Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

The classes differ from a lecture in one essential way: here, the writer—so given to telling anecdotes and changing the subject—was obliged to restrict himself to the announced program. He could not, as he frequently did under other circumstances, after half an hour, ask jokingly, “What was the title of this lecture?” We can see how he managed to give his classes unity and coherence while still indulging in considerable digressions.
    Borges himself was conscious of this difference. “I preferred classes to lectures. When I give a lecture, if I talk about Spinoza or Berkeley, the listener is more interested in my presence than in the content. For example, my way of talking, my gestures, the color of my tie, or my haircut. In classes at the university, which have continuity, the only students who come are those interested in the content of the class. Hence, one can carry on a full dialogue. I cannot see, but I can feel the atmosphere around me. For example, if they are listening attentively or are distracted.” 4
    One important point of these classes is the position Borges gave to literature. “I judge literature hedonistically,” he said in another interview. “That is, I judge literature according to the pleasure or the feeling it gives me. I have been a professor of literature for many years, and I am not unaware of the fact that the pleasure literature gives is one thing, another is the historic study of that literature.” 5 Such an approach is clear from the very first class, in which Borges explains that he will discuss history only when the study of the literary works requires it.
    In the same way, Borges places authors above literary movements, which he defines at the beginning of the class about Dickens as a “convenience” of historians. Though he does not forget the structural characteristics of the texts being studied, Borges focuses mostly on the plot and the individuality of the authors. The course includes texts that the writer loves, and he shows this constantly through his fascination with telling the stories and the biographies. What Borges tries to do as a professor, more than prepare his students for exams, is excite them and entice them to read the works, to discover the writers. Throughout the entire course there is hardly a mention of the exams, and his comment at the end of the second class about Browning is very moving when he says:
I feel some kind of remorse. I think I have been unfair to Browning. But with Browning something happens that happens with all poets, that we must question them directly. I think, in any case, that I have done enough to interest you in Browning’s work.
    More than once that enthusiasm slightly diverts Borges from his path, and in the second class on Samuel Johnson, after narrating the legend of the Buddha, he says he is sorry: “You will forgive me this digression, but the story is beautiful.”
    More proof that the books and authors studied here are among Borges’s favorites is that throughout his life he made certain to write prefaces to editions of many of them, and he included many of them in his collection,
Biblioteca personal
, from Hispamérica. (This was his last selection of other writers’ texts before he died.) This predilection is even more obvious in his choice of poems. Borges does not always analyze the author’s most famous works; instead he deals with the works that made the greatest impression on him, the ones he discusses throughout his entire literary oeuvre.
    Borges’s passion for stories and his admiration for the authors do not stand in the way of him formulating critical judgments with implacable frequency. By exposing the failures of the works and the mistakes of the authors, Borges is not seeking to insult them but rather to perhaps remove any sacred halo they have and bring them closer to the students. By pointing out their failures, he also emphasizes their virtues. In this way, he dares assert on more than one occasion that the fable of
Beowulf
is “poorly imagined,” and he describes Samuel Johnson in this way:“Johnson was a wreck, physically, even though he was very strong. He was heavy and ugly. He had nervous tics.” This only paves the way for captivating the students’ interest. Right on its heels comes the conclusion that “he had one of the most sensible intellects of his era; he had a truly brilliant intellect.”
    When faced with literary criticism that questions the role of the author, Borges