William Shakespeare - the Cobbe portrait - 1610

Porque Canadá y los E.E.U.U. representan una zona donde el inglés manda, parece haber poco conocimiento de los escritores latinoamericanos como Jorge Luís Borges.

Because Canada and the US represent a zone where English is king, there seems to be little knowledge or interest in the literature of the rest of the continent.

Mi conocimiento de la existencia de Guillermo Shakespeare comenzó en la Ciudad de México en 1953 cuando yo tenía 1 años. Mi mamá, abuela y yo habíamos llegado de Buenos Aires y rentamos una casa en la Calle Guillermo Shakespeare en la colonia de Nueva Anzures. Cuando tomábamos un taxi le indicábamos al ruletero que nos llevara a la Calle de Sha-ques-peah-rhe.

My first awareness of the existence of William Shakespeare began in Mexico City in 1953. My mother, grandmother and I had moved from Buenos Aires and we rented a home on Calle Guillermo Shakespeare in the Nueva Anzures. When we took taxis we would tell the driver to take us to “la calle Shawh-kes-peh-ah-rhe."

My favourite moment related to Shakespeare happened when I photographed Kenneth Branagh after having seen his long version of his film, Hamlet.

Mi momento favorito relacionado con Shakespeare fue cuando fotografié al actor/director Kenneth Branagh después de ver su película,versión larga, de Hamlet.

Kenneth Branagh 

Hace unas semanas mi hija Hilary y yo vimos la película Hamnet. Nos encantó. Al verla y notar el actor con el papel de Shakespeare no podía parar de pensar de la hermosa definición de quien era Shakespeare de Jorge Luís Borges. No creo que haya una mejor que ésta.

A few weeks ago my daughter Hilary and I enjoyed the film Hamnet. While watching the actor who played Shakespeare I could not stop thinking on the beautiful Jorge Luís Borges definition of Shakespeare. I do not believe that there is a better one.

 Everything and Nothing  J. L. Borges

 There was no one in him; behind his face (which even in the poor paintings of the period is unlike any other) and his words, which were copious, imaginative, and emotional, there was nothing but a little chill, a dream not dreamed by anyone. At first he thought everyone was like him, but the puzzled look on a friend’s face when he remarked on that emptiness told him he was mistaken and convinced him forever that an individual must not differ from his species. Occasionally he thought he would find in books the cure for his ill, and so he learned the small Latin and less Greek of which a contemporary was to speak. Later he thought that in the exercise of an elemental human rite he might well find what he sought, and he let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At twenty-odd he went to London. Instinctively, he had already trained himself in the habit of pretending that he was someone, so it would not be discovered that he was no one. In London he hit upon the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who plays on stage at being someone else. His playacting taught him a singular happiness, perhaps the first he had known; but when the last line was applauded and the last corpse removed from the stage, the hated sense of unreality came over him again. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamburlaine and again became a nobody. Trapped, he fell to imagining other heroes and other tragic tales. Thus, while in London’s bawdyhouses and taverns his body fulfilled its destiny as body, the soul that dwelled in it was Caesar, failing to heed the augurer’s admonition, and Juliet, detesting the lark, and Macbeth, conversing on the heath with the witches, who are also the fates. Nobody was ever as many men as that man, who like the Egyptian Proteus managed to exhaust all the possible shapes of being. At times he slipped into some corner of his work a confession, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his single person he plays many parts, and Iago says with strange words, “I am not what I am.” His passages on the fundamental identity of existing, dreaming, and acting are famous.

Twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was overcome by the surfeit and the horror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many unhappy lovers who converge, diverge, and melodiously agonize. That same day he disposed of his theater. Before a week was out he had returned to the village of his birth, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood; and he did not bind them to those others his muse had celebrated, those made illustrious by mythological allusions and Latin phrases. He had to be someone; he became a retired impresario who has made his fortune and who interests himself in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. In this character he dictated the arid final will and testament that we know, deliberately excluding from it every trace of emotion and of literature. Friends from London used to visit his retreat, and for them he would take on again the role of poet.

The story goes that, before or after he died, he found himself before God and he said: “I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.” The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: “Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons—and none.” From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Mildred Boyer

