Friday (7/1/22) - Libro de sueños - Book of Dreams - J.L.Borges

Today I discovered yet another lost work by J.L.B.  By lost I mean, apparently never translated into English and therefore unknown to me.

From Amazon:

Jorge Luis Borges. Libro de sueños.

The dream as the oldest and no less complex of literary genres. An amazing compilation by Jorge Luis Borges. In this volume, Borges presents stories of dreamscapes from different eras and documents what man has dreamed of since he was a man, following the path that goes from the first civilizations to Kafka, reviewing the prophetic trances of the Old Testament, the classic epics or Chinese philosophy. A fabulous anthology, in short, that enshrines the dream as the oldest and most complex of literary genres. "This Book of Dreams that readers will dream again includes dreams of the night -those I sign, for example-, dreams of the day, which are a voluntary exercise of our mind, and others of lost roots: let us say, the Anglo-Saxon Dream from the cross." 

Excerpt:

Gilgamesh, dos tercios de dios, un tercio de hombre, vivía en Erech. Invencible entre los guerreros, gobernaba con mano de hierro: los jóvenes lo servían y no perdonaba doncella.

Historia de Gilgamesh. Cuento babilónico del segundo milenio a.C.

Jorge Luis Borges. Libro de sueños.

 

Gilgamesh, two thirds of god, one third of man, lived in Erech. Invincible among warriors, he ruled with an iron hand: the young men served him and spared no maiden.

History of Gilgamesh. Babylonian tale of the 2nd millennium BC

Jorge Luis Borges. Book of dreams.

 

Foreword
In an essay in the Spectator (September 1712), collected in this volume, Joseph Addison has observed that the human soul, when it dreams, disengaged from the body, is at once the theater, the actors, and the audience. We can add that he is also the author of the fable that he is seeing. There are places analogous to Petronio and don Luis de Góngora. A literal reading of Addison's metaphor might lead us to the dangerously attractive thesis that dreams are the oldest and no less complex of literary genres. This curious thesis, which costs us nothing to approve for the good execution of this prologue and for the reading of the text, could justify the composition of a general history of dreams and their influence on letters. 

This miscellaneous volume, compiled for the amusement of the curious reader, would offer some material. That hypothetical story would explore the evolution and ramification of such an ancient genre, from the prophetic dreams of the East to the allegorical and satirical ones of the Middle Ages and the pure games of Carroll and Franz Kafka. I would, of course, separate the dreams invented by sleep and the dreams invented by waking.
This book of dreams that readers will dream again includes dreams of the night —those I sign, for example—, dreams of the day, which are a voluntary exercise of our mind, and others of lost roots: say, the Anglo-Saxon Dream of the cross.
The sixth book of the Aeneid follows a tradition from the Odyssey and declares that there are two divine gates through which dreams come to us: the ivory gate, which is the gate of false dreams, and the horn gate, which is the gate of false dreams. prophetic dreams.
Given the chosen materials, it would seem that the poet has felt in a dark way that the dreams that anticipate the future are less precise than the fallacious ones, that they are a spontaneous invention of the man who sleeps.
There is a type of dream that deserves our singular attention. I am referring to the nightmare, which in English bears the name of nightmare or mare of the night, a voice that suggested to Victor Hugo the metaphor of cheval noir de la nuit but which, according to etymologists, is equivalent to fiction or fable of the night. Alp, its German name, alludes to the elf or incubus that oppresses the dreamer and imposes horrendous images on him. Ephialtes, which is the Greek term, comes from a similar superstition.
Coleridge wrote that waking images inspire feelings, while in sleep feelings inspire images.
(What mysterious and complex feeling did the Kubal Khan, who was the gift of a dream, have dictated to him?) If a tiger entered this room, we would feel fear; if we feel fear in the dream, we breed a tiger. This would be the visionary reason for our alarm. I have said a tiger, but since fear precedes the unexpected appearance to understand it, we can project the horror onto any figure, which in wakefulness is not necessarily horrifying.
A marble bust, a basement, the other side of a coin, a mirror. There is not a single form in the universe that cannot be contaminated with horror. Hence, perhaps, the peculiar flavor of the nightmare, which is very different from the horror and horrors that reality is capable of inflicting on us. The Germanic nations seem to have been more sensitive to this vague stalking of evil than those of Latin stock; let us remember the untranslatable voices eerie, weird, uncanny, unheimlich. Each language produces what it needs.
The art of the night has been penetrating the art of the day. The invasion has lasted centuries; the sorrowful realm of the Comedy is not a nightmare, except perhaps in the fourth canto, of repressed malaise; It is a place where atrocious events occur. The lesson of the night has not been easy. The dreams of Scripture have no dream style; they are prophecies that handle a mechanism of metaphors in a too coherent way. Quevedo's dreams seem the work of a man who had never dreamed, like those Cimmerian people mentioned by Pliny. Then the others will come. The influence of night and day will be reciprocal; Beckford and De Quincey, Henry James and Poe, are rooted in nightmare and often haunt our nights. It is not unlikely that mythologies and religions have an analogous origin. I want to express my gratitude to Roy Bartholomew, without whose scholarly zeal it would have been impossible for me to compile this book.

