Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin

Longreads ^ | June 14, 2016 | Elizabeth Hyde Stevens

[EveningStar]

Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile than the one on the island of Pharos.

—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir”

I fell in love with Jorge Luis Borges when I was a freshman in college. That year, full of hope and confusion, I left my hometown for the manicured quads of Brown University, desperately seeking culture—art, beauty, and meaning beyond the empty narrative of wealth building that consumes our world. It is easy to look back and see why Borges spoke to me. The Argentine fabulist’s short stories were like beautiful mind-altering crystals, each one an Escheresque maze that toyed with our realities—time, space, honor, death—as mere constructs, nothing more. With the beautiful prose of a poet-translator-scholar, he could even make money seem like mere fantasy. It was precisely the narrative someone like me might want.

[EveningStar]

ping

[null and void]

IBHG.

(In Before Humblegunner)

[EveningStar]

A blog! The horror! :-D

[Calusa]

Thanks for sharing

[EveningStar]

ping

[null and void]

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Thank you for posting.

[martin_fierro]

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The prevailing political sentiments that I experienced while living in my little corner of South America in the 70s were:

• "My little country counts for nothing on the world stage;" and
• "Why can't we all be like innocent little children again?"

Result: everyone ends up working for the government, and nobody works very hard.