Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature

by Jorge Luis Borges, Katherine Silver (Translator), Martín Arias (Editor)

In English at last, Borges’s erudite and entertaining lectures on English literature from Beowulf to Oscar Wilde

Writing for Harper’s Magazine, Edgardo Krebs describes Professor Borges: “A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature. Starting with the Vikings’ kennings and Beowulf and ending with Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, the book traverses a landscape of ‘precursors,’ cross-cultural borrowings, and genres of expression, all connected by Borges into a vast interpretive web. This is the most surprising and useful of Borges’s works to have appeared posthumously.”

Borges takes us on a startling, idiosyncratic, fresh, and highly opinionated tour of English literature, weaving together countless cultural traditions of the last three thousand years. Borges’s lectures — delivered extempore by a man of extraordinary erudition — bring the canon to remarkably vivid life. Now translated into English for the first time, these lectures are accompanied by extensive and informative notes by the Borges scholars Martín Arias and Martín Hadis.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, History, Essays, Criticism, Spanish Literature

306 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Federico DN · Rating 1 out of 5]

English literature classes dictated by lauded Jorge Luis Borges.

25 classes of English and American literature dictated by Borges in 1966, transcribed from old found audios. This book contains some of his teachings while a professor at UBA university. Subjects of the classes include authors like Johnson, Boswell, Macpherson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Carlyle, Dickens, Browning, Rossetti, Morris, Stevenson, and the beginnings of written word and literature as we know it.

Do you like Borges or have some interest in literature history and its authors? Then this book may really work for you!

Me? I HATED this thing. I can’t understand Borges, more so, I don’t want to understand him. The guy works on a different plane and makes me feel I don’t even understand spanish, and that’s my native tongue! The only thing I ever liked from Borges is “The Circular Ruins”, everything else has been a terrible miss. And the truth is I don’t really care about literature history, or any of its authors. I love reading, I could read the full bibliography of a classic author if I feel like it, WITH pleasure! But I don’t care for the authors personal lives. Maybe I should, but I don’t. My main focus is on the books, and books alone.

And why for heaven’s sake did I read this dreadful thing to begin with? Because it was given to me. And why didn’t I DNF? Because I DON’T QUIT.

YES! I’m THAT stupid.

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PERSONAL NOTE : [2000] [528p] [Literature History] [1.5] [Not Recommendable] [Boring AF] [Potentially useful as blunt object] [Borges is a genius, I’m not]
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★★☆☆☆ Ficciones
★☆☆☆☆ Borges profesor: Curso de literatura inglesa en la Universidad de Buenos Aires [1.5]
★☆☆☆☆ El tamaño de mi esperanza [0.5]

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Clases de literatura inglesa dictadas por el laureado Jorge Luis Borges.

25 clases de literatura inglesa y americana dictada por Borges en 1966, transcriptas de viejos audios hallados. Este libro contiene algunas de sus enseñanzas mientras era profesor en la universidad UBA. Temas de las clases incluyen autores como Johnson, Boswell, Macpherson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Carlyle, Dickens, Browning, Rossetti, Morris, Stevenson, y los principios de la letra escrita y de la literatura como la conocemos.

¿Te gusta Borges o tenés algún interés en la historia de la literatura y sus autores? ¡Entonces este libro podría realmente funcionar para vos!

¿Yo? Yo ODIE esta cosa. No entiendo a Borges, pero más aún, no quiero entenderlo. El tipo opera en un plano diferente y me hace sentir que ni siquiera entiendo español, ¡y esa es mi lengua nativa! Lo único que alguna vez me gustó de Borges fue “Las Ruinas Circulares”, todo lo demás fue un terrible desacierto. Y la verdad es que realmente no me interesa la historia de la literatura, o ninguno de sus autores. Amo leer, podría leer la bibliografía entera de un autor clásico si quisiera, ¡CON placer! Pero no me interesa la vida personal de los autores. Tal vez debería, pero no. Mi foco principal es en los libros, y en los libros solamente.

¿Y por qué por el amor de todos los santos leí esta maldita cosa para empezar? Porque me la dieron. Y por qué no la abandoné? Porque YO NO ME RINDO.

¡SI! Soy ASI de idiota.

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NOTA PERSONAL : [2000] [528p] [Historia de la Literatura] [1.5] [No Recomendable] [Extremo Aburrido] [Potencialmente útil como objeto contundente] [Borges es un genio, yo no]
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[Ricardo Carrión Pavez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reseña en mi canal de youtube https://youtu.be/kBdjRhOgU5w

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I judge this work not as a scholarly treatise on English literature. Consider how it was put together: One or more students at the University of Buenos Aires taped the entire series of 25 lectures in 1966 and then transcribed the result for use as notes. The tapes themselves are now missing and were probably re-used, according to the editors, for other classes.

This was not intended to be a detailed survey of English literature: Jorge Luis Borges devotes seven lectures to Anglo-Saxon literature, and then skips forward to the 18th century and Dr. Samuel Johnson (leaving out Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Pope, and a few hundred other major figures), followed in quick order by the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite poets, with a quick detour on Charles Dickens. And the 20th century? Nope.

