Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series At Harvard University; 6; Borges, Jorge Luis

My. Duty tonight. To try to express the appreciation of the Norton lecture Committee. And of the university. For what he has brought us. During these past months. Not only by his lectures by his very presence in the Harvard community thinking of what he said last time about one need to believe in the poet behind the poem. I can only say. That from the first sentence he spoke on this form. We believe in him. Last time he made at least a slight promise that he would say something to us. About. The rights or about that other one case but. It

had. Illegitimately church. Ladies and gentlemen my poor cause was to speak about poet's greed. But looking into myself I have found that I have some faltering kind of creed. Perhaps you may be useful to me but hardly to others. In fact I think of whole political theories as being mere tools for the writing of a poem. I suppose there should be as many creeds as many religions as to ports. So at the end I would say something about my likes and dislikes. As to writing of poetry I think I will begin

by some person on to memories the memories not only. Of a writer but also of a reader really. I think of myself I speak essentially the reader but of course. If you are aware I have ventured into writing but I think that what his range is of course far more important than what I have written for you will read what one likes and one writes. Not all would like to write. But what would one is able to write. My memory got its me back too so too even in some 60 years ago to my father's library in the woods Hades.

I see him I see the gaslight. I could place my hand on the shelves. I know exactly who to find. Burton's Arabian Nights and Prescott's conquest of Peru who of course the library exists to no longer and I go back to that already ancient South American. Even in hand I see my father. I've seen him at this moment and I hear his voice saying words but I understood not. But but yet that I felt those words came from Keats who is owed to a Nightingale and of course I have really read that there were so many times as you have. Well I think I would go over them I think it might please my father's

ghost he's around. The verses I remember there are those that you're recording at this moment that I was not born for death. Immortal Bird knew her going to generations to read the dial. The voice I hear of this passing night was heard a nation dazed by the Emperor and to live perhaps the self-same song that found a path to his heart how to Ruth who in six foot home she stood in tears and was the alien cord wood of course. I thought I knew all about who or what I want language when he said child would would fields that would knows many things but those roots came as a revelation to me of course I did not understand them. How could he understand two slides about birds about animals being somehow eternal timeless because they live in the present and that mortal because we live in the

past and in the future because we remember a time when we did not exist and we foresee a time when we shall be dead where those forces came to me which they came to me through their music. What sort of language as being they sing away. Seeing things of uttering complaints saying that one was glad. Or sad or saw it. Then when I heard those lines I have been hearing them in a sense ever since I knew that language could also be a music and a passion and thus was poetry revealed to me. I have toyed with an idea the idea that though a man's life is compounded

of thousands and thousands of moments and days yet whose many Easterns and those many days may be reduced to a single one. The moment when a man knows who he is when he sees himself face to face. Suppose that when Judas kissed Jesus if he indeed did so he felt at that moment that he was a traitor. That will be at the top was his destiny and that he was being loyal to that evil destiny. Who would remember the red badge. Of courage. The story of the man who does not know whether he's a coward. But if man and then the woman comes and he knows who he is. And when I heard those verses of Keats I saw only I felt that was a great

experience of healing it. Ever since and perhaps since then as opposed to make special rates for the purposes of a lecture. Perhaps since then I thought of myself as being literally. That is to say many things have happened to me a straw man. I have been to Joy in many things. For example in swimming riding in looking at the Sunrise what a sunset and being in love. And so on. But somehow the central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry. At first of course it was only a reader would rather I think that. That the happiness of her either is beyond that of a writer photo

a reader need feel no trouble he need not he need feel no anxiety he's merely out for happiness and happiness when you are really the least frequent. Thus before you go on the speaking of my literary output I would like to say a few words about books that have been important to me and they know that this list will abound in the missions and smaller lists too. In fact the danger of making a list is that the missions stand out. The people think of you as being or sensitive I say. Few moments ago about the Arabian Nights and they spoke of Birtles but maybe tonight but when I really think about it even nights they're thinking not Who's many and ponderous and pedantic or rather stilted volumes

