It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Borges describes how writers start by focusing on the physical object of a book before understanding art.
- In plain terms
- Writers first see books as physical objects, not art.
- What can you take from it?
- Understand the form before the art of writing.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What do you value in a book?
- Is the medium the message?
Another view
Digital writing challenges this physical view.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.
Permalink to quote #4 Reading ... is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Permalink to quote #6 Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an esthetic credo which others before him s…
Permalink to quote #3
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