Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

with a lance. The man falls to the ground, and his companions surround him. We don’t know anything about this man, but one of his companions asks him, “Is Gunnar in the house?” And the man—this shows us he is courageous—dies with a joke on his lips. He says, “I don’t know about him, but his lance is,” and he dies with this joke. Then the others surround the house and continue attacking Gunnar, who defends himself with arrows. He is with his dog and his wife. The others in his house have all been killed. But he continues defending himself with arrows, and one of the arrows of those surrounding the house breaks the cord of Gunnar’s bow. Gunnar needs another cord, he needs it immediately, and he asks his wife—much has been mentioned about her long blonde hair—that she weave him a cord with her hair. 17
    [The original transcription of the class ends here. Probably Borges’s final words were not taped.]

CLASS 24

    THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG
, BY WILLIAM MORRIS. THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

    [PROBABLY] MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1966
    In literary histories and biographies of Morris, one learns that Morris’s most important work was
Sigurd the Volsung
. 1 This book is longer than
Beowulf
, and was published in 1876. At that time the novel was considered the most popular genre of literature. The idea of writing an epic poem in the middle of the nineteenth century was audacious.Milton had written
Paradise Lost
, but in the seventeenth century. The only contemporary of Morris who thought of something similar was the French poet Hugo with
The Legend of the Centuries
. 2 But this legend, more than an epic poem, is a series of stories.
    Morris did not believe a poet needed to invent new plots. He believed that the plots that dealt with the essential passions of mankind had already been found, and that each new poet could give them a particular inflection. Morris had heavily researched Old Norse literature, which he judged to be the flower of ancient Germanic culture, and there he found the story of Sigurd. He had translated the
Saga of the Volsung
, a prose work from the thirteenth century written in Iceland. There is an earlier version of the same story that achieved greater fame, which is the German
Song of theNibelungs
, dating from the twelfth century—but that is, contrary to the chronology, a
later
version of the same story. The mythological and epic nature of the story is preserved in the first. On the contrary,
Song of the Nibelungs
, written in Austria, went from epic to romantic, and the versification is Latinate, with rhymed stanzas. In England, it is unusual for the ancient Germanic subject matter to be lost and the Germanic verse forms to be preserved (although we have in the fourteenth century in English the alliterative poem by Langland). 3 In Germany, the Germanic tradition has been preserved, but new verse forms from the south have been adopted, with a determined number of syllables, and rhyme, but no alliteration.
    The story of Sigurd was known by all the Germanic peoples. It is alluded to in
Beowulf
, though the author of
Beowulf
preferred a different story for his eighth-century epic poem. Morris based his on the Norse, not the German, version. This is why his hero is named Sigurd and not Siegfried. The Norse names are kept, for the most part. It is true that Morris wrote in couplets, but his lines are not exempt from the frequent use of German alliteration. The poem, which is very long, is called
Sigurd the Volsung
. The central character is not the hero but rather Brynhild, though the story continues after her death. 4 Morris uses the mythic elements that the German version ignores, so we have the god Odin at the beginning and at the end of the story. The story is long and complicated, and there are ancient and barbaric elements. For example, Sigurd kills a dragon who is guarding a treasure, then bathes in the hot blood of the dragon. This bath makes him invulnerable, except for one spot on his back where a leaf fell on him from a tree. And that is how Sigurd can die. This is reminiscent of Achilles’ heel.
    Sigurd is the bravest of men: king of Burgundy, and friend of Gunnar, king of the Low Countries. Gunnar has heard about a damsel, whose modern version we know as Sleeping Beauty. This damsel is under the spell of a magic sleep and surrounded by a wall of fire on a remote island in Iceland. She will give herself only to the man who can pass through the wall of fire.