114
RICHARD BURGIN
BORGES: Yes, and then, well, they walked away and then I said, "Well,
after this interlude, I think we may go on." And then I was rather
ashamed of having shouted, and of having felt so angry. That was
one of the few times in my life that thing has happened to me.
INTERVIEWER: How long ago was this?
BORGES: This must have been some five years ago. And then the
same sort of thing happened twice again, and I reacted much in the
same way, but afterwards I felt very, very much ashamed of it.
INTERVIEWER: This was a strike against the university?
BORGES: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: What were they striking for?
BORGES: They were striking because there was a strike among the
laborers in the port and they thought the students had to join them.
But I always think of strikes as a kind of blackmail, no? I wonder
what you think about it?
INTERVIEWER: Students are often striking in this country. Do you
know that?
BORGES: In my country also. That they should do it is right, but that
they should prevent other people from going to classes, I don't under–
stand; that they should try to bully me? And then I said, well if they
knock me down, that doesn't matter, because after all the issue of
a fight is of no importance whatever. What is important is that a
man should not let himself be bullied, don't you think so? After all,
what happens to me is not important because nobody thinks that
I'm a prizefighter or that I'm any good at fighting. What is im–
portant is that I should not let myself be bullied before my
students, because if not, they won't respect me, and I won't respect
myself.
INTERVIEWER: Sometimes values, then, are even more important than
one's well-being?
BORGES: Oh yes, of course. After all one's well-being is physical, and
as I don't think physical things are very real, of course - they are
real, if you fall off a cliff that's quite real, but in that case I thought
that whatever happens to me is quite trifling, utterly trifling. Of
course they were trying to bluff me, because I don't think they had
any idea of being violent. But that was one of the few times in my
life I've been really angry. And then I was very much ashamed of
the fact. I felt that, after all, as a frofessor, as a man of letters, I
shouldn't have been angry, I should have tried to reason with them,
instead of saying to them, "well come on and have it out," because
after all I was behaving in much the same way as they were.
