While I was right on top of what was happening in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize this year, it's taken me a while to catch up with some of the big guns in the American version, the Best Translated Book Award. In today's post, then, I take a look at this year's winner, a book which (as far as I'm aware) still hasn't come out in the UK. It was the writer's second win in succession - and if you're following my personal comparison of the two big translation prizes, this definitely makes it a third consecutive win for the American side of the pond ;)
*****
László Krasznahorkai's Seiobo There Below (translated by Ottilie Mulzet, published by New Directions) is most definitely not a book for fans of easy reading. It consists of seventeen pieces (calling them short stories would be misleading) which, while not really interlinked, come together to produce a cohesive work. In fact, most reviews have given me the impression that the book is supposed to be considered a novel.
Seiobo There Below is less a novel in the traditional sense, though, than an exploration of the idea of beauty, approached via a series of sketches examining the effects great art has on the human mind and the problems great artists have in producing their masterpieces. Krasznahorkai takes us on a dizzying journey through time and space, where we might find ourselves in modern-day Japan on one page, then in Renaissance Italy on the next. It's a bumpy ride at times, but one thing is certain - the scenery is always beautiful :)
From the very first piece, in which a description is given of a white heron standing in wait in the shallows of Kyoto's Kamo River, the reader senses that this is a book where plot is a minor issue. It's all about words, emotions, about being swept along in the writer's wake:
"...- and that is why it stood there; almost in the middle of the Kamo River, in the shallow water; and there it stands, in one time, immeasurable in its passing, and yet beyond all doubt extant, one time proceeding neither forward nor backward, but just swirling and moving nowhere, like an inconceivably complex net, cast out into time; and this motionlessness, despite all its strength, must be born and sustained, and it would only be fitting to grasp this simultaneously, but it is precisely that, this simultaneous grasping, that cannot be realized, so it remains unsaid, and even the entirety of the words that want to describe it do not appear, not even the separate words..."
'Kamo-Hunter', pp.4/5 (New Directions, 2013)
I hope you're all following this - there are still another four-hundred-and-forty-odd pages to come...
As mentioned above, the main theme is art and beauty, and the writer explores it in great depth, using his stories to examine the effect they can have on ordinary people. Krasznahorkai doesn't confine himself to painting, although many of the stories are concerned with this section of the arts - he also looks at music, architecture and sculpture, leaving characters and reader dumbfounded:
"...finally he made his way around and once again began the slow sliding, here gaping at the ceiling, here at the Tintorettos, and so it went, and he could not even conceive that, in this palatial hall, such bounty as had been created, marvellous but still too weighty for him, could even be possible, because it was too much..."
'Christo Morto', p.114
From the rotund music lecturer thundering away on the subject of Baroque music (to a terrified handful of old people at the local community centre) to the unemployed migrant mesmerised by the figures in a Russian triptych, these consumers of art are anything but passive, almost unable to withstand the beauty of their chosen pieces of art.
While there's a lot about people appreciating art, much is also written about how the works are created. Many of the sections have a two-strand formation, with one showing a modern appreciation, the other looking at the history of the piece. These sections offer the reader interesting insights into the origin of paintings and cultural artefacts, as we are shown teams of artists in Italian workshops scrambling to fulfil an order for a mural, or the lengthy and deliberate preparations for rebuilding a Japanese temple.
However, in many cases, time is kept at a distance, allowing us to see the effect of beauty, but not all its secrets. The Louvre guard who watches over the Venus de Milo every day has his theories on what her lost arms were doing, but he'll never know for sure whether he's right. When it comes to some of the Renaissance masterpieces, even the greatest of art scholars can be unsure as to whether a particular piece was finished off by the master or one of his apprentices. As for the magnificent Alhambra complex, many more questions are raised than answered. Who commissioned it? Who built it? And, more importantly, what is it actually for? This idea of the impossibility of complete comprehension is most clearly portrayed in the short final section where we are privy to a brief glimpse of magnificent treasures buried beneath the earth, their secrets left thousands of years behind...
