Thursday, October 18, 2007

Borges or Long Time No See

Decided to pick up a book at the library yesterday and this is what i ended up with - Ficciones (in French/Spanish version too!) by Borges. As i shamefully couldn't remember at least one title of his works i've read - i decided to remake my education on this subject.

I do remember looking for his and Cortazar's books in dusty old, but mainly empty libraries in Lviv, Ukraine - apparently considered communist sympathizers, they were translated - but still hard to find in any interesting quantity. I did finish reading Miguel's Manual in France - but don't think i ever came back to this ugly, blind old man. His short stories are definitely recommendable!

Here are a couple of quotes:

"you who read me--are you certain you understand my language?" from the Babel Library,

or the best quote from Uqbar - in my translation from French - "Copulation and mirrors are abominable - they both multiply the number of humans!"

or this, maybe inspired by his promotion to Poultry and Rabbit Inspector position by Perron's regime - "Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy."

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Situation changes overtime:) Now you can find both Cortazar and Borges, but in bookstores

uasunflower said...

Khrystia who - prustavajko? :)

Unknown said...

That's right
btw, here I am http://prystayko.livejournal.com/

uasunflower said...

cool, will come read your blog. Your profile pic looks unrecognizable!