Apr 9, 2006
Borges in Performance
Favourite book by favourite author in favourite film; does intertextuality get any more heavenly? When are Warner Brothers going to do the right thing and release this on DVD?
Posted in {books}, {borges}, {decadence}, {film}.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
#1 posted by Eroom Nala
I’m also from Buenos Aires and I work in a library but luckily I’m not blind. Will have to try and see Performance once again as it’s ages since I’ve seen it and I can’t remember the scene with the pictures you’ve posted.
Haven’t read much Borges yet but I did see a TV series of some of his short stories once which included one where a missionary was trying to educate natives about Jesus and how people should emulate/imitate him so the natives ended up crucifying him in the end.
http://www.lehigh.edu/~stk4/borges_home.jpg
Under the photo it says this is the house where Borges was born.
from here
http://www.lehigh.edu/~stk4/borges.html
and here’s his grave
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pis&GRid=6280&PIgrid=6280&PIcrid=639472&PIpi=89753&
I didn’t know he was buried in Switzerland.
Apr 9th, 2006
#2 posted by John
Those are actually shots from different scenes as the book recurs throughout the film. 1) Gangster Rosie Bloom is reading it while waiting in a car. 2) Turner’s kitchen where Mick Jagger has been reading from the story ‘The South’. A fly hits him in the eye and he drops the book. 3) Rosie retrieves his book after having visited a friend of Chas’s. 4) Borges’ face appears at the end when one of the characters (I won’t say which one) has been shot.
Co-director Donald Cammell was responsible for these references. There’s also a brief Borges reference in his later film Demon Seed.
Borges’ gravestone looks very different to what I expected. The inscription is unusual so I looked for an explanation in James Woodall’s biography, The Man in the Mirror of the Book. “…AND NE FORHTEDON NA…” is “And should not be afraid” from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. On the reverse side of the stone there are more lines: “HANN TEKR SVERTHIT GRAM / OK LEGGR I METHAL THEIRA BERT”, “He takes the sword Gram, and lays it naked between them” from The Saga of the Volsungs.
Apr 9th, 2006
#3 posted by Eroom Nala
We’ve actually got a few rare Borges books in the library where I work
I, I am, A blind man = Yo, Soy, Un ciego / [by Jorge Luis Borges ; selected and illustrated with three etchings by Petr Herel] .
Access Mitchell Library copy: Issued in the Original Materials Reading Room.
“I, Iam, A blind man : three poems …” — Colophon.
“[The book] has been handset in Baskerville and printed on Magnani Pescia paper in an edition of twenty copies” — Colophon.
“I, I am, A blind man, is the tenth book from Finlay Press, Yabber Yabber publications” — Colophon.
Mitchell Library copy: No.5 of limited edition of 20 copies.
Mitchell Library copy: Signed by author.
Ragnarök : a story / by Jorge Luis Borges ; translated by Nestor Silva.
Kings Cross, N.S.W. : Nicholas Pounder, 1990.
Description [6] p. ; 20 cm.
Notes “A parallel text’.
Text in Spanish and English.
Limited edition: “500 copies for Nicholas Pounder, 50 copies for [Catnip] [P]ress.”
Apr 10th, 2006
#4 posted by Dr Miguel-Angel Meizoso
Good morning, congratulations for the elegant layout of your Feuilleton blog.
To any person interested in Borges works and real life, I invite to visit our website and the four entities created to celebrate his works as a shortcut to the best of Literature and Philosophy.
Thanks for your consideration and best wishes
info@FriendsofBorges.net
web: http://FriendsofBorges.net
Aug 30th, 2006
#5 posted by Pedro Marques
Terrific! I took the liberty to post 2 of Perfomance’s frames, as well as using your first linein this post, here: http://livrosdeareia.blogspot.com/2006/11/favourite-book-by-favourite-author-in.html
Pedro Marques
Graphic Designer & Publisher
www.livrosdeareia.com
Nov 12th, 2006
#6 posted by John
Borrow away, I borrowed them from the film, after all! I’ve just noticed that the Yahoo Nicolas Roeg group says Performance is due to be released on DVD early next year. We’ll see.
Nov 12th, 2006
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