Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

not published until 1850, in a new edition of
Poems
. In spite of the title, which attempts to hide the personal origin of these poem, these are not, in fact, translations from Portuguese, but rather original works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
3. Robert Browning and Elizabeth, in fact, had a son, Robert Wiedemann “Pen” Barrett Browning, born on March 9, 1849, in Florence. After Elizabeth’s death in 1861, Pen Browning returned with his father to England. In 1887, when he was thirty-eight years old, Pen married Fannie Coddington, but his marriage did not last and they separated three years later. He died in Asolo, Italy, in 1912.
4. Oscar Wilde says of George Meredith in the dialogue, “The Decay of Lying,” “Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate.”
5. In his article, “Puppets and Actors,” which appeared in
The Daily Telegraph
on February 20, 1892, Oscar Wilde describes Robert Browning’s works as “of introspective method and strange or sterile psychology.”
6. Ramón María del Valle Inclán (1866–1936), Spanish poet and writer.
7. See Class 6, note 10.
8. “My Last Duchess, Ferrara,” from
Dramatic Romances
(1845).
9. In
Men and Women
(1855).
10. “So we’ll live, / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues / Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too— / Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out— / And take upon’s the mystery of things / As if we were God’s spies...”
King Lear
, act V, scene III.
11. The poem reads: “Well, I could never write a verse,—could you? / Let’s to the Prado and make the most of time.”
12. “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” in
Men and Women
(1855).
13. This poem is called “Cleon,” and is also in the book
Men and Women.
    CLASS 19

1. Originally published in
Dramatic Romances
(1845).
2. King Lear, act III, scene IV. The words are spoken by Edgar, Gloucester’s eldest son: “Childe Roland to the dark tower came, / His word was still ‘Fie, foh, and fum, / I smell the blood of a British man.’”
3. This poem appears in the book
Cornhuskers
(1918).
4. Actually, a six-year-old girl.
5. Originally published in
Dramatis Personae
(1864).
6. Originally published in
Dramatic Lyrics
(1842).
7. The full text of the poem “Memorabilia”: “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, / And did he stop and speak to you? /And did you speak to him again? / How strange it seems, and new! // But you were living before that, / And you are living after, / And the memory I started at— / My starting moves your laughter! // I crossed a moor, with a name of its own / And a certain use in the world no doubt, / Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone / ‘Mid the blank miles round about: // For there I picked up on the heather / And there I put inside my breast /A moulted feather, an eagle-feather— / Well, I forget the rest.”
8. Alfonso Reyes (1889–1959), Mexican writer, philosopher, and diplomat.
9. Manuel José Othón (1858–1906), Mexican poet born in San Luis de Potosí. His poetry is characterized by a profound and vivid perception of nature. Among his works:
Poemas
(1880),
Poemas rústicos
(1902),
En el desierto, Idilio salvaje
(1906). He wrote stories, short novels, and plays.
10. The poem is “Confessions” from
Dramatis Personae
(1864). The first stanza says, “What is he buzzing in my ears? / ‘Now that I come to die, / Do I view the world as a vale of tears?’ / Ah, reverend sir, not I!”
11. The fifth stanza of the poem is “At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, / There watched for me, one June, / A girl: I know, sir, it’s improper, / My poor mind’s out of tune.”
12. The poem is “Caliban upon Setebos; or Natural Theology in the Island,” also from
Dramatis Personae.
13. From
Dramatic Lyrics
(1842).
14.
Rashomon
, which premiered in 1950, was directed by Akira Kurosawa and starred Toshiro Mifune as a bandit, and Machiko Kyo in the woman’s role. It received the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 and made Kurosawa into a world-renowned artist.
15. Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892–1927), Japanese writer. His stories, novels, and essays—inspired by historical traditions and legends of