but what I meet called the true Arabian Nights that even Knights of Ghana and. Perhaps. Of Edward William lady I have done most of my reading in English. Most books have come to me through the English language and I am duly grateful for that privilege. When I think of it even now it's the first feeling I have is a feeling of a vast freedom and yet at the same time I know that the book move fast and free is limited to a few patterns we have for example the number three. Really if you frequently and have new characters rather flat characters except perhaps. The Silent lot of others and then you have even made and

good natured rewards and punishments and magic rings and talismans and so on. And I thought we had up to think of me of size as being somehow brutal yet I think there are many books who say sins lies in their being lengthy. For example in the case of the early view Knights We must needs think that the book is a large one. That the story goes on. We may never come to the end of which we would never have gotten through all the Thousand and One Nights. But the fact that they are there somehow lends to a whiteness to the whole thing. We know that you can delve deeper that you could room on another mot of Earth The Magicians the freak beautiful sisters and so what we're all here awaiting us. And there are other books I would like to record.

And I think that one of the very first was a Huckleberry Finn. I have regretted it ever so many times since and also roughing it the first days in California. Life on the Mississippi and so on. And now how do to analyze her but if he did I would say that perhaps you know to the to me to create a great book. But perhaps only one center. And once the simple fact is needed there should be something pleasing to the imagination. He the very framework of the book in the case of Huckleberry feed. We feel that the idea of the black man the boy and the raft and the Mississippi and the long nights those are somehow agreeable to the machine nation Lucette accepted by the U.S.-EU nation.

He also would like to say something about them because that was one of the first books I ever read through I remember the very very big city and one knows so little about oneself that when I read them because I thought I read it because of the pleasure I found in the Arctic's times and in the adventures of the night. And the Squire. But now I think that my pleasure of me that's what I think that it came from the character of the night. I'm not sure now that I believe in the adventurers would say shots between the knight and the Squire but I know that he believed in the Knight's character and the supposed that the Avengers were invented. I said why didn't you know that. To assure us the character of the healer. And the same might be said of another book the wormy called

a minor classic. The same I suppose might be said of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I am and I don't. I'm not sure. I believe in the how of the Baskervilles. I sure do not believe in being terrified by a dog painted over with human speech. But I am sure that he believes in Mr. Sherlock Holmes and in that strange friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and of course one never knows what if usually bring this book the future will bring gone things in the long run. And so we mean measured a moment when they'll be hooked to a satchel. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Lith's Watson. Just the order of angels for only know they have been blotted out and yet still remain. In other languages.

May God invented stories to fit those characters stories that should be as meters to the gutter. These Who are they know me. Happened and now I will judge who are the heirs and come and go to Geneva. He was then a very unhappy young man supposed young men are fond of her happiness. They do the best of it happening to be happy and they generally achieve it. And yet and then it was shaved because I discovered and also who was doubtless a very happy man. He must have in nineteen hundred and sixteen that he came to work who had none and then I felt ashamed of my own happiness. I felt ashamed of her and tried to be still more unhappy by the reading of the story is good. And now they have rage the real rage what with monies biographies. I

suppose that perhaps when Walt Whitman Ridge his Leaves of Grass he may have said to himself Oh if only they were what Whitman across parts of Manhattan the sun goes down at least he was a very different kind of man. Doubtless he evolved what Whitman from himself a kind of fantastic projection. Then at the same time I also discovered that a different writer. I also discovered and there was also overwhelmed by him. I also discovered Thomas Carlyle and I read sort of early Saturday. I could record many of his speeches. I knew them by heart and Carlyle sent me to the study of judgment. I remember I bought Highness lubricious into the midst of a German-English dictionary and after a time I found I could dispense with dictionary and that I could go on reading about his

nightingales and his moons and his pine trees and His love and so on. But what I really wanted but what I did not find of the time was the idea of. Is the jury honest because the idea I suppose was your fault. Nope it has pleasure Mannix people themselves would like a Roman gentleman Tassie tunes and I was led by Carlyle to think I could find it in German literature. I found many other things they are very grateful to God nine for having sent me to cope with Howard. And to hurl the lead into Lessing and so on but the media had the idea of main Not at all intellectually but of men given over literacy to loyalty the briefness to a manly