In addition to writing about the art, Krasznahorkai also turns his gaze to the artists, unveiling the agony and madness which can go hand in hand with greatness. Whether it's an eccentric Romanian sculptor who frees horses from the soil or a Swiss painter whose nerves are shot, the character studies revealed in the book show us that creating a lasting testament has an effect on the creator. In fact, for many of these artists, the act of creation never really stops:
"...in a word, rehearsal is his life, so that for him there is absolutely no difference between rehearsal and performance, there is no particular mode of performance in the Noh, what happens in a performance is exactly the same as what happens in a rehearsal and vice versa, what happens in a rehearsal is exactly the same as what happens in a performance, there is no divergence..."
'The Life and Work of Master Inoue Kazuyuki', p.237
For this famous Noh actor, as for many of the other characters of the novel, genius exacts a cost...
Seiobo There Below is a wonderful book, dazzling in its range of ideas and settings, fascinating stories told in dense, lengthy, multi-page sentences which drag the reader along, breathless and dizzying at the same time. If you're looking for comparisons, books which immediately come to mind include Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair, Mircea Cărtărescu's Blinding or even (in terms of scale and time) David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. However, Krasznahorkai's work is a little more oblique than those, and it's up to the reader to join the dots and make sense of what the writer has offered us.
One of my favourite sections, 'The Preservation of a Buddha', is a representative example of much of what I've discussed. It follows the progress of a statue's restoration, from its departure from the temple to its unveiling a year later. The writer describes the secrets and rituals of the monks in minute detail, but it's only towards the end that we really see the uncanny similarities between the rites of the monks and the meticulous nature of the restorers, who are perhaps the true artists of this piece. There's a fine line between religion and bureaucracy...
The head monk in the story eventually realises that perfection is impossible, and that we can only do our best, despite our limitations, and at this point it's time to take his advice and give up the struggle for a perfect review. There's far too much in Seiobo There Below to cover properly here; it's a wonderful book which has added to Krasznahorkai's already considerable reputation. As always, though, the English-speaking world is behind the game, and with a future Nobel Prize definitely within the realms of possibility, it might be time to finally get more of his work translated into English. I, for one, am certainly keen to see what else he has to say :)
While browsing the library databases recently, I stumbled across a book by a writer I've been meaning to try for a while now. It was a pleasant surprise, so (of course) I put a hold on it, and it arrived in a fairly short time - which is why I have the pleasure of introducing today, for the first time on the blog, the woman the Brazilian press named Hurricane Clarice. Let's see if the nickname is an apt one...
*****
Near to the Wild Heart (translated by Alison Entrekin, published by New Directions) was Clarice Lispector's debut novel back in 1943, when she was just twenty-three years old. It's a swirling, Woolfian tale of a young woman who stands out for her inability to conform to comfortable bourgeois norms - hers is certainly a mind less ordinary.
Joana, the main protagonist of the novel, is a woman trying to work out what she wants from life. She's beautiful but cold, brilliant but unapproachable, a woman who stands out for good reasons and for bad. Eventually, she deigns to marry the handsome Otávio, even though he's not really a match for her. However, it's clear from the offset that theirs is a relationship always destined to explode.
Near to the Wild Heart is a fascinating story written in two parts. While the first looks back at Joana's childhood and introduces the novel's main players, the second focuses on the disintegration of her marriage. There's a mix of description and internal monologues, and the writer slowly develops her creation's relationships, introducing important figures, such as her childhood teacher, and gradually setting her beside other women. There's no doubting who the star of the show is, though.
The book is built around the character of Joana, a woman who, even as a child, was different enough to arouse fear in those in her vicinity:
"Even when Joana isn't in the house, I feel on edge. It sounds crazy, but it's as if she were watching me... reading my thoughts... Sometimes I'll be laughing and I stop short, cold. Soon, in my own home, where I raised my daughter, I'll have to apologize to that girl for goodness-knows-what... She's a viper. She's a cold viper, Alberto, there's no love or gratitude in her. There's no point liking her, no point doing the right thing by her. I think she's capable of killing someone..."
p.43 (New Directions, 2012)
While her aunt's words might be slightly hyperbolic, she does have a point. Joana is formed by her disturbed childhood, and the early death of her mother, then her father, contributes to her unusual attitude towards life.
The childhood Joana was a stormy character, but the finished product is as hard as ice. As a woman she is self-contained, as beautiful and unforgiving as a diamond, quite able to dispense with the need for human company or affection. She's obsessed with working out what she is and what she wants from life, hoping to get to the bottom of what 'living' actually entails. Lispector contrasts this analytical approach to the animal-like living of other characters in the novel, highlighting the conflict between just living and really existing.