Of what value, then, is Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature? If you want a thorough survey of English literature, this is not the book for you. If, on the other hand, you want to look inside a great poet's mind to see what makes him tick, this is a fascinating volume.

Professor Borges is a much more useful book than the author's comparable An Introduction to American Literature, in which he shows no real understanding of an author such as William Faulkner:

Faulkner's hallucinatory tendencies are not unworthy of Shakespeare, but one fundamental reproach must be made of him. It may be said that Faulkner believes his labyrinthine world requires a no less labyrinthine technique. Except in Sanctuary (1931) his story, always a frightful one, is never told to us directly; we must decipher it and deduce it through tortuous, inward monologues, just as we do in the difficult final chapter of Joyce's Ulysses.

But then many of my friends feel the same way about Faulkner, and I suspect that Borges has difficulties with the combination of Southern dialect and the King James Bible.

Please excuse the digression. It is a fact that many of my favorite poets and novelists despise other of my favorite poets and novelists. If they didn't, they wouldn't be who they are: They would be me.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Available for the first time in English translation, Professor Borges collects a term's worth of lectures delivered by Jorge Luis Borges in 1966 on the history of English literature. It’s a remarkable book, I think, for two quite different reasons.

It's remarkable first of all in offering a survey of its subject that will be almost unrecognizable to most students of English literature. Fully a quarter of the course is spent on the Anglo-Saxon era of Beowulf and Co. Almost no mention at all is made of Chaucer and, in fact, seven hundred years of literary history are glibly ignored when Borges leaps directly from the Norman invasion to Samuel Johnson. Milton and Shakespeare are mentioned only in passing. After a couple lectures each for Wordsworth and Coleridge, we’re introduced to a long line of Victorians. Borges really spends a perverse amount of time on Thomas Carlyle, William Morris, Robert Browning, and (of all people) Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He concludes with Robert Louis Stevenson. Modernism he leaves tucked in the womb circa 1895.

Second, the book is remarkable because Borges’s style of presentation is no less idiosyncratic than his selection of texts. But there’s nothing to complain about here. It’s a style born of unabashed personal enthusiasm. Literary theory goes out the window (and good riddance) or, rather, it doesn’t so much go out the window as fail to obtain entrance to the room in the first place. Questions about the nature and function and politics of texts don’t seem to interest Borges. Rather, stories interest him. The old, blind Argentine gets up in front of his students every day and he simply tells stories. He tells whole plots of numerous works. He quotes at length from memory. He tells about the authors’ lives, their absurd notions, unpleasant habits, and frequent misfortunes. Again and again he digresses into alleyways that are sometimes more surprising and more scenic than the view from the broad highway.

The epilogue of Professor Borges excerpts an interview which neatly sums up Borges’s personal philosophy of reading. "I believe that the phrase 'obligatory reading' is a contradiction in terms," he says. "Reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of 'obligatory pleasure'? What for? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek… If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous, don’t read it because it is modern, don’t read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is Paradise Lost – which is not tedious to me – or Don Quixote – which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don’t read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness…"

Never tedious itself, Professor Borges is unrecommendable as an introduction to English literature. It is, however, a wonderful introduction to Borges as a teacher, and it offers a fascinatingly oblique view of its subject for those who already have a more orthodox understanding of it.

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ESPAÑOL: Este libro es un curso sobre literatura inglesa impartido por Borges en la Universidad de Buenos Aires, y grabado y transcrito por sus alumnos. El libro reproduce las 25 clases del curso, añadiendo algunos apéndices.

El curso tiene una estructura extraña. Las siete primeras clases se dedican a la literatura anglosajona, hasta la batalla de Hastings. De pronto salta al siglo XVIII, a Samuel Johnson, a quien asigna tres lecciones completas. En medio dedica poco más de una página a resumir la literatura y la historia de siete siglos. En esa página el único autor que cita es Milton; Shakespeare sólo aparece como punto de comparación para otros escritores, como Coleridge. Y menciona poco a los tres grandes poetas románticos ingleses: Byron, Shelley y Keats,a los que no dedica ninguna lección.

Borges demuestra un conocimiento incompleto de la historia de Europa cuando afirma que Inglaterra obtuvo el dominio de los mares tras derrotar a España en la guerra de finales del siglo XVI. Pero esa guerra la ganó España, y el dominio de los mares no pasó a Inglaterra hasta el siglo XVIII. Se nota que Borges ha debido de leer la historia de ese periodo en libros ingleses.

ENGLISH: This book is a course on English literature taught by Borges at the University of Buenos Aires, and recorded and transcribed by his students. The book reproduces the 25 lectures making up the course, plus a few appendixes.

The course has a strange structure. The first seven lectures are devoted to Anglo-Saxon literature, up to the battle of Hastings. Suddenly he jumps to the 18th century, to Samuel Johnson, dealt with in three lessons. In the middle, he devotes little more than a page to summarize the literature and history of seven centuries. In that page, the only author he cites is Milton; Shakespeare just appears to provide a comparison for other authors, such as Coleridge. And he scarcely mentions the three great English romantic poets: Byron, Shelley and Keats, who are not assigned a lesson.

