Jorge Luis Borges, On
Mysticism
edited with an introduction by Maria Kodama
Penguin Classics, 2010
Is this book necessary?
Ninety percent of it is already available in the three canonized volumes
of Borges’ fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
What’s new here seemed to me very minor – thumbnail sketches of
Santayana and Schopenhauer, and an essay on Berkeley that Borges wrote when he
was 24.
Yet I am so glad I bought and read it. The great canonical volumes of Borges have
been made. They sit on my shelf. I’m grateful for them. Now it is necessary to take them apart
again. I was glad to have a focus and a
path, a small selection made by no less than Maria Kodama, Borges’ literary
executor and widow.
Rereading stories I’d read years before – The Library of
Babel, Funes the Memorious, The Circular Ruins, The Aleph -- I found them more
amazing than I remembered. Over the
years my small-capacity mind had reduced them to clevernesses, to delightful
mental math problems. They are so much
more than that. I am embarrassed to
admit that I thought, “The translation has really been improved. It is much more fresh.” I am delusional. The translation, by Andrew Hurley, is exactly
the same.
I do not know if this book is essential, but certainly it is
delightful. I loved to be guided, to
have the chance to look again, to carry a little Borges along on the train.
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