The blurb describes Joana as amoral, and to some extent that's true. Quite apart from the petty offences she commits as a child, she is painted as almost inhuman, incapable of feeling what others feel, a fact she recognises herself:
"The certainty that evil is my calling, thought Joana.
What else was that feeling of contained force, ready to burst forth in violence, that longing to apply it with her eyes closed, all of it, with the rash confidence of a wild beast? Wasn't it in evil alone that you could breathe fearlessly, accepting the air and your lungs? Not even pleasure would give me as much pleasure as evil, she thought surprised. She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality." (p.9)
There's a feeling of superiority wrapped up in these thoughts. However, as she learns more about life, she also senses that other women, the dumb, cow-like figures she meets, have something she'll never have. Despite herself, she is forced to acknowledge their natural, unthinking power over men.
Otávio, the man she marries in an attempt to 'try' love, is a very different character. He's a dull, dutiful (to an extent) husband, unaware of who he's really marrying. In a sense, though, he gets what he deserves, as he has chosen to tie the knot in order to abdicate responsibility for his well-being, sensing the steel beneath Joana's surface and hoping that she will be strong enough for the two of them. It's a miscalculation he might live to regret...
From the start, it's inevitable that Joana will grow to resent her husband, and it's no surprise that she feels uncomfortable with her new life:
"Before him she always had her hands out and how much oh how much did she receive by surprise! By violent surprise, like a ray, of sweet surprise, like a rain of little lights... Now all of her time had been forfeited to him and she felt that the minutes that were hers had been ceded, split into tiny ice cubes that she had to swallow quickly, before they melted. And flogging herself to go at a gallop: look, because this time is freedom! look, think quickly, look, find yourself quickly, look... it's over! Now - only later, the tray of ice cubes again and there you are staring at it in fascination, watching the droplets of water already trickling." (p.98)
For a woman who is used to having complete freedom, being forced to share it, to give it up, is a painful experience, and once she realises her loss of power, it's only a matter of time before her thoughts, as always, turn into actions. Having decided that her marriage is a mistake, she calmly sets about dissolving the union.
Near to the Wild Heart, with its periods of stream-of-consciousness writing, is certainly a blistering debut work. Comparisons with Woolf and Joyce are inevitable (particularly as the title comes from a line by Joyce); however, the truth is that Lispector hadn't even tried their work at the time of writing the novel. It's something that's hard to believe when you experience Joana's internal monologue, almost an inquisition at times. Her frantic switching of thoughts, with quick sentences darting between ideas, definitely reminds the Anglophone reader of the writers named above.
That's not to say that it was a complete success. I felt that the internal monologues were a little too abstract at times, and the first half gets bogged down towards the end (I was starting to get a little restless). The second part, though, is much better, the examination of the breakdown of the marriage wonderfully undertaken. It would be hard to say that Joana is more human (I'm not sure that's possible...), but she's certainly a more rounded character than is the case towards the end of the first part.
Overall, Near to the Wild Heart is an engaging book, mesmerising in places, and an interesting introduction to a much lauded writer. I'm very keen to try more, so I'm sure I'll be back on the library databases at some point. Perhaps reading Lispector's later works will help me understand her more, taking me further towards the eye of the hurricane that is Clarice...
Shusaku Endo is one of our recent additions to the J-Lit Giants hall of fame, and a well deserved one. I've enjoyed several of his books, and I've had this novel, highly recommended, on the shelves for a long time. Fortunately, it didn't disappoint...
*****
Deep River (translated by Van C. Gessel, published by New Directions) is centred on a package tour to India by a group of Japanese tourists in October 1984 (the date is significant...). Over the course of just over two-hundred pages, we meet many people, all with different motivations for making the trip abroad.
Four of the group members stand out. There's Numada, a children's author, who finds peace in nature, preferring animals to people; old soldier Kiguchi, returning to the subcontinent to make offerings to his dead colleagues; Mitsuko, a single woman searching for meaning in her empty life; and Isobe, an old man whose wife recently died of cancer. Her last wish was for him to look for her after her death - you see, she believes in reincarnation...
