An interview in Buenos Aires
A longtime favourite for the Nobel Prize,
Jorge Luis Borges , the Argentine poet and fantasist, has been adopted as a cult hero by the younger generation. Strange, since most of his short, complex stories distorting time, place and identity -' guided dreams' as he calls them-were written more than 20 years ago.
Now 79 and almost totally blind, Borges lives in the centre of Buenos Aires - his native city where from 1955 to 1973 he was Director of the National Library of Argentina and at the same time Professor of English and North American Literature.
Among his best known collections are A Universal History of Infamy, Labyrinths, Fictions, and Doctor Brodie's Report. In an introduction to one collection Andr6 Maurois writes ... ' Borges has no spiritual homeland. He creates imaginary and symbolic worlds outside space and time. The more complicated the game becomes, the happier he is.'
Robert Robinson went to Argentina to interview Borges - the Homer of the southern hemisphere.
Readings by Michael Bryant
Film editor GEOFFREY BOTTERILL Producer PHILIP SPEIGHT