left to cultivate his soul. The arena to achieve this includes other people – the ways of the world. This realization became his salvation.
Jacques came to accept his gift. It is only after he came to understand his soul, as a differentiated essence, that he began to appreciate his plight and the trajectory of his life.
Jacques spent half of his life trying to figure out that human life partakes in unequaled essences that inform different people in different ways – for good or to our own detriment. Few people are endowed with the ability to see. Jacques learned to accept this truth.
“Pardon me for interrupting you, “Borges said, “I am imagining Kierkegaard’s stages of reflective life as you read.”
“No doubt that Jacques is living on an existential level that is difficult to sustain.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Peterson does not offer a pedantic and romantic portrayal of man, as some people wish man to be, nothing resembling the gutted prototype provided by late postmodernity.
Instead, the author concentrates his literary prowess in offering readers insight into the life of one man, a differentiated being of flesh and bone that cannot be duplicated or fabricated by social engineers.
Jacques Lowell is trapped in a world of interchangeable, morally bankrupted, zombified people.
“Zombies,” Borges interrupted, the word caught his attention, “I have been hearing a lot of this postmodern entity. I am intrigued by this.”
I laughed and went on reading:
Jacques is aware of the movement of time, that is, his participation in the finite world, as this pertains to eternity. Jacques learns to see, where others do little more than glance.
After figuring out that he has little to teach anyone, Jacques accepts his fate as the embodiment of wisdom. He realizes that wisdom is a staple of divinity, man’s dominant characteristic, which removes us from nature.
Jacques’ gift makes him privy to the realization that late postmodernity creates people who are incapable of maturity. He interacts with few people, for he sees nothing in them that signals discipline over the self.
The Ever-Present Man conveys the struggle of a man who takes the straight road to his dreams, and who has few illusions about convincing anyone about the importance of living an authentic existence – what Socrates calls the good life.
At this point I stopped reading: “Mr. Borges, I am embarrassed to mention you in the essay. It is strictly literary, you understand,” I said.
“Young man, I loved this part. I am dazzled by your description of Borges. Which one is he, though? Go on and let us find out. Don’t be coy. Which of us is writing this page, Borges, you or Peterson? I don’t know.”
Reading The Ever-Present Man, I began to imagine how Borges, that insatiable reader, would review this book.
“I would take much enjoyment from reviewing such a book,” Borges assured me.
First, Borges would refer the reader to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He would have us look up mystics the likes of Jakob Böehme, Angelus Silesius, and Paracelsus. He would offer some commentary pertaining to the life and thought of these great mystics. Does Jacques Lowell fit this mold? Silesius started Borges thinking about the nature of aesthetics, when the German Catholic mystic wrote: “Die Rose ist ohne warum; Sie blühet, weil sie blühet” (“The rose is without ‘why’; she blooms, because she blooms”). In other words, Borges would consult the main tenets of mysticism to make the reader better acquainted with Jacques Lowell.
Because Jacques is a first and last man rolled up into one, Borges would perhaps refer us to the mysterium trememdum. Concerning the hierarchy of Being and the mystery of the human condition, Borges would say that we experience life as lived – not through know-how we receive from texts; a paradox that the clever Borges understood well.
“I am honored and humbled that you place me in such company,” Borges vowed gently.
Borges might also have the reader consider the essence and destiny of Jacques Lowell and how this pertains to the “nostalgia for paradise” that Mircea Eliade eloquently reminds us of. This being the case, Borges would have little recourse but to send the reader packing to the nearest library in search of Plato’s dialogues – Timaeus and Phaedrus will do.
In Plato, Borges is correct to suggest that readers of The Ever-Present Man will encounter the Alpha and Omega of thought. Alfred North Whitehead’s suggestion that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato will not get an argument from Borges.
“I think Borges – the man – is having a…what do you call it? An out of body experience?” he said.
“Hope I got it right,” I said, apologetically.
“Beautiful. Go on,” he encouraged.
This is merely a book review of Peterson’s The Ever-Present Man. What’s the big deal? Just cover the five Ws of writing, and how these affect the main character and the tension in the story. “It is only a book review essay,” some readers will object.
Let us not forget that Borges thinks of books and writing worth preserving as more than meets the eye, for writing is as much about what is left out of any given page. Writing is equally about the empty spaces between the lines.
