Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

character. 5 Stevenson proceeds with great skill. Already in the title there is a suggested duality: two characters are introduced. But these two characters never appear at the same time—Hyde is the projection of Jekyll’s evil—the author does everything possible to prevent us from thinking they are the same person. He starts by making a distinction between their ages. Hyde, the evil one, is younger than Jekyll. One is dark, the other is not: he is blond and tall. Hyde is not deformed. If you looked at his face you could see no deformity, because he was pure evil.
    Many films have been based on this plot. But all those who have made films based on this story made a mistake; they used the same actor to play Jekyll and Hyde. Moreover, in the film, we see the story from the inside. We see the doctor—the doctor who has the idea of a potion that can separate evil from good in a man. Then we watch the transformation. So it is all reduced to something quite secondary. On the other hand, I think a film should be made with two actors. Then we would have the surprise that these two actors—already known by the viewer—are in the end the same person. They would have to change the names of Jekyll and Hyde, because they are too well known; they would have to be given different names. In all the film versions, Dr. Jekyll is shown as a severe, Puritan man with unassailable habits, and Hyde as a drunk, a rake. For Stevenson, evil did not essentially consist of sexual licentiousness or alcoholism. For him, evil was, above all, gratuitous cruelty. There is a scene at the beginning of the novel in which a character is standing at a high window and looking out at the labyrinth of mankind, and he sees a little girl coming along one street and a man along another. They are both walking toward the same corner. When they meet at the corner, the man deliberately tramples on the girl. This was evil for Stevenson—cruelty. Then we see that man enter Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory, then bribe his pursuers with a check. We might think that Hyde is the son of Jekyll, or that he knows some terrible secret in Jekyll’s life. And only in the last chapter do we find out that he is the same man, when we read Dr. Jekyll’s confessions.
    It has been said that the idea that one man is two is a cliché. But asChesterton has pointed out, Stevenson’s idea is the opposite, it is the idea that a man is not two, but that if a man commits a sin, that sin stains him. So at the beginning, Dr. Jekyll drinks the potion—if he had been more good than evil, it would have converted him into an angel—and he is changed into a being who is pure evil—cruel, and merciless—a man who has no conscience or scruples. He gives himself over to the pleasure of being purely evil, of not being two persons, as all of us are. At first, it is enough for him to drink the potion, but then there is a morning when he wakes up and feels smaller. Then he looks at his hand and that hand is the hairy hand of Hyde. Then he drinks the potion, and again turns into a respectable man. Some time passes. He is sitting in Hyde Park. Suddenly he feels that his clothes are too big, and he has changed into the other. Then, when there is an ingredient for the potion that he cannot find, it is the same as the trap the devil sets. Finally, one of the characters kills himself and with him, the other also dies.
    This was imitated by OscarWilde in the last chapter of
ThePortrait of Dorian Gray
. You will remember that Dorian Gray is a man who does not age, a man devoted to vice, who watches his portrait age. In the last chapter, Dorian, who is young, who looks pure, sees his own image in the portrait, his reflection. Then he destroys this portrait and he dies. When they find him, they find that the portrait is as the painter had painted it, and he is an old, corrupt, monstrous man, identifiable only from his clothes and rings.
    I recommend you read Stevenson’s book,
TheEbb-Tide
; it was very well translated into Spanish by RicardoBaeza. 6 There is another book, unfinished, written in Scottish, that is very difficult to read. 7
    But speaking about Stevenson, I have forgotten something very important, which is Stevenson’s poetry. There are many nostalgic poems, and there is a short poem called“Requiem.” This poem, if translated literally, would not be very impressive. The sense of the poem is more in its intonation. The literal meaning is not very impressive, as is the case with all good