Professor Borges : A Course on English Literature

“Borges fans should be grateful . . .”

“I have taught forty terms of English Literature at the University, but more than that I have tried to convey my love for this literature.”
—Jorge Luis Borges

In 1966 when Jorge Luis Borges was 67 and respected but not yet famous, he was invited to Buenos Aires to give a series of lectures on the history of English Literature. Dr. Borges held 25 lectures on poetry and literature beginning with the Anglo-Saxons and ending with the Victorians. Although he skips Chaucer and Shakespeare his lectures run the gamut—along with literature, there’s a bit of history, anthropology, sociology, biography, and philosophy. For Dr. Borges, everything is connected to everything.

Professor Borges provides the edited transcripts of these lectures taken from audio recordings by students for students unable to attend. The original tapes have been lost to time; the editors presume they were copied over. Because the transcripts were made for study, they were written quickly with no attempt to modify Dr. Borges’s language nor edit his sentences. The editors’ challenge in this was to make the transcripts presentable—deciphering words spelled phonetically, spelled poorly or completely unintelligible in English, and also hunting down Dr. Borges's wide ranging references. Dr. Borges’s first lecture begins with the poetry of post-Roman England.

England at that time was populated by Anglo-Saxons (a German tribe) that warred with other German tribes and Norse raiders. “The Norsemen were for the Saxons what the Saxons were for the Britons, that is pirates and then overlords.” Dr. Borges says that poetry came before prose because it was easier to remember (Dr. Borges was blind and should know). Dr. Borges also points out the notion of what a verse is, that its structure, alliteration and rhyme varies across cultures, and what we can learn from shards of poetry may be compared to what we can learn from shards of pottery.

The Anglo-Saxon poetic style was odes about battles. Dr. Borges deciphers an example of an obscure Anglo-Saxon metaphor, “the swan of the beer of the dead.” “The beer of the dead” becomes blood, and “the swan of the blood” becomes the bird of death—the raven.

Prior to the ninth century, what poets did best with a “harsh” language was to describe battle, courage, and loyalty. Beowulf, written at the end of the seventh century is for Dr. Borges not just a poem but also a glimpse into the people who lived at that time. That the poem contains lines from the Aeneid makes Beowulf not a “barbaric poem” but an “erudite, baroque experiment of a priest.” Beowulf is not only tied to Pagan myth but also to Christian tradition.

Beginning with the ninth century poems began to take on the form of elegies, what Dr. Borges calls personal poems with a melancholic tone. He suggests a Celtic origin for the elegies—these were not the poems of the Anglo-Saxons but perhaps the survivors of their conquests. In the elegiac poem “The Seafarer” the theme is the sea and expresses the peril of a sailor’s life.

“The Seafarer” uses new metaphors, such as “treasure chest” for the heart. Dr. Borges asks his students if the sea could be an allegory for life, offering that the poem could certainly be read on more than one level and that it would not be too difficult for a ninth century man to do. Dr. Borges also discusses the Christian elegies of that era pointing out aesthetic conflicts between a good poem and a poem diluted with moral considerations. Christian poetry did not start out as Christian but as expressions of Germanic ideals—courage and loyalty. Humility or the love of one’s enemy was “inconceivable in that era.” Despite this there are fragments of Christian poems from the 10th century, fragments that Dr. Borges calls “mysteries”—vivid versifications and paraphrases of the Bible made by monks or religious poets.

Greater changes in the English language and literature occur after 1066 with the Norman conquest of England. The Anglo-Saxon language starts to evolve into contemporary English influenced by Vikings, Danes, and Norse tribes that settled the center and north of England. The Normans though are French and as a consequence English literature goes underground for two centuries.

Fourteenth century England produces Langland (author of the narrative poem Piers Plowman), and Chaucer, and an English has been so permeated with French that there are now more Latin than Germanic words in the English dictionary. Dr. Borges tells us that words of Germanic origin are essential words: fire, metal, man, and trees, while words of Latin origin are words of culture.

Though Chaucer gets only brief mention, Dr. Borges’ lectures on the Middle Ages are spellbinding. An example: “Throughout the Middle Ages, the idea held sway that God had written two books. One of the books, needless to say, was sacred scripture, The Bible—dictated to various people at various times by the Holy Spirit. The other book was the Universe and all its creatures. It was said repeatedly that the duty of every Christian was to study both books, the holy book and the other enigmatic book, the Universe.”

