Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

says, “
Que nuestra tierra quiera salvarnos del olvido / por estos cuatro siglos que en ella hemos servido.
” [“That our land will save us from oblivion / for these four centuries we served her well.”] As if his elders, those of the War of Independence, were more important than he, Leopoldo Lugones. 10
    In his poem, Stevenson speaks of a “strenuous lineage that dusted from its hands the granite sand, and in its decline played with paper like a child.” That child is he, and that game with paper is his admirable literary work. Stevenson began by studying law, and then we know his life went through a dark period. In Edinburgh, Stevenson spent time with thieves and women of the night; when he says “women of the night” and “thieves,” we should imagine an essentially Puritan city. Edinburgh was, along with Geneva, one of the capitals of Calvinism in Europe. This environment was aware of its guilt, it was an environment of sinners, who acknowledged that they
were
sinners. And we can see this in the famous story
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, which we will come back to. 11
    At first, Stevenson was interested in painting. He went to a doctor, who told him he had tuberculosis and should go south; he thought the south of France could be beneficial to his health. Stevenson wrote a short article about the south in which he tells about this. (The article is called “Ordered South.”) 12 Then Stevenson passes through London, which must have seemed to him like a fantastic city. And in London he wrote his
NewArabian Nights
. 13 Later we will talk about one story in particular, “The Suicide Club.” As in
A Thousand and One Nights
, where we have a caliph named Harun the Orthodox, who wanders through the streets of Baghdad in disguise, here in
The New Arabian Nights
by Stevenson, we have Prince Florizel of Bohemia, who wanders through the streets of London in disguise. 14
    Then Stevenson goes to France and dedicates himself to painting, through which he does not make his fortune; and he and his brother reach a hotel one winter night, I think in Switzerland, and inside is a group of gypsy women sitting around the fireplace. 15 Stevenson did not want to be alone . . . there was also a young girl and an older woman—who later turned out to be the mother of the girl. And then Stevenson says to his brother, “You see that woman?” And his brother says, “The girl?” “No, no,” Stevenson says, “the older one, the one on the right. I am going to marry her.” His brother laughs, he thinks it is a joke. They enter the hotel. He makes friends with the woman, who is named FannyOsbourne, and she tells him that she will stay there for only a few days, that she has to return to the United States, she has to return to San Francisco, California. Stevenson says nothing to her, but he has already made the decision to marry her. They don’t write to each other, but a year later Stevenson sets sail as an immigrant, arriving in the United States then crossing the vast continent; he works in one place as a miner. Then he arrives in San Francisco. There is the woman, she is a widow, and he proposes to her, and she accepts. In the meantime, Stevenson lives from his literary essays. These essays were written in an admirable prose, though they did not attract much public attention.
    Then Stevenson returns to Scotland, and to entertain himself on the rainy days that are so frequent there, he draws a map on the ground with chalk. This map is in the shape of a triangle; there are hills, bays, gulfs. And his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, with whom he will later co-author
TheWrecker
, asks him to tell him about Treasure Island. 16 Each morning, he writes a chapter of
Treasure Island
and then reads it to his stepson. I think it has twenty-four chapters, though I’m not certain. 17 It is his most famous work, though not his best.
    Stevenson also tries writing theater, but theater in the nineteenth century was an inferior genre. Writing for theater then was like writing for television now, or for the movies. He co-writes several plays with W. E.Henley, the editor of
The Observer
, and one is called
The Double Life.
18
    Stevenson went to the city of San Francisco. He described it admirably. . . . Then, the doctors tell him that California will not cure him, that he needs to travel through the Pacific. Stevenson knew a lot about sailing, and he sails through the Pacific. Finally, he settles in a place called Vailima, and