This Craft of Verse

These are the six Norton Lectures that Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard University in the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968.

The recordings, only lately discovered in the Harvard University Archives, capture the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of our age.

Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, the lost lectures return to us now-in Borges' own voice.

Born in 1899, Borges was by this time almost completely blind (only a single colour - yellow, "the color of the tiger" - remained for him), and thus addressed his audience without the aid of written notes.

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 and the Bible. 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.

Throughout, Borges tells the very personal story of his lifelong love affair with the English language and its literature, ancient and modern.

In each lecture, he gives the reader insights into his literary sensibility, tastes, preoccupations, and beliefs.

Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging.