1. cortex
  2. Borges' Brain Injury

Borges' Brain Injury

By cortex on March 31, 2008.

This is from The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1:

Q: I would like to ask about your having said that you were very timid about beginning to write stories.

Borges: Yes, I was very timid because when I was young I thought of myself as a poet. Then I had an accident. You can feel the scar. If you touch my head here, you will see. Feel all those mountains, bumps? Then I spent a fortnight in a hospital. I had nightmares and sleeplessness - insomnia. After that they told me that I had been in danger, well, of dying, that it was really a wonderful thing that the operation had been successful. I began to fear for my mental integrity - I said, Maybe I can't write anymore. Then my life would have been practically over because literature is very important to me. Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no? Then I thought I would try my hand at writing an article or poem. But I thought, I have written hundreds of articles and poems. If I can't do it, then I'll know at once that I am done fore, that everything is over with me. So I thought I'd try my hand at something I hadn't done; if I couldn't do it, there would be nothing strange about it because why should I write short stories? It would prepare me for the final overwhelming blow: knowing that I was at the end of my tether. I wrote a story called, let me see, I think, "Hombre de la esquina rosada," and everyone enjoyed it very much. It was a great relief to me. If it hadn't been for that particular knock on the head, perhaps I would have never written short stories.

Tags
Uncategorized

More like this

The Perverse Imp
I couldn't sleep last night. As far as I can tell, there was no particular reason for my insomnia. I wasn't stressed, or anxious, or caffeinated, or sick. My mind was tired, but my brain just wasn't in the sleeping mood. And no, I hadn't been talking on a cell phone. For me, one of the most…
Things I Didn't Know I Loved
tags: Things I Didn't Know I Loved, Nazim Hikmet, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run…
Still Far Away and on a Dark Mountain
At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird's cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above the snow... It would have been outside. It…
Should I be ABD before I have a baby? (and other questions about academic motherhood)
I recently received an email, prompted by my series about having a family and an academic career, asking for some input: I am a mere first year in a Ph.D. program and am a bit older than the other students. I am wholeheartedly committed to the program I am also considering the seemingly traitorous…

The possible brain injury here isn't as important as the fact that it forced Borges into a genre (fiction) where he had no expectations for himself. Creating without having any notion that you have any ability, proclivity, or talent might be what made his first story so great...

And it might explain the beauty of the work of "outsider" artists like Henry Darger who lack self-identification as "artists." The consciousness of talent might actually be a barrier to its release.

I agree with McFawn, I feel the conscious expectation of performance can subvert the ability to perform by the fear of not meeting expectations, however subliminal that fear might be.
I expect most of us experience this in various sports or instruments we might play, or in any area we try our talents. Maybe this lack of expectation accounts for "beginners luck" in some arenas.