 Todo y nada – Jorge Luís Borges

Nadie hubo en él; detrás de su rostro (que aun a través de las malas pinturas de la época no se parece a ningún otro) y de sus palabras, que eran copiosas, fantásticas y agitadas, no había más que un poco de frío, un sueño no soñado por alguien. Al principio creyó que todas las personas eran como él, pero la extrañeza de un compañero, con el que había empezado a comentar esa vacuidad, le reveló su error y le dejó sentir para siempre, que un individuo no debe diferir de su especie. Alguna vez pensó que en los libros hallaría remedio para su mal y así aprendió el poco latín y menos griego de que hablaría un contemporáneo; después consideró que en el ejercicio de un rito elemental de la humanidad, bien podía estar lo que buscaba y se dejó iniciar por Anne Hathaway, durante una larga siesta de junio. A los veintitantos años fue a Londres. Instintivamente, ya se había adiestrado en el hábito de simular que era alguien, para que no se descubriera su condición de nadie; en Londres encontró la profesión a la que estaba predestinado, la del actor, que en un escenario, juega a ser otro, ante un concurso de personas que juegan a tomarlo por aquel otro. Las tareas histriónicas le enseñaron una felicidad singular, acaso la primera que conoció; pero aclamado el último verso y retirado de la escena el último muerto, el odiado sabor de la irrealidad recaía sobre él. Dejaba de ser Ferrex o Tamerlán y volvía a ser nadie. Acosado, dio en imaginar otros héroes y otras fábulas trágicas. Así, mientras el cuerpo cumplía su destino de cuerpo, en lupanares y tabernas de Londres, el alma que lo habitaba era César, que desoye la admonición del augur, y Julieta, que aborrece a la alondra, y Macbeth, que conversa en el páramo con las brujas que también son las parcas. Nadie fue tantos hombres como aquel hombre, que a semejanza del egipcio Proteo pudo agotar todas las apariencias del ser. A veces, dejó en algún recodo de la obra una confesión, seguro de que no la descifrarían; Ricardo afirma que en su sola persona, hace el papel de muchos, y Yago dice con curiosas palabras no soy lo que soy. La identidad fundamental de existir, soñar y representar le inspiró pasajes famosos.

Veinte años persistió en esa alucinación dirigida, pero una mañana le sobrecogieron el hastío y el horror de ser tantos reyes que mueren por la espada y tantos desdichados amantes que convergen, divergen y melodiosamente agonizan. Aquel mismo día resolvió la venta de su teatro. Antes de una semana había regresado al pueblo natal, donde recuperó los árboles y el río de la niñez y no los vinculó a aquellos otros que había celebrado su musa, ilustres de alusión mitológica y de voces latinas. Tenía que ser alguien; fue un empresario retirado que ha hecho fortuna y a quién le interesan los préstamos, los litigios y la pequeña usura. En ese carácter dictó el árido testamento que conocernos, del que deliberadamente excluyó todo rasgo patético o literario. Solían visitar su retiro amigos de Londres, y él retomaba para ellos el papel de poeta.

La historia agrega que, antes o después de morir, se supo frente a Dios y le dijo: Yo, que tantos hombres he sido en vano, quiero ser uno y yo. La voz de Dios le contestó desde un torbellino: Yo tampoco soy; yo soñé el mundo como tú soñaste tu obra, mi Shakespeare, y entre las formas de mi sueño estabas tú, que como yo eres muchos y nadie.

Damion - October 1988

One of the courses I took in college was called Logic. Now in this new year of 2026 I don’t see any of it anywhere. Perhaps it has to do with what may have been my idea of logic back in 1962.

On the little TV that I watch, I am met by a barrage of women singing with a microphone while wearing next to nothing and moving those lower areas back and forth. Red carpet situations even in my supposedly refined NYTimes is full of photographs of these “influencers” wearing little body coverage.

My social media algorithms in Twitter and in Facebook do provide me with my interests in art, Argentine literature, Mexican politics, etc, but in Facebook there are these reels that show what look like underage Chinese girls with pink skin showing lots of it. And Twitter has lots of moving almost bare bums.

In that past century when you did not like something you read in the newspaper you would tell yourself that you would write a letter to the editor. I seldom wrote them. Now with social media those complaints have escalated to four-letter verbiage and unkind criticism.

In that other century we had many galleries in Vancouver that featured photography. I had the idea in October 1988 to photograph women at home wearing nothing. The show was called Homebodies/ Woman Revealed.

The process once each woman had agreed to my idea was for me to ring their home bell. They would invite me in and serve me a cup of coffee or tea. I would look around and thought of a scenario.

 In the photograph here I feature a lovely Chinese woman, now dead, called Damion. Because she was Chinese I took many photographs of her wearing my mother’s silk Mandarin coat. In the end I decided to take her portrait having tea and surrounded by her stuff in her living room. When I looked at my contact sheet in order to scan one of the negatives for this blog I could not find one that did not show a bit of a nipple. I corrected that with my 22-year-old Photoshop 8.

I am sure that in this century a young, an undiscovered Grace Kelly would not have a chance for any fame.

I see in the photograph no eroticism. Damion looks dignified and sure of herself. Yet there is no place in our Vancouver where I could safely show this photograph without being lambasted.

My friend Abraham Rogatnick died in 2009. A few months before he told me, “Alex, I am not long for this world. I am glad.”

Somehow Rogatnick saw it coming. 

A young yet-to-be-discovered Grace Kelly would not have a chance of any fame in this century.