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PAGE 24 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE July 11, 1986
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Views and reviews
The legacy of Borges
by Joseph Cohen
Like lesser human beings, giants
die too. When the giant is one you
happen to know, either through
the impact of his work or through
personal contact, or both, his de
parture evokes a sense of loss which,
while shared with the multitudes,
remains peculiarly personal. One
mourns the loss silently and goes
about his business. But my busi
ness is writing about literary giants,
and lesser beings as well, so silence
is out of the question. Bernard
Malamud, whom 1 never met, I
mourned in March. Now it is Jorge
Luis Borges, whom I did know,
who is gone—dead at age 86 on
June 14, 1986—and I, like so many
other admirers all over the world,
owe him my respects.
I was originally attracted to the
famed Argentine’s short stories
nearly two decades ago when I
began to teach translations of them
in my modern literature courses.
But it was not until some years
afterward that I really began to
comprehend the depth and extent
of his genius. In his short stories,
particularly, his imagination soared,
creating fantasies of dream-worlds
which, however distant, were as
near and as real as the tips of my
fingers turning the pages of his
books. Then, in addition, there was
all the Jewish material that attracted
me in his stories that had already
become famous: “The Aleph,”
“Death and the Compass” and
“The Secret Miracle.”
Searching for the meanings be
hind these narratives 1 discovered
Jewish mysticism, and it is Borges
to whom I am indebted for luring
me into the first realization that in
Kabbalah there exist dazzling and
profound structures ideal for the
enrichment of contemporary liter
ature, structures that have begun
to be tapped by Jewish novelists
including Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Chaim Potok, Elie Wieseland Cyn-
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thia Ozick, and non-Jewish ones
including Lawrence Durrell, Mal
colm Lowry (dead in 1957) and
Thomas Pvnchon. In time, I came
to ponder this “Jewish dimension”
in Borges’ work, curious about his
Jewish antecedents and his discov
ery of the resources in Jewish mysti
cism.
My rising interest in Borges co
incided with an opportunity in the
winter of 1980-81 to bring him
from Buenos Aires to lecture at
Tulane University. I leapt at that
opportunity joining with others to
help make the trip a reality. Borges
was in New Orleans for 11 days,
and as the Jewish Studies Program
was the principal campus sponsor
of his visit, I was able to satisfy my
curiosity about his Jewish connec
tions. In a taped, as yet unpub
lished, interview with him, I asked
him how he first became acquainted
with Jewish mysticism. His answer
and our discussion of that portion
of the interview follows:
JLB: I read Gerhom Scholem’s
books. Later, I used his name as a
rhyming word in my poem, “The
Golem.” That was told to him, and
he sent me a letter thanking me.
Afterward, we occasionally wrote
to each other. When I was in Jer
usalem, 1 went to his house, and we
talked about Kabbalah. I read an
English translation of the “Sefer
Yetsirah” and “The Zohar.” I’ve
read many other books about Kab
balah, but the best is Scholem’s. Of
course! I read it in German. There
is no Spanish translation. 1 read
Buber. 1 also read Meyrink’s “Der
Golem.” I was 16 at the time. That
opened up new possibilities for me.
1 was fascinated by the idea that
the right combination of letters
could make a human being out of
clay. The right combination of let
ters is basic in Kabbalah. Kab
balah means “tradition,” no? Un
happily I don’t know Hebrew.
JC: Did you know Yiddish?
JLB. No. Well, if you know
German, you know Yiddish. I know
a few words: gonif, schnorrer. What
is the real meaning of a schnorrer,
a thief?
JC: No, a gonif is a thief, a mean
person. A schnorrer is a beggar.
JLB: I read Zangwill’s book,
“The King of Schnorrers.” In that
book, I found my mother’s family
name, Acevedo. That’s one of the
Jewish names in my family. There
are three of them. They are Jewish-
Portuguese. The first would be
Rubio. That links me to Rosa, the
dictator. The second is Acevedo.
And, finally, Pinedo. These are
Sephardic names, of course.
JC: You’ve never traced back,
genealogically, the exact connec
tion?
JLB: No, I don’t believe in genea
logy.
JC: But if you had to assign a
time, say, when your Sephardic
forebears were still practicing Jews,
could you pick a century, or is that
important to you?
JLB: No, it is not important.
Well, the dream is important, the
experience, the reality. It doesn’t
matter being born in Timbuktu or
Buenos Aires. Those things hardly
matter. It’s what you do that mat
ters. Ethics matter. 1 consider myself
an agnostic, but 1 try to be an ethi
cal man. 1 learned ethics from my
father. He taught me to do right.
Of course!
As that portion of our discus
sion ended, 1 thought to myself
that nothing could be more Jewish
than being taught ethics by one’s
father. And, in his bearing, his gra
ciousness, his courtly, old-world
ways, in the softness of his voice,
though he was blind, 81 and ailing,
Borges seemed to me filled with
menschleitkeit, a true giant.
Were there time and space, it
would be tempting to look at the
stories mentioned above and ex
amine their Jewish aspects. Here,
that temptation had best be res
isted, for to do the task properly
would require several columns
longer than this one. Suffice it for
now to say that, a giant once came
our way, enriched our lives and
then departed, leaving his treasures
behind for generations yet unborn.
Add to that only that some of those
treasures sprang out of the Jewish
blood that still sparkled through
his veins. Of course!
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