submission to fate that I did not find for example in an even longer lead role that seemed too romantic for me and it was to find each years and years afterwards in the notes silence and then the study of old English poetry. There I found at last what I had been looking for when I was a young man I found in old English a harsh language but all but a language whose harshness made for a certain kind of beauty and the very deep feeling. And but haps know very deep thinking of course in poetry I suppose feeling is enough if the feeling comes through to you that is that should be sufficient. He was lured to the study of old English by my inclination to the

metaphor I had read you would notice that the metaphor was the essential an element of literature and they accepted that dictum. The world approach the door and words were originally metaphors this is true but it is also true that in order to understand most words you have to forget about the fact of that habit of the being metaphors. For example if I say style should be played then I don't think we should remember that style steel was meant and I or Ben and the plain means flat. Because in that case I would never understand it. Now when I go back to my boyhood days I remember the other authors who struck me. I wonder if he has enough or I'm out of that pool. And Oscar Wilde. I don't really.

Writers for boys. At least the stories of poor interest me when I was a boy. And now you could hardly read them without feeling rather uncomfortable. Who are the style of the author. In fact I don't quite understand though what I remember here says we're speaking of a man of genius who can quite understand whatever sin meant when he called it that I love the genial man. And I suppose that this fact of being a writer for boys might have played for many other writers. So in some cases it is unjust in the case of Stevenson for example of Kipling. For though the right foot was the also right for men but there are other writers who one will treat and one is young because well if one comes to them who what is old and grey and full

of days. Then the reading of the writers can hardly be pleasant. You may be a blasphemy to say that in order to learn to enjoy both the letter and pull. Which should be young afterwards it is difficult. One has to put up with so many things when first think about history and so on. I still have many photos I should add that now we see that metaphor is horrible complicated thing than I thought. It is not merely comparing I think to another saying the mood like and saw no. It may be done in a more subtle way. You are thinking of Robert Frost who of course remembered the lines but I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep.

Now if we take the two verses. The first verse and miles to go before I sleep is I suppose a statement from the poet thinking of mice and of sleep why and when he repeats blue slides and miles to go before they sleep. Those verses are a metaphor for my eyes. I suppose I should stand. For days forty years for a long stretch of time asleep I suppose I should stand for death. Perhaps I am doing for us no good by pointing this out but perhaps the pollution of lies not you know was resonating my hands into yours and asleep into death. But rather in feeling the implication the same thing might be said of that other very fine poet of his. Acquainted with the nature of the beginning I

have made one acquainted with the night. We mean literally what is standing you but in the end after one movement of the clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Then you were made to think of the night. I saw an image of evil sexual evil I suppose. I spoke a moment ago about don't be haughty. Sherlock Holmes they said that what the take would be leaving the characters but not in the adventurers and hardly in the words that your source put in their mouth. Now we wonder who could find the book. Who are the exact contrary occurred. Could we find a book in who's got it that we disbelieve but who are we might believe the story.

And here I remember another book that has struck me. I remember Melville's Moby Dick because I am not sure that I believe in Captain Ahab. I am not sure that I believe he was huge with a white whale. I can hardly tell the other characters apart and yet they believe in the story that you say believe in it as a kind of part of it. Though I don't know exactly but I will watch. I suppose it should be a parable of a struggle against evil of the wrong way. Of. Fighting. Evil. I wonder if her any books of which you might be saved in the Pilgrim's Progress. I think I believe both in the parable. Both in the electorate and in the characters This should be looked into I suppose. Well I remember the Canasta X

sayd that the only way to be rid of a seed was to commit it because afterwards you repent it. And I think that regards literature. They were essentially right. For you. If I have. Attained to the happiness of writing. Four or five tolerable pages after writing fifteen Tolliver volumes I have come to that feature not only through the many years but also through a method of trial and error. I think I've committed not all of the possible mistakes because mistakes are innumerable but many of them. For example I began as most young men do by thinking that free verse is easier than the regular forms. Of course now I am quite. Now I feel I am quite sure in thinking