The story starts off slowly as we learn about the background of the main characters and their reasons for joining the tour. While interesting in its way, I was a little impatient at times, with the writer taking half the book to get us to India. It is important though, as these first chapters set up everything that happens when we arrive.
Of the main characters, it's perhaps Isobe and Mitsuko (who nursed Isobe's wife in hospital) who stand out. Isobe is a typical, unemotional Japanese salaryman, learning to cope with life alone after decades of being cared for in a conventional, dry Japanese marriage. His wife's death throws him off guard, leaving him unable to quite grasp what has happened:
"Isobe could not bring himself to believe that the strangely pallid fragments of bone strewn in the box were those of his wife. What the hell is this? What are we doing? He mumbled to himself as he stood beside his weeping mother-in-law and several other female relatives. This isn't her."
p.18 (New Directions, 1994)
He doesn't believe in reincarnation, but with his life partner gone, he decides it's worth thinking about. And so he sets off to look for his wife...
Mitsuko is a very different case. Divorced, jaded, angry - she's looking for something to occupy her as she exclaims:
"Just what the hell is it I want?" (p.68)
Despite her affluence and attractive appearance, she's trapped in an empty life, seeing herself in the tragic heroine of a French novel she reads, Thérèse Desqueyroux. Her fate is linked with that of an aspiring catholic priest Otsu, her former lover, who she attempted to seduce and steal from God during her university years.
Otsu, while absent for long periods of the novel, is another important figure. He's a Japanese Christian with dangerous heretical opinions, views which prevent him from ever progressing in his quest to become a priest. Pantheistic and inclusive, he's a Christian of the east, unable to accept the strict doctrines of the Catholic church. In many ways, it's inevitable that he'll end up in India.
When he sees the Ganges, it's as if he's found what he's been looking for all this time. It's a river of life and death, inclusive and welcoming:
"The river, as always, silently flowed by. The river cared nothing about the corpses that would eventually be burned and scattered into itself, or about the unmoving male mourners who appeared to cradle their heads in their arms. It was evident here that death was simply a part of nature." (pp.144/5)
The river is a backdrop to the later story and the scene of several pivotal events. Those who stay by the river, giving up on the usual tours, get to catch glimpses of the 'true' India. There are weddings, beggars, caste discussions and filth...
The tour group, of course, is no homogeneous unit, but a small microcosm of society. It consists of many people with different reasons for making the trip, each of whom sees India in their own way. In addition to the main characters, we also have a young married couple who loathe the dirt and noise of the country - and a tour guide who loves the country and hates the people he has in tow... The tourists are chance fellow travellers, people with little in common thrown together for a short time - but isn't that exactly what life is?
Deep River is a beautiful novel containing stories about people with issues in the late 20th century. In a consumer society which has lost its way, it seems that everyone has their own cross to bear. In discussing pantheism and Christianity, reincarnation and nihilism, Endo (along with his creations) asks us how we should live our lives. Otsu, who perhaps has thought most about this problem, eventually finds an answer of sorts in the words of Gandhi:
"There are many different religions, but they are merely various paths leading to the same place. What difference does it make which of those separate paths we walk, so long as they all arrive at the identical destination?" (p.191)
That could just about be a fitting epitaph for a great book.
While New Directions have published a fair few of César Aira's books in the US, he's still not really widely known here in Australia (or in the UK) - so my library doesn't have much of his work to borrow. Recently though, I've been very lucky, managing to obtain an inter-library loan and persuade my local branch to buy one of his books. Which is why you have a double dose of Aira delights today :)
*****
The Seamstress and the Wind (translated by Rosalie Knecht) starts with a writer in a Parisian café who wants to pen a story. He already has the title (the title of the real book), but that's as far as he's got. If only he can think of a story to go with it...
Eventually, he stumbles upon one from his childhood, a tale which starts with a friend's disappearance but quickly becomes ever more surreal. In the course of a mad dash to Patagonia, the reader makes the acquaintance of a host of unhinged characters, with the addition of a wedding dress, some serious gambling and (of course) the wind...
While some dislike the term, 'magical realism' is the easiest (and most apt) way to describe what's going on here. When you have a woman flung high into the air, only to land gently on her feet, an invisible lorry, a monster and a woman turning black from shock, you sense that we're no longer in Kansas (or even Buenos Aires). That's without mentioning the appearance of an armadillo on wheels, racing across the dried-out flatlands of Patagonia...
