Free Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges Page B

they had him go speak with the monastic authorities. The abbess heard the verses, she thought they were very good, but she wanted to carry out a test. She ordered one of the priests to read Caedmon the following verses of Genesis and told him to versify them. The next day, Caedmon, who was illiterate, came with a verse version of the passage, which they transcribed, and Caedmon continued versifying the Pentateuch until the day he died. Bede says that in England, many have sung well, but that nobody sang as well as he did, because the others had men as teachers, and he had God or his angel as his teacher. And Caedmon predicted the hour of his death, and he was so certain of it and his posthumous fate that just before this hour, he was asleep rather than in prayer. And so he passed from one dream to another—from sleep to death—and it has been said that we should rest assured that he met his angel in the other world. So Caedmon dies, leaving behind some mediocre verses—I’ve read them—and a beautiful legend. 8 And as we shall see later, when we read the work of Coleridge and Stevenson, this is part of a literary tradition that seems to be deeply rooted in England: the tradition of versifying in one’s sleep.
    After Caedmon, there came other religious poets, the most famous of whom isCynewulf, whose name means “bold wolf.” The oddest thing about Cynewulf, whose poems are paraphrases of the Bible, is the habit he had of “signing” his poems. There are poets who have done this, of course, in a much more efficient way than Cynewulf. Perhaps the most famous is the American poet, WaltWhitman, who speaks about himself in his poems, saying: “
Walt Whitman, un cosmos, hijo de Manhattan, turbulento, sensual, paternal, comiendo, bebiendo, sebrando
.” 9 And he has a poem that says: “
Qué ves, Walt Whitman?
” [“What do you see, Walt Whitman?”] And he responds, “
Veo una redonda maravilla que gira por el espacio.
” [“I see a great round wonder rolling through space.”] And then: “
Qué oyes, Walt Whitman?
” [“What do you hear Walt Whitman?”] At the end, he sends best wishes to all the countries of the world, “from me and America sent.” 10 Ronsard did the same in a sonnet. 11 AndLugones has also done it, kind of in jest. 12 Somebody asks in
Lunario sentimental
, “
El poeta ha tomado sus lecciones / Quién es? / Leopoldo Lugones / Doctor en Lunología
” [“The poet has had his lessons / Who is he? / Leopoldo Lugones, Doctor of Lunology.”] But Cynewulf chose another way. This practice is common among Persians, and it seems the Persians did it so that others wouldn’t claim their poems as their own. For example, the great Persian poetHafiz mentions himself many times, always in praise, in his poems. He says, for example, “Hafiz,” and someone answers, “The angels in the sky have learned your latest poems by heart.” Now, Cynewulf—remember that the detective novel is a genre typical of the English language, although it was invented in the United States byEdgar Allan Poe—Cynewulf anticipates cryptography, using the letters of his own name to make a poem about the Final Judgment. 13 He says, “C and Y kneel in prayer; N sends up its supplications; E trusts in God; W and U know they will go to Heaven; L and F tremble.” And this is written inRunic letters.
    Runic letters were the ancient alphabet of all the Germanic peoples. 14 These letters were not made for cursive writing. They were made to be engraved or etched into stone or metal. (A knife with the letters of the runic alphabet was found in the Thames.) These letters had magic properties; they were closely linked to ancient religion. So Cynewulf writes his poems using the Latin alphabet, learned from the Romans, but when he gets to letters that are meaningful, he uses the runic letters, which the Saxons, as well as the Norsemen, used, for the writing of epigraphs. These letters—I don’t know if you have seen them—have sharp