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🦋 Borges' Opinion of Poe

As I read this lecture I'm beginning to think that Borges does not really think that much of Poe as a writer -- interesting because he says (as I noted below) that Poe changed the course of the history of literature, that Poe invented a genre and a manner of reading hugely important in our time. Of Poe as a poet, Borges says we have "a much lesser Tennyson"; he quotes Emerson in calling Poe a "jingleman." There is a hugely entertaining two-page digression in which Borges imagines the process of writing "The Raven," which is by itself worth the price of admission. Of his prose, Borges says he is "more extraordinary in the aggregate of his work, in our memory of his work, than in any of the pages of his work."

Update: I found what might be the original reference for Emerson calling Poe "the jingle man" -- the May 20, 1894 edition of the NY Times, under the headline "Emerson's Estimate of Poe" (only available as PDF) quotes the April 1894 Blackwood's Magazine:

"Whom do you mean?" asked Emerson with an astonished stare, and on the name being repeated with extreme distinctness, "Ah, the jingle man!" returned Emerson, with a contemptuous reference to the "refrains" in Poe's sad lyrics.

posted evening of Friday, February 27th, 2009
➳ More posts about Borges oral
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges
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➳ More posts about Edgar Allen Poe

Someone or another in the last fifty years called Emerson (without naming him) a "cracker-barrel philosopher". So Poe was avenged, sort of.

That was more a testimony to the tediousness of contemporary philosophy than a judgment on Emerson, but in truth, Transcendentalism is hard to figure as a systematic philosophy.

posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by John Emerson

Everybody's ragging on one another... Emerson is one of the people Borges named as a descendant of Swedenborg. This period that includes Emerson, Poe, and Whitman seems pretty important to Borges.

posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Jeremy

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