 

The majority of the dreams in this anthology are drawn from the Bible or from classical literature.  There are only a few that are from the writings of J.L.B. actually.  One entitled la pesadilla (The Nightmare), another entitled Caedmon, la cierva blanca (The White Doe), Ulrica, The Dream of Alonso Quijano, The Dream of Coleridge, Dreamtigers, Ragnarok, Episode of the Enemy, The dream of Pedro Henríquez Ureña seem to constitute a complete index of his original contributions to this 213 page volume. Many of these already appear elsewhere. 

Joseph Addison, en The Spectator, núm. 487, Londres, 18 de septiembre de 1712. In English. Is cited in the text.

The Nightmare

I'm dreaming of an ancient king. His crown

Is iron and his gaze is dead. There are 

No faces like that now. And never far

His firm sword guards him, loyal like his hound.

I do not know if he is from Norway

or Northumberland. But from the north, I know.

His tight red beard covers his chest. And no,

His blind gaze doesn't hurl a gaze my way.

From what extinguished mirror, from what ship

On seas that were his gambling wilderness

Could this man, gray and grave, venture a trip

Forcing on me his past and bitterness?

I know he dreams and judges me, is drawn

Erect. Day breaks up night. He hasn't gone.

Jorge Luis Borges. (SP, 373) Willis Barnstone, tr.

The White Deer

From what wild ballad of English green
or Persian miniature, from what withdrawn
place of days and nights no longer seen
came the white deer that I dreamed at dawn?

It crossed the lawn, a momentary reflection,
and vanished in the afternoon’s golden tide.
A graceful thing, half made of recollection,
half made of forgetting: a deer with one side.

The gods that rule this strange life, it seems,
have let me dream you, but not make you mine.
But maybe in some future bend of time

I will find you again, white deer of my dreams.
For I too am a dream, and will soon be gone,
like the white and the green of my dream at dawn.

Jorge Luis Borges Translated from Spanish by Paul Weinfield, © 2016

Another version of this appears in The Sonnets translated by S. Kessler:

The White Deer

From what folk ballad out of green England,

from what Persian print, from what arcane region

of nights and days enclosed in yesterday,

did the white deer come, the one I am dreaming this morning?

It lasted but a second. I saw it cross a field

and vanish into the gold of an illusory evening,

a light-footed creature made partly of memory

and partly of forgetting, a deer with just one side.

The mysterious forces that rule this mysterious world 

allowed me to dream you but not to be your master;

perhaps at some bend in the distant future

I'll meet you again, white deer of a dream.

I too am a fleeting dream which scarcely lasts

longer than that of a field and a white flash.

(The Sonnets, S. Kessler, tr.)

Alonso Quijano dreams

The man awakens from a fitful, blurred 

Dream of cutlasses, of a level plain, 

And tentatively puts his hand to his beard, 

Wondering whether he is hurt or slain. 

Is he not being pursued by sorcerers 

Who have sworn to do him ill under the moon? 

No one. It's just a chill; or maybe one 

Of the little ailments of his dwindling years. 

This hidalgo was a dream dreamt by Cervantes; 

The hidalgo dreamed Quixote and his squire. 

The double dream confounds them all and something 

Is happening now that happened long before. 

Quijano sleeps and dreams. A scene of war: 

Lepanto's tides, and bursts of cannon fire.
Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Richard Barnes and Robert Mezey)

Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes have translated over four hundred of Borges's poems into formal English verse. Their Collected Borges will be published by Penguin in 1997. Both Mezey and Barnes teach at Pomona College.COPYRIGHT 1996 World Poetry, Inc.

 

Another version of this is included in The Sonnets translated by Stephen Kessler:

 

Alonso Quijano dreams

The man wakes up from a confusing dream

of scimitars and a landscape strangely flat

and touches his beard with his one good hand

and wonders if he's been wounded, or been killed.