It's not always easy to tease out the deeper ideas hidden beneath the crazy surface, but one theme Aira works on is memories and forgetting. In his initial rambling monologue, the writer touches on these ideas, recalling(!) several mistaken memories from his childhood. He remembers his mother being asleep when he went to bed, even though he's sure she was always up later than him, and his memory of being waken by birds turns out to be mistaken (it was his neighbour's car).
He also enjoys playing with contradictions, frequently starting sentences off only to turn back on himself before we reach the full stop:
"My parents were realistic people, enemies of fantasy. They judged everything by work, their universal standard for measuring their fellow man. Everything else hung on that criterion, which I inherited wholly and without question; I have always venerated work above all else; work is my god and my universal judge; but I never worked, because I never needed to, and my passion exempted me from working because of a bad conscience or a fear of what others might say."
p.23 (New Directions, 2011)
The reader needs to stay focused when reading this book. Like the wind which makes its appearance late in the piece, Aira's story goes off in odd directions...
The Seamstress and the Wind is a great story that feels like it's being made up as the writer goes along - which, of course, is exactly what is happening, both in the story and in real life. Anyone familiar with the great Aira 'method' will know that he's a writer that doesn't like to plan too far in advance :)
*****
The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (translated by Katherine Silver), the second of my library delights, is a little different from the first. The book starts with the titular faith healer wandering the streets, and after an adventure in an ambulance (one which he undergoes unwillingly), he goes back to pondering his writings on the theory of miracle cures. One day, he is summoned to the bedside of an ailing billionaire, and, to his own surprise, agrees to test his theories for the first time...
It's very different from others I've read by Aira, a much denser piece despite its brevity. In fact, after the first couple of sections (44 of 80 pages), I wasn't really sure if I was enjoying it; I was missing the easy-reading flow his work usually induces. Then the 'great' doctor goes to work, and you are swept away by the energy and audaciousness of his attempt to bend the universe to his liking. It's a battle between belief and reason, and Aira and his doctor insist that you've got to believe...
Anyone wanting specifics about the miracle cure will be disappointed as the writer is deliberately ambiguous, which fits in very well with the slippery nature of what Aira's trying to say with his book. In fact, it's very easy to equate Dr. Aira with the writer, even without the name:
Writing was something he couldn't do in a single block, all at once. He had to keep doing it, if at all possible, every day in order to establish a rhythm... The rhythm of publication, so checkered due to the imponderables of the material aspects, could be regularized through the installment format, which also took care of the quantity of the product and its basic tone, that of "disclosure".
p.38 (New Directions, 2012)
Hmm - an author who writes every day and brings out regular short works... Remind you of anybody?
I may be completely wrong, but it seemed to me as if Aira was equating the struggle and mystery of producing a great work of art with the art of the miracle cure (or vice-versa). Just as in the creation of a work of fiction, the good doctor tries to bend the universe in his own fashion; more importantly, just as is the case in writing, it can all go horribly, horribly wrong.
At the end of the piece, we find ourselves asking whether the 'doctor' is a charlatan. More importantly, perhaps, what about his creator? Now that's not a question most writers pose about themselves...
*****
That makes four Aira books for me over the past few months, and I'm very happy that New Directions have taken on the job of bringing Aira's *many* works into English - one 'installment' at a time. Each of the books has had an excellent translation (Chris Andrews was responsible for both Varamo and Ghosts), and with several more translations already out there, I'm very keen to read some more. Why not give Aira a try? I'd definitely recommend his work. He might turn out to be your next new favourite writer...
It's the final stop on my reading tour of Spanish- (and Portuguese- ) language literature, and the last author on the trail is César Aira. My first encounter with the Argentine novel(la)ist was the enigmatic, and slightly confusing, Varamo, but I'd been assured that today's selection was a much more enjoyable choice...
*****
Ghosts (translated by Chris Andrews, published by New Directions) takes place in, on and around an apartment building in Buenos Aires on the final day of the year. A Chilean family is living on the roof of the unfinished building while the father, Raúl Viñas, works there as a caretaker. On a sweltering morning (northern hemisphere folk, take note: December = summer), the future residents of the building come to look at how things are progressing. All in all, the building is fairly packed - workmen, tenants, children and ghosts. Yep, ghosts.
