Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

“
Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan, siþas secgan
.” This was totally revolutionary in the Middle Ages. This poem has been translated by the famous contemporary poet, EzraPound. When I read Ezra Pound’s version many years ago, it seemed absurd. Because I could not have guessed, by reading it, that the poet had his own personal theory about translation. The poet believed—as did Verlaine, let’s say, as did many others, and perhaps they were right—that the most important thing in a poem is not the meaning of the words but the sound. Which is, of course, true. I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned the example of “
La princesa está pálida / en su silla de oro
” [“The princess is pale on her golden chair”]. 17 This line is beautiful, but if we, say, use the same words, but place them in a different order, we see that the poetry disappears. If we say, for example, “
En su silla de oro está pálida la princesa
,” nothing at all is left of the poem. And this is the case with so many poems, perhaps with all poems, except, of course, narrative poetry.
    Now, here’s how Ezra Pound translated those lines: “May I for my own self song’s truth reckon, / Journey’s jargon.” 18 This is barely comprehensible, but as sound it resembles the Saxon. “May I for my own self” (this is about myself)—“song’s truth reckon” sounds like “
Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan, siþas secgan
,” and then “journey’s jargon” repeats the alliteration of “
siþas secgan
.”
Secgan
is of course the same word as “say.” But we will delve into an analysis of this poem and another one called “TheRuin”—a poem inspired by the ruins in the city of Bath—in the next class. I will also speak about the strangest of all Saxon poems, the oddest one from that period, whose title is“The Dream of the Rood.” And after talking about these poems, and after we have analyzed the distinctive elements contained in the last one I mentioned—in other words, after we have looked at the Christian and pagan elements in that poem’s composition (because in the last poem, “The Dream of the Rood,” although the poet is a devout Christian and perhaps even a mystic, there remain elements of the ancient Germanic epic)—after that, I will say a few words about the end of the Saxons in England, and I will discuss the Battle of Hastings, which, true or not, is one of the most dramatic events in the history of England and the history of the world.

CLASS 6

    THE ORIGINS OF POETRY IN ENGLAND. THE ANGLO-SAXON ELEGIES. CHRISTIAN POETRY: "THE DREAM OF THE ROOD."

    WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1966
    The story of the origins of English poetry is quite mysterious. As we know, all that remains of what was written in England from the fifth century—let’s say, from the year 449—until a little after the Norman Conquest in the year 1066, besides the laws and the prose, is what has been preserved by chance in four codices, or books of manuscripts. These codices suggest the existence of a prior literature that was quite rich. The oldest texts are charms, remedies for curing rheumatic pain or making barren lands fertile. There is one to protect against a swarm of bees. Here, they reflect ancient Saxon mythology, which has since been lost; we can only guess at it, based on its affinity with Norse mythology, which has been preserved. For example, in a charm against rheumatic pain, the valkyries, without being named, unexpectedly appear. 1 The verses say, “They were loud” or . . . sonorous, yes, “sonorous, as they rode through the hills. They were determined, as they rode through the land. Mighty women . . . ” And then the text is lost, and at the end of the charm there is a Christian incantation, because the sorcerer, the witch doctor, the wizard, says, “I will help you,” and says, “If God is willing.” This is a Christian verse, apparently written later. Then in another line, in another stanza, it says that this pain will be cured “if it be the work of witchcraft, if the work of gods”—“
esa geweorc
,”
ese
being the Norse gods—“if the work of elves.” 2
    Until now we have looked at the epic tradition, from
Beowulf
and the Finnsburh Fragment, until its last appearance in the ballad of “The Battle of Maldon,” which prefigures, with its abundance of circumstantial details, the later Icelandic prose sagas and narratives. But a revolution takes place in the ninth century. We don’t know if