that free verse is far more difficult than the regular And the classic forms. And the proof is if I put if we needed that literature begins my verse. I suppose the explanation would be that once a platter has evolved a pattern for example of ride a fast analysis of alliterations of longer short syllables or sawed you only have to repeat the pattern while if you attempt prose and prose of course it was long after the verse. Then you need a Stevenson pointed out a more subtle patter because the air is laid to expect something and then it does not get what it expects for something that is given to it and that's something gives should be in a sense of

failure and those who are. It is a distraction. And so what I should say that unless you take the precaution of being what Whitman called Sandy Hook then free verse is more difficult at least I have found. Now when I am near my urine I sense that the classic forms the first are easier and another facility. Another reason is the length the fact that once you have written a certain line that once you have resigned yourself to a certain line then you have committed yourself to a certain rhyme and as rhymes are not infinite then your work is made easier for you. Of course what is important is what is behind the verse. He began by trying to hold your

men do. I began by trying to disguise myself. At first it was so mystical that at the time when I read Carlyle and Whitman I thought that Carlyle's way of writing prose was the only possible one. And that would man's way of writing verse was the only possible one. And I made I made no attempt whatever to reconcile this very strange fact of having two opposite men having attained the perfection of prose and and the first when I began writing. I only said to myself that my ideas were very shallow that if the reader saw who them he would despise me. So I disguised myself. I disguised myself in the beginning. I just try to be a 17th century Spanish writer

with a certain knowledge of Latin. My knowledge of latitude was quite slight. I do not think of myself now as a 17th century Spanish writer. And my attempts to be sore trial must put down a spanish. Feigns juggler. Who perhaps evolved quite a dozen fine sounding lines. Of course I was out for purple patches. Now I think the proper patches are a mistake. I think they are a mistake because they are a sign of fighting and so the reader thinks of them as being signs of vanity and if the reader thinks a few and he thinks that her modern effect. There's no reason whatever why should my or you or put up with you. Then I fell into a very common mistake. I did my best to be of all things modern now but it had character in get this.

When you get this good can meisters lady added the character says well you may see of me what you like. But nobody will deny that I am a contemporary. Now I see no difference whatever between that white absolute character you get Aznavour and the wish to be mother. Because we are a mother. We don't have to strive to be a mother. It's not a case of subject matter of style. I suppose that if you look into Sarah Walter Scott's novel home which will take a lot of different examples into flow best seller book you me tell the date when those books were written. Though Flo Bear spoke of Salon books I thought oh man you know what any reader worth his salt would know after reading the

first page of the book was not written in Carthage but it was written by a very intelligent Frenchman of the nineteenth century. I understood why but who were not taken in by the castles and the knights and the sacks of swineherd and so on when all the time. The reading and 18th or 19th century both of Besides. We have a model with a very simple fact that we live in the present. No nobody has discovered us yet the art of living in the past and not even the few shouldst has discovered the secret of living in the future. We are mothers who want it or not. And perhaps the very fact of why attacking modernity now is in its way I suppose a way of reading other boards. When I began writing stories I did my best to trick them

out. I labored over the style and sometimes they were hidden under the many the many over names. For example I thought of a quite good plot. Then I wrote the story in mortality. Now the idea behind that story and they dear will come as a surprise to any of you who have read the story. You know idea that if a man would immortal then in the long run on the run would be long of course it would be endless. Then in the long run he would of said old things done old things Britain or things and then I took his makes time for home and I thought of home. If indeed he existed as having written heliotrope then Homer would go on living. And then he would change. Of those you know nations of men have changed.

And then of course who should get his critique in due time. You forget that he had been home. And a moment may come when you think of pope's translation of Homer as being not only a fine work of art indeed it is but as being true to the original. But that idea of Homer forgetting I do hope that that idea is hidden under the many structures I wove around the book. And indeed when every ridge that story a couple of years ago I found it a wilderness of the flesh and I had to go back to my old plant to see that the story would have been quite good had I been content to write it down simply and not to permit so many purple patches and so many strange adjectives and and metaphors.

