Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

whip them back to the
querencia
, and to march on . . .”
    The mere presence of the word
querencia
in the above text points to the simmering of a strange and potent brew.
Querencia
is a typical
gaucho
word used in the Argentine field and pampas; it literally means “attachment, fondness, longing,” but its actual, metaphorical meaning refers to a horse’s perceived home or base. When left alone and without guidance, a horse will follow its longing or attachment, that is, he will head
home
. But neither the whipping of horses nor the goal of sending them back home appear at all in the original. The Maldon poet just states that the horses were sent off. That Borges would enrich this scene with such elements, and then weave into it the very concept of
querencia
, a rather folkloric word reminiscent of traditional Argentine rural life, is indeed an amazing act of literary fusion; but this is a habit that this most universal of writers would often indulge, both throughout this course and in many of his fictions. These lively South American additions may have little to do with medieval England, but they undoubtedly help bring the battle of Maldon and its protagonists from the tenth century into our era, and closer to his students’ cultural frame of reference.
    Continuing to study this poem, Borges re-creates the landscape and the initial scene of the battle:
“Then the earl tells them to form a line. Far off, they will see the tall boats of the Vikings, those boats with the dragon on the prow and the striped sails, and the Norwegian Vikings, who have already landed.”
    Once again, Borges’s description is a free version, enriched by his own imagination. The earl’s orders that the professor cites can be found in the verses of “Maldon,” but neither the tall ships nor the striped sails nor the arrival of the Vikings appear in the poem, whose opening lines were lost. Borges, however, needs to imagine the setting in detail for the action to begin to take place, and he tells us of the Saxons “watching the Vikings descend from their boats.” He immediately adds: “We can imagine the Vikings with their helmets adorned with horns, imagine all these people arriving.”
    Borges doesn’t just want his students to approach the poem as a philological specimen; his goal is to transport them to the actual scene of the battle. Borges’s depictions are indeed extremely vivid and often resemble actual movies. 6 He, in fact, associates the poem’s imagery with cinematography on more than one occasion. Further into his class on “Maldon,” he states:
“Then there appears in the scene—because this poem is very beautiful—a young man . . . And this young man . . . has a falcon on his fist; that is, he is devoted to what is called falconry . . . And something happens, something that is realistic and has symbolic value, something a movie director would use now. The young man realizes that the situation is serious, so he lets his beloved falcon . . . fly off into the forest, and he joins the battle.”
    This most peculiar professor then uses the same cinematic procedure to describe the battle ofStamford Bridge:
“The Saxon army advanced with thirty or forty men on horseback. We can imagine them covered in armor, and the horses also might have had armor. If you have seen [the film]
Alexander Nevsky
, it might help you imagine this scene.”
    These movie-like descriptions immerse us in the tension of the verses. In his role as professor, Borges not only describes and analyzes but also infuses these epic words with life, meaning, and movement, as a film director would do.
    It is this same sensibility that leads Borges to weave history and legend, myth and reality into his classes. Without the restrictions imposed on him by a lecture or a set number of pages in a publication, Borges exhibits here his habit of mixing facts with literary fiction, blurring the line between these two realms that in the Borgesian universe often split apart only to fuse together later on.
    Thus, in his description of the Battle ofHastings, Borges adds a poetic episode from Heine or legendary details taken from the
Gesta Regum Anglorum
, by William de Malmesbury; in his explanation of the Viking expeditions, he throws in quotes from
Chronicles of the Kings of Norway,
knowing full well that this work weaves historical fact with legendary or fictitious material. Needless to say, this is never the result of carelessness but is fully in keeping with