Thursday (6/30/22) - Alberto Manguel's With Borges

Today I read all of Alberto Manguel's With Borges, a recollection of his time as one of Borges' readers (meaning a person who read aloud to Borges after his blindness, in the mid-1960's.)

I learned about the engravings by Durer (Knight, Death and The Devil) and Piranesi (a circular labyrinth) that adorned the walls of Borges' apartment.  I also learned of his admiration of De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars.*  I learned that Silvina Ocampo produced some strange and fantastical tales. That Bioy Casares was only 17 when he met the 31 year old Borges.

That Borges' white cat's name was Beppo.

That Las Delicias also figures in the story August 25, 1983, in which Borges meets an older version of himself in a Buenos Aires hotel room. That he wrote two poems entitled Things, that are quite a bit different.

He was afraid of two things, mirrors and labyrinths. "The labyrinth, first discovered as a child in a copperplate engraving of the Seven Marvels of the World, made him fear 'a house with no doors' at the center of which a monster awaited him." 

Toward the end of his life, Marguerite Yourcenar visited him in Geneva. He is buried in Geneva.

 

* Possibly related, De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe.

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