BORGES
INTERVIEWER :
This reminds me a little
bit
of "The South."
BORGES:
Yes.
INTERVIEWER:
I think that's one of your most personal stories.
BORGES :
Yes, it is.
115
INTERVIEWER:
The idea of bravery means a lot to you, doesn't it?
BORGES:
I
think it does because I'm not brave myself.
I
think if
I
were
really brave it wouldn't mean anything to me. For example, I've been
ducking a dentist for a year or so. I'm not personally brave and as
my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather were per–
sonally brave men,
I
mean some of them fell in action....
INTERVIEWER:
You don't think writing is a kind of bravery?
BoRGES:
It
could be, yes. But perhaps if
I
were personally brave
I
wouldn't care so much about bravery. Because, of course, what one
cares for is what one hasn't got, no?
INTERVIEWER:
Right.
BORGES:
I
mean if a person loves you, you take it for granted, and you
may even get tired of her. But if you are jilted, you feel that the
bottom is out of the universe, no?
INTERVIEWER:
You say people should be ashamed of anger, but you
don't think people should be ashamed of this; of "what to make of
a diminished thing?"
BORGES:
I
don't think one can help it.
INTERVIEWER:
Can you help anger?
BORGES:
Yes, yes.
I
think that many people encourage anger or think it
a very fine thing.
INTERVIEWER:
Masculine, they think it's manly to fight.
BORGES:
Yes, and it isn't, eh?
INTERVIEWER:
No. It
isn't.
BORGES:
I don't think there's anything praiseworthy in anger. It's a
kind of weakness. Because, really, for example, I think that you should
allow very few people to be able to hurt you unless of course they
bludgeon you or they shoot you. For example, I can't understand
anybody being angry because a waiter keeps him waiting too long,
or because a porter is uncivil to him, or because somebody behind a
counter doesn't take him into account because, after all, those people
are like shapes in a dream? While the only people who can really
hurt you, except in a physical way, except by stabbing you or shooting
you, are the people you care for. A friend was saying to me, "but
you haven't forgiven so and so and yet you have forgiven somebody
who has behaved far worse." I said, "Yes, but so and so was, or
I thought he was, a personal friend and so it's rather difficult to