Borges shows incomplete knowledge of the history of Europe, when he asserts that England obtained control of the seas after defeating Spain in the war of the late sixteenth century. But this war was won by Spain, and England did not get control of the seas until the 18th century. One can see that Borges has probably read the history of that period in English books.

[Andrés · Rating 4 out of 5]

No hace falta para nada hablar de Borges, porque además sé que me quedaría muy corto al respecto. Así que cero introducciones. Todo el mundo sabe quién fue Borges.

Pero lo que sí puedo decir de este libro es que admiro y reconozco que es producto de un laburo tremendísimo y que les llevó mucho tiempo realizar. Desde completar clases incompletas, hasta investigar sobre muchos de los escritores que se nombran a lo largo de las clases, así como también pasar a texto horas y horas y más horas de audios y grabaciones en donde varias veces tuvieron que tratar de adivinar qué era lo que se estaba diciendo.

Está muy bien armado, y por momentos uno se siente parte de esas clases dictadas por Borges.
También me llevo unos cuantos nombres de autores de literatura inglesa para seguir investigando.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting book which goes into the backbone of english literature told from the eyes of a south american legend. Borges goes into the history of english literature teaching you things about the classics like Beowulf and the battle of Maldon and Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Blake, Carlyle and lots of other classic english writers / english texts. Some of the insights into this book were eye opening. The chapters were different classes that Borges gave on English literature at a university of Buenos Aires in 1966 - the year that Eric Cantona was born. Anyway, here are my best bits:

In spanish we have alto, alta, altos for the word high. The adjectives change according to the grammatical gender. In english we only have the word “high”. Now what was it that bought this simplification that made contemporary english a much simpler language, grammatically, though much richer in vocabulary than old english? It is the fact that vikings, danes, and norwegians settled in the north and centre of england. They had to understand each other, so in order to do so and as the vocabulary was already so simple, a kind of lingua franca emerged and english became simpler.

I think that the Norman invasion of england was very important for the history of England, and naturally that means for the history of the whole world. I think that if the normans had not invaded england, england today would be another Denmark. It would be a very educated country and politically admirable, but a provincial country and a country that has not exerted its influence upon the world. The normans on the other hand made possible the British Empire, as well as the spread of the english race all over the world.

The weaker we are, the less our strength, the bolder we shall be.

The role of the poet is not to count the stripes on a tulip or linger over the many shades of green of the foliage. The poet should not deal with the individual but rather with the generic, for the poet is writing for posterity. The poet should seek out the eternal passions of man, as well as the subjects such as the brevity of life, the vicissitudes of destiny, the hopes we have of immorality, sins, virtues, etcetera.

The scots tend to be perhaps as a result of their theological discussions much more intellectual, more rational. Englishmen are impulsive, they don't need theories for their behaviour. On the contrary, Scots tend to be thinkers and reasoners.

But we mustn't forget that words that are difficult for the English reader are easy for us because they are the intellectual words of Latin origin. On the other hand as i have said more than once, the common words in english, the words of a child or a peasant or a fisherman, they are of Germanic Saxon origin. Certain works abound in “hard words” in words that are difficult for the english (that demand some culture on the part of the reader) but they are easy for us because they are latin words, that is, spanish.

Writing bad pages is typical of great poets. When shakespeare wanted to write a bad page he sat down and did it without further ado, he enjoyed it. On the other hand a mediocre poet might not have any very bad poems. He might not have them because he is conscious of his mediocrity, because he is constantly keeping watch on himself. Wordsworth on the other hand is conscious of his strength and that is why there is so much ballast, so many dead zones in his work.

And he speaks of coleridge's splendid conversation. He says that his very words were the very music of thought.

The angels tell him that by devoting himself to pure virtue he has wasted his time on earth to learn.

Finally carlyle settles in london and there he publishes the french Revolution, his most famous work. Carlyle lent the manuscript to a friend - John Stuart Mill. Mill’s cook used the manuscript to light a stove in the kitchen! (WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

The Fabian society took that name because during the punic wars there was a Roman general who had the name Fabius Cunctator “Fabius the Delayer” for he believed that the best way to defeat the enemy was not to engage in battle but rather to tire out the organised armies against whom they were fighting, by leading them from one place to another, tiring them out leading them to places with bad pastures for their horses, which is what the irish did to the essex. So this socialist society is founded in london, because the members of that society did not believe in revolution, they believed that socialism should be imposed bit by bit without forcing events.

The word saga is related to the word “sagen” in german - to say. The narrator was forbidden to enter into the mind of the heroes. He could not recount what a hero dreamed, he could not say that a person hated or loved. This would be to intrude upon the mind of the character. Only what the characters did or what they made could be told.

Reading should be a form of happiness. I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read.

