Retorno a la voz: Las clases de Borges sobre Oscar Wilde (1950)

This article studies the unpublished manuscripts for the classes on Oscar Wilde that Jorge Luis Borges gave in the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores between July and August 1950. The first section shows outlines Borges’s work as a lecturer in this period and shows how a class centered on Wilde’s speech gave rise to the essay “Del culto de los libros” (1951). The second and third sections argue that the defense Borges mounts of Wilde’s work involves two lines of approach, the relation of Wilde’s speech to his work and a survey of aesthetic justifications of evil. These two lines converge in Borges’s reading of Schopenhauer and Wilde. The fourth section studies Borges’s notes on “The critic as artist”, where Wilde calls for a “return to the voice”. What this might involve is discussed in light of the work of Walter Ong (2012) and the reading of pragmatism elaborated by Bruno Bosteels (2007). The last section traces the echoes of these notes in “La muralla y los libros”.