Borges at 80

Re: Chỉ những nhà thơ bậc nhì thì mới làm toàn những vần thơ hay.

Only secondary poets write only good verses.

Borges

Ý này, Gấu đọc, trong “Borges Tám Bó”. 

Đọc 1 phát thì đúng là sướng điên lên được, và sau đó, làm thơ, dịch thơ tưới hột sen, và, kiên quyết  không thèm là/làm nhà thơ bậc nhì nữa, như Borges khuyên: Out of politesse you should have bad verses, Vì lịch sự, mi nên làm thơ tồi!

Bữa nay, cũng vẫn trong không khí thời thương nhớ Bùi Giáng, bèn dịch lai rai chương 10, The Nightmare, That Tiger of the Dream, trong có đoạn nêu trên. 
Có thể coi chương này, là về bài thơ Camden 1892, của Borges, viết để vinh danh Walt Whitman

10 

The Nightmare, That Tiger of the Dream 

Indiana University, 

 April 1980 

 I am often haunted by nightmare.

And I feel that were I a theologian-happily

I am not-I might find an argument in

favor of hell. ... The nightmare has a

peculiar horror to it. The nightmare, that

tiger of the dream. 

WILLIS BARNSTONE: In the years that we have known each other we have spoken almost exclusively about poetry. 

JORGE LUIS BORGES: Yes. It's the only subject, really. 

BARNSTONE: A few days ago when we took a plane in New York, you asked what the name of the airline was, and I said 1W A. You asked what that stood for, and I said Trans World Airlines. Do you remember what you said? 

BORGES: Yes. I said that that stood for Walt Whitman Trans World.

He would have enjoyed that. 

BARNSTONE: What about that pioneer transworld pilot? 

BORGES: I think that what I have to say now is what I said quite some time ago in an essay:  * the fact, forgotten by many people, that Whitman thought of Leaves of Grass as an epic, not as a series of short poems. Now, the epic has been attempted many times, but there always was a central figure. Arma Virum que cano. I mean you always had a character larger than life. For example, you had Ulysses, you had Beowulf, you had Roland. But when Walt Whitman thought of writing an epic, Sewuld he thought, well, this should be an epic of democracy, and so I can't have a central figure. In one of his poems he says: "There are painters who give us pictures of crowds, and one of them has a halo. But I want all of my  

** Nota sobre Walt Whitman," "Note on Walt Whitman", Discusion (1912 ).