The ghosts are real, gliding about in the background, men covered in dust, naked and invisible to the visitors. However, the Chilean family living on the building are able to see the strange apparitions, and most of them simply accept the figures as part of the background.
"The children weren't there, but the other characters, those bothersome ghosts, were legion. They were always around at that time. To see them, you just had to go and look."
p.47 (New Directions, 2008)
Fifteen-year-old Patri is a little different though, and the quiet young woman observes the ghosts as she walks up and down the stairs. And then they begin to talk...
Ghosts is confusing, but strangely comforting, a story which initially makes little sense but is nevertheless enjoyable. The story meanders along, wonderful rambling vignettes interrupted by tangential asides and the odd glimpse of naked men hanging in the air. At one point, Patri has a dream during her siesta, one which serves as a lengthy digression on the nature of architecture and the importance of non-building in primitive cultures. While it's nice to see a few pages devoted to the culture of Australian Aborigines in the middle of the book, you do start to wonder if Aira might have got ever-so-slightly sidetracked...
There is a method in his apparent madness though, and despite its brevity, Ghosts does deal with a few clear ideas. One is the difference between the Chilean main characters and the Argentines they are living among; in the sense that they are invisible migrants, the family are just as much ghosts as the real things. Aira describes the contrast between the Chileans and Argentines as one between rich and poor, delicate and brash, real and superficial. Patri's mother Elisa explains that in Argentina, money is the only form of virility (I think the writer is trying to say something about his mother country here...).
In contrast, the extended family are shown as people who can enjoy life and use time as they see fit rather than being strangled by it. Theirs is a relaxed existence, seizing the moment with little thought of the future, and it's one which appears to work well. Raúl's drinking may well end up badly, but it gets him through the day, and the wine (which he cools by putting the bottles inside the ghosts...) is drunk at exactly the right time. Even the melon eaten at the party has reached its exact peak at the time it is to be consumed.
However, Patri is the odd one out, tenser and more preoccupied, and Ghosts is really about how she starts to think about what the world may have in store for her. The ghosts are reminders of masculinity and her inevitable fate - and they're not exactly subtle reminders either:
"Although well proportioned in general, some of them, the majority in fact, had big bellies. Even their lips were powdered; even the soles of their feet! Only at odd moments from certain points of view, could you see the foreskin at the tips of their penises parting to reveal a tiny circle of bright red, moist skin. It was the only touch of color on their bodies." (pp.54/5)
In a sense, the ghosts may represent a metaphor for a sexual awakening, and only Patri's mother senses that her daughter might be in danger. While the other children race around the building with little fear of a slip, Patri might just be falling for a rather dangerous idea of happiness. Waiting for the ideal man is a little like waiting for a ghost to appear...
While I enjoyed Varamo, I wasn't quite sure if Aira was my kind of writer, but Ghosts has convinced me that he's definitely on my wavelength. There's so much to like in such a short book, and while a lot is made of his 'process' of writing a page each day and then just letting himself be forced to move the story along, I suspect that a lot of thought does go into the stories. Certainly, I felt that this story was extremely cohesive, with all the tangled strangs coming together in a dramatic climax.
And that's it - I've finally made it through my library loans :) Since finishing my IFFP reading, I've managed to try twelve books by six new writers (in between racing through my ARCs and a few choice works from the shelf). Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time to revisit a few of them in the future - and if I do, I'm sure Aira will be high on the list :)
After my recent experience with Fictions, I was keen to try more of Jorge Luis Borges' work (and I actually had a library copy of The Aleph sitting on my shelves). However, while browsing the New Directions web-site recently, I saw a new book by the Argentinian legend, an intriguing piece of non-fiction - and thought it might be interesting to see what the maestro thinks about our literary history...
*****
Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature (edited by Martín Arias and Martín Hadis, translated by Katherine Silver - review PDF courtesy of the publisher) does exactly what it says on the cover. Borges spent many years as a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires, and this book brings together a series of lectures he held from one semester back in 1966. The twenty-five chapters (or lessons!) provide the reader with a trip through time and English literature - Borges style.
