“Relationships with writers from other generations are always complicated because each one speaks a different language, and so we end up understanding one another through an invented jargon with fragments of each person's private language, and all we accomplish is incomprehension and unease.”
The above is a quote from Ricardo Piglia's The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, but it could serve as epigraph for this beguiling tale where the great Jorges Luis Borges, now an old man, recounts a meeting he had with his younger self back in 1969 when he took a seat on a bench beside the Charles River, north of Boston.
Borges tells us it is now 1972 and he decides to write about his experience for a very specific reason: others will surely read this bizarre happening as merely a story and, perhaps he too will, over time, see it as a mere story concocted by his imagination rather than a true encounter that could drive him insane.
Anyway, Borges is looking out at the Charles River and reflects on Heraclitus and the philosopher's observations on the nature of time, how we can't step in the same river twice. Then, a young man takes a seat at the other end of the bench and begins whistling, rather badly, a popular Argentine tune that brings to mind, for Borges, a certain man he knew many years ago. Then, to his horror, the young man begins to sing the tune, imitating the voice of that very individual. Borges turns to the young man and asks if he is Uruguayan or Argentine. The young man replies, “Argentine, but I've been living in Geneva since '14.”
Following a long silence, Borges asks a second question about the exact location where he's been living in Geneva. The young man nods. Borges tells him, “In that case, your name is Jorge Luis Borges. I too am Jorge Luis Borges. We are in 1969, in the city of Cambridge.” The young man replies, “No, I am here in Geneva, on a bench, a few steps from the Rhône.” And then adds, “It is odd that we look so much alike, but you are much older than I, and you have gray hair.”
Borges insists he can prove the truth of what he speaks. He goes on to relate various details in the house in Buenos Aires were they grew up, distinctive objects in certain rooms, and then, of course, because he's Borges, specific books, books like Tacitus' Germania in Latin and a Quixote in the Garnier edition, as well as a book hidden behind the others on the bookshelf, a paperback volume detailing sexual customs in the Balkans.
Is the young man convinced? No, he is definitely not convinced, for he replies, “Those 'proofs' of yours prove nothing. If I'm dreaming you, it's only natural that you would know what I know. That longwinded catalog of yours is perfectly unavailing.”
Let's pause here to reflect on how the older Borges uses books to ground his identity. And the younger Borges uses dreams to dismantle that identity. As anybody familiar with Borges knows, both books and dreams are ongoing themes in the great author's writing.
Back on the story. The older Borges recognizes the objection is a fair one. Then he replies, “If this morning and this encounter are dreams, then each of us does have to think that he alone is the dreamer. Perhaps our dream will end, perhaps it won't. Meanwhile, our clear obligation is to accept the dream, as we have accepted the universe and our having been brought into it and the fact that we see with our eyes and that we breathe.” The young Borges then asks a critical question. “But what if the dream should last?”
What does the older Borges say to this and how does the tale continue? You'll have to read for yourself. Allow me to shift to the philosophic.
If you were to have such an encounter, how would you prove to your younger self that you, in fact, exist?
Would you warn your younger self of a past decision and urge him/her to make a better choice?
Would you in any way envy your younger self, particularly if you are of advanced age?
To what extent do you see your life as a dream? If you were to become fully awake, would this alter the way you experience yourself and the world around you?
In what way do you ground yourself by books? If so, are those books novels or short-stories? I recall one well-read gent saying that what makes us human is stories, thus the popularity of fiction.
How well would you know your younger self, really? British author Will Self is suspicious of autofiction like those written by Karl Ove Knausgård. Will cites any of our recollections when we were younger, no matter how hard we try, are always filtered through our imagination. That is, we pick and choose what type of person we were back then. Will goes on to say he finds it difficult to reconstruct what he was like last week, let alone what he was like years ago, the way Karl Ove Knausgård seems to do.
There's a quote attributed to Carl Jung. “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” Are you at a point in your life where you feel you are truly the person you were meant to become? Or, do you look back at a time when you were more 'you' than you are now? In other words, what do you judge to be the peak of your life? Or, conversely, do you think you will reach your peak sometime in the future?
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The Other is included in The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory translated by Andrew Hurley. Also, Andrew's translation of The Other can be read via this link: https://xpressenglish.com/wp-content/... -
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