Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

spectacles were the barracks—there is order in barracks, at least—and prisons. These were the two things capable of making Carlyle’s spirit rejoice.
    We have, then, in everything I’ve said, a kind of manifesto of Nazism and fascism, conceived before the year 1870. More particularly, Nazism, for Carlyle believed in the superiority of the various Germanic nations—the superiority of England, Germany, Holland, and the various Scandinavian countries. This did not prevent Carlyle from being one of Dante’s greatest admirers in England. His brother published an admirable, literal translation (in English prose) of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
. 23 And naturally Carlyle admired the Greek and Roman conquerors, the Vandals, and Caesar.
    As for Christianity, Carlyle believed it was already disappearing, that it already had no future. And as far as history, he saw salvation in strong men. He thought that strong men can be—asNietzsche said later; in a way Nietzsche would be his disciple—that strong men are beyond good and evil. This is what Blake said before: that having the same law for the lion and the ox was an injustice.
    I don’t know which of Carlyle’s books to recommend to you. I think that if you know English, the best book would be
SartorResartus
. Or, if you are interested—if you are less interested in his style and more in his ideas—read the lectures he collected under the title
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
. As for his more extensive work, on which he spent fourteen years, his
History ofFriedrich II of Prussia
is a book that has brilliant descriptions of battles. Carlyle’s battles came out very well, always. But in the long run it is evident that the author feels himself to be quite distant from the hero. The hero was an atheist, and a friend of Voltaire’s. Carlyle was not interested in him.
    Carlyle’s life was sad. He ended up turning his friends into enemies. He preached in favor of dictatorship, and he was dictatorial in his conversation. He tolerated no contradictions. His best friends distanced themselves from him. His wife diedtragically: she was driving in her carriage through Hyde Park when she dropped dead of a heart attack. Afterward, Carlyle felt regret at being a little responsible for her death, for he paid no attention to her. I think Carlyle came to feel, as ourAlmafuerte felt, that personal happiness was denied to him, that his own neurosis destroyed any hope of being personally happy. 24 And that is why he sought happiness in his work.
    I forgot to say—a merely curious detail—that in one of the first chapters of
Sartor Resartus
, when speaking about garments, Carlyle says that the simplest garment he knows of was used by thecavalry of Bolivar in the South American war. And here we have a description of the poncho as “a blanket with a hole in the middle,” under which he imagines Bolivar’s cavalry soldier, he imagines him—simplifying it a bit—“mother naked,” as naked as when he came out of his mother’s belly, covered by the poncho, with only his sword and his spear.” 25

CLASS 17

    THE VICTORIAN ERA. THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS. WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
, BY DICKENS.
    NOVEMBER 25, 1966
    When we look at the history of French literature, we see that it can be studied by using the sources that fed it as points of reference. But this method of study is not applicable to England; it does not fit the English character. As I have said before, “Every Englishman is an island.” Englishmen are especially individualistic.
    The history of literature that we are doing—and that most people do—resorts to a method of convenience, and that is the division of literary history into eras: dividing writers up into eras. And this can be applied to England. So, we will now see that one of the most remarkable periods in the history of England is the Victorian era. But such a characterization has the inconvenience of being too long: it lasts from 1837 to 1900, a long reign. And, moreover, we would find that defining it is difficult and risky. We would have difficulty, for example, fitting in Carlyle, an atheist who believed in neither heaven nor hell. It appears to be a conservative era, but it saw the rise of the Socialist movement. It is also the time of the great debates between science and religion, between those who affirmed the truth of the Bible and those who followed Darwin. (We should note,