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Alternating currents of metaphysics and machismo, and an elegant pared-down style, may be Borges' most obvious literary attractions. But it is a profound charm and personal modesty that make him endearing in person. His face lights up when anyone praises his work; yet he habitually conveys the deep stillness of a man with few illusions about himself or the world. He also conveys sweetness and wisdom, those refinements of perception that sometimes accompany old age. "Beside real short story writers," he says, "my stories hardly exist." Then he adds an overly modest bit of self-appraisal: "As Latin American writers go, perhaps they are not so bad."
Borges has never been a political figure, but he deplored the Nazi influence in his country during World War II. By 1946, his satiric comments on the pro-Fascist Argentine government and the accession of Juan Peron to power brought him a demotion from a state job as librarian to the post of chicken inspector in Buenos Aires. Today, at home, the aging poet's days are full of calm work and study. Lately he has received special assistance from a young American, Norman de Giovanni, who is translating all Borges' writing into English.
Like Hamlet, who claimed, "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a King of infinite space," Borges seems completely at home with his years and his blindness. By 1955, his sight was nearly gone. "I stopped wasting time at movies," he jokes. But he actually began an intensive study of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse to enjoy the odd lore about monsters and dragons as well as recurrent poetic devices—known as kennings—"whale's path" and "swan-road" for sea. For relaxation he is read to, mostly from favorite writers whom his intellectual admirers disdain: Kipling, Conrad, Stevenson. "Time flows differently for the blind," he admits. "It flows easier. I am not bored when I am alone. Circumstances are easily forgotten. A sleepless night is made up only of time, not thinking. I know two twilights: the twilight of the dove [morning] and the raven [evening]. One is blindness, the other is old age."