Jorge Luis Borges Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Dionisio Cañas

Critical Essay by Dionisio Cañas

SOURCE: “The Eye of the Mind: Borges and Wallace Stevens,” in Borges the Poet, edited by Carlos Cortinez, The University of Arkansas Press, 1986, pp. 254–59.

In the following essay, Cañas explores affinities between Borges and the poet Wallace Stevens.

I don’t know what mysterious reason Borges had in his 1967 Introduction to American Literature by not mentioning the name of Wallace Stevens; to solve the enigma is irrelevant. Nevertheless, it is this omission that impelled me to do a simultaneous reading of the two poets.

In 1944, the literary magazine Sur published a translation of the famous Stevens poem “Sunday Morning”; the translators were Bioy Casares and Borges, and some lines from this poem are very close to Borges' own poetry:

What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

At the end of the poem, once more, the obscurity so dear to...
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