This Craft of Verse (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) [Paperback]

Jorge Luis Borges (Author), Calin-Andrei Mihailescu (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2002 | Series: Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

Available in cloth, paper, or audio CD

Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, these lost lectures given in English at Harvard in 1967-1968 by Jorge Luis Borges return to us now, a recovered tale of a life-long love affair with literature and the English language. Transcribed from tapes only recently discovered, This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of the twentieth century. In its wide-ranging commentary and exquisite insights, the book stands as a deeply personal yet far-reaching introduction to the pleasures of the word, and as a first-hand testimony to the life of literature.

Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms (especially the novel), literary history, and translation theory to philosophical aspects of literature in particular and communication in general. Probably the best-read citizen of the globe in his day, he draws on a wealth of examples from literature in modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese, speaking with characteristic eloquence on Plato, the Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as on translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

Whether discussing metaphor, epic poetry, the origins of verse, poetic meaning, or his own "poetic creed," Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and in the making of a unique literary sensibility, this is a sustained encounter with one of the writers by whom the twentieth century will be long remembered.

(20001106)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Norton lectures at Harvard retain their prestige, even though the annual speakers rarely achieve the general interest of such past invitees as Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. Ten years ago the venerable Ashbery (Your Name Here; Forecasts, July 24) returned to his undergraduate alma mater to give the customary six lectures, here retouched and presented with documentation. They deal with "certifiably minor" writers whom Ashbery, as a self-confessed nonscholar, feels more at ease in discussing: John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert. He relies heavily on the lives of the arid Boston Brahmin poet Wheelright and depression-era American Schubert for entree into their work, and, in the case of all the writers, liberally invokes secondary sources. The lectures themselves are unlikely to raise strong objections or reapprisals, as the Schubert particularly seems designed to do, but Ashbery's fans will appreciate a look into his reading. Borges's lectures from 1967-68, posthumously transcribed, retread familiar critical territory for the poet and maker of masterly Ficciones. Although titles like "The Riddle of Poetry," "The Telling of the Tale," and "Thought and Poetry," hold abstract promise, these are the sort of musings on literature that Borges carefully kept out of his diamondlike stories but allowed into much of his critical prose: wistful, retro, and slightly befuddled, such as when Borges cites The Arabian Nights in the middle of a paragraph about Jewish mysticism or calls Oscar Wilde "a writer for boys." The stilted afterword by Mihailescu, a professor of modern languages at the University of Western Ontario, doesn't help. The delay in the issuing of these two books already boded poorly; their release now seems perfunctory.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

For Borges (1899-1986), the central fact of life was the existence of words and their potential as building blocks of poetry. In this series of six long-forgotten lectures given at Harvard more than 30 years ago, he insists that reading (in English, primarily) gave him more pleasure than writing. Most of his examples are taken from English-speaking writers, such as Shakespeare, Keats, Byron, Whitman, and Frost. Borges developed a passion for the study of Old English, with its abundant metaphors, harsh beauty, and deep feeling (though not, he admits, for its deep thought). He dislikes the history of literature, which he feels demeans individual works, and he is generally wistful for a future when we are no longer overburdened by history. He champions the primacy of storytelling and prefers the epic to the novel, which he finds "padded." He also argues that one of the great poverties of our time is that we no longer believe in happiness and success and that happy endings seem commercial or staged. Some of his ideas are quirky, but it's still a privilege to have access to one of the most distinctive literary voices of the century. Recommended.DJack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674008200
• ISBN-13: 978-0674008205
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #475,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The joy of living in literature, June 11, 2003

By 

Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Craft of Verse (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

I am not sure whether we learn much about the CRAFT of verse from these lectures. But one thing that we do learn from Borges is what a pleasure it is to be able to find beauty in poetry (and prose). Borges was an amazing man - he was almost seventy when he delivered these six lectures, and he did it without the help of notes since his poor eyesight made it impossible for him to read.

