QUESTION re BORGES quote

[Bottle Rocket]

To you Borges folk, perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity about a quote which I am fairly sure came from FICCIONES, but which I'm just about 100% certain comes from Borges somewhere

The best I can do is a paraphrase in English (my espanol isn't remotely up to the subleties of JLB ). It runs something like this:

"Imagine a panther and all else follows."

Maybe it's a leopard or a jaguar; I read it many years ago and have driven myself nearly mad trying to find it again.

What I understood/understand him to mean is that when you summon the image of anything, you implicitly summon all Creation ... not just the great cat, but the grass he stands on, the clouds whose rain waters the grass, the ocean from which the rainwater came in the first place, and all else that exists. Assuming I'm not ENTIRELY wrong about both the source and the meaning, I think this is one of the most economical formulations ever committed to paper in regard to the interconnectedness of everything


BRocket

[Johan]

I seem to have misplaced my copy of his Collected Fictions, but I'm pretty sure it's a leopard, and that the story is called The Writing of the God and can be found in The Aleph.

[Bottle Rocket]

@Johan

Muchas gracias, amigo!!


BRocket

[Daniel del Real]

Borges had a fascination for tigers. He said that he saw in his fur a type of language the gods had created to send a message to human beings.
However, although he prefered tigers, he said that about other felines, like jaguars and leopards. Don't remember about that story, but I'm sure it goes that way.

[Stiffelio]

Originally Posted by Bottle Rocket

To you Borges folk, perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity about a quote which I am fairly sure came from FICCIONES, but which I'm just about 100% certain comes from Borges somewhere

The best I can do is a paraphrase in English (my espanol isn't remotely up to the subleties of JLB ). It runs something like this:

"Imagine a panther and all else follows."

Maybe it's a leopard or a jaguar; I read it many years ago and have driven myself nearly mad trying to find it again.

What I understood/understand him to mean is that when you summon the image of anything, you implicitly summon all Creation ... not just the great cat, but the grass he stands on, the clouds whose rain waters the grass, the ocean from which the rainwater came in the first place, and all else that exists. Assuming I'm not ENTIRELY wrong about both the source and the meaning, I think this is one of the most economical formulations ever committed to paper in regard to the interconnectedness of everything


BRocket

The essence of the quote is similar to the one you wrote above, and you are right about the meaning of universality encompassed in one object.

The story, from The Aleph, is indeed The Writing of the God (Thanks to Johan ). In it Borges writes about a jaguar, but alternatively he refers to it as a tiger (generally describing any feline). The quote, in Spanish, goes:

"Consideré que aún en los lenguajes humanos no hay proposición que no implique el universo entero; decir el tigre es decir los tigres que lo engendraron, los ciervos y tortugas que devoró, el pasto de que se alimentaron los ciervos, la tierra que fue madre del pasto, el cielo que dio luz a la tierra"

(I considered that, even in human languages, there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe; to say the tiger is to say the tigers who begot it, the deer and the tortoises it devoured, the grass that fed the deer, the earth that mothered the grass, the heaven that gave light to earth).

[Bottle Rocket]

Thank you all very much; I have been trying to rediscover that passage for at least 20 years, and had begun to feel I must have dreamed it.

That thought is a wonderful example (for me) of the all-too-rare sensation that a writer has peered into my soul and left me with a truth that is at once simple and subtle. Even if I never read a single other word of Borges's I would still consider him a genius, and the limpidity of his vision -- only emphasized, IMO, by his physical blindness -- has helped me enormously in my quest to make sense of existence.

Muchas gracias ... muchissimas gracias a todos


BRocket