Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

published his first poems in the
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
, a magazine written by students and for students. One of his classmates heard those poems and said, “Topsy”—because that is what his friends called him, I don’t know why—“you are a great poet.” 31 And he said, “Well, if what I write is poetry, then it is easy, I have only to think about it and let the poems write themselves.” And his whole life he maintained this marvelous ease. It is said that one day—I’m going to check the date—he wrote four or five hundred rhymed couplets.
    At the time he was writing
The Earthly Paradise
, which is perhaps his most important work, and the epic poem,
The Story ofSigurd the Volsung
, he was writing hundreds of lines of poetry every day. 32 At night, he would sit with his family and read to them out loud and accept corrections, the changes they suggested, and the next day he would continue his work, and at the same time he was also involved in weaving tapestries. He said that a man who was unable to weave with one hand and write an epic with the other could devote himself neither to making tapestries nor to poetry. And it seems this was not merely a boast but rather a fact.
    Let us now take a look at an episode that I will recount from his first book, undoubtedly changing it in the telling. 33 Andrew Lang said of this episode that it had a certain
bizarrerie
, a French word that is difficult to translate and was new in the English language. This reminds us of the generous letter that VictorHugo wrote toBaudelaire when he published
Les Fleurs du Mal
: “You have given new worth to the sky of art.” And Andrew Lang said something similar about Morris’s first poems.
    In this poem, Morris supposes—imagines—a medieval knight. This knight is dying; he has closed his eyes in his large bed, and at the foot of the bed is a window. Through this window he sees his river and the forest, his forest. And suddenly he knows he must open his eyes, so he opens them and sees “a great God’s angel.” And this powerful angel, this great emanation, is standing in the light, and the light illuminates him and makes his words seem like commands from God. The angel has in his hand two cloths, each on a wand. And one of the cloths, more vibrantly colored, is red, scarlet. And the other is a little less bright, it is long and blue. The angel says to the dying man that he must choose one of the two. The poem tells us that “no man could tell the better of the two.” And the angel tells him that his immortal destiny depends on his choice, that he cannot make a mistake. If he chooses “the wrong colour,” he will go to hell, and if he chooses the correct one, he will go to heaven. The man waits for half an hour. He knows that his fate depends on this whim, this act that seems capricious, and after trembling for half an hour he says, “May God help me, blue is the color of heaven.” And the angel says, “Red,” and the man knows that he has been condemned forever. Then he says to all men, to the living and the dead, because he is alone with the angel, “
¡Cristo! Si yo lo hubiera sabido, sabido, sabido
. . . ” “Ah Christ! if only I had known, known, known . . . ” And it is understood that he dies and his soul goes to hell. That is, he loses his soul, as the human race is lost, because Adam and Eve ate from the lost fruit of the mysterious garden.
    And now that I have told it—and I did this not because I think I can do it better than the text, but rather so you can follow it better—I will ask one of you to read this passage of the poem. The last time we had an excellent reader, I hope she is here, or perhaps somebody else would like to take her place. And as for the reading, I ask only that it be read slowly, expressively, so you can follow the words and hear the music, which is so important in this poem.
    So, I have dared to talk this whole time, which one of you now dares?
    [
A student comes to the front of the class
.]
    Now let us watch the death of a medieval knight.
    [
A student begins to read
.]
But, knowing now that they would have her speak,
She threw her wet hair backward from her brow,
Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek,
As though she had had there a shameful blow,
And feeling it shameful to feel ought but shame
All through her heart, yet felt her cheek burned so,
She must a little touch it; like one lame
She walked away from Gauwaine, with her head
Still lifted up; and on her