Beschreibung:

Self-portrait.
ink on paper 8 3/4 x 6 inches (225 x 150 mm) signed Britton, p. 199 Borges' work had not been widely translated into English by the time he shared the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor with the widely respected Samuel Beckett in 1961. This led the translation and publication of two major Borges collections, Ficciones and Labyrinths. Poignantly relating to self-portraits, Borges wrote in his The Art of Poetry : To gaze at a river made of time and water And remember Time is another river. To know we stray like a river and our faces vanish like water … Sometimes at evening there's a face that sees us from the deeps of a mirror. Art must be that sort of mirror, disclosing to each of us his face. "There's a poem by Ken McCullough - 'Buckley Interviews Borges', found in the volume Travelling Light - in which the poet tells of my meeting with the great Borges. He tells of my showing him, the nearly blind Borges, my collection of self-portraits - Saroyan, Merwin, Lowell, the hundreds of others - and of Borges studying each one as if for an exam. And then of Señor Borges putting pen to paper - using one finger along the edge of the paper to guide the others - and doing his own. Then saying, he's 'tired', that he 'must rest'. The portrait, Borges as Labyrinth, is perfect. But what I most remember as if it were indeed yesterday was escorting him up the stairs onto the main floor, him stopping and, as McCullough tells it, 'listens/ to the room, the stacks, the books', and telling me, 'You have as many volumes here as we have in our/ National Library'". -- Burt Britton