I can smell Borges in my dreams, and I dream about him often. He reeks of age, with the mustiness, the sourness of years. And the odor gives off a peculiar sweetness, too, as if he has smoked ripe old tobacco in a pipe for many decades, although I suspect he didn’t.
A writer of poems and brief, enigmatic
stories, and provocative essays that were also stories, Borges moved
easily between fact and fiction, and his wild inventions became truths.
It was all fiction for him, as in the title of his most celebrated
volume, Ficciones, first published in the early 1940s. Fiction means, in its Latin root-word, “shaping.” And Borges was always shaping realities, even making them.
I called him Mr. Borges the first time we met, and he corrected me. “Just Borges, please.”
He had been translated by Alastair Reid, the Scottish poet and essayist, who was my mentor and close friend during my seven years in Scotland. Alastair lived at Pilmour Cottage, on the edge of the Old Course in St. Andrews, with a view of the North Sea through his kitchen window. I had met him at the suggestion of my history tutor, Miss Anne Wright. When I told her that I wrote poetry, she said, “In which case you must meet Alastair.” ... [mehr] https://lithub.com/the-time-i-drank-with-borges-in-a-scottish-pub/
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