Jay Parini
Two Men in a Morris Minor
Soon I’ll publish Borges and Me, a book that has been in the works, in some form or another, for nearly fifty years. A kind of novelised memoir, it’s an account of a journey I took through the Highlands of Scotland in 1971 with Jorge Luis Borges, whose work, at the time, I didn’t know and who was by then totally blind and somewhat fragile.
You may well ask: how did this come about? I spent seven years in Scotland as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate student. During this time Alastair Reid was a close friend and mentor. He was a poet who translated the works of Borges and Pablo Neruda, among others. Borges had come from Argentina to visit Alastair, who invited me to dinner the first night he was there. From the outset, Borges puzzled me: he paid very little attention to anyone but himself and talked incessantly about literature and ideas, quoting poetry in several languages. He asked me what I was studying, and I said, ‘English literature’. He brightened, telling me to read ‘only the great ones’. Not Shakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Chaucer, ‘but Chesterton, Stevenson and, of course, Tichborne’.
I’d never heard of Chidiock Tichborne at that point. I was impressed by Borges’s dramatic rendering of ‘Elegy’, Tichborne’s most famous poem, written in the Tower of London in the late 16th century before his execution. Borges nearly wept as he repeated the poem’s refrain, ‘And now I live, and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/