[Felipe Fuentealba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este año salieron a la luz las clases, las maravillosas clases que Borges dio durante los 12 años que fue profesor de literatura inglesa en la UBA, cuando ya estaba completamente ciego, y las clases las dictaba de memoria, lo cual daba igual, porque Borges lo había leído todo, y lo recordaba todo. En realidad, sólo son las clases de un semestre, a partir de los apuntes de los alumnos, el resto, para nuestro pesar, se han perdido.
Habla muy bien de los rectores de la UBA el que hayan reconocido el genio de Borges, que aún no había alcanzado la fama mundial que le llegaría recién en los 70, y lo contrataron a pesar de que él nunca pisó una universidad, y que se educó a sí mismo en la biblioteca de su padre (decía que el poco tiempo que pasó en el colegio, sólo sirvió par interrumpir su educación).
Yo no sé qué imagen habrá dejado en sus alumnos, el Borges profesor, sería maravilloso conocer sus opiniones, quizás hay algún libro por ahí al respecto, pero no puedo dejar de pensar que debe haber sido una experiencia abrumadora y elocuente: la certeza de estar ante un sujeto descomunal, alguien que aparece una vez cada mil o dos mil años, y que de haber nacido en la antigua Grecia seguro le habrían inventado origen divino. Tenemos suerte, decía Bolaño, los que hablamos castellano, de que haya existido Borges. Está Cervantes, y está Borges. Y luego el resto.
(En mi fuero interior estoy esperando a ver qué ocurrirá cuando los "cancelacionistas" se enteren de que Borges apoyó a Pinochet, a las dictaduras argentinas, y que despreciaba la democracia por ser un abuso de la estadística. Imagino la escena y me río sólo)
Las clases de Borges, eran sobre todo anécdotas sobre la vida de los grandes poetas ingleses (que van desde el Beowulf hasta Stevenson), y la clave está en una de las clases en las que admite que para un poeta tan importante como su obra es la impresión que su vida deja en sus contemporáneos. Las anécdotas que narra son increíbles, mágicas, hasta hilarantes. Recopilo algunas:
- Coleridge estaba enamorado de una mujer joven, quien tenía una hermana ya mayor. Para no herir a la mayor (quien se hubiera sentido dolida de que su hermana menor se casara antes que ella), Coleridge optó renunciar a la menor, a la que amaba, y se casó con la mayor, aunque no le interesaba en lo más mínimo. O sea, para no herir a una mujer, renunció a ser feliz.
- Wordsworth, de quien Borges dice que se casó con una mujer más bien "fea"; pero que a pesar de eso, no la abandonó, decidió ser fiel a ella, aunque no la amaba. Y Borges, que utiliza literalmente la palabra "fea", no lo hace humorísticamente, ni de modo ofensivo. Usa el adjetivo como si fuera un término imparcial, tal como quien dice que la lluvia es intensa.
- De Stevenson, a quien idolatra, cuenta que, ya tuberculoso, entró a una hostal junto a su hermano y vio a una mujer. Stevenson en seguida le dijo al hermano: "me voy a casar con ella". El hermano lo juzgó loco, sobre todo porque la mujer les contó que al otro día se marchaba a EEUU. Stevenson pasó un año más en Europa, luego fue a EEUU a trabajar de constructor, creo, y buscó a la mujer que había visto una sola vez dos años antes. Y se casó con ella. Y para el hijo de ella, es decir, para su hijastro, escribió la "Isla del Tesoro".
- Pero sin duda la historia más intensa y trágica es la de Dante Rosseti, el poeta pre-rafaelista. Roseti tenía una mujer, frágil de salud, y que además era su modelo, la famosa modelo de pelo rojizo y labios gruesos de los cuadros de Roseti. Luego, Roseti tenía también una amante, a la que por su tamaño llama "Elefante" (Borges se excusa porque sólo recuerda el apodo, no su nombre). Y una noche Rosetti miente a su mujer, dice que va a pintar, cuando en realidad a a ver a "Elefante". Al volver su mujer se ha matado por sobredosis de opio. Roseti comprende que su mujer sabía lo de "Elefante" y que se mató por ello, desgraciada. Abrumado por la culpa, decide abandonar la poesía al punto de que deja bajo las manos de su esposa en el ataúd, su único libro escrito, del cual no tenía copias. Pasan los años. Vive sólo, alejado de los amigos y de la ciudad. Se martiriza, diríamos. Pero los pocos amigos que habían leído el libro logran convencerlo de que lo publique, que lo recupere. Roseti acepta. Los autorizan para exhumar a su mujer, o al cadaver de su mujer para sacar el libro de sus manos. Borges cuenta que tuvieron que quebrarle los huesos de las manos para recuperar el libro. Y con esa obra, Roseti alcanzó la fama. Qué tal.