We start with Anglo-Saxon poetry, looking at the differences in style between Beowulf and other historic texts, before jumping to the middle ages. There's a (very) brief look at the Victorian novelists, especially Dickens, before ending with the romantic poets. There is a lot on poetry... Strangely, Shakespeare is mentioned only in passing (if frequently), and while George Eliot, Austen and the Brontës are absent, there's a whole lesson on Robert Louis Stevenson.
Borges has an idiosyncratic style, and his choices certainly reflect that. In addition to the heavy focus on poetry, he also spends a long time looking at Anglo-Saxon literature, an era you'd expect to fill one or two sessions, not seven. His lectures are not your usual meticulously planned talks, more a kind of informal, digression-filled ramble through literary history. His goal seems to be less to deconstruct texts but to kindle interest in his students by discussing the history of the pieces and the lives of the writers.
Of course, it's all done with a slight Spanish slant. Barely a session goes by without a mention of Cervantes or Don Quixote (or both), and even in the sessions on Beowulf, Borges is able to find an Hispanic connection through the involvement of the Geats (Spanish relatives of the Goths). When he says...
"Hence all descendants of the Spaniards would be relatives of Beowulf"
p.10 (New Directions, 2013)
...you might think he's exaggerating a little though ;)
Above all, Borges has an interest in the characters of the writers he discusses, the people, not the author. He spends a lot of time talking about Samuel Johnson, using Boswell's biography of the great man to paint a humorous warts-and-all picture (he even describes the Johnson-Boswell pairing as comparable to that of Quixote and his trusty sidekick Sancho Panza...). Another figure to receive this treatment is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom Borges brings across as a somewhat lazy genius...
It's true that the book is just a transcript of off-the-cuff lectures, but it is amazing how he expounds and digresses, but manages to stay (mostly) on topic. Borges is erudite, with an incredibly wide historical and literary knowledge - and, let us not forget, it's all from memory. At this point of his life he was virtually blind:
"And now let us read some of Rossetti's work. We are going to begin with this sonnet I spoke to you about, "Nuptial Sleep." I do not remember all the details, but I do remember the plot." (p.187)
As a piece of writing, you won't find it particularly impressive - and that's because it's not writing...
It is inspiring though. I frequently zipped off to the computer to look up the writers and works name-checked (Rossetti, Blake, Morris), often reading the poems mentioned before returning to the book. One interesting find was Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, a long poem dealing with ten views of the same crime, a work Borges mentioned in the same breath as Kurusawa's film Rashomon (adapted from two stories by Akutagawa). Yep, erudite ;)
While I enjoyed this book greatly, not everyone agrees. A Guardian review I saw really didn't like it, and had several reasons for criticising it. The first was that this is not something Borges would ever have wanted published himself, and that's a hard point to argue with. Then again, this is merely a translation of the Spanish-language original, so I think we can probably side-step that objection.
The second point was that this is just a standard series of university lectures and that there's nothing here a university student wouldn't have come across before. That may be true to an extent, but for readers like myself, without a university background in literature, it does throw up new writers and works - plus there is the unique Borgesian slant...
The final point is that the lectures are dull and lacking in humour, and that's one I'd have to disagree with. It's not obvious, but a subtle, dry humour pervades Professor Borges (perhaps easily missed if you don't read the book carefully enough...), and what appears to be dry conjecture could also be read as sly mockery:
"Johnson had a peculiar temperament. For a time he was extremely interested in the subject of ghosts. He was so interested in it that he spent several nights in an abandoned house to see if he could meet one. Apparently, he didn't." (p.84)
All in all then, Professor Borges is a book worth having a look at, especially for those obsessed with all things Borgesian. In fact, even the introduction explaining how the book came about is a fascinating one. You see, we owe these pages to the unnamed students who recorded the lectures (on cassettes!) for lazy friends, and later transcribed them. All good and well, except for the fact that these were university undergraduates working in a foreign language - which means that the transcripts were full of errors and, at times, illegible.
With the original tapes long reused, scholars had to reconstruct the original lectures from the half-baked second-hand copies the students had produced, leaving us with a sparkling, possibly imaginary, series of lectures which may or may not have happened this way (Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius...). So did these lectures really exist? Just as was the case (as Borges tells us) with Samuel Johnson, whose witty conversations were remembered and written down after the fact, we'll never really know the truth...
