Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

restore coherence to these classes, the recited stanzas were found, and Borges’s commentaries were interspersed through a truly laborious editing and reassembling task.
    Such work required the restitution of quotes in Old English that had been transcribed phonetically from the original. Though seriously distorted, these were recognizable and were replaced with the original texts.
    Punctuation in Borges’s text, inconsistent in the quick, original transcription, had to be completely changed, always with the goal of following the rhythm of the spoken presentation.
    This edition required the correction of all possible facts, fixing errors of transcription and making the necessary corrections. The original sources of most of the texts were found, and endnotes were added, offering the poems in their original languages (if they were brief) or in fragments.
    In some cases, for the sake of the reader, certain minor changes were necessary:
1. Missing words were added (conjunctions, prepositions, etcetera) that Borges surely spoke, despite their absence in the original transcription.
2. Other conjunctions used in spoken language, but that made comprehension of the written text more difficult, were eliminated.
3. In a few places, it was necessary to bring a subject and verb closer together where Borges’s enthusiasm led him into a long digression—a practice that is acceptable in spoken language, but in a written text, the thread of discourse is completely lost. The order of phrases in a sentence was changed around, but without omitting a single spoken word.
    As none of these changes altered the words or the essence of Borges’s discourse, we preferred not to indicate when this was done, so as to avoid disturbing the reader. On other occasions, words
not
spoken by Borges were added to the text in brackets to facilitate comprehension.
    The endnotes mostly supply information about works, people, or events in order to enrich the reading of these classes. We mostly resisted the temptation to link subjects in these classes with the rest of Borges’s oeuvre. The relationship between Borges the writer and Borges the teacher is so close that it would require an almost infinite quantity of notes; moreover, our goal has not been to carry out a critique or an analysis of the text.
    Many of the notes are brief biographies; the relative length of each does not reflect our judgment as to the value of the person or thing, but rather, in most cases, was determined by two factors: 1) how unknown a particular reference might be, and 2) its relevance within the context of the class. Hence, Ulfilas, the Gothic minister, and Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic historian, receive a few lines; while those figures who are more recent or well known—or only mentioned in passing—have notes containing only their dates, nationality, and a few facts that allow for easy identification.
    The reader will find that many of these short biographical notes correspond to famous figures, but that does not mean that we assume the reader is not familiar them. The presence of these notes allows the reader to situate these figures historically, this in consideration of the liberty with which Borges leaps from century to century, continent to continent, contrasting and comparing.
    We don’t know if Borges knew about the existence of these transcriptions; we are, nevertheless, certain that he would be pleased to know that these pages carry on his work as a teacher. A limitless number of readers can now join all those students to whom Borges taught English literature for many years with dedication and affection.
    We hope the reader enjoys reading this book as much as we enjoyed editing it.
MARTÍN ARIAS
MARTÍN HADIS
Buenos Aires, February, 2000

CLASS 1

    THE ANGLO-SAXONS. GENEALOGY OF THE GERMANIC KINGS. POETRY AND KENNINGS.

    FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1966
    English literature starts to develop at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century. The first works we have come from that era, predating any from any other European literature. In these first two units, we will discuss this literature: Anglo-Saxon poetry and prose. In order to learn the material in these classes, it would be helpful for you to consult a book I wrote with Ms. Vázquez called
Literaturas germánicas medievales
[
Medieval Germanic Literatures
]. 1 It was published by Editorial Falbo. Before continuing, I would like to make clear that this course will be undertaken from the