SOURCE: “Borges and Emerson: The Poet as Intellectual,” in Borges the Poet, edited by Carlos Cortinez, The University of Arkansas Press, 1986, pp. 197–206.

In the following essay, Holditch examines Borges's appreciation of and affinity with Ralph Waldo Emerson as a poet.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Borges' deep love for the literature of the United States is the high position in which he has repeatedly, in writing and in interviews, placed Ralph Waldo Emerson as poet. One is certainly not surprised at his appraisal of Walt Whitman as an epic poet, or Emily Dickinson as “perhaps the greatest poet that America … has as yet produced,” or when he speaks with admiration of the ideas expressed in Emerson's essays; but the praise for Emerson as a poet is another thing altogether. Traditionally Emerson has been admired by American readers and critics, rightly or wrongly, as a philosopher, thinker, and...