BORGES
117
"El otro tigre, el que no esta en el verso." I wrote that poem, I was
walking up and down the library, and then I wrote that poem in a
day or so. I think it's quite a good poem, no? It's a parable also,
and yet the parable is not too obvious, the reader doesn't have to
be worried by it, or even understand it.
INTERVIEWER: You'll always be trying to capture the tiger.
BORGES: Yes, because the tiger will always be . . .
INTERVIEWER: Outside of art.
BORGES: Outside of art, yes. So it's a kind of hopeless poem, no? The
same idea that you get in "A Yellow Rose." In fact, I never thought
of it, but when I wrote "The Other Tiger" I was re-writing "A
Yellow Rose."
INTERVIEWER: You often speak of your stories as echoing other stories
you've written before. Was that the case also with "Deutsches Re–
quiem?"
BORGES: Ah, yes. The idea there was that I had met some Nazis, or
rather Argentine Nazis. And then I thought that something might
be said for them. That if they really held that code of cruelty, of
bravery, then they might be, well of course, lunatics, but there was
something epic about them, no? Now I said, I'll try and imagine a
Nazi, not Nazis as they actually are, but I'll try and imagine a man
who really thinks that violence and fighting are better than making
up things, and peacefulness. I'll do that. And then, I'll make him
feel like a Nazi, or the Platonic idea of a Nazi. I wrote that after
the Second World War because I thought that, after all, nobody
had a word to say for the tragedy of Germany. I mean, such an
important nation. A nation that had produced Schopenhauer and
Brahms and so many poets and so many philosophers, and yet it
fell a victim to a very clumsy idea. I thought, well, I will try and
imagine a real Nazi, not a Nazi who is fond of self-pity, as they are,
but a Nazi who feels that, after all, a violent world is a better
world than a peaceful world, and who doesn't care for victory; who
is mainly concerned for the
fact
of fighting. Then that Nazi wouldn't
mind Germany being defeated, because, after all, if they were defeated
then the others were better fighters. Well the important thing is that
violence should
be.
And then I imagined that Nazi, and I wrote the
story. Because there were so many people in Buenos Aires who were
on the side of Hitler.
INTERVIEWER: That's horrible.
BORGES: It's awful, really. They were very mean people. But after
all, Germany fought splendidly in the beginning of the war. I mean,
