Robert Louis Stevenson: An Anthology: Selected by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges

by Robert Louis Stevenson, Kevin MacNeil (Editor), Jorge Luis Borges (Compiler)

First imagined in the 1960s but never published, this collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's essays, fables and short stories was compiled by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares - a collection of their favourite works of non-fiction, short stories and fables. The themes - integrity, intellectual and imaginative truth, literary meaning, the fantastic - are common to all three authors, and these connections are explored in an introduction by Kevin MacNeil. Including such classic tales as 'The Bottle Imp' and rare essays on crime, morality, dreams and romance, Robert Louis Stevenson: An Anthology is rich, eloquent and utterly readable.

Genres: Short Stories

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.

Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.

Reviews

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is comprised of two parts, essays and short stories, and it had me at "Selected by Jorge Luis Borges." First essay in, I realized I was in over my head, and most topics--on lay morals, morality, gentlemen, the ethics of crime--weren't my cup of tea; A Humble Remonstrance, RLS's remonstrations of Walter Besant and Henry James's opinions on the art of fiction, was particularly pedantic. It picked up with Gentlemen in Fiction, though my reading of W.M. Thackeray and H. Fielding and their gentlemanly/rakish characters remain in the distant future. I related more with his childhood enthusiasm for adventure stories in A Gossip on Romance, where RLS waxes eloquent on the pleasures of reading. "In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye." That's some orgasmic reading, which explains why I too, dig "blithely after a certain sort of incident*, like a pig for truffles."

I so easily forget the short stories I read these days, but the following titles will likely stay with me: The Suicide Club for its absurdity, reminiscent of some of Kipling's work, the thought-provoking fairy tale of The Bottle Imp, and that allegorical tale for all ages, The House of Eld. Special mention goes to the surreal, timeless tale of The Song of the Morrow, which may as well have been written by Jorge Luis Borges.

* As a child, these treats came in the form of the Classics Illustrated Comic Books: Frederick Marryat's The Little Savage, H.R. Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, and of course, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Small wonder I wanted so much to be a boy growing up, the grand ambition being a cabin boy. Most of the literature I was exposed to showed the guys having all the fun!

** A note on the book cover: RLS looks so much like my reading group co-member, friend, and RLS descendant John Stevenson.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adquirí esta antología en formato electrónico el día 13 de septiembre de 2021 y completé su revisión parcial los días 18 y 19 de septiembre de 2021 como parte de mi inmersión en la lectura de Robert Louis Stevenson.

El volumen consta de tres partes:

1. Una extensa introducción firmada por Kevin MacNeil;
2. Una selección de doce ensayos de Stevenson atribuída a Borges y Bioy Casares (cinco de los cuales están traducidos en la edición de Siruela comentada aquí);
3. Una selección, también atribuída a Borges-Bioy Casares, de dos relatos cortos ("The Suicide Club" y "The Bottle Imp") y de siete de sus veinte fábulas.

De todo esto, he leído la introducción, uno de los doce ensayos ("A Chapter on Dreams", que proporciona pistas sobre la creación de Dr.Jekyll y Hyde), los dos relatos cortos y dos de las siete fábulas ("Faith, Half-Faith and No Faith at All" y "The Song of the Morrow.

Aunque la introducción contiene algunas reflexiones útiles para conocer la personalidad literaria de Stevenson, en realidad no trata tanto sobre este autor y las obras suyas contenidas en esta antología, como sobre Borges y Bioy-Casares. Es un largo ensayo de carácter embarazosamente apologético sobre estos dos últimos, especialmente sobre Borges, en el que se intenta decir que si Stevenson fue un gran autor es porque se parecía mucho a Borges.

