Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

drew ...”
The Life and Death of Jason
, lines 132–140.
14. "For to the waist was man, but all below
A mighty horse, once roan, now well-nigh white
With lapse of years; with oak-wreaths was he dight
Where man joined unto horse,”
The Life and Death of Jason
, lines 145–147.
15. “So, when he saw him coming through the trees,
The trembling slave sunk down upon his knees”
The Life and Death of Jason
, lines 151–152.
16. This episode belongs to
Brennu-Njáls saga
or
Njal’s Saga
(chapter 77). The woman was Hallgerd, daughter of Hauskuld.
17. The conclusion of the episode of Gunnar and Borges’s commentary can be found in the first edition of
Antiguas literaturas germánicas
(1951), p. 71.
“Weave me a cord with your hair,” he tells Hallgerd.”
“Is it a question of life or death?” she asks.
“Yes,” Gunnar answers.
“Then remember that slap you gave me and I will watch you die,” Hallgerd says.
Thus Gunnar dies, overcome by many, and they also killed Samr, his dog, but first the dog killed a man. The narrator does not tell us that Hallgerd held this resentment against her husband; we suddenly find out, as things are often revealed in reality.
    CLASS 24

1. The full title is
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung.
2. Victor Hugo,
La légende des Siècles
, perhaps Hugo’s most important poetic work, was published in three parts in the years 1859, 1877, and 1883. In his preface, Hugo affirmed that he wanted to express humanity in a kind of cyclical work; paint it successively and simultaneously in all its aspects—history, fable, philosophy, religion, science—all summarized as one vast movement toward the light.
3. Borges is referring here to
Piers Plowman
, attributed to William Langland, mentioned earlier.
4. In these classes, Borges uses the Spanish version of this name (Brunilda). In
Medieval Germanic Literature
, Borges refers to this character using the original form, Brynhild.
5. In the saga, Gudrun promises to marry her daughter, Svanhild—described as a woman with a sharp eye and exceptional beauty—to a powerful king named Jormunrek. Svanhild is unjustly accused of betraying Jormunrek and is condemned to die. She is trampled by horses. The final chapters of the saga tell how Gudrun plans to avenge Svanhild, and she convinces her other children to kill King Jormunrek.
Gudrun later married the King Atli (loosely based on Attila the Hun).
6. Published as a book in 1883.
7. Written in collaboration with Lloyd Osburne. Published in
Scribner’s Magazine
10–12 (August 1891–July 1892), and as a book the same year.
8. “On a New Form of Intermittent Light and Lighthouses,” from the
Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts
, vol. VIII, 1870–71 (Edinburgh: Neill and Company, 1871).
9. The poem is numbered XXXVIII in the book
Underwoods
, published in 1887. It reads:
“Say not of me that weakly I declined / The labours of my sires, and fled to sea, / The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, / To play at home with paper like a child. / But rather say: In the afternoon of time / A strenuous family dusted from its hands / The sand of granite, and beholding far / Along the sounding coast its pyramids / And tall memorials catch the dying sun, / Smiled well content, and to this childish task / Around the fire addressed its evening hours.”
10. Borges is quoting the last two lines of
“Dedicatoria a los antepasados (1500– 1900)”
[Dedication to My Forbearers], the first poem in Lugones’s
Poemas Solariegos
[Ancestral Poems] (1927).
11.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was published in 1886.
12. Included in
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
, 1881.
13. Published in 1882.
14. Harun al-Rashid (766–809), the fifth caliph of the Abbasid Dynasty. He is remembered as a great patron of the arts and for the luxury of his court in Baghdad. He was immortalized in the legends that make up
A Thousand and One Nights.
15. In fact, they were at an international colony for painters in Barbizon, near Fontainebleau, France.
16. Lloyd Osbourne (1868–1947), North American writer.
17. It has thirty-nine chapters.
18. The full title is
Deacon Brodie or The Double Life
and was written in 1879. Together, Stevenson and his friend William Ernest Henley also wrote
Beau Austin
(1884),
Admiral Guinea
(1884), and
Macaire
(1885). Henley was Stevenson’s agent and his inspiration for the character Long John Silver in
Treasure Island
.
19. In Samoa, Stevenson himself gave it this name, which means “five