starring Dr. Hal !
-- The Nightmare, 1781.jpg)
ON NIGHTMARES
October 10, 2025 10:00pm
--AN EXAMINATION BY BORGES from SEVEN NIGHTS. We begin with W.S. Merwin's "Leviathan," a translation of an archaic Early Christian (Anglo-Saxon) poem. Then we set forth to examine the phenomenon called Nightmare. Soon Borges is in control, informing and cross-referencing in his familial fashion. Perhaps this topic is one more suitable for those of us who principally occupy the night. Borges was a founder, and principal practitioner, of postmodernist literature, a movement in which literature distances itself from life situations in favor of reflection on the creative process and critical self-examination... Widely read, and profoundly erudite, Borges was a polymath who could discourse on the great literature of Europe and America and who assisted his translators as they brought his work into different languages, influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, but his own fiction "combines literary and extra-literary genres in order to create a dynamic, electric genre," to quote Alberto Julián Pérez in the DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY. Pérez also said that Borges's work "constitutes, through his extreme linguistic conscience and a formal synthesis capable of representing the most varied ideas, an instance of supreme development in and renovation of narrative techniques. With his exemplary literary advances and the reflective sharpness of his meta-literature, he has effectively influenced the destiny of literature."
In his preface to LABYRINTHS: Selected Stories and Other Writings, André Maurois wrote that Borges "composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style. Argentine by birth and temperament, but nurtured on universal literature, Borges... [had] no spiritual homeland."
Nearly unknown in most of the world until 1961, in his early sixties he was awarded the Prix Formentor, the International Publishers' Prize, an honor he shared with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Prior to winning the award, according to Gene H. Bell-Villada in BORGES AND HIS FICTION: A Guide to His Mind and Art, "Borges had been writing in relative obscurity in Buenos Aires, his fiction and poetry read by his compatriots, who were slow in perceiving his worth or even knowing him." But soon a collection of his short stories, FICCIONES, was simultaneously published in six different countries and he was invited by the University of Texas to come to the United States to lecture, the first of many international lecture tours. His lasting appeal to us partly results from his prodigious erudition, which becomes immediately apparent in our podcast-- the multitude of literary allusions from cultures around the globe that are contained in his writing. "The work of Jorge Luis Borges," Anthony Kerrigan wrote in his introduction to the English translation of FICCIONES, "is a species of international literary metaphor. He knowledgeably makes a transfer of inherited meanings from Spanish and English, French and German, and sums up a series of analogies, of confrontations, of appositions in other nations' literatures. His Argentinians act out Parisian dramas, his Central European Jews are wise in the ways of the Amazon, his Babylonians are fluent in the paradigms of Babel." From the sublime then to the ridiculous as we engage in quoting our earlier presentations. A hideous "earworm" is indulged as we recall the smarmy music and lyrics to a crass children's cartoon show. From there we take several leaps into the poetic world of Clark Ashton Smith. How about Stan Freberg? We have him too. A sufferer from Roderick Usher Syndrome, Dr.H. Owll takes refuge in a recording of the old Live Show back in the Chicken John days. We present Shelley's "Ozymandias." Finally the Arachnologist within prompts a recitation of Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider." Do join Dr. H. Owll on his own upcoming show The Ask Dr. Hal! Show, The Home Edition. This will be presented at 6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern on Twitch via Zoom, easily reachable at askdrhalshow.com on Sunday, October 19th. Join us afterward at our interactive post-Show Chat Room...
In his preface to LABYRINTHS: Selected Stories and Other Writings, André Maurois wrote that Borges "composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style. Argentine by birth and temperament, but nurtured on universal literature, Borges... [had] no spiritual homeland."
Nearly unknown in most of the world until 1961, in his early sixties he was awarded the Prix Formentor, the International Publishers' Prize, an honor he shared with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Prior to winning the award, according to Gene H. Bell-Villada in BORGES AND HIS FICTION: A Guide to His Mind and Art, "Borges had been writing in relative obscurity in Buenos Aires, his fiction and poetry read by his compatriots, who were slow in perceiving his worth or even knowing him." But soon a collection of his short stories, FICCIONES, was simultaneously published in six different countries and he was invited by the University of Texas to come to the United States to lecture, the first of many international lecture tours. His lasting appeal to us partly results from his prodigious erudition, which becomes immediately apparent in our podcast-- the multitude of literary allusions from cultures around the globe that are contained in his writing. "The work of Jorge Luis Borges," Anthony Kerrigan wrote in his introduction to the English translation of FICCIONES, "is a species of international literary metaphor. He knowledgeably makes a transfer of inherited meanings from Spanish and English, French and German, and sums up a series of analogies, of confrontations, of appositions in other nations' literatures. His Argentinians act out Parisian dramas, his Central European Jews are wise in the ways of the Amazon, his Babylonians are fluent in the paradigms of Babel." From the sublime then to the ridiculous as we engage in quoting our earlier presentations. A hideous "earworm" is indulged as we recall the smarmy music and lyrics to a crass children's cartoon show. From there we take several leaps into the poetic world of Clark Ashton Smith. How about Stan Freberg? We have him too. A sufferer from Roderick Usher Syndrome, Dr.H. Owll takes refuge in a recording of the old Live Show back in the Chicken John days. We present Shelley's "Ozymandias." Finally the Arachnologist within prompts a recitation of Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider." Do join Dr. H. Owll on his own upcoming show The Ask Dr. Hal! Show, The Home Edition. This will be presented at 6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern on Twitch via Zoom, easily reachable at askdrhalshow.com on Sunday, October 19th. Join us afterward at our interactive post-Show Chat Room...