Podría seguir horas, pero no hay tiempo. Borges dice que en la poesía lo esencial es la música. Les lee a sus alumnos poemas en inglés antiguo, aunque no entiendan nada, porque asegura que si les llega la música ya es algo. Podemos disfrutar un poema, antes de entenderlo, incluso sin llegar a entenderlo, si es que tiene la música adecuada

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro compila las clases que dio Borges en la UBA sobre literatura inglesa. Son, básicamente, las desgrabaciones, con abundantes notas complementarias. Una joya. Borges, en vez de tratar de cubrir todas las tendencias y los autores, se concentra en sus favoritos, en los que mejor conoce, en los autores (y en los textos específicos) que lo apasionan, o sea: literatura anglosajona medieval, Browning, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Stevenson, Blake. Todo es fascinante (nunca entendí esa fama de complicado que tiene Borges). Eso sí, algunos autores y secciones del libro son más interesantes que otras (contrariamente a lo que pensé, cuanto más antiguo lo que Borges reseña, más accesible lo hace). Lástima que el libro esté virtualmente agotado (aunque se puede leer, cuesta arriba, una versión online, en un formato horrendo). Ojalá lo reediten, porque esto está a la altura de los mejores ensayos de Borges, aunque tiene una perspectiva distinta (es, al fin y al cabo, una clase).

[Michael Hingston]

"Borges is happy to follow his nose, canon be damned. Who else would give 19th-century poet and textile designer William Morris (three full lectures) more space than Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare (zero, zero and zero, respectively) combined?"

I got to review this for the Globe and Mail a couple weeks back. Read the whole thing here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/b...

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ran across this in a used bookstore, never knowing it existed, and am glad I snapped it up. Hearing Borges talk about everything he liked was just fantastic. The lectures are mostly summarized, but suddenly, here, they feel like Borges stories--and, in the connections he makes and the perspectives he takes, it's a reminder of just how good it feels to be trapped in his mind. I would probably suggest the selected nonfiction over this, but for the Borges enthusiast, this is an amazing find.

[John Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’ve read much of Borges’s work, you know he’s a master not only of short fiction but also of essays and poetry. (No cat lover should miss his cat poem; translations are easy to find, though none I’ve seen strike me as quite right). This book shows him in yet another light, that of the teacher—more properly, the student and lover—of the English language and its literature. The text comes from a series of recordings that were made by students in a class Borges gave at the University of Buenos Aires in 1966; the recordings have since been lost, only the students’ transcriptions remain, and in the advance reading copy that I read a good deal of cleaning up was yet to be done. Copious notes have been added, which makes the book academically useful, but I rarely consulted them. I simply read the text from start to finish; I could almost imagine being there as Borges spoke, off the cuff and purely from memory. As is often the case with books, what I really prize is the encounter with another mind, and such a mind as he had is a rare thing indeed.

Here are a few things I enjoyed, drawn from notes I jotted and Goodreads updates I posted.

• Germanic and Anglo-Saxon poetry employed strangely complex metaphors that are called kennings. Examples: “whale-road” instead of “sea”; “breast-horde” or “treasure of the chest” for “heart.”

• The refrain as a recurring element was apparently first used in “Deor’s Lament” (circa 9th century), where it takes the form “That passed, so too shall this.” (If you’ve read the phrase “This too shall pass,” it probably came from here.)

• A remark that Churchill made in a World War II speech, offering six feet of English ground to Hitler, originated centuries earlier, in a text narrating a prelude to the Battle of Hastings.

• “[Gaelic is] a Celtic language, of course similar to Welsh, Irish, and the Breton language carried to Brittany, or Bretagne…, by the British who took refuge there during the Saxon invasions in the fifth century. That is why it is still called Great Britain, to distinguish it from small Britain, or Brittany, in France.”

• A poem of a few hundred lines came to Coleridge in a dream. When he awoke, he remembered it and began writing it down. Then a neighbor dropped in. By the time he left, Coleridge could no longer remember the rest of the poem. This was the origin of “Kubla Khan,” which is only a few dozen lines in length.

• As an illustration of “a certain modesty, a certain bashfulness” in the English, Borges cites an anecdote. When some people from a magazine went to see Thackeray with the intention of writing about him, he sent them away. Borges says, “He thought that the work of the writer should be public, but the life of the author should not be.”

• J. B. Priestley used the first line of a Rossetti sonnet called “Sudden Light,” “I have been here before,” as the title of one of his plays about time. The phrase reflects Rossetti’s belief in cyclical history, in the doctrine of eternal return.

• Even the endnotes have their rewards. One of them discusses terms for the early form of our language, which was for a time referred to as Anglo-Saxon (the term Borges prefers). Henry Sweet, the philologist who influenced Shaw’s Pygmalion, was instrumental in the adoption of the label “Old English,” essentially to bring it into line with present-day English—partly for patriotic reasons.

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Borges bootleg! Transcripts of recordings of a few lectures on English literature Borges gave in the 1960s in Buenos Aires, before he was internationally famous, which is why the recordings of these lectures don't exist anymore.

Interestingly, it's very conversational in tone, there's very little university related talking going on (of course, there is a possibility that the editors cut this) - Borges talks only once about tests, never again about anything but Anglo-Saxon/English literature; he seems to be more concerned about recommending books students should read instead of drilling tidbits of knowledge into them for tests. That's another amazing thing about these lectures; Borges was already mostly blind, everything he quotes (for some reason in Spanish) is from memory, all years and all facts are from his head, which is why he so often gets students to read longer poems to the class for him.

