For anyone curious this is the complete text of "Borges and I". It is much more nuanced than what is implied by the article. I have made minor stylistic changes to Antonios Sarhanis' English translation available at http://anagrammatically.com/2008/01/31/borges-and-i-borges-y...:
"Borges and I" by Jorge Luis Borges
To the other one, to Borges, is to whom things happen. I walk through Buenos Aires and I pause, one could say mechanically, to gaze at a vestibule’s arch and its grillwork; of Borges I receive news in the mail and I see his name in a list of professors or in some biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; the other shares these preferences, but in a vain fashion that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to claim that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live so that Borges may weave his literature, and that literature justifies me. It poses no great difficulty for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, yet these pages cannot save me, perhaps because whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition. In any case, I am destined to lose myself, definitively, and only a fleeting moment of myself will be able to live on in the other. Little by little I am ceding everything to him, even though I am aware of his perverse tendency to falsify and magnify. Spinoza understood that all things strive to persevere in their being; the stone eternally wishes to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I will remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognise myself less in his books than in those of many others, or in the laborious strum of a guitar. Years ago, I tried to free myself from him and went on from the mythologies of the slum to games with time and the infinite. But those games are now Borges’ and I will have to conceive of other things. Thus my life is an escape and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to the other one.
I do not know which of the two is writing this page.
"Borges y Yo" por Jorge Luis Borges
Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario biográfico. Me gustan los relojes de arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo XVIII, las etimologías, el sabor del café y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte esas preferencias, pero de un modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Sería exagerado afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre de falsear y magnificar. Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito, pero esos juegos son de Borges ahora y tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.
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