Photo credit: Georgina Gould
Jorge Luis Borges, the blind Argentinian librarian, liked to quote
Arthur Schopenhauer, who said that dreaming and wakefulness are the pages of a single book: “to read them in order is to live, and to leaf through them at random, to dream.”
The distinction between dreams and reality must have been especially blurred for Borges, who was blind for most of his career. He relied on disembodied readers’ voices and was forced to compose his letters, poems, and short stories inside his head, memorizing them and then waiting for a willing amanuensis.
He was “a keen dreamer, and enjoyed telling his dreams,” recalls the writer
Alberto Manguel, who was one of many young friends who read to Borges...