Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you introduced me to Robert Louis Stevenson.’ I told him, ‘At this moment I feel justified because of this encounter with you.’ It is unusual for one to feel justified; I, most of the time, feel unjustifiable, but at that moment, no; I felt justified: I have done good deeds, I have given someone a gift of this greatness that is Stevenson; may everything else be forgotten.”
2. “Borges visita a Pezzoni,” Class 16. In
Enrique Pezzoni
(Buenos Aires, Sudamaericana), p. 204.
3. For the sake of rigor, it must be noted that West-Saxon, the Old English dialect—which became the literary standard of its time, and is thus the one most commonly studied—is not the direct ancestor of modern Standard English. Modern English is mostly derived from an Anglican dialect.
4. From the preface to
A Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology
, OCC, p. 787.
5. From “
La cegura
” [“On Blindness”],
Siete Noches
[
Seven Nights
], OCC III, p. 280.
6. This may lead us to forgive Borges’s inclusion of historically inaccurate horned protrusions on the Viking helmets as a moviemaking license!
7. “As we read through the pages of
Heimskringla
we feel that even if the historical characters did not really say those things, they should have, and with the same economy of words.” (From Borges’s prologue to his translation of the first part of Snorri Sturluson’s
Younger
or
Prose Edda, The Deluding of Gylfi.

ALSO BY JORGE LUIS BORGES
    Available from New Directions

    Everything & Nothing
    Labyrinths
    Seven Nights

Copyright © 2000 by María Kodama
    Copyright © 2000 by Martín Arias and Martín Hadis
    Copyright © 2000 by Grupo Editorial SAIC
    Copyright © 2013 by Katherine Silver
    All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
    This work was published with the generous support of “Sur” Translation Support Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentina Republic.
Obra editada en el marco del Programma “Sur” de Apoya a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina.
    PUBLISHERS NOTE: Martín Hadis offered valuable factual corrections to the English translation. Please visit www.martinhadis.com for a bibliography and additional supplementary material.
    The Publisher wishes to thank Eliot Weinberger for his assistance in publishing this edition.
    Book design by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance
    First published as a New Directions Book in 2013.
    Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899–1986.
[Borges profesor. English]
Professor Borges : a course on English literature / Jorge Luis Borges ; edited, with an introduction and afterwords, by Martín Arias and Martín Hadis ; translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver.
pages cm
Includes index.
A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the
University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature.
eISBN 978-0-8112-2117-7
1. English literature—Study and teaching (Higher)—Argentina—Buenos Aires. 2. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986—Knowledge—Literature. 3. English literature—History and criticism. 4. Universidad de Buenos Aires. 5. Borges, Jorge Luis, 189–1986—Translations into English. I. Arias, Martín, 1970– editor. II. Hadis, Martín, 1971– editor. III. Silver, Katherine, translator. IV. Title. V. Title: Course on English literature.
PR51.A7B6713 2013
820.9—dc23
2012050163
    New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
    by New Directions Publishing Corporation
    80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011