Happy Monday friends, today we will read yet another poem by the great Borges as he is considered to be one of the greatest poets of all times!
Today we are reading:
BROWNING DECIDES TO BE A POET BY JORGE LUIS BORGES
Let's get to know Jorge Luis Borges:
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986), was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph),
published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories
interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths,
libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. His international reputation bloomed in the 1960s, that lead to his works being available in English. He became blind by the age of 55, and since he never learned braille,
he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through
imagination.
Browning Decides to be a Poet
in these red labyrinths of London I find that I have chosen the strangest of all callings, save that, in its way, any calling is strange. Like the alchemist who sought the philosopher's stone in quicksilver, I shall make everyday words-- the gambler's marked cards, the common coin-- give off the magic that was their when Thor was both the god and the din, the thunderclap and the prayer. In today's dialect I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things: I shall try to be worthy of the great echo of Byron. This dust that I am will be invulnerable. If a woman shares my love my verse will touch the tenth sphere of the concentric heavens; if a woman turns my love aside I will make of my sadness a music, a full river to resound through time. I shall live by forgetting myself. I shall be the face I glimpse and forget, I shall be Judas who takes on the divine mission of being a betrayer, I shall be Caliban in his bog, I shall be a mercenary who dies without fear and without faith, I shall be Polycrates, who looks in awe upon the seal returned by fate. I will be the friend who hates me. The persian will give me the nightingale, and Rome the sword. Masks, agonies, resurrections will weave and unweave my life, and in time I shall be Robert Browning.
The struggle of finding or deciding to choose path of your life. It's hard isn't it? Well, never give up if the first path you chose didn't work out. Life is not about one choice is about opportunity and adventure! Remember, no one should tell you who or what you should be.
What did you think of BROWNING DECIDES TO BE A POET?
