Saturday, February 6, 2016

El Hombre Invisible

Everything and Nothing, Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Andrew Hurley)
There was no one inside him; behind his face (which even in the bad paintings of the time resembles no other) and his words (which were multitudinous and of a fantastical and agitated turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a dream someone had failed to dream.  At first he thought that everyone was like him, but the surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance to whom he began to describe that hollowness showed him his error, and also let him know, forever after, that an individual ought not to differ from its species.  He thought at one point that books might hold some remedy for his condition, and so he learned the "little Latin and less Greek" that a contemporary would later mention.  Then he reflected that what he was looking for might be found in the performance of an elemental ritual of humanity, and so he allowed himself to be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long evening in June.

At twenty-something he went off to London.  Instinctively, he had already trained himself to the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered.

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