“That’s absolutely true about Borges – the writer,” Borges said, tapping his cane on the ground again as a form of approval.
I read on:
Prudence recognizes that to read proper is to read not one book at a time, but all the books ever written. Any culture and civilization that does not cultivate this truism exists in a self-indulgent, delirious state of perpetual decay.
In any case, Borges would be tempted to make readers look up the idea of the numinous that Rudolf Otto illuminates us with in The Idea of the Holy.
Borges would undoubtedly make mention of Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, an apt metaphor for Jacques Lowell’s discovery of a new country of the soul; some men are equipped to know what others do not suspect exist.
Borges would dazzle us by bringing to mind Saint John of the Cross’ The Dark Night. What epiphanies do we receive from pondering the essences that inform the differentiated soul in that Spanish saint’s thought?
Jacques Lowell tells us only so much. Thoughtful readers must earn the rest on their own.
“Bravo. Spectacular imagination,” Borges clapped several times, “Borges approves…I… Read the next essay. Future Days, I believe? I enjoyed the epigraph by Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints. Accidents and contingencies remain out of our control. Read it.”
A Trip through Peterson’s Future Days
The world is controlled, so it seems, not by a single specific conductor, but by a new apocalyptic beast, a kind of anonymous, omnipresent monster, and one that, in some primordial time, must have vowed to destroy the Western World.
It is complicated to summarize and classify Peterson’s complex novel Future Days. There is nothing formulaic about this work.
Is Future Days social science fiction? Is it imaginary fantasy? Visionary realism? Magical realism? Existential symmetry? Perhaps all of the above?
Future Days brings to mind Jean Raspail’s controversial – that catch-all word that is thrown around by ideological zealots who aim to discredit writers and works that do not promote their totalitarian social/political agenda – 1975 novel The Camp of the Saints.
Future Days is thematically similar to my novel Dreaming in the Cathedral, an apocalyptic vision of man’s last days; how few people suspect their demise will be appropriated by them no differently than the life they lead.
“You never mentioned your novel. I’d like to see it sometime. What is the title of you novel?” Borges asked.
“Dreaming in the Cathedral,” I said and kept reading:
One can write volumes about Peterson’s novels and essays. Though, whatever is said of his work must be fresh, not the hackneyed, tired clichés that late postmodern literary critics embrace.
“Pardon me for bringing you up again, Mr. Borges,” I said, apologetically.
“I am honored. I’d like to hear more,” Borges responded.
I celebrate the approach Borges takes in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, a glancing look at the complete works of the fictional novelist Pierre Menard, and the latter’s attempt to re-write Don Quixote. What a formidable task.
“This approach comes nearest to my philosophy of existential symmetry in my novel Dreaming in the Cathedral,” I told Borges.
“Ah, you mention that man Borges – the writer – once again,” Borges said, nodding. “Menard wants to turn into Cervantes, as the Spaniard becomes enraptured in writing Don Quixote,” Borges explained.
Reviewing Peterson’s novels is an exhilarating task, for Peterson’s novels are not kind to aggressively mediocre late postmodernity. I embrace Gabriele D’Annunzio’s view that criticism is “the art of enjoying art.”
“Bravo for D’Annunzio,” Borges interjected.
Peterson is a gifted writer and thinker who points out the life-affirming virtue of individual autonomy and introspective reflection. These are staple characteristics of personhood’s quest to unravel the existential symmetry of human existence.
Peterson understands that late postmodern man cannot return to meaning and purpose, innocence, and beauty, without first cultivating a vision of transcendence. A difficult task, given that late postmodernity is a perverse ideological social-engineering program that strips man of free will, innocence, beauty; the ability to decipher appearance from reality. What is left of the human person?
In Historia universal de la infamia (Universal History of Infamy) Borges places characters in the grip of death, makes them suffer a dearth of recognition, irony and puzzlement. This is the result of assigning reality to appearances, a perversion that destroys the role of reality in human life. Borges’ collection of short stories is an apt introduction to the hodgepodge of universal delusions that characterize late postmodern life. Future Days is such a book.
Borges interjected: “My imaginary beings, El libro de los seres imaginarios (The Book of Imaginary Beings), began as Manual de zoologia fantastica. A menagerie of beings that only exist in the imagination is a fine place for literature to dwell. Don’t you think?” he asked.