Studying the Universe, Dr. Borges says, leads to writing on ethics, morals, and fables such as “The Grasshopper and the Ant.” There was a veritable bestiary (both real and imaginary) in the fables of the Middle Ages. The panther and the whale mentioned in the Bible were imaginary animals to the Anglo-Saxons, having never been seen in England, and the fabled phoenix and griffin came to England from the Romans through the Greeks in Egypt. Dr. Borges's lectures jump from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, what he calls “The Empire of Rationalism” and “The Century of Reason.” Writers addressed include Samuel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell. Dr. Borges spends some time with Boswell and explains his draw—Boswell wrote his biography of Johnson as if it were a drama with characters that behaved like actors.

Samuel Johnson is famous for being the compiler of the first English dictionary and a novel, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. Dr. Borges compares Rasselas to Voltaire’s Candide, claiming that Rasselas's scantiness of invention makes it more convincing. The novel, Dr. Borges tells us is over-adorned and a bit infantile but a “measure of the man.” One character in Rasselas is a poet that Dr. Borges takes as a stand-in for Johnson, and Dr. Borges relays to us Johnson’s philosophy of poetry spoken through this character. Dr. Borges next lectures on the poets of the Romantic Movement, these include Lord Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Dr. Borges defines “Romantic sentiment” as having a “pathetic” sense of time—the idea that everything passes away, the sentiment of autumn, twilight, and the passing nature of our lives. “Pathetic” being used by Borges in its archaic meaning: “arousing pity.” Victor Hugo is mentioned several times in these lectures—though French, Dr. Borges points out Hugo plays a large part in defining the era.  Dr. Borges calls the Scottish poet James Macpherson a forgotten poet of the 18th century, of interest to Dr. Borges (and us) because he wrote an epic poem attributed to another, Ossian. That the poem was written in the epic style was intended to place it alongside Homer, and in doing so promote Scotland. Dr. Borges points out that making stuff up and passing it off as true in literature was treated differently in the 18th century than it is today. (The Wikipedia entry for Jorge Luis Borges is illuminating on this point—Dr. Borges also attributed his own writing to others.)

In his lecture on Coleridge, Dr. Borges says that there is something about him that fills the imagination to overflowing. “When one thinks of Wordsworth, one thinks of an English gentleman of the Victorian era . . . When one thinks of Coleridge . . . one thinks of a character from a novel.” And, though there are a hundred sources that comprise the Kubla Khan, “yet at the same time [it] is original and incomprehensible.”

Although admiring the poet William Blake, Dr. Borges suggests he may have been insane. According to Dr. Borges, Blake was isolated, unpleasant, and aggressive—though he also says Blake’s life should be weighed as less important than what Blake dreamed and saw. William Blake was a visionary poet outside the Romantic Movement and the classical school that came before, belonging more to ancient traditions. Dr. Borges compares Blake to the philosopher Swedenborg who believed man’s salvation should be more than ethical—that salvation should be intellectual, and in this Dr. Borges says that Blake anticipates Nietzsche.  Dr. Borges addresses the mythology and theology that Blake created, something close to the Gnostics’ concept of good and evil. Blake believed that we are living in a dream imposed by an inferior god—the true universe is inside ourselves.

For the Gnostics as for Blake, there exists one perfect God who created lesser gods—each lesser god an imperfect reflection of its creator, and it was an inferior god who created the Earth. Dr. Borges says that the writing of Thomas Carlyle dazzles, though Carlyle’s life was filled with bitterness. Carlyle turned his friends into enemies, perhaps not without cause. Carlyle leant his only copy of his manuscript of the French Revolution to John Stuart Mill, whose cook unknowingly used it to light the kitchen stove.

Carlyle was a Calvinist and a believer of a Universe without hope. Carlyle condemned democracy and admired dictators—those he called “strong men”—who were beyond good and evil (another theme of Nietzsche). Dr. Borges considers Carlyle’s beliefs to be an early conception and manifestation of Nazism and fascism (Again, visit Wikipedia for Dr. Borges’s first hand experience under Fascism). Dr. Borges moves on to the Victorian era.

He lectures on Charles Dickens, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Of Dickens, Dr. Borges says once you have read Dickens, you will find a friend for life. Dr. Borges considers Robert Browning to be England’s most obscure poet—for every one of Browning’s poems there will be two or more explanations. Browning often attended meetings of the “Browning society” whose purpose was to read and discuss his poems (a poet should be so lucky!). When asked about a poem’s meaning, Browning would never commit to an interpretation.

Though he was born in England, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was called “The Italian in England.” Rossetti had a morbid life, worse than Carlyle’s. Rossetti’s wife committed suicide after learning that he had a mistress. Rossetti buried his first manuscript with her, perhaps as penance. Later, under pressure from friends, Rossetti had the body exhumed so he could recover the manuscript (that launched his fame).

Professor Borges is a fascinating and valuable companion piece to Borges at 80 (previously reviewed at NYJB). Jorge Luis Borges fans should be grateful to New Directions for bringing both back into print.