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and reflexion, whatever does not turn into a somewhat perverse fervor is superficial, hence unreal. 

As a student, I had been led to investigate the disciples of Schopenhauer. Among them was a certain Philipp Mainlander who particularly attracted me. Author of a Philosophy of Deliverance, he enjoyed the additional distinction, in my eyes, of having committed suicide. This completely forgotten forgotten? philosopher, I flattered myself, belonged to me alone; not that there was any particular merit in my preoccupation--my studies had inevitably brought me to him. But imagine my astonishment when, much later, I came across a text by Borges which plucked him, precisely, out of oblivion! If I cite this example, it is because, from that moment, I began thinking more seriously than before about the condition of Borges, fated--reduced to universality, constrained to exercise his mind in all directions, if only to escape the Argentine asphyxia. It is the South American void which makes the writers of an entire continent more open, more alive, and more diverse than those of western Europe, paralyzed by their traditions and incapable of shaking off their prestigious sclerosis. 

Since you ask what I like most about Borges, I have no hesitation in answering that it is his freedom in the most varied realms, his faculty of speaking with an equal subtlety of the Eternal Return and the Tango. For him everything is worth while, from the moment he is the center of everything. Universal curiosity is the sign of vitality only if it bears the absolute