The publication of the Charles Eliot Norton lectures given by Jorge Luis Borges at Harvard in 1967 is an unusual, as well as a belated, event. Those who heard him recall that, as a public speaker, Borges was never an assured or dominating presence, but he was still a strangely haunting and magnetic figure on the stage. It must be remembered that he was educated at home and had the most fragile contacts with the outside world well into adulthood. A stutter from childhood, sometimes heard even in his old age, complicated matters. There was always a sense of hesitancy, even when he made his most rotund affirmations. Sometimes this could lead to exasperation. The poet Alastair Reid, during a public interview, said to his face, “Borges, you use humility like a club!” Often, his sentences would end with a querulous “no?”—as if asking for affirmation by the hearer. And there was the matter of his Scottish burr, learned in his...

 

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