Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

holy book and the other enigmatic book, the Universe. In the seventeenth century,Bacon—Francis Bacon—returns to this idea, but in a scientific manner. The idea is that we have sacred scripture on the one hand, and on the other, the Universe, which we must decipher. In the Middle Ages, however, we find this idea that the two books—the book par excellence, the Bible, and the other book, the Universe (naturally, we form part of the second book)—should be studied from an ethical perspective. That is, it was not a question of studying nature as Bacon did, as does modern science (conducting experiments, investigating physical things), but rather of seeking moral examples in it. And this persists today, in fables about the bee or the ant that teach us to work hard, in the idea that the grasshopper is lazy, etcetera. In all the literatures of Europe can be found books called “physiologies.” 1 In this case, the word means “doctors,” or “bestiaries” because the subjects were animals, real or imaginary. So, for example, the Phoenix. People believed in the Phoenix, which became a symbol of resurrection because it burns up, dies, then is reborn. In Old English, in Anglo-Saxon, there was also a bestiary. It seems that the original bestiary, or what has been considered the original, was written in Egypt in the Greek language, and this is why it includes so many Egyptian animals, both real and imaginary, such as the Phoenix, which goes to the holy city of Heliopolis, the city of the sun, to die.
    Only two chapters from the Anglo-Saxon bestiary have been preserved. These chapters are curious because they are about the panther and the whale. Amazingly enough, the panther is a symbol of Christ. 2 This might surprise us, but we must also remember that for the Saxons of England, for the Anglo-Saxons,
panther
was merely a word in the Bible. Naturally, they had never seen a panther—an animal that lives in other parts of the globe. And there was a text, I don’t remember which verse of scripture, about the panther, where it is identified with Christ. And so it says there, in the Anglo-Saxon text about the panther—it was thought to have many colors, that is, to have spots, to be a brilliant, dazzling animal, this panther who is identified with Christ—the text says that the panther is an animal with a musical voice and sweet breath, which does not appear to be borne out by zoos, or zoology. It says that it sleeps for many months, then awakens, which might correspond to the days Christ is dead before he is resurrected, and that it is a gentle animal, that men come from the cities and the countryside to hear its musical voice, and that it has only one enemy: the dragon. Thus, the dragon becomes the symbol of the devil.
    There is an expression I have never been able to figure out, and perhaps you can help me solve it. It is a verse fromEliot, I think it is in his
Four Quartets
. It says: “Came Christ, the tiger.” 3 Now, I don’t know if Eliot’s identification of Christ with the tiger is based on some memory he has of an ancient Saxon text that identifies Christ with the panther (which is a tiger), or if Eliot is simply seeking to evoke surprise—though I don’t think so, for that would be too easy. Christ is always compared to the lamb, a docile creature, and he may have been looking for the opposite. But if this were the case, I don’t think he would have thought of the tiger, but rather the wolf (though perhaps the wolf seemed to him too easy a contrast to the lamb). Eliot’s verse says, “In the juvenescence of the year”—he does not use the word “youth,” but rather an old word, from Middle English, “juvenescence”—“Came Christ, the tiger.” And this is, undoubtedly, astonishing. But I think that when we read Eliot, we must assume that when he wrote his poem, he was trying to do something more than surprise his reader. Surprise, as a literary effect, is a momentary effect, quite quickly spent.
    So we have this pious poem about the panther, the panther that is then understood to be a symbol for Christ, an instance of Christ given to mankind. And then we have the other poem,“The Whale,” given the name Fastitocalon, which I believe, though I am not certain, is similar to the Greek word for sea turtle. 4 So, this poem is about the whale. The Saxons were familiar with whales; as we have already seen, one of the classic metaphors for the sea is “whale road,” which is good because the