Now I think I've covered now to a certain wisdom or perhaps to a certain sense. I think of myself as a writer and what does being the writer mean to me. He means simply being true being true to my imagination that he's a say when I write something I do not think of it as being true to fact. The mere fact since the mere fact alone he's aware of circumstances and accidents but of being true to something deeper that you see where I write a story I write it because somehow I believe in it not as one believes in mere history. Well if one believes in a dream world you know you didn't but in an ideal and. I think that would help her lead us to me. My one of her studies I value

most the study of the history of literature. I won that and I hope this is not a blasphemy. I wonder if you are not too aware of history because being aware of the history of literature or of any other art for that matter is really affordable fun believing a photo must get this is if I say to myself for example. That Wordsworth overlayed were very good 19th century poets then I may fall into the danger of thinking that time somehow has destroyed that the they're not as good now as they were. And yet I think the ancient idea was a believer one. They didn't hear that but a fiction might be allowed to art without taking into account the dates I have read several histories of Indian philosophy and the

authors. The Englishman Germans Frenchmen Americans and so on. I always wonder at the fact that there that in India people have no historical sense that they treat or think as if they were contemporary that they don't have sleet the words of a nation the loss of it into their literacy the modern jargon of today philosophy but this stands for something very stands for the idea that one believes if you loss of faith whether one believes in poetry that thing this beautiful one's going to go on being beautiful still and those opposed and being quite at his starting when I see this since of course the meanings of words are changing the connotations of words are changing it's still I think. That there are verses in version for example. I wonder if I'm scanning it as they

should because my lighting is very rusty. For example I suppose that one version wrote even top schooling Solus would lock their room with water. But when an old English poet wrote note of the NSS knew there and so on. Well when we read for example music to hear why his own music sadly sweets with sweets were not joy delights in Joy I think that somehow we are to be on time. I think that that is an eternity in beauty and this of course is what Keats had in mind when he wrote a thing of beauty. He said joy forever. We accept this worse but you accept it somehow as a kind of right as a kind of formula. And yet sometimes I have been sometimes here I am. Well graceful and hopefully not gracious and hopefully enough to think that

it may be true that the main writing time the soul and men are involved in the circumstances and that's aeons and failures of time somehow things of eternal beauty may be achieved. When I write I try as I have said to be loyal to the dream not of being lonely in the circumstances. Of course in my stories people tell me I should speak about them. You may study her. Through circumstances but somehow I have found that those circumstances should always be told with a certain amount of untruth. I think there is no satisfaction in telling a story as it actually happened you have to change things. Even if we think that is significant. If not we

should not think of ourselves as artists but perhaps it's merely whether you're a journalist or media historians though I suppose all true historians have known but they can be quite as imaginative as novelists. For example when we read gibberish as it was a pleasure we get from given is quite akin to the pleasure we get but reading a great novelist. After all he knew very little about his characters as opposed he had to imagine the circumstances. I suppose he must have thought of himself as having created in a sense the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But he did it so wonderfully that I do not care to accept any other explanation. I.

So that you had to give advice to the writers and they don't think they need to because everyone has to find or things by himself. I would give them simply this one. I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with little work. I don't think tinkering is any good. I think that the moment comes when one has found out what one can do with one has found out one's natural voice. Once written and then I do not think slight emendations should prove useful. When I write I think not of the reader because I read it is of course an imaginary character I do not think of myself. Perhaps I am an imaginary character also. I think of what I am trying to convey and I do my best not

to spoil it. When I was young I believed in exposition a hundred Croce's and the reading of Croce did me no good. I wanted to express everything I thought for example that if I needed a sunset then I should find. The exact word for a sunset load the exact or rather the most surprising metaphor. And now I have come to a conclusion and this conclusion may sound sad. The conclusion is that I no longer believe in expression. I only believe he illusion because after all what are words words or symbols for shared memories. If I use a word then you should have experience of what the word stands for if not the word means nothing to you.

