Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:—
Only to live as once on earth
With Love,—only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he.”
    “
Yo le preguntaré a Cristo, el Señor, esto para él y para mí
. . . ” [“There will I ask . . . for him and me”]. She does not want to ask for anything else. The only thing she wants is to be happy in heaven as she was once happy on Earth. There is a sonnet byUnamuno on this same subject, in which he asks for no happiness other than the happiness he has known on Earth, and this is what she is going to ask of Jesus Christ, that they be happy in heaven as they were on Earth. 5 It is a very passionate plea: “
que para siempre estemos juntos
” [“for ever now / Together, I and he”].
She gazed and listened and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild,—
“All this is when he comes.” She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, fill’d
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smil’d.
(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)
    And finally: “
Todo eso ocurrirá cuando llegue
” [“All this is when he comes”], and the air was “
lleno de ángeles en fuerte vuelo
” [“With angels in strong flight”]. “
Sus ojos rezaron, y sonrió
.” “
Yo vi su sonrisa / Pero pronto / su camino fue vago . . . Y luego ella puso sus brazos sobre Las barreras de oro . . . Y lloró.
” Then, “I heard her tears.”
    Well, there is another poem, also both heavenly and terrible, called“Eden Bower.” Now “bower” is translated into Spanish in the dictionary as
glorieta
[arbor], but here it should be translated as
alcoba
[bedchamber].
Alcoba
suggests a closed place. “Bower” is a place where two lovers meet. And here, in this poem, Rossetti has taken a Jewish tradition, because I think that in some Jewish text, it says, “Before Eve came Lilith.” In Eden, Lilith was a snake and Adam’s first wife before his human wife, Eve. But in Rossetti’s poem this snake is in the shape of a woman and gives Adam two children. And Rossetti tells us directly all about these children; but we understand that the children were snakes, because he says, “shapes that coiled in the woods and waters” (“
formas que se encroscaban en las selvas y en las aguas
”) are “glittering sons and radiant daughters” (“
hijos resplandecientes e hijas radiantes
”). Then God puts Adam to sleep and takes Eve out of his rib, and Lilith obviously is envious, and she has to take revenge. So she seeks out her first lover, who was a snake, and gives herself to him and asks him to give her his shape. And then she will take the shape of the snake and she will tempt Eve, and then Adam and Eve will be expelled from Eden: “And where there were trees there shall be tares.” And Adam and Even will wander the Earth, and Eve will give birth to Cain, and then to Abel. Cain will kill Abel, “and then you,” she tells the snake, “will drink the blood of the dead.”
    Now we will listen to a few stanzas of this Rossetti poem—not all, because it is a long poem. I request the use of your voice again, young lady.
    [
The student comes up and begins to read
.]
It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
(Eden bower’s in flower.)
Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
    There are refrains that are repeated. It has a very strong rhythm:
Era Lilith la mujer de Adán,
(la alcoba de ellos está en flor.)
    There is an internal rhyme: “bower” and “flower. And Lilith:
En sus venas no había una gota de sangre humana,
pero ella era como una dulce mujer.
    [
The student continues reading
.]
Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
(And O the bower of the hour!)
She was the first that thence was driven;
With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.
In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
(Eden bower’s in flower.)
“To thee I come when the rest is over;
A snake was I when thou wast my lover.
“I was the fairest snake in Eden:
(And O the bower and the hour!)
By the earth’s will, new form and feature
Made me a wife for the earth’s new creature.
“Take me thou as I come from Adam:
(Eden bower’s in flower.)
Once again shall my love subdue thee;
The past is past and I am come to thee.
    “
Y ella estaba en los confines del Paraíso . . .
” [“Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden . . . ”].