∞ Final Dialogue I., 2018
In Dialogo I
Borges × Ferrari translated by Chen Dongbiao
New Classic Culture | Nova Press
I believe in Henry James
is an outstanding writer
Excerpt from On Henry James
About Henry James
Ferrari: Guillermo de Torre 1 reminds us that Borges, a writer from North America, a naturalized Briton, has created what he calls "a comeback" over time.
That is to say, after perhaps a period of apparent forgetting, he was accepted by the new generation; he was published and re-read with great interest. I'm talking about Henry James.
Borges: Absolutely, yes.
Ferrari: In addition, Guillermo de Torre added something that we also mentioned when we talked about Kafka; he said that Henry James, in a sense, was a bridge between the end of the last century and the beginning of this century.
Borges: That is, Henry James is a member of the decadent, depraved, right? Of course, I say, because there is always speculation, I believe it makes sense, that this century is inferior to the last; he is probably the first descent downhill. But I don't think so, I believe he is a brilliant writer, there is no need to mix him with this century.
Ferrari: Perhaps it would be better to link him to the transition between two centuries.
Borges: I basically don't believe in all historical standards; John Keats said, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," and for James, I believe we can ignore literary history.
Ferrari: Maybe we can, on this issue, ignore history, but perhaps we should pay a little attention to geography: James was born in the United States, and during World War I, around 1915...
Borges: He became a British citizen. Well, he did it because he believed that the United States had a moral responsibility and a moral obligation to go to war. So, in order to emphatically express this, he became a British citizen. I believe he is for this. Moreover, he was very sympathetic to England, and his father's education of him and his brother, the psychologist William James—whom he feared they would turn into hillbills—deliberately adopted a cosmopolitan atmosphere so that they, uh, would say excessively or narrowly become Americans. They received a European-style education, and indeed they could not be described by the narrow word "home country". They are very, very generous...
That being said, Henry James believed that, in general, Americans were slightly more morally superior and less intelligent than Europeans. This is also reflected in all his writings: The American is like a naïve person, surrounded by very complex minds, sometimes demonic people. I'm sure he had that impression.
He had a very good novel—an early work—and he wrote it down and rewrote it; the novel was called The American, and the plot was roughly this: an American fell in love with a French aristocratic lady, and her family wanted to stop the marriage, so, uh, a terrible persecution of the girl. He knew all this, but could not take revenge; though, he always wanted to do something—I believed the girl was dead, and I wasn't sure, the book had been read many years before.
The American.
James R. Osgood，1877
But I remember the last chapter; in the last chapter, the protagonist already knew, and said that it was the countess of so-and-so, the mother of the girl he had fallen in love with, and he knew a French noblewoman, I believe a duchess, and thought, "Well, I know that this woman loves to play tricks, and if I tell her what happened, she will surely spread it throughout Paris, so that the sinners will have nothing to hide." So he wrote to her to ask for a meeting. She lived in a castle near Paris, and was a little surprised that they had only seen it twice; but at the same time, because she loved to play right and wrong, she suspected that there might be something else behind the visit. So she invited him.
There was also a guest: a rather nasty Italian prince who insisted on staying. Madame finally drove him away, and invited the gentleman, an American millionaire, to dinner with her; the two of them ate together, and he did not say a word, and she thought, "Well, he will not say anything at dinner." Then they went into the next room and drank coffee, and she waited for what he was bound to tell her, which was perhaps the only reason for this unusual visit. Time kept passing, and he remained silent, and then at a moment when the last train that was about to take him back to Paris was about to depart; he stood up, bid farewell to the lady, thanked her for her hospitality, and returned to his hotel.
The next day, or two days later, he set off for the United States, determined never to return to Europe, full of extremely unpleasant memories. Then, when he got to the car, he asked himself, "But why didn't you say anything to the Duchess?" "He did it himself, but he didn't know why.
But then he got the revelation, which was wonderful; the revelation was this: he hated the woman he wanted to condemn so much that he didn't want to take revenge on her anymore, because that would create another connection between the two of them: that is, revenge was the same thing that bound him more tightly to her. So he was silent, but at the time he didn't know why he was silent.
Ferrari: It's really original.
Borges: That's a great idea, well, it seems that Henry James—who generally rewrites his book—didn't let his characters do it deliberately in the first edition of the novel; because he liked forgiveness over revenge. But the idea of the second edition, the one I had read, was even better, and I learned later that there was another edition. It is not to take revenge, because revenge is another connection between the avenger and the avenged.
Ferrari: There's no doubt that this one is more original.
Borges: This is more original, it's the second edition that I've read, and my mother has read it too, and she loves it. That was, in other words, a long novel; presenting the european, uh, evil deeds, which was James's general idea of the Europeans. And the character in the novel, the American, is a naïve man in this sense; although, of course, he is a millionaire, and he used to get rich by using a kind of ... In a ruthless way, that's how wealth is made anyway—but not in this case, where he was a righteous man——。
Well, this man exemplifies james's general conception of Americans—he may be thinking mostly of... Maybe he wasn't thinking of people in Chicago or San Francisco; he was probably thinking of people from New England, that is, people who had inherited the best British traditions.
Translation Notes:
Guillermo de Torre (1900-1971), Spanish essayist, poet, literary critic, brother-in-law of Borges.
The revelation was this: he hated the woman he wanted to condemn so much that he didn't want to take revenge on her anymore, because that would create another bond between the two of them: that is, revenge was the same thing that bound him more tightly to her. So he was silent, but at the time he didn't know why he was silent.
—Translated by Borges | Chen Dongbiao
—Reading and Rereading—
Chen Dongbiao translation and others
Caption: Henry James
Vialiterariness.org