Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian writer with many talents.  It is sad indeed that he was never awarded the Nobel prize which he richly deserved.  He is one of the most influential writers of the 20^th-century and I have the greatest admiration for his work.  A book like Extraordinary Tales (1967), a compilation of international tales, is a bedside book for me.  In Labyrinth there is a monologue called Deutsches Requiem which is the thoughts of a Nazi war criminal awaiting his execution, one of the profoundest pieces of writing I have ever read.  I dug up these statements on the internet and find them true to this unusual mind, the quirkiness and the depth.

Jorge Luis Borges in 1976

 

While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.

Time looks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.

 

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. 

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

 

In my next life I will try to commit more errors. 

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited. 

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. 

Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

 

© Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

April, 2020

 

Sources

The Best Jorge Luis Borges images

 

Images

Wikipedia Jorge Luis Borges

Nikon Small

Hubble 

Argentinian painting – source lost 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South Gate, Seoul

 The Koreans are set on their patrimony and each piece of historical value, large or small, is carefully numbered and thus, treasured and conserved.  The list stretches to more than one hundred thousand, the inheritance of five millennia.  The Number One on that list is the South Gate of Seoul, a gate structure from the Joseon epoque, between 1396 and 1398, constructed with seven other Gates.

When I crossed the main city throughway to the island on which the South Gate has been since the 14^th-century, it was as if the skyscrapers around it, glass-clad, of immaculate design, were guarding the South Gate like cosmic guards.

I was impressed with the actual guards that were on display probably for the sake of tourists, rather enjoying, I imagine, the endless clicking of cameras.  For me there was a massive leap of time in the costumes the guards were wearing, telling of an era in the East that the West was not aware of.

Inside the curved entrance there were painted beams, traditional art from many centuries before, magical in form and colour.

It was thus, with great shock, that on the night of the 10^th February (the year was 2008), that I saw on Korean television that someone had set fire to the South Gate.   It was established later that the person was psychologically troubled and was seeking some kind of revenge.  Gigantic flames poured out of the wooden interior changing the whole aspect of the South Gate.  Hundreds of firemen rushed to the scene and massive water curves were seen against the blinding lights around the building.  The shocked crowds were not easy to control.

After some hours the fire was brought under control, but the destruction to the wooden structures in the interior and the roof was total.  From 2008 reconstruction work was carried out.  In 2013 the South Gate was reopened to the public.  For Koreans the whole incident and what has followed carries deep symbolism.

What still haunts me is the image of a man, for some seconds on the television screen, with his arms open surrendering himself to his weeping, his face radiant with tears.

 

© Will van der Walt.

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

April, 2020

 

Source

Wikipedia : South Gate, Seoul ; The Eight Gates of Seoul

 

Images

South Gate  – source lost

South Gate guard – my photograph

South Gate burning – Korea Times

South Gate, 10th February, 2008 – source lost

 

 Note

It is a year since Notre Dame de Paris burnt down.  If I had to find parallels, it would be the haunting moments, on television, of a woman weeping as she stood in the crowd watching the flames.  “This is France,” she said. “This is our France that is burning here.”  Yes, these events tell me, if I needed to be told, that we are more than flesh and blood.  (See WWT 19.4.19) 

Flamenco – cold flames

I know as much about flamenco as I’ve been told by dancers in the Western Cape.  They mention especially the influence of gypsies in the music, not merely a poetic idea, but essential in understanding where the phenomenon originated.  It is probable that flamenco had its origin in India (refer to the gestures in the dancing) and traversed with gypsies through the many influences of music in the Arabic world.  The destination was Andalusia where it even survived the expulsion of Arabs and Jews in the 1490s.  The gypsies, of course, can’t be expelled; they slip through the guitar strings and they are still there.

Carmen Amaya 1913-1963 Legendary flamenco dancer

Today flamenco is the spirit of Spain.  I’m told that they played flamenco music on the bus for the soccer team heading for the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010.  The rest is history.

What grabs me is the relationship between the man and the woman on that dance floor  —  it is the stark equality of two profiles confronting each other, both have drunk at the flagon  of proud arrogance, both are turned inwards and allow the world to obtrude in small bits.  The sensuality in flamenco is not flirtatious;  rather, there is a seriousness:  they are aware of each other  —  move, dance, call me from distances, I will allow you into my shadow.

Manitas de Plata 1921-2014 Legendary flamenco guitarist

The music is complex, made for virtuousos.  It is almost as if it isolates the dancer, male or female.  Still, there is passion, implied rather than shown, the passion of white hot coals.  There is drama, there is angry ecstasy in those chords, those runs are a fine rippling over the skin, a suddenness, a stalking, a withholding to drive you mad.  It is the music that intoxicates with a razor sharp sobriety.

 

© Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

March, 2020

 

Source

Discussions with dancers

My soul

 

Images

Carmen Amaya  –  letempsdesdanses.e-mon

Manitas de Plata  –  atlantico.fr

Flamenco dancer –  source lost

My drawing

 

 

It is suggested that readers look up the music of Paco de Lucia and Manitas de Plata on You Tube. 

 

Dedicated to the dancers and their students at a Cape school.

 

I can’t let the opportunity go by without mentioning a story about Manitas de Plata (“The hands of platinum”).  At a concert of this world-famous gypsy flamenco guitarist, Picasso was in the first row.  Halfway through the concert, half way through his own divine madness, he rushed up on stage, grabbed the guitar from Manitas and drew on it with a (koki?) pen.  That guitar became millions worth within seconds.  The audience was astounded.  Then Manitas played. 

 

#  Morocco dancer

 

Barbara Hepworth, sculptor

 

Images are sometimes mirrors for us:  we see what is going on inside us.  With abstract art this process becomes more fluid and for me more exciting.  The work of Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)  as a modernist is almost all abstract and there are possibilities.  Are there “people” in these forms?  It is perhaps easier to see feelings and thoughts.  She speaks of the “tension between forms”.  The word tension opens things for us.

I saw this Hepworth at the Galerie-Maeght at Vence.  Is there a tension between the two openings in the form?  She was a lifelong friend of Henry Moore and it is said that these openings in the forms of her work may have influenced him.

Let me speculate.  Is this the heart of a mother?  Hepworth herself gave birth to triplets in 1934.

Is this 1935 work a dialogue between forms in the womb?

Thoughts and feelings ?

A work from 1957 … is it vulnerability?

Is this a mother-and-child?  It was created in 1959.

A clear thought?  Created in 1937.

I’m sure that there will be those critical of my speculations.  They probably expect an academic analysis.  Well, let them do it.  I derive meaning from a personal response and I understand that the more I see the work, there more will come up for me.  In the end art is for people and allows us to project our meanings.

© Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

April, 2020

 

Source

Wikipedia Barbara Hepworth

 

Images

My photograph

The rest of the images come from a book that is on my shelf ten thousand kilometres away.  I will fix this gap (“opening”?) as soon as I can.