Borges had died long before Golem Trump came on the scene but Trump’s arrival, sanctioned by the vested interests of the few and supported by the basest of bases, has most certainly wrought havoc. Or to put it more plainly we should sometimes be careful what we wish for. The Golem shows us how periodically the embodied hopes of individuals or the masses themselves can give birth to monsters that create disastrous consequences for us all. It should create wonder but also apply it with warning. And that is what great art should always do. ![]() It is a description of links in a chain that go back through history and tradition and make us – as readers – marvel. The politically liberating power of cultureĪll of this reads remarkably like one of Borges’ own stories. Effectively, he asked Scholem, is the work of art a living Golem or a handful of dust? He asked the scholar what is created when an artist sets out to create and is the work of art a lasting reality or an imperfect lie. Borges wondered how a writer could ever achieve his purpose when all he has at his disposal is the imperfect tool of language. Scholem and Borges discussed issues on art. The scholar’s surname was used to rhyme with golem in Borges’s poem The Golem, chosen by Borges for inclusion in his Personal Anthology, published by Picador in 1972. In 1957 Borges, along with Margarita Guerroro, published the Book of Imaginary Beings which mentions the Golem and in 1969 Borges travelled to Israel to meet with the scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem. ![]() The German film-makers Carl Boese and Paul Wegener brought out in 1920 one of the first horror films called Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem, how he came into the world) and this film is still popular with the more discerning film buffs around Halloween. The Rabbi had then to turn it to dust by removing from its brow the first letter of emet – meaning truth – so that the word now read met meaning death. However, the creature escapes his master’s control and caused chaos in the ghetto. This is built to serve him in this time of need. He decides to summon the dead spirit of Astaroth and build a clay figure of a Golem. Then in 16 th century Prague another Rabbi, Rabbi Loew, the spiritual leader of the Jewish people in the Prague ghetto, divines from his astrological tables that a disaster is imminent. The Rabbi attempted to speak with it and in anger at its refusal to reply, the Rabbi said ‘ return to dust’ whereupon the creature crumbled into a shapeless heap. the Babylonian teacher Rava created a creature out of clay and sent it to Rabbi Zera. ![]() it was Rabbi Eliezer who wrote that the golem was ‘an inarticulate lump.’ And in the fourth century C.E. The word is first mentioned in Psalm 139: ‘ Thine eyes did see my golem.’ In the 1 st century C.E. The story of The Golem has quite a lineage. Borges was sixteen years old and reading Gustav Mehring’s book The Golem (1915), which totally captivated his mind and helped to form the writer he became. It was his fellow Argentinian writer and, like his mentor, a former Director of the National Library of Argentina, Alberto Manguel, who told us in Packing My Library (2018) that Borges, while trapped in Geneva during the Second World War, came across the story of the Golem. Jim Aitken unearths the radical and progressive meanings in Borges' writings
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