It’s a bit premature that I am releasing an opinion from my thought cannon on Jorge Luis Borges. After all, I am in the midst of reading only my first Borges. But it appears that I am well acquainted with him. How do I say? Like how it doesn’t matter how long but how much we spend on a person that shapes our opinions about them. With Borges, few minutes are enough.
Documents say today is his death anniversary. But I am sure he is around; much like his declaration:
“When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”
What kind of a book would he have become? I wonder aloud. I am attracting some uncalled-for stares but I don’t care. Metaphysical, labyrinthine, juxtaposing, convoluted – when these are the words I am toying with, normal, commonplace happenings reduce to toothless distractions. I, think, in incarnated avatar, Borges would be none of these because these are his expected versions. No. He would defy anything that is predictable. He would trounce the obvious and the logical and instead embrace the abstract; always. So, I suspect, he would have turned into a book, rather deceptively plain, so much so that plain would have to undergo a rejig to find new meanings.
He would make for a fascinating read nonetheless. He would be a book to re-propel a stagnated mind, a stalled objective. He would be pages invoking dances on a still stage. He would be a foreword for a timid voice to take his first confident step forward. He would a climax for the raucous to eat humble-pie. He would be a friend to have, on the LIFE-shelf. After all, wasn’t he the one who granted LIFE, the privilege of a “quotation”?
[Image courtesy: cloudfront.net]
SEEMITA DAS 