So, I’ve finally come to the end of the marathon that was learning ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ by heart. Regular repetition should now help to sear it deep within my brain where, if Homer Simpson’s philosophy of mind is to be believed, it will shoulder aside being able to name Saturn’s satellites or some other piece of trivia that I was hitherto in command of.
Onwards and upwards then. Excelsior! For my next By Heart mission I want to bend the rules a little and learn not poetry but a short piece of text. There is a piece written by Jorge Luis Borges which I’ve always fancied committing to memory but never had the impetus to do so.
My next piece to learn is ‘Borges and I’. It begins:
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor.
Borges is such an accurate miniaturist that his texts read as poetry anyway.
What an incredibly interesting choice. I look forward to seeing what you do with this, Mr Porter.