Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges Page A

they are known, and they constitute the contribution, the first personal contribution, by the Anglo-Saxons to Germanic poetry. Other than“The Battle of Maldon,” which we have seen abounds in specific descriptions that anticipate the Norse sagas, which come much later, everything else we have seen that was written in England theoretically could have been written elsewhere. We can easily imagine, for example, a poet from Germany or the Low Countries, or from Scandinavia, taking the Norse legend of Beowulf and turning it into a poem, or a Danish poet telling the story of the Danish warriors at Finn castle, or a poet from any other tribe singing of his people’s victory, as did the author of the fragment about Brunanburh. On the other hand, these elegies are individual, and one of them, which has been called “TheSeafarer,” begins with lines that anticipate “Song of Myself,” by WaltWhitman. 16 It begins like this: “I can sing a true song about myself, I can sing of my travels,” “
Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan, siþas secgan
.” This was totally revolutionary in the Middle Ages. This poem has been translated by the famous contemporary poet, EzraPound. When I read Ezra Pound’s version many years ago, it seemed absurd. Because I could not have guessed, by reading it, that the poet had his own personal theory about translation. The poet believed—as did Verlaine, let’s say, as did many others, and perhaps they were right—that the most important thing in a poem is not the meaning of the words but the sound. Which is, of course, true. I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned the example of “
La princesa está pálida / en su silla de oro
” [“The princess is pale on her golden chair”]. 17 This line is beautiful, but if we, say, use the same words, but place them in a different order, we see that the poetry disappears. If we say, for example, “
En su silla de oro está pálida la princesa
,” nothing at all is left of the poem. And this is the case with so many poems, perhaps with all poems, except, of course, narrative poetry.
    Now, here’s how Ezra Pound translated those lines: “May I for my own self song’s truth reckon, / Journey’s jargon.” 18 This is barely comprehensible, but as sound it resembles the Saxon. “May I for my own self” (this is about myself)—“song’s truth reckon” sounds like “
Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan, siþas secgan
,” and then “journey’s jargon” repeats the alliteration of “
siþas secgan
.”
Secgan
is of course the same word as “say.” But we will delve into an analysis of this poem and another one called “TheRuin”—a poem inspired by the ruins in the city of Bath—in the next class. I will also speak about the strangest of all Saxon poems, the oddest one from that period, whose title is“The Dream of the Rood.” And after talking about these poems, and after we have analyzed the distinctive elements contained in the last one I mentioned—in other words, after we have looked at the Christian and pagan elements in that poem’s composition (because in the last poem, “The Dream of the Rood,” although the poet is a devout Christian and perhaps even a mystic, there remain elements of the ancient Germanic epic)—after that, I will say a few words about the end of the Saxons in England, and I will discuss the Battle of Hastings, which, true or not, is one of the most dramatic events in the history of England and the history of the world.

CLASS 6

    THE ORIGINS OF POETRY IN ENGLAND. THE ANGLO-SAXON ELEGIES. CHRISTIAN POETRY: "THE DREAM OF THE ROOD."

    WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1966
    The story of the origins of English poetry is quite mysterious. As we know, all that remains of what was written in England from the fifth century—let’s say, from the year 449—until a little after the Norman Conquest in the year 1066, besides the laws and the prose, is what has been preserved by chance in four codices, or books of