Speaker 1: Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Alice Irasari.
Speaker 2: And I'm Patrick Woodward. Spotlight uses a special English method
Speaker 2: of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
Speaker 2: matter where in the world they live.
Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered how time works? What about memory?
Speaker 1: Have you thought about the difference between life and dreams?
Speaker 2: Some people do not think about these questions, and most
Speaker 2: writers do not explore them. But the Argentinian writer Orgey
Speaker 2: Louise Borjes was not like other writers. Most of his
Speaker 2: writing explored these ideas. To many people. These ideas may
Speaker 2: seem strange, but in exploring them, bores became one of
Speaker 2: the world's most important writers.
Speaker 1: Today's spotlight is on the Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borhes.
Speaker 2: Borjeses wrote about many different subjects. Sometimes he wrote about
Speaker 2: his own experiences, but often he wrote about subjects like
Speaker 2: time and memory. Much of his writing is difficult to define.
Speaker 2: It is mysterious, like a dream.
Speaker 1: But Bor's early life did not seem mysterious. The only
Speaker 1: unusual thing about young Borhess was his eyesight. Even when
Speaker 1: he was young, he had a hard time seeing, so
Speaker 1: he did not play outside as often as other children,
Speaker 1: and he did not make many friends. Instead, he spent
Speaker 1: much of his time inside reading from his father's books.
Speaker 1: His father had over a thousand books in many languages,
Speaker 1: and Borhas tried to read them all. He read the
Speaker 1: Christian Bible and stories from ancient Greece. He even read
Speaker 1: books full of facts.
Speaker 2: For Borjes, these books were the most important part of
Speaker 2: his young life. Gloria Lecube was an Argentinian journalist. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, she talked to Borjes. She asked when
Speaker 2: he knew he would become a writer.
Speaker 3: He said, I think I have always known, maybe because
Speaker 3: my father had an influence on me. I was raised
Speaker 3: with my father's books. I went to school, but that
Speaker 3: hardly matters, right. I was really raised among my father's books.
Speaker 3: I always knew that it was what I was meant
Speaker 3: to do, being among books, reading them, but it would
Speaker 3: seem I was influenced to write as well.
Speaker 1: Borhesse's father influenced him in other ways too. Borhs's father
Speaker 1: studied many subjects. He was a lawyer and he also
Speaker 1: taught students. Often he would speak to his son about
Speaker 1: very difficult subjects. They would talk about how memory is
Speaker 1: not perfect. They would speak about different ways to think
Speaker 1: about time.
Speaker 2: Borjes would later write about these subjects in his stories.
Speaker 2: One of the most interesting is called Funess the Memorious.
Speaker 2: An unnamed first person writer believed to be Bores himself,
Speaker 2: tells the story.
Speaker 3: The trouble began when fu Ness fell from the horse.
Speaker 3: The boy hit his head on a stone, and the
Speaker 3: fall broke his back. Today he sits in his parents'
Speaker 3: house in the country, unable to move on his own.
Speaker 1: Some people would probably love the power to remember, but
Speaker 1: Funess is in a difficult situation. He sits in the
Speaker 1: same place all day. His new memories are all the same. Instead,
Speaker 1: he spends most of his time in his memories. Each
Speaker 1: day of his past takes another day to remember. These
Speaker 1: memories cause problems for him. He finds it hard to sleep.
Speaker 1: He relives his life over and over again. By the
Speaker 1: time the writer of the story speaks to him, he
Speaker 1: has gone over his life many times. He is only nineteen.
Speaker 1: It seems as if he has lived many lives, but
Speaker 1: it is also as if he has not lived at all.
Speaker 2: Borjes began to publish his own work when he was
Speaker 2: very young. He was only twenty when he published his
Speaker 2: first poem, and his work soon became popular in literary
Speaker 2: circles around Argentina. People saw that his work was different.
Speaker 2: It played with the idea of what writing was. His
Speaker 2: ideas were like no one else's.
Speaker 1: Bor Has found it difficult to make money as a writer.