De los cuentos cortos, "The Suicide Club" me parece de lo mejor de Stevenson, pero no así "The Bottle Imp", ambos brevemente reseñados aquí.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came very near to not rating this book at all. As I typically rate books based on my personal reading experience, this one would not have faired terribly well. But taking a step back and considering what this book really is brings an alternative metric into play. The sub-title of this work suggests Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares as simply editors of a short story collection. Ah but there is much more to it than that. In their rather lengthy (if somewhat dry) introduction to the anthology, Borges and Casares acquit themselves quite well as real scholars of Stevenson's work as well as of Stevenson the man. They present a fairly comprehensive picture of the ultra-staunch moralist and give ample warning as to the nature of the selected works that follow. Fair enough. The reader is then presented with a collection of Stevenson's essays followed by a number of short stories. While ostensibly covering a fairly broad range of topics, the essays all ultimately become treatises on moral duty and obligation. To characterize them as pedantic would be charitably gracious. Far more accurate to say that they are pedantic to the point of condescension. But we were warned. With the moralistic harangue still ringing in the ears, the reader mercifully finds their way to the short stories. One to the next, these are wonderfully creative works and rather beautifully written at that. And all are now instantly and unmistakably identifiable as parables of the darkness of human nature and the consequent imperatives of moral responsibility. So a pleasantly light reading short-story experience...this is not. So if that's what you are after - as I initially was - this is not the collection for you. But once involved, this anthology becomes a fascinating exploration of who Stevenson was and how he came to write the things he did. So all credit to Borges and Casares. If you are looking for a somewhat more scholarly perspective on Robert Louis Stevenson, they have delivered quite well with this one.

[Francisco Barrios · Rating 5 out of 5]

En los sesenta, Jorge Luis Borges y Adolfo Bioy Casares pensaron en una antología de textos de Robert Louis Stevenson, un autor que había influido en ambos y por el que sentían una profunda admiración.

Sin embargo, por razones económicas, el proyecto nunca se materializó. Esto no impidió que se hiciese una lista con los textos que aparecerían en la antología y que inclusive se nombrara a un traductor (aunque, como bien apunta el editor Kevin MacNeil, es muy probable que Borges haya pensado en algún momento poner manos a las obra habiendo ya traducido las fábulas de Stevenson).

Finalmente en 2017, bajo el sello Polygon Books, los textos seleccionados por Borges y Bioy finalmente vieron la luz: Se trata de una soberbia colección de ensayos y narraciones que, sobre todo más los primeros que los segundos, debería ser conocida por todos aquellos lectores interesados no solo en la obra del genial escocés, sino en la impronta profunda que este dejó en Borges y Bioy, así como en las lecturas comparadas que pueden establecerse entre la obra de unos y otro.

Un libro de 322 páginas, bellamente editado y cuyo único inconveniente es la dificultad para hallarlo. Fuera de ello, el libro es verdaderamente un imperdible.

[Addison Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those enticed by the Borges/Bioy angle will find this collaboration only a little less disappointing than their other outings together in the sense that, apart from the selection of texts, they contributed nothing to the book. There are no prefatory remarks or notes of any kind; the only signs of their presence are the inclusion of their names on the cover and the strong taste for detective literature their choices reflect. What prevents this from being a significant disappointment, however, is that RLS was one of the most delightful authors in the English language and perhaps the finest writer of English prose in the nineteenth century. There is nothing in this book that is not a joy to read, and stories as good as The Bottle Imp and The Suicide Club simply do not outstay their welcome.

[Cestmoi]

had no idea this even existed til i found it in a combination book store/pub in falmouth. it didn't blow me away, some of the stories are cool little fun things, and the essays are interesting enough, particularly when stevenson veers into that kind of 19th century english humanism that stops just before it reaches being explicitly socialist. mostly it's cool for the borges connection: the works are clearly things that impacted borges, just as there are ideas that i think i developed by myself only to reread a piece by borges and realise i'd stolen it almost wholesale and added minor adjustments, there are things in stevenson's work that prefigure borges, things that hit him but he was smart enough to take further and impart more of himself in than most who read borges can do with the ideas he gave them. casares was presumably there too