“Such beings exist in their own realm, only we can’t perceive them,” I responded and continued reading.
Future Days finds man living in an age when gender differences are deemed unconstitutional by the ruling body of socio-political linguists and psycho-ideological technocrats, experts who advise the Council of Five, the legislative body that makes up the One-World government.
In this dysfunctional world, sex is considered purely accidental, no matter what the eyes see and the ears hear. Sex is merely a biological tool that can only be practiced or mentioned through governmental decree. It is the world government council that dictates when, and if, mention of sexual differences between men and women can take place.
Future Days is an aberrant brave new world. Aldous Huxley made a lasting contribution to human understanding about diabolical social engineering.
“Yes, Huxley, indeed,” Borges inserted.
Because the One-World government has implemented a policy of de-populating the planet, childbirth is a rare occasion…a crime against humanity. The cult of ‘Earth justice’ proclaims that procreation has become an antiquated thing of the past in Future Days.
Young girls are made infertile at puberty in order to safeguard their competitive edge with boys. Boys are given estrogen for the first ten years of life. The few children that are born annually are taken to government-run farms, gulags by any other name, where they are routinely brought up in communes operated by women who undergo testosterone therapy. These children are considered ‘the guardians of the State.’
Future Days takes place in a reality-simulacrum, where the State sanctions and encourages debauchery.
“Peterson does not mean a literary simulacrum. Does he? What he is describing is social-political dystopia. Am I correct about that?” Borges asked.
“Yes, that is correct. A reality turned on its head by psychopaths,” I responded and continued reading:
The idea, the Peterson’s narrator is adamant, is “to make as many people happy as possible. Life is only bearable if man lives for the here-and-now.”
The ‘perfect State,’ as the dystopia of Future Days is called, has come about through conditioning that makes people believe that the most efficient form of human life is for people “to customize a living-death that follows a government-sanctioned, pre-planned regiment of perpetual pleasure. ‘Ultimate utility,’” this is called.
The State has convinced people that perpetual pleasure is like transcendence, minus the existential longing.
“You know, In Tlön,” Borges began, “I explore the realm of facts, imagination, and truth. Like in a dreamscape, these are interrelated but remain at odds with each other. A little imagination can see through this.”
The narrator of Future Days says, “Just when the god of technology has begun to exhaust itself by creating empty lives, when people can no longer be told apart one from another, controlled detonations and viruses become rampant in Europe and America.” More de-population?
Future Days, as is obvious from the themes it employs, is a horrific futuristic novel that depicts a dark age of technology, what the Council of Five refers to as “God’s utopia.”
“Fictions. Nothing more. These are the proponents of the mind virus. Nothing more than Ficciones,” Borges said, emphatically, pointing to the sky, “I feel the breeze turning cooler. I think rain is on the way.”
“Looks like it. I will finish reading shortly,” I said.
The Council of Five established a decree that stresses: ‘No longer can man be unhappy.’ The One-World government cannot afford for people to be unhappy.
“No doubt, we are talking about a council of despair,” Borges added.
“Unfortunately,” I responded.
Borges elaborated: “What a vulgar idea to have five pathologically ill totalitarian oligarchs rule the fate of one planet and its 8 billion people. Is this an improvement over the single despots and totalitarians that have ruled over man in previous eras? Have we merely gone around in a circle, like a hapless dog going after its own tail? Is the Council of Five merely one despot who is aided by four supporting tyrants? What a novel idea.”
I moved the essay along:
I read Future Days with a smirk on my face, thinking of the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem’s notion in A Perfect Vacuum: “Technological development means the ruin of culture? It provides freedom where hitherto reigned the constraint of biology? But of course, it does!”
Utilizing his gift for parody, Lem adds: “And instead of shedding tears over the loss of our captivity, we should hasten our step to leave its dark house.”
Future Days is that dark house.
“I congratulate you, young man. You represent the autonomous sphere and spirit of literature well. The possibilities for being and becoming, and appearance and reality are endless in the metaphysical realm,” Borges said, shifting his crossed legs.
While waiting for a taxi, I began to wonder which Borges I had just met with.
*Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1886).
This essay originated after sitting before Borges at a lecture he gave at the University of Miami in 1979. Borges wore a brown suit.
The title of the lecture was “The Riddle of Poetry.” It was later included in his book Seven Nights.
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