Zitate von Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Geburtstag: 24. August 1899
Todesdatum: 14. Juni 1986
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈβorxes] war ein argentinischer Schriftsteller und Bibliothekar. Borges verfasste eine Vielzahl phantastischer Erzählungen und Gedichte und gilt als Mitbegründer des Magischen Realismus.
Literarisch beeinflusst wurde Borges vor allem von Macedonio Fernández, Rafael Cansinos Assens, englischsprachiger Literatur , Franz Kafka und dem Daoismus. Seine philosophischen Anschauungen, die dem erkenntnistheoretischen Idealismus verpflichtet sind und sich in seinen Erzählungen und Essays wiederfinden, bezog Borges vornehmlich von George Berkeley, David Hume und Arthur Schopenhauer. Mit dem argentinischen Schriftsteller Adolfo Bioy Casares verband ihn eine lebenslange Freundschaft. Borges war Mitbegründer der „lateinamerikanischen Phantastik“ und einer der zentralen Autoren der von Victoria Ocampo und ihrer Schwester Silvina 1931 gegründeten Zeitschrift Sur, die sich dem kulturellen Austausch zwischen Lateinamerika und Europa widmete.
Zitate Jorge Luis Borges
„Lesen ist Denken mit fremdem Gehirn.“
zitiert in: Borges, J.L. und Osvaldo Ferrari: Lesen ist Denken mit fremdem Gehirn - Gespräche über Bücher & Borges, Arche 1990, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S.84. Paraphrase eines Ausspruchs von Schopenhauer: "LESEN heißt mit einem fremden Kopfe, statt des eigenen, denken." Parerga und Paralipomena II, HaffmansTaschenBuch 1991, S.438
„In meinem Gedicht spreche ich von Gottes glänzender Ironie, mir gleichzeitig achthunderttausend Bücher und Dunkelheit zu schenken.“
Jorge Luis Borges, Autobiographischer Essay, übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Christiane Meyer-Clason, in: Borges Lesen, Fischer-TB, 1991, S.61 (vgl. books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=nQRJAAAAYAAJ&q=achthunderttausend).
Es handelt sich um Borges' "Gedicht von den Gaben", in: J.L. Borges, Borges und ich, Fischer-TB, 1993, S.49:
"[...] von Gottes planendem Genie, // da er mir, groß in seiner Ironie // die Bücher und die Nacht zum Leben gab." - volltext.online-merkur.de http://volltext.online-merkur.de/?m=v&link=/daten/www.online-merkur.de/mr_1962_04_0321-0324.pdf&session=747297512D84F4D43B9A529E7132943E
"esta declaración de la maestría // de Dios, que con magnífica ironía // me dio a la vez los libros y la noche." - Poema de los dones (1960)
„Im Unterschied zu den Nordamerikanern und fast allen Europäern identifiziert sich der Argentinier nicht mit dem Staat.“
Unser armer Individualismus, in: Inquisitionen, Fischer-TB 1992, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S. 43
„Wir werden alle Augenblicke unseres Lebens wiedererlangen und sie kombinieren, wie es uns gefällt. Gott und unsere Freunde und Shakespeare werden unsere Mitarbeiter sein.“
Die Zeit und J.W. Dunne, 1940, aus: Borges, Eine neue Widerlegung der Zeit, Frankfurt am Main 2003
„Ich habe mir das Paradies immer als eine Art Bibliothek vorgestellt.“
Blindheit, in: Die letzte Reise des Odysseus, Fischer-TB, 2. Aufl. 2001, Übers. Gisbert Haefs, S. 188
"Siempre imaginé que el Paraíso sería algún tipo de biblioteca."
„I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.“
"The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)
Kontext: Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
„I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors.“
No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados...
Quelle: El Pais, 1981 http://elpais.com/diario/1981/09/26/ultima/370303206_850215.html; translation: The Guardian, 2008 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/10/jorgeluisborges
„Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.“
"The Threatened", The Book of Sand [El Libro de arena] (1975)
„To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.“
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Other Inquisitions
"The Meeting in a Dream"
Other Inquisitions (1952)
„The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.“
"On Dubbing" ["Sobre el doblaje"]
Discussion (1932)
Kontext: The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful. The Greeks engendered the chimera, a monster with heads of the lion, the dragon and the goat; the theologians of the second century, the Trinity, in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are inextricably tied; the Chinese zoologists, the ti-yiang, a vermilion supernatural bird, endowed with six feet and four wings, but without a face or eyes; the geometers of the nineteenth century, the hypercube, a figure with four dimensions, which encloses an infinite number of cubes and has as its faces eight cubes and twenty-four squares. Hollywood has just enriched this vain museum of horrors: by means of an artistic malignity called dubbing, it proposes monsters that combine the illustrious features of Greta Garbo with the voice of Aldonza Lorenzo.
„The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding.“
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Kontext: The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one such aspect. Even the phrase "all aspects" is rejectable, for it supposes the impossible addition of the present and of all past moments.
„It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much.“
Discussion (1932)
Kontext: It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. It is also venturesome to think that of all these illustrious coordinations, one of them — at least in an infinitesimal way — does not resemble the universe a bit more than the others.
„We do not know what the unicorn looks like.“
Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Kontext: It is universally held that the unicorn is a supernatural being and of auspicious omen; so say the odes, the annals, the biographies of worthies, and other texts whose authority is unimpeachable. Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification. Nor is it like the horse or bull, the wolf or deer. In such circumstances we may be face to face with a unicorn and not know for sure that we are. We know that a certain animal with a mane is a horse and that a certain animal with horns is a bull. We do not know what the unicorn looks like.
„As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries.“
"A Conversation With Jorge Luis Borges" http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/borges.htm, Artful Dodge (April 1980)
Kontext: As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves — and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity — are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.
„Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work.“
"The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)
Kontext: Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
„I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature.“
— Jorge Luis Borges, buch A Universal History of Infamy
A Universal History of Iniquity, preface to the 1954 edition; tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Kontext: I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. [... ] The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.