But, if you're looking for Borges as a builder of mysterious worlds, you won't find him here; these are introductory lectures, there's very little interpretation, more often than not Borges is more concerned with how fun the story is and how beautiful the language sounds than he bothers with explaining, as an example, the political background of why a certain writer wrote this poem.

Sometimes it's strange in that he gets a student to read a poem in English, then summarizes the story in the middle of the poem (remember, the students are young and probably didn't know much English yet), then lets the student read the rest of the poem, and at that point you would have expected Borges to talk some more about what they just read, focus on single elements and interpret them, but he just has the student read the next poem. Another curious thing is the choice of authors by Borges - there's only a single page on Shakespeare, but an entire lecture on Stevenson.

Recommended for: People who are looking for an introduction to English literature, or those who need more books on their to-read shelf

Not recommended for: People who want to see a blind man construct a library containing every possible book

[Pablo Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer este libro no sólo me introdujo a nuevas ideas y conocimientos sobre la literatura inglesa (lo cual ya habría justificado su compra, por supuesto), sino también la pasión de Borges por las letras. Casi cada noche durante exactamente un mes me fui a dormir y soñar con el recuerdo de una clase de Borges, a quien (gracias al trabajo incomparable de los editores) a veces casi podía escuchar hablar. Cualquiera puede hoy entrar a internet, estudiar los períodos históricos de la literatura, tomar nota de los autores y en una hora compilar una lista de lectura y estudio; lo que hace Borges, hablándonos desde un salón de clase en 1966, es de una dimensión diferente: es la tarea de un profesor excelente, que enseña en vez de simplemente mandar a estudiar, y que inspira porque en su voz impresa se lee el amor íntimo por las palabras.

[Gabriel Llagostera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy buen libro. Borges recorre la historia de la literatura inglesa desde sus orígenes hasta Stevenson, haciendo una selección de autores bastante personal. Esa selección puede parecer curiosa (a muchos autores no los tenía ni de nombre) pero sirve para recorrer esas épocas de una manera no tan obvia.

Las anotaciones de los recopiladores ayuda a desarrollar algunas obras o citas que Borges menciona por arriba.

[Al Bità · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the period 14 October–14 December 1966 inclusive, the Professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges, gave a series of 25 lectures on English Literature to a small group of students. Borges was blind by this time, so the lectures were purely oral. The lectures were taped, and quick transcriptions made by the students for their study, and for those students not able to attend. The tapes are no longer extant, but the transcriptions have been recovered, and they are presented here for our information and edification.

The editors are to be commended for their work in bringing these lectures to the English-speaking world: they have tried to minimise any possible editorial interference, and present the work in such a way that the reader can easily imagine being physically present at the lectures. Borges’ idiosyncratic phrases, personal commentaries and often startling cross-references are presented with minimal editorialising, thus giving the words the kind of immediacy one would normally experience in a live lecture. To this end, the work of the translator from the Spanish (Katherine Silver) in maintaining this aura is also to be commended.

English literature begins once the western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th-c CE, and the Anglo-Saxon Old English begins to flourish. Borges is concerned to emphasise the early Germanic influences in this literature, feeling that this aspect of the language, which he considers to be a major thread, tends to be forgotten. Essentially he begins with Beowulf, and then examines several other related themes — and he is off on his take of what he loves about English literature.

Often centuries are skipped and then specific authors and works are selected to which Borges is partial. In his own way, he links these works together, and in the process, urges his students to engage with these writings and fall as much in love with them as he is. The ride is fast, exciting, and covers subjects more often covered in the more esoteric areas of the discipline but without becoming too difficult for an ordinary reader. The course finishes with his comments regarding works of Robert Louis Stevenson.

I can’t help but feel that this is a rare, special treat, resurrected from the thoughts and feelings of an Argentinian aficionado of English literature with a passionate love of his subject, which would otherwise have been lost forever. In that sense it becomes a unique kind of specialised treasure that all readers of English Literature will relish.

[Hugo Oviedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un libro muy interesante, leerlo se acerca mucho a la experiencia de tomar una clase de literatura y también se disfruta conocer el pensamiento de Borges sobre nuestra cultura y sus raíces. Lo disfruté enormemente y me despertó un gran deseo de leer varias obras de las que habla.

[Christian Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

This 1966 lecture series re-establishes Borges are one of the most interesting minds in literature, and one of the most eccentric. It is not a good introduction to his work, that would be the poems (get an edition with Spanish and English on facing pages) and the stories. His long fascination with Old English is fairly bizarre, considering his college kids in Argentina, and his frequent quotations to them in the language makes you wonder how the devil anybody took notes in an alphabet that can't even be authentically pronounced. His subsequent lectures on the Romantics evidence a tolerance I no longer have, and you sorta have to read behind the lines to get at the yawn of Woodsworth and the, well, this is personal, but read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner Again and see if you don;t think, as I do now, that Coleridge is a child and this Great Work, assigned to every high school kid in America, is sing-songy pap. Stevenson? Blah. Thoreau? Read Walden again and it feels like a callow kid lecturing the bourgeoisie from the pulpit of a tulip. Professor Borges' interest is catholic and clear-eyed, I just found the collection dutiful to his memory but otherwise without persuasiveness on a reading list.