Speaker 1: Many people respected his work, but it did not sell well.
Speaker 1: So bor Has found work as a teacher. He spent
Speaker 1: much of his time reading and translating. What he did
Speaker 1: write was very short. Often he wrote more about ideas
Speaker 1: than people. He created strange worlds and played with language.
Speaker 2: Then, in nine eighteen forty one, he published one of
Speaker 2: his most important stories. It is called The Garden of
Speaker 2: Forking Paths. It was his first story translated into English.
Speaker 2: Before this, only a few people in Argentina knew his work.
Speaker 2: Now people in other countries began to read it. In
Speaker 2: a very short time, Borjes became well known. He traveled
Speaker 2: North America and Europe giving speeches. His work began to
Speaker 2: win awards.
Speaker 1: But by the time he was in his thirties, Borjess's
Speaker 1: eyesight had begun to fade. The process was slow. He
Speaker 1: lost the power to see some colors. First, at fifty
Speaker 1: he could not see at all.
Speaker 2: Later, Borjes would write a poem about his experiences of
Speaker 2: losing sight. It is called in praise of darkness.
Speaker 3: Old age, or so it is called by others, can
Speaker 3: be the season of our happiness. The animal has died
Speaker 3: or nearly died. The man remains with his soul. I
Speaker 3: live among vague and luminous shapes that are not yet darkness.
Speaker 3: My friends do not have faces. Women are what they
Speaker 3: were so many years ago. The street corners have chained.
Speaker 3: There are no letters in the pages of books. All
Speaker 3: of this ought to terrify me. But it is a sweetness,
Speaker 3: a coming back home from the south, from the east,
Speaker 3: from the west, from the north. The roads converge, the
Speaker 3: roads that have brought me to my secret center. Those
Speaker 3: roads were echoes and footsteps, women and men, death, throws, resurrections,
Speaker 3: days and nights, dreams and between dreams, every moment of yesterday,
Speaker 3: even the meanest and all of the yesterdays of the world.
Speaker 3: Now I can let them go. I have come back
Speaker 3: to my center, to my algebra, to my key, to
Speaker 3: my mirror. Soon I will know who I am.
Speaker 1: He could not see, but Borjes continued to write. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he would speak his poems and stories out loud. He
Speaker 1: could no longer write long works, so he concentrated on
Speaker 1: small papers and poems. By the time he died in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, he had published dozens of books. He
Speaker 1: wrote almost half of them while blind.
Speaker 2: Borjes did not think that people would remember him. He
Speaker 2: thought that his writing was too difficult, or that his
Speaker 2: subject matter would not be important to them. But his
Speaker 2: writing had a profound influence on many people. He created
Speaker 2: the genre of magical realism. His work inspired mathematical theories.
Speaker 2: It also influenced science fiction and fantasy. But more than anything,
Speaker 2: Borjes's work changed Latin American writing.
Speaker 1: Marcella Valdez is a literary critic. She spoke to the
Speaker 1: British Broadcasting Corporation about these changes.
Speaker 4: Borjess's influence on Latin American literature is, like Sherwood Anderson's
Speaker 4: effect on American fiction, very deep. It has become difficult
Speaker 4: to name a major writer who has not been touched
Speaker 4: by it.
Speaker 2: Have you ever read Borjes? Do you have a favorite
Speaker 2: story or poem? Tell us about it. You can leave
Speaker 2: a comment on our website or email us at Spotlight
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Speaker 1: The writer of this program was Dan Christman. The producer
Speaker 1: was Mityo Osaki. The voices you heard were from the
Speaker 1: United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted
Speaker 1: for this program and voiced by Spotlight. No AI or
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence was used in this program. Spotlight programs are written, voiced,
Speaker 1: and produced by real people for real people, no matter
Speaker 1: where in the world you live. This program is called
Speaker 1: The Limitless Stories of Jorge Luis Forhess.
Speaker 2: We hope you can join us again for the next
Speaker 2: Spotlight program. Goodbye,