"Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camels
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Camels
18 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Camels →
Related Quotes
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business. There are two kinds of camels -…"
"A camel's hump is an ugly lump"
"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."
"The camel has a single hump, The dromedary, two; Or else the other way around; I'm never sure. Are you?"
"Thee, then, O Pūṣan, like a swift one on his way, I urge with lauds that thou mayst make the foemen flee, drive, came…"
"As such, O Aśvins, find for me my share of new-presented gifts, As Kasu, Cedi's son, gave me a hundred head of buffal…"
"Kakuha hath reached up to heaven, bestowing buffaloes yoked in fours, And matched in fame the Yadavas."
"Steeds sixty thousand and ten thousand kine, and twenty hundred camels I obtained; Ten hundred brown in hue, and othe…"
"And in the grazing herd he made a hundred camels bleat for me, And twenty hundred mid the white."