And I think we can only do we can only try to make the reader imagine. I think that the reader if he's quick enough can be satisfied with a lot of merely hinting at something. And this makes I think for efficiency. And you made your own case. It also makes for laziness. I have been asked why they have never attempted a novel where laziness of course is the first information. But there is another one I have never heard anyone over build feeling a certain weariness. I think that no words include padding I think the padding may be an essential part of the novel. For I know and yet I have read many short stories over and over again and they find for example that in a short story my head regimes will read your Kipling. You get quite as much from complexity and in a more pleasurable

way as you may get out. Of a long novel and I think that this is what my creed comes to when I promised a poet's creed. I thought very clearly directly that once I had given five lectures I would need. But the fact of having given five lectures I would be I would evolve a creed of some kind. What I think I owe it to you to say that you know I have no particular Creech except those few precautions and misgivings I have been talking to you about. I pray when I'm writing something. I try not to understand it. I don't think intelligence has much to do with the work of a writer. I think that one of the

sins of modern literature is the fact that it is too self-conscious. For example I think of French literature as being one of the going to be literate years in the words of those who was unable to go down to that. And yet I have a need to feel how the authors I cheerily to self-consciousness as opposed a French writer begins by defining himself before he quite knows what he is going to write. And so he says what should for example a Catholic born in such and such a province and being a bit of a socialist write. Or how should we write after the Second World War. And I suppose there are many people all over the world who labored under those usury problems who are not right. And of course I may not be a fair example but merely an awful warning. When I write I try to forget all about myself and forget about my

personal circumstances. I don't know try as I tried once to be a South American writer. I merely try to convey what the dream is and is a dream a dream a dream one the make each year release. They do not try to beautify but even to understand it. And maybe I have done well. For every time I read an article about me and somehow you seem to equate to people quite a lot of people are that sort of thing. I am generally amazed and very grateful for the deep meanings that have been read as a quite. Haphazard jottings of mine. Of course I'm grateful to them but I think of writing speed kind of collaboration. That is to say

the reader dust is part of the world of the work he said Richard. The book and the same thing happens I suppose who want to stay actually. You may think that now and then have you in a good lecture you that kids are comfortable going to cheerlead you because after all you have been working with me. I did not mean for you. I don't think the lecture would have seemed particularly good. Whatever talent or want to. I hope that you have been collaborating with me tonight and see if this night is different from other nights. I would like to say something about myself because I came to America six months ago in my country. I had practically to repeat the title of a famous book by Welles and presently the invisible man. And here I am somehow visible here. People have read me they read me so much that they cross examine me

on stories in forgotten all about. They ask me why I did so and so. What I saw and saw was silent. Before he answered and then I wondered who saw and saw a loss. Why he was silent what he had heard. And then I hesitated to tell him the truth. I say that so and so was silent before he answered because were generally signs or before one Lancers. Atl. And yet worldly things have made me happy. I think that you are quite mistaken if you admire a woman who do my writing what I think of it as a very generous mistake. I think that one

should try to believe in things even if they let you down afterwards and if I am joking now I'm joking because I feel something within me. I am joking because I really feel what this means to me and you know that I shall look back on this night that is I wondered why did not I see what I should have said why did not they say what these months in America have meant to me what all these unknown unknown friends have meant to me. But I suppose that somehow my feeling is coming through to you. When asked to say some verses of mine I would go over a sonnet a sonnet on Spinoza. The fact that many of you may have no Spanish will make it a higher sonnet of course.

And as I have said that meaning is not important but it is important. He's a sort of music a certain way of seeing things. Maybe though the museum may not be there. You would feel it. Or rather since I know that a very current human invented for me. Now we come on to the sonnet. Laughter Lucy the one of them who do you love and I love a new bit of Chris Dodd has he let out of the can lead if you have the freedom the thought of the telephone out of a Sony Why does la mano you know personally I seem to keep finding this in and going from delegate to because you know the system but a number of key it took with us so yeah I'm glad I don't have any to normal to do out of Hama has had a phonecall this way your students who are in your therapy who are used to middle of the office Asians believe it or they let me thoughtfully that we will never do that who could have

done it if you need to not buy the occasion you told us who is British. Or 20.