ARTISTS ON ART:

Excerpt from "Walt Whitman: Man and Myth" by Jorge Luis Borges:

Sr. Borges gave this talk at the University of Chicago on the evening of January 30, 1968.

In the year 1855, American Literature made two experiments. The first, quite a minor one, the blending of finished music with sing-song and Red Indian folklore, was undertaken by a considerable poet and a fine scholar, Longfellow. The name of it, Hiawatha. I suppose it succeeded, as far as the expectations of the writer and of his readers went. Nowadays, I suppose it lingers on in the memory of childhood and survives him. Now the other is, of course, Leaves of Grass. Leaves of Grass is a major experiment. In fact, I think I can safely venture to say that Leaves of Grass is one of the most important events in the history of literature. If I speak of it as an experiment, perhaps you will think that I am implying a profanation, a desecration, and a blasphemy, since, when we speak of experiments in literature, we generally think of unsuccessful ones. For example, when we speak of experimental literature, well, we think of works that we do our best to admire and that somehow defeat us (for example, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, may I add the ninety-odd Cantos of Ezra Pound?) because, after all, the word "experiment" is a polite word. Well, in the case of Leaves of Grass the experiment succeeded so splendidly that we think it could never have failed. Somehow when something goes right - and that hardly ever happens in literature - we think it somehow inevitable. We think that Leaves of Grass lay there, lay unsuspected there, ready for anybody to discover and write it down.

© 1975 by The University of Chicago. All excerpts appear in Critical Inquiry, Volume 1, Number 4 (June 1975). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.

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