Is he not being tormented by sorcerers

who've sworn to do him evil under the moon?

Nothing. Scarcely a chill. Scarcely an ache

in the aging bones of his twilight years.

The country squire was a dream dreamed by Cervantes

and Don Quixote a dream of the country squire.

The double dream confuses them and something

is happening that happened long before.

Quijano sleeps and dreams.  He is at war:

the seas of Lepanto and the cannon fire.

(The Sonnets, S. Kessler, tr.)

 

An Episode with Enemy
So many years on the run, expectant, and now the enemy stood at my door. From the window, I saw him working his way up the hill, laboring along the steep road. He leaned on a staff, a clumsy staff, which in his hands was no more than an old man's cane, not a weapon. Although I was waiting for it, his knock was so weak I barely made it out. I glanced full of wistfulness at the half-finished draft I was working on and at Artemidorus' treatise on dreams, a book somewhat out of place on my writing table, since I have no Greek. Another day lost, I thought. At the door, I fumbled with the key to let the man in. I feared he was going to collapse all at once, but he took a few faltering steps, let go of the staff (which I never saw again), and tumbled, utterly worn out, onto my bed. My anxiety had pictured him many times before, but only then did I notice his resemblance-in an almost brotherly way-to Lincoln's last portrait. It was around four o'clock in the afternoon.

I bent over him so that he could hear me.

"One believes that the years pass for one," I said to him, "but they pass for everyone else, too. Here we meet at last face to face, and what happened before has no meaning now."

While I spoke, he had unbuttoned his overcoat. His right hand was in the pocket of his suit coat. Something there was aimed at me, and I knew it was a revolver.

Then he told me in an unwavering voice, "To get myself into your house, I fell back on your pity. Now I have you at my mercy and I am unforgiving."

I tried to get out some words. I am not a strong man, and only words could save me. I managed to utter "It's true that long time ago I ill-treated a certain boy, but you are no longer that boy and I am no longer that callous brute. Besides, revenge is no less vain and ridiculous than forgiving."

"That's just it," he replied. "Because I am no longer that boy, I am about to kill you. This has nothing to do with revenge- this is an act of justice. Your arguments, Borges, are only stratagems of your terror designed to keep me from my mission. There's nothing you can do now."

"There's one thing I can do," I said.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Wake up," I said.

And I did.

Jorge Luis Borges. (Thanks to A Friend of Tolstoys for translation.)

Another version, translated by N.T.dG.

EPISODE OF THE ENEMY
So many years on the run, expectant, and now the
enemy stood at my door. From the window, I saw him
working his way up the hill, laboring along the steep
road. He leaned on a staff, a clumsy staff, which in his
hands was no more than an old man’s cane, not a
weapon. Although I was waiting for it, his knock was
so weak I barely made it out. I glanced full of wistfulness 

at the half-finished draft I was working on and at
Artemidorus’ treatise on dreams, a book somewhat out
of place on my writing table, since I have no Greek.
Another day lost, I thought. At the door, I fumbled
with the key to let the man in. I feared he was going
to collapse all at once, but he took a few faltering steps,
let go the staff (which I never saw again), and tumbled,
utterly worn out, onto my bed. My anxiety had pictured
him many times before, but only then did I notice his
resemblance—in an almost brotherly way—to Lincoln’s
last portrait. It was around four o’clock in the afternoon.
I bent over him so that he could hear me.
“One believes that the years pass for one,” I said to
him, “but they pass for everyone else, too. Here we meet
at last face to face, and what happened before has no
meaning now.”
While I spoke, he had unbuttoned his overcoat. His
right hand was in the pocket of his suit coat. Something
there was aimed at me, and I knew it was a revolver.
Then he told me in an unwavering voice, “To get
myself into your house, I fell back on your pity. Now I
have you at my mercy and I am unforgiving.”
I tried to get out some words. I am not a strong man,
and only words could save me. I managed to utter, “It’s
true that a long time ago I ill-treated a certain boy, but
you are no longer that boy and I am no longer that
callous brute. Besides, revenge is no less vain and
ridiculous than forgiving.”
“That’s just it,” he replied. “Because I am no longer
that boy, I am about to kill you. This has nothing
to do with revenge—this is an act of justice. Your
arguments, Borges, are only stratagems of your terror
designed to keep me from my mission. There’s nothing
you can do now.”
“There’s one thing I can do,” I said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Wake up,” I said.
And I did.

Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni (In Praise of Darkness)