“A Poet’s Creed” Borges p.97
· “I though I knew all about words, all about language, … words cam as a revelation to me. Of course, I did not understand them.”
o As children we read and we feel something in words, we have emotions when we read a poem but we don’t always understand these emotions, nor the words that incited them.
· A man will have a defining moment, life is made up of millions of moments, in many years but one moment is important
o “the moment when a man knows who he is, when he sees himself face to face”
o The moment when Judas kissed Jesus is the moment when Judas must have realized he was traitor and fated to be a traitor
o That moment in a mans life is the most important moment
· For Borges his life has been words, and “weaving those words into poetry”
· Before everything else though humans are readers.
o “I think the happiness of a reader is beyond that of a writer”
o The reader is the one without worries without anxiety
o Everyone is a reader, not only as in reading words reader
§ People read actions, read others emotions, read their surroundings
· Some books have value in being lengthy, it helps define them, it helps make them what they are, but that does not make them better from a shorter story
· “I am not sure now that I believe in the adventures, or in the conversations… but I believe in the … character”
o stories should mirror the character
· You don’t find everything you expect in the places you expect to find them
o He did not find Germanism in German texts, it was not defined by them
o He found what he was looking for instead in Old English
o “I discovered a harsh language, but a language whose harshness made for a certain kind of beauty and also for very deep feeling”
· Metaphors = essential part of literature
o Aren’t always just a simple comparison, must look deeper
o Repetition of last line in Robert Frost makes reader realize it is not just miles and sleep, it is years and death
· “the only way to be rid of a sin is to commit it, because afterwards you repent it”
o Only way to correct a mistake in life and in poetry is to make the mistake first
o Thought free verse was easier learned it was not, because a structured verse has a rhythm that once you start you are able to follow through the rest of the poem
· Prose is simply elongated poetry
o Prose simply has a more subtle rhythm than poetry, but it is still there.
· What is behind the rhythm is important as well, the meaning
o Tried to make a deep meaning or make his work seem modern, but failed
o This created “purple patches”, vanity that shown through the work that made it less appealing to the reader
o “If a reader thinks that you have a moral defect, there is no reason whatever why he should admire you or put up with you.
· “We are modern; we don’t have to strive to be modern” (another mistake trying to be modern”
o We live in the present therefore we are modern though we will become history
o We cannot be in the past or in the future because we are in the present
· Time and Immortality
o Homer example: Homer is immortal and therefore eventually forgets he is Homer
o Simply because something is old, does not mean it is any less beautiful
o Beauty outlasts time
o Time and our perception of time in itself makes us mortal
· To be a writer “means simply being true to [one’s] imagination”
o Being true to your thoughts is something deeper than you think and will be perceived by the audience as something deeper
o Be loyal to your belief not the circumstances that surround you
o “circumstances should always be told with a certain amount of untruth [because] there is no satisfaction in telling a story as it actually happened”
o when you write you write for the reader but you must not think about the reader while you write.
· Readers are the ones that create perceptions and ideas about your beliefs.
o That is what gives the writing meaning, not what the writer says it’s what the reader sees in the writing.
· At the heart of it all though, “the meaning is not important – what is important is a certain music, a certain way of saying things”
o The rhythm that is in all writing, all poetry, all prose and ultimately everything else.
