{"id":18916,"date":"2013-12-19T03:49:14","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T03:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/cyborges-ounu-on-jorge-luis-borges-creative\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T20:06:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T03:06:26","slug":"cyborges-ounu-on-jorge-luis-borges-creative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/cyborges-ounu-on-jorge-luis-borges-creative\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-18916 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/cyborges-ounu-on-jorge-luis-borges-creative\/attachment\/18917\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_md7anxtaYl1qe0r71o1_r1_540-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cyborges.tumblr.com\/post\/70443190611\/ounu-on-jorge-luis-borges-creative-process\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">cyborges<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#4c4c4c\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ounu.tumblr.com\/post\/69839331101\/on-jorge-luis-borges-creative-process-during-his\">ounu<\/a><\/font>:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\"><b>On <\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><b>Jorge<\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><b> Luis <\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><b>Borges<\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><b>\u2019 creative process during his later years<\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\">:<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\">\u201c<\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Mar\u00eda<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Kodama<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> described for me how, later in life, the blind <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Borges<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> composed. After a light breakfast, he would sit in a comfortable armchair, in his front room, at about nine in the morning. He would lean his head back. Sometimes, one of his cats would sit in his lap, and he would stroke it, very slowly, very rhythmically. Though he was blind and presumably had little need to, <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Borges<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> would still close his eyes. A serene expression settled on his face, as if he was sleeping, but he wasn\u2019t asleep. With his eyes closed, he would start nodding his head, inducing in himself a kind of trance, feeling the pulse of language he could hear somewhere in the depths, in his voice, his \u2018other\u2019 voice, the voice of the famous \u2018other <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Borges<\/font><font color=\"#888888\">.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\">Sometimes, he would mutter to himself, repeating a line aloud, in a whisper. Mostly, he dreamed away quietly. He would do this for about two hours, and then call for <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Mar\u00eda<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Kodama<\/font><font color=\"#888888\">\u2014his secretary and platonic companion (only many years later would he marry her and make her the keeper of his estate, and his secrets). La <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Kodama<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> would come into his study, the main room of his apartment, lined floor to ceiling, with easily two thousand books. <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Borges<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> would begin dictating to her a whole stanza of seven, eight, or ten lines as if he were writing a poem, or it might be a complete paragraph, long or short, of an essay or rare new story <\/font><font color=\"#888888\">Borges<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"> had spent those morning hours dreaming up, imagining, revising, and editing in his head. He dictated everything whole\u2014finished\u2014to Mar\u00eda Kodama. The two of them would go to the dining room to eat lunch.\u00a0After lunch and a short nap, Borges would work for about another two hours, dictate another stanza or paragraph, then knock off at about 3:30, when he would prepare himself to entertain visitors. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\">After some time had gone by\u2014usually months, sometimes years\u2014Borges would make changes when lines were read back to him from these drafts. He seasoned his work, cut and revised, and applied writerly craft through multiple revisions. Borges knew that\u00a0<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><i>impatience <\/i><\/font><font color=\"#888888\">is the enemy of art. Still, the first drafts were all mainly there, born out of his trance, those \u2018dream tigers\u2019 the writer could pad around with through his surreal and mythic landscapes. His works were drawn forth as if at will from sources directly related to his capacity to enter into dreams.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\">\u2014<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><b>Douglas Unger,\u00a0<\/b><\/font><font color=\"#888888\">from his essay \u201cOn Inspiration: Thomas Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, &amp; Raymond Carver,\u201d in\u00a0<\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><i>The Writer\u2019s Chronicle\u00a0<\/i><\/font><font color=\"#888888\">(Vol. 42, No. 2, October\/November 2009)\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font color=\"#888888\">Photograph: <\/font><font color=\"#888888\"><i>Jorge Luis Borges and Mar\u00eda Kodama<\/i><\/font><font color=\"#888888\">, n.d.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>cyborges: ounu: On Jorge Luis Borges\u2019 creative process during his later years: \u201cMar\u00eda Kodama described for me how, later in life, the blind Borges composed. After a light breakfast, he would sit in a comfortable armchair, in his front room, at about nine in the morning. He would lean his head back. Sometimes, one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4V6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18918,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18916\/revisions\/18918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}