You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Borges reflects on a past encounter and the limitations of writing in a language that feels secondary, acknowledging their shared influences.
In this quote, Jorge Luis Borges reminisces about a meeting with Pablo Neruda, highlighting their mutual admiration for Walt Whitman and their playful yet serious view on the challenges of writing in Spanish. Borges expresses a feeling of resignation about the limitations imposed by language, suggesting that despite their potential, they might only produce work within what they perceive as a 'second-rate literature,' illustrating the complexities of cultural and linguistic identity among writers.
Themes
LanguageLiteratureIdentityWritingCulture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges of writing in a non-native language.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
All quotes →To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
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