For Borges, poetry is essentially undefinable. It flows like Heraklit's river - the meaning of words shifts with time, and readers' appreciation changes over the years. Poetry as he understands it is a riddle because it is beyond rational understanding; it is 'true' in a higher (magical) sense. And what is true in a higher sense remains unfathomable, a riddle: "we KNOW what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words [to define what poetry is]?"(18)

Metaphors, according to Borges, are the core of poetry, closer to the magic source of words than any other artistic means of expression. Metaphors are so powerful because for him "anything suggested is far more effective than anything laid down. Perhaps the human mind has a tendency to deny a statement. Remember what Emerson said: arguments convince nobody. They convince nobody because they are presented as arguments."(31)

My favorite lecture is the fourth, 'Word-Music and Translation.' It is a real gem. I will not quote Borges on how word-music can be rendered in translation; just a short quote to illustrate how magnificently language can be translated by an inspired translator of genius. When Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century translated 'ars longa, vita brevis,' (art is long, life is short) he chose a stunning interpretation with 'the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.' Borges comments that here we get "not only the statement but also the very music of wistfulness. We can see that the poet is not merely thinking of the arduous art and of the brevity of life; he is also feeling it. This is given by the apparently invisible, inaudible keyword - the word 'so.' 'The lyf SO short, the craft SO long to lerne.'"(62) One small word, and it makes all the difference.

And since I prefer translations true to the spirit over translations true to the letter, I was pleased to learn from Borges that all through the Middle Ages, people thought of translation not in terms of a literal rendering but in terms of something being re-created.

I do believe that these lectures speak of the wisdom of Borges; not in spite of, but because of the contradictions in the text. Here we meet a man in full; a man who stresses the irrational in poetry and the immediacy of experiencing it, yet proves by his own example how the experience of poetry grows with the plain, rational knowledge about poetry that we gather over the years. Borges is also a man who lives in literature. He finds new beauty in poetry because he continues to change every day. And this is perhaps the most inspiring message of his lectures: people who continue to enjoy changing with the new things they learn 'turn not older with years, but newer every day,' as Emily Dickinson phrased it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magisterial Magician: Borges, October 5, 2000

By 

Laure-Madeleine - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Craft of Verse (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Hardcover)

An otherworldly snapshot of Jorge Luis Borges, head tilted upward from the lectern with his mouth caught in motion, graces the cover of the slim volume, "This Craft of Verse" (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures). Once in hand, this book is difficult to ignore. Aside from his generous citations of poets, from Homer to Virgil to Coleridge to Keats to Whitman, Borges delivers his received wisdom, distilled from his years of writing. Any one of several passages taken from these five lectures, which have been skillfully edited by Professor Calin-Andrei Mihailescu, is well worth the price of admission. An example: "What does being a writer mean to me? It means simply being true to my imagination" (113).

Borges dissembles as he describes the poetic process. He cleverly tells the audience that perhaps they know more than he does about this subject. Yet his apparent humility before the genius of Homer seems authentic. Further, he proffers lines from Frost and Byron to illustrate the power of metaphor: sleep and night--are they "words" or do they connect to one of the twelve patterns in our collective imagination? For Borges, "Words are symbols for shared memories" (137).

When Borges says (after Whistler) that "Art happens every time we read a poem," (6) he means to tell us that it is okay to live with the mystery, that we don't need to "tinker" with our poetry to make it "right." What we must do is to be faithful to the dream from which the words came. The magic is in the words; thus "the first reading of a poem is a true one" (6). Such good advice from the master abounds--one can hear him speak through the text. (A CD is forthcoming.)

Highly recommended to struggling writers and readers of poetry! This book would be excellent for use in a poetry workshop as an antidote to poison of critical choruses. One does not have to be a disciple of Borges to appreciate these lost but now found lectures.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The supreme lover of literature, January 16, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: This Craft of Verse (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

Borges writes in this work, " I think of myself as essentially being a reader. As you are aware, I have ventured into writing;but I think that what I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes- yet one writes not one would like to write, but what one is able to write." pp.98
This is not to contradict Borges but it seems to me that his writing is what it is essentially because he is such a reader. And as others have often remarked the most remarkable reader .For he reads from so many different linguistic and literary traditions- and he reads with his own imagination, in effect rewriting and combining all he reads into what he enables us to read- his writing.
In all this one feels that Borges so loves literature that he is making it live more by writing to us about what he reads. He is the writer perhaps more than any other for whom books are the first and primary experience. They are the world before the world is the world. Borges reads and rereads them and presents his rereadings to us.
They often amaze us with their startling perceptions and beauty.
This work is ostensibly about the craft of verse but is really Borges talking about various aspects of his reading, and his writing. And he talks with such wisdom and insight, such original poetry that it is impossible not to take pleasure in this work.
Borges writes of the music of poetry and of the meaning of metaphor and how real literature like Louis Armstrong's 'jazz' must be sensed and felt as its first definition. For people who love poetry and people who love books there is no other writer who more strengthens their faith in what they are doing, than this very great writer and reader, this supreme lover of literature.