[Jorge Obed Guevara Tirado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinante poder disfrutar al menos a través de un libro las clases de una de las mentes más importantes que ha tenido América Latina. Todos los días despertaba deseoso de poder experimentar una nueva clase del profesor Borges, porque a través de esta reconstrucción literaria de sus enseñanzas uno llega a sentir esa cercanía con la que trataba a sus estudiantes en la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Al terminar este libro me queda claro que el mundo al leer a Borges puede encontrar en el un gran amigo.

Por otra parte el contenido académico es excelente, conocimiento de la más alta calidad. A pesar de que mi trabajo día a día es escribir correos o llevar reuniones exclusivamente en inglés nunca había sentido curiosidad por entender el origen de este idioma, hasta que simplemente un día al final de un pasillo de librería me tope con este libro. Como es usual en este tipo de cursos , el temario se abordaba utilizando una sencilla línea del tiempo donde Borges hacia pausas para profundizar en ciertas obras o autores que el consideraba claves para la concepción y sucesivamente la consagración del idioma inglés.

Totalmente recomendado, no puedo encontrar buenos argumento para decir lo contrario.

[Kumari de Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so enjoyed this book. It's a set of lectures and it reminded me of being in college. I went to school back in the 1980s before people had classes on Skype. We actually used to sit in a room and have discussions. How I would have loved to have been able to take a class from Professor Borges, he's smart and friendly and easy to understand. There's just one thing I want to point out. The title is a little misleading. It's more a course on the history of English Lit than a course on English Literature. For example the first lecture is on Anglo-Saxon stuff dating from the 10th Century. I don't think the average person considers 10th century poetry "English" literature because it wasn't even written in English, but rather in older languages. Nonetheless, this book is interesting - a real education. I will be reading and re-reading this book with pleasure for many years

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read, and conveniently divided into "lectures" of mostly discrete topics, which lent themselves to reading before bed. The thoroughness varies -- the early lessons have a wealth of historical/contextual info, whereas some of the lectures later in the text seem to be summarizing/recapitulating what is literally happening in the poem or passage. There's a lot of biographical info about the authors themselves which, honestly, sometimes I'd prefer not to know (so many seem to have been irascible dicks), but it all makes for an interesting, if somewhat scattered, read.

Definitely the earlier lectures were interesting. Unfortunately more of a survey than anything else.

[Francisco Vazquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borges no necesita introducción: es uno de los grandes genios de la literatura universal.
La razón por la que puse 4 Estrellas es porque su erudición llega a ser abrumadora y, peor aún, cansina.
Este es una recopilación de conferencias que Borges dio prácticamente de memoria; cuando las entendemos así, y como la descripción que da el propio Borges de lo que le fascina, este es un gran libro. Pero si queremos entenderlo como un libro monográfico, no tanto.
En resumen, es una curiosidad dentro de la obra de Borges; probablemente prescindible para el gran público, pero indispensable para quien busque entender cómo funcionaba su mente.

[Steve Chisnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this is like sitting quietly in one of his classes in the 1960s, listening to him riff on his favorite poets and anecdotes. Comfortable, enlightening, engaging! One of the more unique reads of recent years, and completely memorable. Do not expect the crafting of his stories or essays here-this is the relaxed and open Borges!

[Abril]

trampita, leí de la página 35 hasta la 121, shhhhh pero muy muy útil para el trabajo de literatura inglesa.

[El-Jahiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a journey through the evolution of the English literature, and what better opportunity to learn from Borges, my most favorite author! A great collection of his lectures from 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of literature, meaning that you get pleasure out of not only reading but also thinking over and talking about books, then this is a must-read simply because it's one of the greatest writers of all time talking about some of the other greatest writers of all time with his customary immense insight and analytical ability. Idiosyncratically composed, far-ranging in scope, and unbelievably erudite, this collection is all the more amazing because it was compiled from a series of lectures he gave to students at the University of Buenos Aires in 1966 completely without notes and after having been legally blind for an entire decade.

The course he was teaching was on English Literature, which to Borges means going back to the very beginning with Anglo-Saxon literature. He spends the first seven lectures on things like Anglo-Saxon poetic styles, Beowulf, the Finnsburgh Fragment, Caedmon, and the elegiac tradition. He then, surprisingly, mostly skips over the big guys like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope and jumps right to the 18th century to discuss Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, William Blake, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Dante Rosetti, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Among and in between these brief but incredibly dense capsule biographies and literary treatments are all kinds of interesting side discussions of things like the history of the runic alphabet, why Anglo-Saxon poems use alliteration instead of rhymes, how English's lack of grammatical gender sounds to speakers of Romance languages, the literary effects of the Battles of Hastings and Maldon, how English literature differs from the French, the film Rashomon, the upsides of forgetfulness for G. K. Chesterton, the nature of crime and whether murdering someone truly makes you "a murderer", the difference between strong plots and strong characters in detective fiction, and a million other fascinating topics, tossing off all these thought-provoking insights as if they had just occurred to him. Here's a good example of the way he talks about someone, not only relating their work to that of their contemporaries, but also people throughout space and time:

"William Blake, on the contrary, remains not only outside the pseudo-classic school (to use the most elevated term), and that is the school represented by [Alexander] Pope, but he also remains outside the romantic movement. He is an individual poet, and if there is anything we can connect him to - for, as Rubén Darío said, there is no literary Adam - we would have to connect him to much more ancient traditions: to the Cathar heretics in the south of France, the Gnostics in Asia Minor and Alexandria in the first century after Christ, and of course to the great and visionary Swedish thinker, Emmanuel Swedenborg."

Yes... Gnostics and Swedenborg... that's just what I thought as well. You could spend hours or days trying to unpack those connections he drew in just two quick sentences, but he rattles off kind of panoptic synthesis of tradition so effortlessly it's clear that he's really thought about the connections between them and is not trying to play some kind of Harold Bloom-ish ranking game. Even if some of the sections aren't quite as riveting as the others - I thought some of the stuff about the Anglo-Saxons in the beginning and William Morris' poetry towards the end dragged on a bit long - there are so many quotable gems and good reading suggestions inside that it beggars belief. If you liked his essays in Selected Non-Fictions then this is the natural next step.

[Adriana Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se trata de Borges Profesor (Sudamericana, 2020), un libro que aporta un cuidadísimo trabajo de investigación, corrección y edición. Monumental, realmente, y en consecuencia, admirable en la pesquisa que reconstruye su oralidad, en la recuperación de fuentes de textos que menciona en anglosajón e inglés de ese curso inolvidable de literatura.


Nos encontramos con su faceta pública conocida a través de las conferencias, con la fuerza y sensibilidad del auténtico narrador que sin descuidar lo didáctico deslumbra con su erudición y entusiasmo. Esa traslación a la escritura nos devuelve el mejor Borges.

Lo que deja a ese grupo privilegiado de alumnos es un conocimiento más poderoso y vasto que el que recoge en Introducción a la literatura inglesa (1965). La clase ofrece un procedimiento similar al de sus elogiados policiales, generando suspenso en las anticipaciones de temas y autores.

Leerlo es entrar en la maravilla y habitarla pendiendo aún después de concluida la lectura de esos crepúsculos y ruinas, de bardos y cadencias antiguas prometidas por su voz singular.

Lecciones como viajes en cada evocación de guerreros y poetas de otras lenguas que como él entregan al presente su propia eternidad en cada página, en cada libro, en cada biblioteca.

[Alexis Iparraguirre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Para quienes son seguidores de Borges es un libro sin muchas sorpresas y a la vez con numerosas sorpresas. Sin muchas sorpresas porque los temas son casi los mismos de los que trata en su producción de ensayista sobre literatura inglesa. Con muchas porque los temas reciben ampliaciones y/o derivas inesperadas, especialmente porque, a diferencia de las conferencias y los ensayos, la exposición en clases favorece la digresión, la asociación con la anécdota sorprendente, la pausa para identificar la mera musicalidad de los versos. Es obvio que Borges disfruta mucho las clases sobre la épica medieval y su retorno en ánimo lírico con los poetas románticos. Disfruta contar biografías porque le permite lanzar analogías entre vidas que pueden resultar en ironías paradójicas que le divierten. Quiere que los estudiantes disfruten los versos, que entiendan la cultura de los diferentes periodos de la literatura, que les sorprendan las vidas de los poetas. Mérito aparte es que dicta estas clases de memoria, las escenifica, incluso en la evocación de los poemas, luego de muchos años de estar completamente ciego. Una experiencia memorable también para sus lectores.

[João Torres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borges said once that poetry remembers to have been music before. Remembering is what Art does with us. In this case, Borges classes - just like his speeches - remember to be one day literary essays.
Close eyes and listen, not to a typical class of literature, with list of readings and discussion about styles or technique, you are in a class of literature where you remember the emotion of reading.
Borges with his fantastic memory - fantastic because it is impressive and because he will fill the blank spaces with his on inventions - guides their students thru the world of english literature history. He give us reasons to read more and more.
Another great trait of Borges, his capacity to link different authors and works, to find new interpretations for each work, which is using his imagination for the criticism (so he would never call this criticism), is everywhere in the book. It is Borges exploring the potential of literature at maximum. From everything, he can extract more and more.
This book is for this, to enjoy literature and learn as a form of art.

[Diana Lagunas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siempre he pensado que nuestros sentidos se coordinan cuando leemos, y poder escuchar a Borges a través de este libro ha sido una experiencia muy especial.
Si bien, es posible que no pueda ser muy objetiva cuando se trata de Borges, estas páginas desbordan el amor que él tenía por la literatura. Me ha introducido a nuevos autores y despertado mi curiosidad por poemas que no conocía.
Qué gran trabajo con este libro <3