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

manuscripts. These codices suggest the existence of a prior literature that was quite rich. The oldest texts are charms, remedies for curing rheumatic pain or making barren lands fertile. There is one to protect against a swarm of bees. Here, they reflect ancient Saxon mythology, which has since been lost; we can only guess at it, based on its affinity with Norse mythology, which has been preserved. For example, in a charm against rheumatic pain, the valkyries, without being named, unexpectedly appear. 1 The verses say, “They were loud” or . . . sonorous, yes, “sonorous, as they rode through the hills. They were determined, as they rode through the land. Mighty women . . . ” And then the text is lost, and at the end of the charm there is a Christian incantation, because the sorcerer, the witch doctor, the wizard, says, “I will help you,” and says, “If God is willing.” This is a Christian verse, apparently written later. Then in another line, in another stanza, it says that this pain will be cured “if it be the work of witchcraft, if the work of gods”—“
esa geweorc
,”
ese
being the Norse gods—“if the work of elves.” 2
    Until now we have looked at the epic tradition, from
Beowulf
and the Finnsburh Fragment, until its last appearance in the ballad of “The Battle of Maldon,” which prefigures, with its abundance of circumstantial details, the later Icelandic prose sagas and narratives. But a revolution takes place in the ninth century. We don’t know if those who made it were even aware of it. We don’t know if the pieces that have been preserved were even the first. But something very important takes place, perhaps the most important thing that can take place in poetry: the discovery of a new inflection. Often, when journalists talk about a new poet, they say “a new voice.” Here the phrase would have that meaning exactly: there is a new voice, a new inflection, a new use oflanguage. And this must have been rather difficult, for the Anglo-Saxon language—Old English—was by its very harshness destined for epic poetry, in other words, to celebrate courage and loyalty. This is why, in the pieces of epic poetry we have looked at, what these poets do best is describe battles. As if we can hear the sound of swords clashing, the blow of spears against shields, the tumult and shouts of the battlefield. In the ninth century, there appear what have come to be called the“Anglo-Saxon elegies.” This poetry is not the poetry of the battlefield. These are personal poems. Moreover, solitary poems, poems by men expressing their solitude and their melancholy. And this is something totally new in the ninth century, when poetry was generic, when the poet sang of the triumphs and defeats of his clan, of his king. Here, on the contrary, the poet speaks personally, anticipating the romantic movement, which we will study when we look at English poetry of the eighteenth century. I have speculated—this is my personal speculation, not to be found in any book I know—that this melancholic and personal poetry might have come from the Celtic tradition, that it could be of Celtic origin. It seems improbable, if we think carefully about it, to assume, as is common, that the Saxons, the Anglos, and the Jutes, when they invaded England, slaughtered the entire population. It is more natural to assume that they kept the men as slaves and the women as their concubines. There would be no point in killing the entire population. Moreover, this can be verified in England today: the purely Germanic type, that is, the lineage of people who are tall, blond, or red-haired, belongs to the Northern counties and Scotland. In the south and to the west, where the primitive inhabitants took refuge, there are many people of average height and with brown hair. In Wales, there are a lot of people with black hair. In the north, in the Scottish Highlands, also. In addition, surely, there are many blond people in England who are not of