Jorge Luis Borges

WILLIAM BLAKE

POESÍA COMPLETA

Visionario, grabador y poeta, William Blake nació en Londres en 1757 y murió en 1827 en la misma ciudad. Fue el menos contemporáneo de los hombres. En una era neoclásica urdió una mitología personal de divinidades no siempre eufónicas: Orc, Los, Enitharmon. Orc, anagrama de Cor, es encadenado por su padre en el monte Atlas; Los, anagrama de Sol, es la facultad poética; Enitharmon, de dudosa etimología, tiene como emblema a la luna y representa la piedad. En las Visiones de las hijas de Albión, una diosa, Oothoon, tiende redes de seda y trampas de diamante y apresa para un hombre mortal, del que está enamorada, «muchachas de suave plata o de furioso oro». En una era romántica, desdeñó la Naturaleza, que apodó el «universo vegetal». No salió nunca de Inglaterra, pero recorrió, como Swedenborg, las regiones de los muertos y de los ángeles. Recorrió las llanuras de ardiente arena, los montes de fuego macizo, los árboles del mal y el país de tejidos laberintos. En el verano de 1827 murió cantando. Se detenía a ratos y explicaba «¡Esto no es mío, no es mío!» para dar a entender que lo inspiraban los invisibles ángeles. Era fácilmente iracundo.

Creía que el perdón es una flaqueza. Escribió: «El gusano partido en dos perdona al arado». Adán fue arrojado del Edén por haber probado la fruta del Árbol de la Ciencia; Urizen fue arrojado del paraíso por haber promulgado la ley moral.

Cristo enseñó que el hombre se salva por la fe y por la ética; Swedenborg agregó la inteligencia; Blake nos impone tres caminos de salvación: el moral, el intelectual y el estético. Afirmó que el tercero había sido predicado por Cristo, ya que cada parábola es un poema. Como el Buddha, cuya doctrina, de hecho, era ignorada, condenó el ascetismo. En los Proverbios del infierno leemos: «El camino del exceso conduce al palacio de la sabiduría».

En sus primeros libros el texto y el grabado tienden a ser una unidad. Ilustró admirablemente el Libro de Job, la Comedia dantesca y las poesías de Gray.

La belleza para Blake corresponde al instante en que se encuentran el lector y la obra y es una suerte de unión mística.

Swinburne, Gilchrist, Chesterton, Yeats y Denis Saurat le han consagrado sendos libros.

William Blake es uno de los hombres más extraños de la literatura.

SOURCE: Borges, Jorge Luis. “William Blake: Poesía completa,” in Biblioteca Personal: Prólogos (1985, 1988). Rpt. in Borges, Miscelánea (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori-DeBols!llo, 2011), pp. 356-57.

Note: El Siglo XVII , Introducción a la literatura inglesa, OCC, 825. William Blake, BP, 113.
BP = Biblioteca personal. Madrid: Alianza, 1988.
OCC= Obras completas en colaboración. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1979.

Automatic translation:

WILLIAM BLAKE

COMPLETE POETRY

Visionary, engraver, and poet, William Blake was born in London in 1757 and died in 1827 in the same city. He was the least contemporary of men. In a neoclassical era, he wove a personal mythology of sometimes un-euphonic deities: Orc, Los, Enitharmon. Orc, an anagram of Cor, is chained by his father on Mount Atlas; Los, an anagram of Sol, is the poetic faculty; Enitharmon, of dubious etymology, has the moon as her emblem and represents piety. In The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, a goddess, Oothoon, spreads silk nets and diamond traps to capture a mortal man she loves, ‘girls of soft silver or furious gold.' In a romantic era, he scorned Nature, which he nicknamed the 'vegetable universe.’ He never left England, but like Swedenborg, he traveled through the regions of the dead and angels. He traversed the plains of burning sand, the mountains of solid fire, the trees of evil, and the land of labyrinthine weavings. In the summer of 1827, he died singing. He would pause at times and explain, “This is not mine, not mine!” to convey that he was inspired by invisible angels. He was easily irritable.

He believed that forgiveness is a weakness. He wrote: “The worm cut in two forgives the plow.” Adam was cast out of Eden for having tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; Urizen was thrown out of paradise for having promulgated the moral law.

Christ taught that man is saved by faith and ethics; Swedenborg added intelligence; Blake imposes three paths to salvation: the moral, the intellectual, and the aesthetic. He asserted that the third was preached by Christ, as every parable is a poem. Like Buddha, whose doctrine was, in fact, ignored, he condemned asceticism. In the Proverbs of Hell, we read: “The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

In his early books, text and engraving tend to be a unity. He beautifully illustrated the Book of Job, the Dantean Comedy and the poems of Gray.

Beauty for Blake corresponds to the moment when the reader and the work meet, and it is a kind of mystical union.

Swinburne, Gilchrist, Chesterton, Yeats, and Denis Saurat have dedicated respective books to him.

William Blake is one of the strangest men in literature.

Note:

Borges’ favorite Blake scholar was Denis Saurat. Saurat wrote one book on Blake in in French and two books in English―Blake and Milton and Blake and Modern Thought. Borges is rather idiosyncratic, but he has a few interesting observations here, beginning with Blake’s uniqueness in the English literature of his time, not in the same boat with the other Romantics among which he is now classified. [10 Nov. 2018 ― RD]

SOURCE: Borges, Jorge Luis. Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature, edited, researched, and annotated by Martín Arias and Martín Hadis; translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver. New York: New Directions Books, 2013. (The collected 25 lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires.) See:

Class 15: The Life Of William Blake. The Poem "The Tyger." Blake And Swedenborg’s Philosophy, Compared. A Poem By Rupert Brooke. Blake’s Poems (Monday, November 21, 1966), pp. 137-147.

Comments on Blake are strewn throughout Borges’ non-fiction. See, e.g. Textos recobrados, 1919-1929.

William Blake Study Guide

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web