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2ddb3c8
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The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day--terrified of letting him slip and tumble--I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the following morning but I had to decline. I pleaded truthfully that I was booked on a plane for Chile. 'I am so sorry,' said this courteous old genius. 'But may I then offer you a gift in return for your company?' I naturally protested with all the energy of an English middle-class upbringing: couldn't hear of such a thing; pleasure and privilege all mine; no question of accepting any present. He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. 'You will remember,' he said, 'the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.' And he then recited the following: The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)--'Inclusiveness'--may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. I was mumbling my thanks when he said, again with utter composure: 'While you are in Chile do you plan a call on General Pinochet?' I replied with what I hoped was equivalent aplomb that I had no such intention. 'A pity,' came the response. 'He is a true gentleman. He was recently kind enough to award me a literary prize.' It wasn't the ideal note on which to bid Borges farewell, but it was an excellent illustration of something else I was becoming used to noticing--that in contrast or corollary to what Colin MacCabe had said to me in Lisbon, sometimes it was also the right people who took the wrong line.
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poetry
jorge-luis-borges
pinochet
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Christopher Hitchens |
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4c0c1e1
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El golpe militar no surgio de la nada; las fuerzas que apoyaron a la dictadura estaban alli, pero no las habiamos percibido. Algunos defectos de los chilenos que antes estaban bajo la superficie emergieron en gloria y majestad durante ese periodo. No es posible que de la noche a la manana se organizara la represion en tan vasta escala sin que la tendencia totalitaria existiera en un sector de la sociedad; por lo visto no eramos tan democraticos como creiamos. Por su parte el gobierno de Salvador Allende no era inocente como me gusta imaginarlo; hubo ineptitud, corrupcion, soberbia. En la vida real heroes y villanos suelen confundirse, pero puedo asegurar que en los gobiernos democraticos, incluyendo el de la Unidad Popular, no hubo jamas la crueldad que la nacion ha sufrido cada vez que intervienen los militares.
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dictadura
isabel-allende
chile
salvador-allende
pinochet
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Isabel Allende |